Summer Internship working on the new UNESCO website

UNESCO is currently searching for summer interns to work on helping define and launch the new UNESCO website. Duties vary from editorial, technical to promotional activities.

UNESCO.ORG has over 1.5 visitors per month from around the world and publishes content in over seven languages. The site is currently undergoing a total overhaul including a content renewal and development of a new user interface.

Sound exciting? Then visit UNESCO's volunteer webpage to find out if you have the right profile and submit your candidature:

http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=11716&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

You can contact Stephen Roberts, UNESCO Web Coordinator, directly once this has been done, with a short letter of introduction and motivation. Note that he is a member of the UNESCO's Friends Group on LinkedIn, the social networking site.

Dept of Ed Policy Attache to UNESCO Cut from U.S. Budget

Tuesday the Washington Post had a story that the White House had cut the position of Education Attache from the staff of the Permanent Representative of the United States to UNESCO. The cut is estimated to save between $631 thousand to $713 thousand.

That includes the following: one GS-15 salary, plus benefits; one Paris apartment, plus parking; travel and moving expenses; education costs for children of up to $60,000; and $170,000 for International Cooperative Administrative Support Services, an expenses-sharing mechanism used by agencies for overseas staff.

Sally Lovejoy, formerly a Congressional aid, was appointed to the job in 2006 and resigned at the end of the Bush administration. I assume that we will replace Ms. Lovejoy with a considerably junior officer, who has much less luxurious support services.

No Wonder This Woman Is Smiling
Photo credit: Susan Walsh - AP

Job: DIRECTOR, DIVISION OF CULTURAL OBJECTS AND INTANGIBLE HERITAGE

Level: D1
Location: Paris
Competition Closes: 14 May 2009
For more information: http://recrutweb.unesco.org/pdf/CLT188.pdf
To Apply: http://tinyurl.com/cgpn6h

Job: Chief of Section on the Diversity of Cultural Expressions

Level: P5
Location: Paris
Closing Date: 9 June 2009
To Apply: http://tinyurl.com/dk29j4
For More Info: http://recrutweb.unesco.org/pdf/CLT945.PDF

A Boom Time for Cultural Cooperation and Industries

Past weeks, certainly, have led to exciting milestones in bringing together cultural goods and services. The World Digital Library, for example, has rightfully generated buzz about the wealth of resources now available in sharing information from around the world. Further, projects cherishing cultural cooperation like UNESCO's Memory of the World project and today's World Press Freedom Day cherish diversity of expression in all forms.

These projects and events are just a few of the signs that indicate diversity is more often seen as an asset and not a threat around the world than in the past. In fact, UNESCO reports indicate that initiatives promoting diversity for development will increase in the future.

One upcoming initiative may be especially intriguing in this regard. UNESCO's first Forum of Cultural Industries will be held this coming September in Monza, Italy, and will focus on one specific segment of cultural industries in seeking to increase the capacity of cultural industries worldwide.


This September's forum will bring together hundreds of international experts and focus on promoting innovation and excellence in the craft and luxury industry. The specific goal is to generate discussion and ideas on how to strengthen multi-stakeholder partnerships in this area, especially in the private sector.

UNESCO hopes that this will be the first of many forums that will further strengthen links in cultural sectors at local, national, and international levels.

Launch of the World Digital Library

The world is atwitter with the news of the launch of the World Digital Library, literally. The Twitter social networking site was abuzz with hundreds of tweets about the inauguration, including tweets in Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian, as well as other languages.


In 2005, at the first meeting of the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO after the United States reentered its community of nations, James Billington took advantage of his opening plenary address to lay our a vision of the World Digital Library. He proposed an online collection, global in scope and catalyzed by UNESCO, that would be modeled after the Library of Congress' American Memory, a website that provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. At the time of his talk, the American Memory already contained 40 million entries.

Billington's proposal, that the United States delegation take his proposal to UNESCO, was enthusiastically accepted by the members of the National Commission. Since that time the proposal has been exhaustively reviewed and approved by UNESCO's governing bodies. A number of national libraries and the Library of Alexandria joined in the effort. $10 million has been raised, including $3 million from Google.

This week the World Digital Library was made available with 1,200 documents and their explanations from scholars in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Spanish and Russian. But it is designed to accommodate an unlimited number of such texts, charts and illustrations from as many countries and libraries as want to contribute.

Read the article describing the launch in:

• The Washington Post
• The New York Times
  

Join the LinkedIn UNESCO Group

A group has formed on the LinkedIn social network in support of UNESCO and its programs. It currently has 280 members, and more are welcome. The website provides news, a forum for discussions, job information, and means to link with others interested in the UNESCO. LinkedIn is the social network most used for professional networking.

Join the LinkedIn UNESCO Group!