Citizen's Almanac

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), [has] released The Citizen’s Almanac, a publication specifically developed for new citizens. The Citizen’s Almanac is a collection of America’s most cherished symbols of freedom and liberty. The Almanac links our newest citizens with the rich civic history we all share as Americans. In an effort to enhance the naturalization process for the more than 700,000 new citizens the United States welcomes each year, USCIS will distribute The Citizen’s Almanac at all naturalization ceremonies beginning this month.
Direct to full text
Source: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (via Homeland Security Digital Library Weblog)

Slowly, Slowly, Slowly, said the Sloth

Set in the lush world of the tropical rain forest, this original picture book is an beautiful example of Eric Carle's colorful collage art with a message: Slow down! Take time to enjoy your world. For a delightful day trip with young children, visit the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, MA.

Slowly, slowly, slowly . . . that's how the sloth lives. He hangs upside-down from the branch of a tree, night and day, in the sun and in the rain, while the other animals of the rain forest rush past him. "Why are you so slow? Why are you so quiet? Why are you so lazy?" the others ask the sloth. And, after a long, long, long time, the sloth finally tells them!

Don't forget to click on Comments and tell us some of your favorite children's books.

Six Higher Ed Learning Technologies

The New Media Consortium (NMC) and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) have just released the 2007 Horizon Report. The annual Horizon Report identifies six emerging technologies that the underlying research suggests will become very important to higher education over the next one to five years.

The six selected areas for 2007 are user-created content, social networking, mobile phones, virtual worlds, new scholarship and emerging forms of publications, and multiplayer educational gaming. A central focus of the discussion of each technology is its relevance for teaching, learning, and creative expression. The times-t0-adoption for the six technologies selected are:
one year or less: user-created content and social networking
two to three years: mobile phones and virtual worlds
Four to Five years: new scholarship/publication and multiplayer educational gaming.

The Report may be freely downloaded. The Horizon Report wiki may be accessed as well.
Source: Distance Education Report

Don't Mess With Our Chocolate!

Did you know that good chocolate's richness comes straight from the cocoa bean -- and that means cocoa and cocoa butter? But maybe you did not know that the nation's food manufacturers are asking for federal permission to make chocolate with vegetable oil instead of cocoa butter -- and still call it chocolate. Yes--vegetable oil! A typical chocolate bar is about one-fourth extra cocoa butter. Under the Grocery Manufacturers of America petition to the FDA, vegetable fat could replace the cocoa butter for about one-third of the cost. I can feel the rage building out there.

The chocolate provision is one detail in a much broader GMA petition to change food manufacturing standards. The FDA has promised to respond to the GMA by April 25.
Gary Guittard, president and CEO of Burlingame Chocolate, wants to stir up opposition before then, and has added a link for consumer comments to the FDA on its Web site, dontmesswithourchocolate.guittard.com. Rise up, chocolate lovers, wherever you are!

Curbing Climate Change

Somehow we let Earth Day on April 22 go by without comment. To make up for that oversight, here is the summary of "Curbing Climate Change" from Global Researcher, our new database on trial.

"The scientific consensus on global warming is sobering: It's real, it's happening now and carbon-dioxide emissions caused by the burning of fossil fuels are almost certainly responsible. Predicting what the exact effects will be on humanity and the planet's living resources is trickier, but a growing body of evidence suggests they will be profound. The international community generally — and the European Union in particular — take the threat very seriously, and most wealthy industrial nations have adopted mandatory limits on carbon emissions under the 2005 Kyoto Protocol. The United States — the world's largest carbon emitter — has refused to sign the protocol or adopt mandatory limits, and is seen by other nations as obstructing progress on the issue. Kyoto expires in 2012, and world governments are working on a successor agreement. Many experts say the effort will fail without active U.S. leadership and the participation of major developing-world polluters such as China and India, with potentially dire consequences."

For the complete report, access Global Researcher. (See previous posting on Global Researcher database.)

Global Researcher Free Trial

Are you looking for background and context on headline-making world news from an authoritative, global perspective? The new CQ Global Researcher meets the increasing demand for balanced, reliable reporting on international issues and crises. Modeled after the award-winning CQ Researcher, CQ Global Researcher delivers definitive, in-depth coverage of newsworthy global affairs from a multitude of international viewpoints. Available exclusively online, CQ Global Researcher offers focused, readable, single-topic reports on vital world issues.

The free trial is currently underway. You will find Global Researcher on the CQ Researcher page which you already know is accessed from the library home page. Call the library for the user name and password.

