Campus Pandemic Flu Planning

All Connecticut colleges and universities are encourage to send a campus team to a one-day conference on planning for pandemic influenza, capitalizing on the approach utilized by Yale University The Conference is at the Michael J. Adanti Student Center, SCSU on February 22 from 8:30 to 2:30.

In late 2005, the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began in earnest to alert the world’s countries to the possibilities of a pandemic flu outbreak on a scale similar to that of the Spanish Flu of 1918. Higher Education will be among the industries most severely impacted. The impact on college or university operations may include unprecedented demands on student health services, the establishment of quarantine sites, debilitating sickness among staff and faculty causing severe reductions in the work force, essential services hampered and perhaps unavailable, and significant loss of tuition revenues from closure of the institution, and non-returning students.Further information on the February conference is available at greimanj@theccic.org

New Book: A Hand To Guide Me

In A Hand to Guide Me, Denzel Washington shares his personal story of the mentors who helped guide his life--more than 70 of America's leading personalities in theater, sports, business, and politics who in turn tell their life-changing stories of mentorship. The library has four copies.

The book "showcases how the kindness of mentors has shaped the lives of people you know and respect. In their own words, legendary personalities tell how people stepped up to guide them. From Hank Aaron and Muhammad Ali to Bob Woodard and James Worth, the voices in this book may be household names now, but they credit their success to the guidance of others long ago." (book jacket)

Bookfinder.com

BookFinder.com is an one-stop ecommerce search engine that searches over 100 million books for sale—new, used, rare, out-of-print, and textbooks. They save time and money by searching which booksellers are offering the best prices and selection.

The BookFinder.com website is part of the BookFinder.com/JustBooks network, produced by a team of high-tech librarians and programmers based in Berkeley, California, and Düsseldorf, Germany.
Source: Free Pint

21st Century Literacies.

During this week's 21st Century Literacies Impact Conference, more than 170 attendees invited from all sectors of education, business, and policy leadership will explore how teacher education, ongoing professional development, and assessment practices need to change to support the core 21st century skills framework.
Source: The Council Chronicle Online, January 25, 2007

Facts on File: Free Trial

We have a free trial to Facts on File until February 9, 2007. Facts On File is one of America’s leading publishers of print and online reference materials since 1941. The list has grown to more than 1,300 titles and spans a multitude of subject areas such as:
American History
American Women's History
African-American History
American Indian History
Modern World History
Ancient and Medieval History
World Atlas
Science
Health Reference Center
Curriculum Resource Center
Bloom's Literary Reference
Ferguson's Career Guidance Center
Personal and Business Forms

The URL to access our site via username/password is:
http://www.fofweb.com/demo
*. Enter your Username: Goodwin
*. Enter your Password: Trial

Put Another President in Your Pocket

Put Another President in Your Pocket

"Third time’s a charm? The U.S. Mint is set to give the $1 coin another go, but this time they’re using the power of dead presidents. Starting with Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison in 2007, the Mint will release four presidents each year, in the order in which they served—much like the state quarters, which were released in the order in which states joined the union."
Source: the World Almanac blog

People Places Plants, Oh My

This blog is way too serious. So here is a change of pace. The early spring issue of People Places Plants is now in the library. Find out about all the glorious flower shows of the Northeast. The Connecticut Flower and Garden Show moves this year to the Convention Center and runs from February 22-25. Visit the web page www.ctflowershow.com for more information.

The New England Spring Flower show at Boston's Bayside Exposition & Executive Conference Center features its larget garden in a decade showcasing the principles of xeriscaping--the cover article in the magazine. If you are headed for Logan Airport with a ticket for out of state between March 17-25, you will miss it! The theme of the show this year? "Yes You Can!" The web page is www.masshort.org.

Health Care Tax Deductions

A new analysis released by the Tax Foundation suggests that tax deductions for purchasing healthcare insurance would help less than half of the uninsured. Fifty-three percent of Americans without health insurance pay nothing in federal taxes and would therefore be unable to take the deduction, according to the study by staff economist Gerald Prante.
Health Care Tax Deductions Would Reach Less than Half of Uninsured
Source: Tax Foundation“

Homeland Security Information

Rethinking Research, Development, and Acquisition for Homeland Security

In 2004, a joint research project by The Heritage Foundation and the Center for Strategic and Interna­tional Studies (CSIS) offered extensive recommendations on how to improve the organization and operations of the newly established Department of Homeland Secu­rity (DHS)[1]. After appointment as Secretary of Home­land Security, Michael Chertoff undertook a “Second Stage Review” that adopted many of the recommenda­tions in The Heritage Foundation/CSIS report.

