SI-ASB-2009: Chicago Park District


Chicago Park District 541 N. Fairbanks, Chicago, IL. 60611 www.chicagoparkdistrict.com	Projects 1
The Chicago Park District was formed in 1934 when the Great Depression fostered the consoldiation of the city's 22 independent park commissions. (The earliest three had been established in 1869 to create unified park and boulevard system.) Today, the Chicago Park District is the steward of over 550 parks spanning 7300 acres of land, including 33 beaches, nine museums and two conservatories. The agency is devoted to enhancing quality of life throughout the city as the leading provider of recreation and leisure opportunities; providing safe, inviting and beautifully maintained parks and facilities; and creating a customer focused and responsive park system.
Comments

We built an online catalog of Jens Jensen's drawings. It was a pilot project of digitizing tons of rare and aged drawings and photos within the collections of Chicago Park District, and publishing them online as a web-based catalog. Our supervisor is not a strictly technical person, so we discussed together about what we could implement in a week, and leave it open for future extension. The organization also has a nurturing culture. …the result was rewarding; People in the organization all appreciate our work.

The best part of the project was the “People! So many nice people there in the organization!”

Projects

Jens Jensen Archives Web-Based Guide

Interns: Sui Yan, Zhe Pu

Code: CHIPARK-01

Interns
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The Chicago Park District Special Collections is a vast and rich archive containing plans photographs and documents related to the history of Chicago's parks from the 1870s to the 1980s. This project focuses on the contributions of renowned landscape architect and conservationist Jens Jensen (1860 - 1951). The product will be a pilot web-based guide to Jens Jensen-related archives belonging to the Chicago Park District. The project will update an existing web-site http://www.jensjensen.org/ to provide a used friendly guide that provides information about Jensen's work and full access to digitized archives.

The SI Alternative Spring Break is open to graduate students of the University of Michigan's School of Information. Undergraduates looking for Alternative Spring Break opportunities should look into the University of Michigan Alternative Spring Break program administered by U-M's Ginsberg Center.