Threat to Small Publications

The U.S. Post Office is in the process of implementing new postage rates for magazines in a move that could put many independent and small publications out of business. According to the advocacy group Free Press, the rate change was proposed by Time Warner and was developed with no public involvement or Congressional oversight. Postal rates for smaller periodicals could increase by as much as 30 percent while some of the largest circulation magazines will face hikes of less than 10 percent.

Free Press founder Robert McChesney says the new postal rates could make it almost impossible to launch a new magazine, unless it is spawned by a huge conglomerate. Free Press is calling for a congressional hearing on the changes. The group has just launched a new website at stoppostalratehikes.com.
Source: Democracy Now Radio Showbhmqjxt

Another Book Recommendation

On the third day of the Week of the Young Child, the library staff recommends David Wiesner's Flotsam. A day at the beach like no other! A boy finds an old camera that has washed ashore and thus begins an incredible story-in-pictures. As beautiful and intriguing as any of his previous books, Flotsam is a Wiesner classic — a treat for kids and adults alike. Flotsam won the Caldecott medal and the New York Time's best illustrated children's book award. This beautiful book is available in the library for some very lucky child.

The Two-Year Attraction

The Sunday New York Times featured two-year college experiences in the Education Life section. Titles of some of the articles include "To Teach, to Nurse, to Dance Or Just to Do High School Math" and "Community Colleges for Achievers". The section is available in the library and online.
Source: The New York Times April 22, 2007

How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night?

It is the Week of the Young Child. Danielle Wilken recommends How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? by Jane Yolen with wonderful illustrations by Mark Teague. When bedtime comes, sleepy dinosaurs don't pout or shout. They simply give a great big dinosaur kiss and say good night. Young readers are delighted with the rhythmic text and delightful illustrations in this rollicking exploration of familiar bedtime rituals. (Ages 4-8 and perhaps older) This book and other children's books are on display in the library this week.

Xreferplus Free Trial

xreferplus is a giant online reference library that provides you with access to a selection of reference books from a total of 240. xreferplus includes encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri and books of quotations, not to mention a range of subject-specific titles covering everything from art to accountancy and literature to law. Find out about the titles in xreferplus. On the library home page you can access the free trial. We are considering this elibrary or others to support all of the programs on and off campus without the need for additional physical space.

While you are there, try using the concept map that enables you to quickly find information when you want to expand your knowledge of a given area or if you don't know exactly what to look for.
The Concept Map provides a visual map of how search terms and topics in Xreferplus are interconnected. Students really like this.

Since you are new to xreferplus, try the starter quiz of ten questions that puts this elibrary through its paces. Good luck and have fun. Comments are always welcome!


What does it do?The Concept

State of Black America 2007

Portrait of the Black Male

If the United States does not take immediate steps to address the black male crisis, the nation risks losing its “greatest untapped resource,” said National Urban League President Marc H. Morial in presenting the league’s annual State of Black America (SOBA) report, which assess conditions within the black community, at the National Press Club today.

“Empowering black men to reach their full potential is the most serious economic and civil rights challenge we face today. Ensuring their future is critical, not just for the African American community, but for the prosperity, health and well-being of the entire American family,” he said.
Source: National Urban League Executive Summary

Medicare Part D Drug Price Increase

Contrary to repeated assertions by the Bush Administration that the Medicare Part D prescription drug program would bring down pharmaceutical prices, a report released today shows quite the opposite has occurred. According to the report, Part D prices of the most-prescribed drugs for seniors rose steeply last year.

The report, released by the consumer health organization Families USA on the same day the Senate sustained a filibuster on a bill allowing Medicare to bargain for cheaper prices, examined Part D drug plan price changes from April 2006 to April 2007 for the top 15 drugs prescribed to seniors, such as Celebrex, Fosamax, and Lipitor.
According to the report, the median Part D drug price increase was 9.2 percent – almost four times the latest inflation rate (2.4 percent) and almost three times the increase in this year’s cost-of-living adjustment in Social Security (3.3 percent).
Source: Families USA Report

Libraries Alive and Well

Ten years after some experts predicted the demise of the nation’s system of libraries as a result of the Internet explosion, the most current national data on library use shows that the exact opposite has happened. Data released today by the American Library Association (ALA) indicates that the number of visits to public libraries in the United States increased 61 percent between 1994 and 2004.