However, both efforts at rethinking the department gave scant attention to the Directorate for Science and Technology (S&T Directorate). At the time, the directorate was still establishing its organization and research priorities. Now, five years after its creation, its track record is clear enough, and it is not good. Reorganization of the S&T Directorate is unfinished business that the department can no longer ignore.
Source: The Heritage Foundation

Preventing Plagiarism Tips

New out this week, National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Preventing Plagiarism: Tips and Techniques offers secondary and college teachers effective strategies for heading off plagiarism at its sources. Read chapter one of the book, "The Rewards of Original Thinking," online now!
Source: NCTE

Video Lecture: Introduction to Chemistry

Introduction to Chemistry
Video Lectures: Course Chem 1A (Berkeley)
Course Website
Course covers:Atoms, Molecules, Stoichiometry, Atomic Structure, Molecular Formulae, Reactions in Solution, Light waves, Absorption, Emission, Light, Particles, Photons, Matter: Particles/Waves, Quantum Particles in 1-Dimension, Quantum Mechanics: H Atom, QM Orbitals, Radiation and Matter, Many Electron Atoms, Spin, Pauli Principle, Electronic Configuration, Periodic Properties, Trends, Chemical Bonds, Lewis Structures, Covalent Bonding, Resonance, Oxidation Numbers, Formal Charge, Molecular Structure, VSEPR, Isomers, Colavent Bonding, Molecular Orbitals, Hybridization, Molecular Orbitals, Resonance, Ideal Gases, Kinetic Theory, Absolute Temperature, Real Gases, Phase Transitions, Thermodynamics: First Law, Thermochemistry, Enthalpy, Calorimetry, Human Thermochemsitry, Bond Energies, Entropy, Second Law, Free Energy, Direction of Change, Equilibrium, Mass Action, Equilibrium, Temperature, Le Chatelier, Free Energy, Equilibrium Constant, Heterogeneous Equilibrium, Strong Acids and Bases, Weak Acids and Bases, Titration of Weak Acids, Buffers, Indicators, Acid Strength, Amino Acids, Polyprotic Acids, Reduction Potentials, Galvanic Cells, Chemistry vs. Biochemistry, Nuclear and Radiochemistry, Nuclear and Radiochemistry, Nuclear Applications, UC Berkeley and the Actinides
Source: Free Science and Video Lectures Online

Recommended Sociology Internet Resources

Dictionary of Social Sciences
http://socialsciencedictionary.nelson.com/ssd/default.html
This dictionary is designed for undergraduate students and the entries cover basic concepts and events relevant to the study of anthropology, sociology, criminology, political science, and women’ studies.

American Sociological Association
http://www.asanet.org/index.ww
There is a student section that gives you access to the Student Sociologist, A semi-annual newsletter for students and their departments from the American Sociological Association. The December 2005 issue has an article “Teach for America: Using Sociology in Education” that includes a fascinating list of websites designed to enhance the learning of sociology.
Internet Resources for Sociology (University of Delaware Library)

http://www2.lib.udel.edu/subj/soc/internet.htm
This helpful site has organized internet sites into general resources, social theory resources, social research resources, associations and organizations, discussion groups, electronic journals & newsletters, and resource centers.

Sociology Timeline
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/%7Estephan/timeline.html
A “quirky" list from Western Washington University

Sociology Tour through Cyberspace
http://www.trinity.edu/%7Emkearl/index.html#re
This is a must--a stimulating site from Trinity University in Texas.
It includes general sociological resources, sociological theory, data resources and other useful websites, methods and statistics, guide to writing a research paper, exercising the imagination (subject based inquiries) I like the section on stimulating the sociological imagination. This is just a super site!

Statistical Resources on Sociology
http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/stsoc.html
University of Michigan Library

Top Twenty Sociology Sites
.http://www.top20sociology.com/
This is a commercial site, but has useful information

WWW Virtual Library of Sociology
http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/w3virtsoclib/ (McMaster University)

United States National Library of Medicine
http://gateway.nlm.nih.gov
Gateway is "One-stop shopping" for an increasing number of the information resources of the National Library of Medicine (NLM). It is targeted to the user who comes to NLM not knowing examly what is there or how to search for it. But many students find that one resource, such as PubMed or MedlinePlus, has information they would like to know more about. they may then choose to go straight to that resource for a more focused search.

President Bush Opposes Student Loan Change

President Bush opposes a bill that would halve the interest rate on federally subsidized student loans, the White House announced on Tuesday.

The announcement, which came the evening before the U.S. House of Representatives was scheduled to take up the legislation, stopped short of saying the president would veto the bill, HR 5. But it strongly hinted at that possibility.

