UB Names Director of Polish Academic Information Center

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Tomasz Goban-Klas, Ph.D., an international authority on the sociology of communication in Poland, has been appointed the director of the University at Buffalo Polish Academic Information Center (PAIC).

The PAIC, a Web-based clearinghouse of information about Poland and Polish Studies, opened formally in April 1997 and logged approximately 2,000 visitors in its first year. The site provides the most extensive and comprehensive coverage of topics and activities relating to Poland available on the World Wide Web.

Funding and administrative support is provided by the Faculty of Arts and Letters Dean's Office.

Goban-Klas, professor and chair of communication and media studies at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, expects to work at UB until September. A resident of North Buffalo, he succeeds Piotr Pienkowski, the center's founding director, who has returned to Poland.

Goban-Klas says he will build on the foundation established by Pienkowski by making the site more comprehensive and adding a variety of new electronic resources that will be useful to those seeking information about Poland and Polish studies. He also plans to develop an on-line course called "Media, Politics and Society: The Case of Poland," in collaboration with several UB faculty members.

The objectives of the PAIC include providing links to U.S. and Polish educational institutions dealing with Polish studies; collecting and providing access to information concerning faculty, courses, syllabi and required materials; making scholarly papers, book chapters and other documents available in electronic form, and helping to organize teleconferences and discussion groups, and facilitate distance-learning programs in Polish studies.

For more information about the PAIC, visit its Web site at .