Dear friend or colleague,
The Institute on Independent Living, under funding from the European
Union, maintains a full-text online library with documents on all
aspects of Independent Living. One of our areas of particular interest
is Personal Assistance.
We try to make our selection of texts on personal assistance as
extensive and complete as possible. We collect and publish articles,
manuals, research reports and personal accounts about legal, funding and
organizational aspects, training and support issues as well as the
interpersonal dimensions of the user-assistant relationship.
If you or your organization have produced materials of no commercial
value or know of relevant resources elsewhere, we can help in making
them available to a large public through our website which presently
receives close to 500 visitor a day from all over the world. With full
credits and links to authors and copyright owners, of course. Please,
contact our
webmaster Kris Walmsley, at mailto:[log in to unmask] You too can
empower personal assistance users.
Through the year we've received a number of comments - both critical and
complimentary - about our website. When possible, we try to accommodate
requests or implement suggestions. As we head into a new year we're
happy
to present a new look for the website of the Institute on Independent
Living. Webmaster Kris has done a fine job.
The homepage offers now a clear and comprehensive overview of the site's
contents. Latest additions to the Library are headlined, as are
world-wide events (calls for papers,
conferences, etc.). Especially exciting is the addition of a regular
columnist. We begin this feature with Karen Stone, who takes the pulse
of the disability community, and notes the best and worst influences
affecting people with disabilities in the 1900's.
The Library now contains over a thousand pages of relevant materials on
independent living, personal assistance, universal design, legislation,
advocacy, and many other related topics. We're in the process of
providing
descriptive annotations for each article, report, or commentary.
Our free on-line services continue to grow. Aside from new subject
headings in our Discussion Forums, you'll also notice that the
Accessible Vacation Home Exchange contains now 100 objects, and that we
updated the Assistant
Referral Exchange with its list of persons seeking work as personal
assistants and those looking for assistants.
We changed the name of DisOrgNet (Disabilities Organizing Network) to
Global Networking to better reflect the purpose of this service: to
facilitate networking among organizations both of and for persons with
disabilities in
their search for partner organizations for joint projects; events;
sharing resource persons for lectures; training or technical assistance;
for study visits, internships or other cooperation, including funding.
Finally, we'd like to remind you to subscribe to our Newsletter, either
by adding your email address in the form on our homepage or by sending
a mail to
mailto:[log in to unmask] with
"subscribe"
in the body of your email message.
We look forward to your visit and hope to continue hearing from you.
All the best in 2000.
Cordially yours,
Adolf Ratzka
[log in to unmask]
Director, Institute on Independent Living
http://www.independentliving.org
Important references:
Full-text Library
http://www.independentliving.org/Library/Library_Contents.html
Accessible Vacation Home Exchange
http://www.independentliving.org/VacationHomeSwap.html
Assistant Referral Service
http://www.independentliving.org/assex/index.html
Global Networking
http://www.independentliving.org/donet/index.html
Discussion Forums
http://www.independentliving.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/indliv/forum/bbs_entrance.cgi
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