"The administration opposes HR 5," the White House statement reads in part. "Reducing student-loan interest rates would direct federal subsidies to college graduates, not to students and their families who are struggling to meet current and future educational expenses."
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

Open WorldCat Availa le

Open WorldCat will be added soon to allow you to search for materials in libraries not currently part of reQuest, the statewide catalog. WorldCat is the world's largest network of library content and services. WorldCat libraries are dedicated to providing access to their resources on the Web, where most people start their search for information.
Source: WorldCat

Another New Database: LegalTrac

Later this month LegalTrac will be available to the Goodwin community. LegalTrac provides indexing for 1,300 titles: major law reviews, legal newspapers, law specialty publications, bar association journals and international legal journals. The database also contains law-related articles from more than 2000 additional business and general interest titles. This will give the students instant access to a comprehensive range of major legal publications. Watch for it on the library web page.
Source: Thomson-Gale

New Database Available: Academic OneFile

WOW! Academic OneFile is a comprehensive, subscription-based database of more than 8,000 journals covering everything from STM to the humanities. It provides the academic community with a sophisticated, up-to-date, easy to use database for serious research. The majority of the journals are in full text, available in HTML andPDF formats. This database also includes hundreds of podcasts and transcripts from NPR, CNN, and CBC, as well as the full text New York Times content to 1995. This database will be available later this month. InfoTrac OneFile will still be there!
Source: Thomson-Gale

American Fact Finder

The library staff recommends this government resource. It provides access to thematic maps, community fact sheets, housing reports, and census data. Most notable is the includes of the new American Community Survey what will provide annual rather than decennial demographic, socioeconomic, and housing information.
Access: http://factfinder.census.gov
Source: American FactFinder

Open Access to Research

Open access to research is one of the most important issues for academic libraries and strongly supported by the Association of College and Research Libraries. Increased access to federally funded research accelerates the pace of discovery and innovation.It is critical that this new research be readily available to researchers and all taxpayers.

In May last year, Senator Lieberman and Senator Cornyn (R-TX) introduced the "Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006." (FRPAA) The bill, S.2695, would have required federal agencies that fund more than $100 million in annual external research to make electronic manuscripts of peer-reviewed journal articles stemming from their research publicly available via the Internet within six months of publication. It is anticipated that FRPAA will be reintroduced early by the 110th Congress in the Senate and in the House of Representatives.

For further information, please go to the Alliance for Taxpayer Access (www.taxpayeraccess.org/frpaa/), a coalition that supports reforms that will make publicly funded research accessible to the public. You might also send a message to Senator Lieberman.

Teenage Brains

Now we know why surly teenagers storms off in a huff after being told to tidy their bedrooms. The medical name for the part of the brain associated with teenage sulking is "superior temporal sulcus." Adolescents do not put the part of the brain that considers others' feelings to full use, scientists have found.

It seems our neural decision-making processes mature quite slowly, and researchers think this might help to explain typical teenage behaviour. The adolescent brain undergoes massive changes and does not reach maturity until 20 or 30 years old. Oh my!
Source: Seeing the Teenager in the Brain

Finding Government Information

This month, FirstGov.gov changed its name to USA.gov because last year more than 600,000 people typed "usa.gov" into their web browser when searching for government information. USA.gov is more intuitive. It describes what the site is--the official information and services from the U.S. government. New features include:
Visitors to the United States Gateway
GobiernoUSA.gov (Spanish version)
Web chat

The Next Pandemic?

The Deutsche Press today reported that bird flu claimed its 59th Indonesian. The press reported the second human death from bird flu in as many days, and Japan said it suspected it had discovered its first cases in two years of the deadly H5N1 strain of the disease in poultry as avian influenza makes a resurgence in Asia.

Why worry about 150 or so deaths from bird flu (H5N1)? According to the author of Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching, "go back to 1916, to Etaples in northern France, where a form of flu causing heliotrope cyanosis with a case fatalify of 60% was beginning to spread. There were only 143 cases, but at some point in the next two years it became more infectious. Then it killed 50 million people. Doesn't this ring a nasty bell?" He goes on to say that in 1916 they were also too preoccupied with war and too busy to read the warnings in The Lancet that a new disease was lurking. Greger says they could have prepared themselves.

Michale Greger's book is reviewed in December 27/28 issue of Nature and has been ordered for the library. Thanks to Kim Reese, we are acquiring a special collection on infectious diseases and pandemics.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Learning Resources

Monday, January 15, is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Here are some excellent resources for all of us to remember.

