Nicaragua project
continues successful third
phase

 

 

 

 

Emilia Ruiz from the Nicaraguan Institute for Research and Popular Education
works with Jamie Gunn from Instructional Media Services on graphic design
projects. Funded by the Association of Canadian Community Colleges, the
Nicaragua project will soon move into the evaluation and wrap-up phase.

he last training session for Douglas

College’s ACCC-funded project

with Nicaragua was completed in
October.

Emilia Ruiz from the Nicaraguan
Institute for Research and Popular
Education (INIEP) spent a month training
in print materials and video production
here. Ruiz spent most of the summer of
1993 training at Douglas College as part
of the project’s second phase. Carmen
Rodriguez, one of the project organizers,
says that this training session was one of
the best yet.

“We did an evaluation, and Emilia felt
that it had been for her better than her first
visit because she had two years of design
experience under her belt in Nicaragua.
Everybody felt very good about the
training. The intention was to give her an
overall view of all the processes involved
in producing materials, and for her to
become coordinator of production of
popular education materials for INIEP,”
says Rodriguez.

Ruiz spent the month studying graphic
design and production with Jamie Gunn

from Instructional Media Services, and
video production with Tom Childs from
the Library, both of whom have
participated in training sessions in
Nicaragua. Ruiz also went off-campus to
help in the production of Latin American
women’s magazine Alquilarre, where she
did editing, proofreading, designing,
graphics, paste-up, and took the magazine
all the way to the printer.

With the training now ended, Ruiz
now goes back to Nicaragua and puts it
into practice, says Rodriguez. “She wants
to form an editorial board at the Materials
Production Centre, which they haven’t
done before. This will allow them to do
some planning, rather than only reacting
to requests for materials. We'll keep in
touch and follow up, and in the next three
or four months, Pll be going to visit and
see how their materials are being used.”

Year Three of the four-year project
ends in March. The last year will be used
for evaluation and wrap-up. The main
concern will be to ensure that INIEP is
self-sufficient, although Rodriguez notes
that they are already beginning to take in
contract jobs for popular education
materials. I

New service
lets you stay on
top of
publications

Keep abreast of your interests without
spending your life surfing the Net or in
the library: that’s the basic idea behind
the Uncover Reveal Service. Not just
another intimidating maze of mostly-
worthless information, the Uncover
Reveal Service is really two services in
one: a huge database indexing over
16,000 different journals, and an interest-
profiling service which notifies you of
publications of interest to you.

“Tt’s a marvellous service for anyone
with an E-mail account,” says the
Library’s Jean Cockburn. “The beauty of
it is that you don’t necessarily have to
subscribe to a lot of journals in order to
keep on top of what’s being published.”

When you sign onto the system, on-
screen instructions show you how to
create a profile of your interests. You can
choose up to 50 titles for table of contents
notification and 10 keyword search
strategies.

Every week afterwards, the Uncover e-
mails you the tables of contents from the
selected journals and the citations to any
articles which match your keyword search
strategy. You then have the option of
either using the library to look up
interesting articles, or just typing in your
fax number and VISA card number if
you'd like them sent directly to your
home.

“The library has paid for the overall
subscription, so if you telnet to
eln.carl.org, it will recognize you as
someone calling from a contracted library.
Just be sure to wait 24 hours from the
time you set your profile before you enter
your list of journals.”

Jean will happily sit down with you to
help you sign up, or just send you the
instructions. She can be found in the
Library, or call her at local 5184.1