We Shall Overcome, Historic Places of the Civil Rights Movement shows 41 churches, houses, and other properties related largely to the post-World War II civil rights movement. The links to these properties consist of photographs and texts, and the exhibit offers a bibliography and links to websites relating to civil rights. (National Park Service)

History and Politics Out Loud lets us hear key speeches by Martin Luther King Jr., Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and others. Listen to King's "I have a dream" speech, President Roosevelt's speech to Congress declaring war on Japan, Churchill's "iron curtain" speech, and more. (Michigan State University, National Endowment for the Humanities)

Voices of Civil Rights documents the civil rights movement in the U.S. Nearly 50 photos, posters, and descriptions depict important events and individuals: school integration in Little Rock (1957), the lunch counter sit-in in Greensboro (1960), the memorial service for Medgar Evers (1963), the March on Washington (1963), the Selma-to-Montgomery March (1965), the Voting Rights Act (1965), and others. (Library of Congress)
Source: Federal Resources for Educational Excellence

Testing Technology Literacy

Professors, librarians, and other college officials are increasingly coming to grips with the somewhat confounding reality that despite students’ affinity for IPods and their complete comfort with Google, many of them lack the technological literacy they need to navigate today’s information landscape. The California University System is creating a test to measure students' technology literacy. University officials are contemplating making this test mandatory for students to pass before moving on to higher level courses.
Source: Inside Higher Ed, January 4, 2007

Martin Luther King's Word Choice

For details on the ways that King's word choice shapes his message, consider the Teaching English in the Two-Year College "Using 'I Have a Dream' to Teach Strong Repetition (What Works for Me)" (S-C).
Source: National Council of Teachers of English

Go to M.I.T. for Free

By the end of 2007, Massachusetts Institute of Technology will offer all of its 1,800 courses online for free. Students do not have to register for classes and all will be accepted. It's part of the OpenCourseWare Movement, and it has spread to 120 universities worldwide.
Source: The Christian Science Monitor, January 4, 2007

High Schools: Relics of the Past

Will High Schools Be a Relic of the Past? North Carolina is combating its large school drop-out rate with a program called "early college." It combines high school and college courses, allowing students to start earning a college degree while still in high school.
CBS News, December 28, 2006

ESL Resource Guide

Useful guide to books, audio-visual materials, web sites, and databases for ESL instructors and students.
http://www.epcc.edu/nwlibrary/esl_research_guide.htm
Source: Mary Laine, Librarian

Transcultural Nursing Sensitivity

By the year 2050, less than one half of the American population will be of European ancestry. The 2000 census revealed that 29.4% of the United States population already represents a variety of ethnic backgrounds. Because the nursing profession predominately consists of European Americans, a major challenge in nursing education is to educate and prepare future nurses with skills in transcultural nursing. A recent article in the Journal of Transcultural Nursing describes one school's multicultural curriculum for nursing students and a tool to measure changes in behaviors and attitudes. The article presents the psychometric properties of the Cross-Culutral Evaluation Tool that yields a cross-cultural interaction score. Successful teaching strategies are presented as well. Issues of of this journal are available in the Goodwin Library. This issue also devotes an entire supplementary volume to integrating culutural competence into nursing education and practice.
Source: Journal of Transcultural Nursing Vol. 18 No.1, January 2007 56-62.

Participant-Centered Learning for Educators

Participant-Centered Learning and the Case Method

This popular program has previously been available only on CD. In order to reach a wider range of case teachers, Harvard Business Review Educator section has made this resource available online at no cost. Participant-Centered Learning and the Case Method is designed to help instructors develop skills and confidence in leading case discussions. It features eight Harvard Business School professors discussing fundamental issues of participant-centered learning, such as:
What are the qualities of effective discussion teachers?
Adopting and supporting participant-centered learning
Specific teaching techniques
Evaluation
Timing and feedback
The program also uses actual HBS classroom examples to demonstrate case teaching in action. For access, contact the Goodwin Library.
Source: Harvard Business Review

Answers.com 2006 From A to Z

As we usher in the new year, here's a look at what was on the news, the web and our minds in 2006. I couldn't resist making this available.
Answers.com Year-in-Review
The site is titled: 2006 From A to Z
Source: Answers.com

Colleges & Social Software

From the article:
MOVE OVER, MYSPACE. STEP ASIDE, FACEBOOK. These two technologies may have been pioneers in the world of social software, but nowadays, colleges and universities across the country are embracing better and more targeted forms of technology, to enable their campus users to interact. Today, the world of social software includes traditional venues and formats: blogs, wikis, and podcasts.
Social Software >> Social Revolution
Source: Campus Technology

Homeland Security & Immigration Updates

Roundup of Recent/Updated CRS Reports: Immmigration and Homeland SecuritySource:
+ 9/11 Commission Recommendations: Implementation Status
+ Border Security: Barriers Along the U.S. International Border
+ Federal Emergency Management Policy Changes After Hurricane Katrina: A Summary of Statutory Provisions
+ FY2007 Appropriations for State and Local Homeland Security
+ Homeland Security: Establishment and Implementation of Northern Command+ Immigration Consequences of Criminal Activity
+ U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology Program (US-VISIT)+ Visa Waiver Program
Source: Congressional Research Service