According to the 2007 State of America’s Libraries report, there were nearly two billion visits to U.S. libraries in fiscal year 2004. The study was released this week by the ALA as the nation began its observance of National Library Week, April 15-21. In the case of academic libraries, the number of visits exceeded more than one billion for the first time in 2004, up more than 14 percent in just the previous two years.

National Medical Lab Professionals Week

National Medical Laboratory Professionals Week

April 22-28

This week provides the profession with a unique opportunity to increase public understanding of and appreciation for clinical laboratory personnel. Because medical laboratory professionals often work “behind the scenes,” few people know much about the critically important testing that lab professionals perform every day. Laboratory test results constitute an estimated 70% of the patient’s medical records and are vital to the diagnosis and treatment of illness and disease.

Pulitzer Prize Winner: The Looming Tower

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize this week for general nonfiction. "A sweeping narrative history of the events leading to 9/11", the publisher calls this book "a groundbreaking look at the people and ideas, the terrorist plans and the Western intelligence failures that culminated in the assault on America. Lawrence Wright’s remarkable book is based on five years of research and hundreds of interviews that he conducted in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, England, France, Germany, Spain, and the United States."The Pulitzer Prize is the American award regarded as the highest national honor in print journalism, literary achievement, and musical composition.

In addition to the Pulitzer prize, The Looming Tower was a National Book Award finalist and a New York Time's Editor's Choice. The book also received the Gelber Prize that honours the excellence of those who think and write about the local and global forces of change in international relations and the Lukas prize for the best American nonfiction writing. This book is available in the Goodwin Library.

National LIbrary Week Special

Thomson Gale is offering open access to all its databases during National Library Week (April 15 - 21). To access any database, you need to register at

www.accessmylibrary.com/libraryweek .

Thomson Gale is also sponsoring a contest on YouTube. From the press release:

"Make a video no shorter than 30 seconds and no longer than 2 minutes professing a deep, abiding love of libraries, librarians and those who depend on them. Load the video to the librareo group on YouTube before midnight EST on Friday, May 25, 2007. Go for it!

Support Teen Literature Day

The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), the fastest growing division of the American Library Association (ALA), is celebrating the first ever Support Teen Literature Day tomorrow, April 19. Support Teen Literature Day is celebrated in conjunction with ALA’s National Library Week (April 15-21, 2007).

The purpose of this new celebration is to raise awareness among the general public that young adult literature is a vibrant, growing genre with much to offer today’s teens. Support Teen Literature Day also seeks to showcase some award-winning authors and books in the genre as well as highlight librarians’ expertise in connecting teens with books and other reading materials. I will mention those tomorrow.

Today I recommend two books for teachers of teens or relatives of teens. You Gotta BE the Book: Teaching Engaged and Reflective Reading with Adolescents by Jeffrey Wilhelm. Wilhelm argues that literary reading depends on a reader's entering and becoming involved in a story-world. He develops this theory through his study of three of the most engaged seventh grade readers that he taught the year he collected data. The other book, Going With the Flow: How to Engage Boys (and Girls) in Their Literacy Learning by Michael Smith and Wilhelm, shares powerful ways to build strong literacy habits in adolescent boys and girls.

Open Culture Podcasts

Open Culture explores cultural and educational media (podcasts, videos, online courses, etc.) that's freely available on the web, and that makes learning dynamic, productive, and fun.
They sift through all the media, highlight the good and jettison the bad, and centralize it in one place. You'll find engaging content here that will keep you learning and sharp. And you will find it much more efficiently than if you spend your time searching with Google, Yahoo or iTunes. This is a dynamite site! I particularly like the educational web resources and the university online courses., but there's much more. IT IS ALL FREE and terrific listening for treadmill, elliptical, walking, and long drives.

Almost Human

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Almost human, and sometimes smarter is the headline of one of today's science articles in the New York Times. Chimps display a remarkable range of behavior and talent. They make and use simple tools, hunt in groups and engage in aggressive, violent acts. They are social creatures that appear to be capable of empathy, altruism, self-awareness, cooperation in problem solving and learning through example and experience. Chimps even outperform humans in some memory tasks.

Source: New York Times Tuesday Science Section

Free Course Management System

Moodle is a course management system (CMS) - a free, open source software package designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help educators create effective online learning communities. You can download and use it on any computer you have handy (including webhosts), yet it can scale from a single-teacher site to a 50,000-student University.

Moodle is designed to help educators create quality online courses. Such e-learning systems are sometimes also called Learning Management Systems (LMS) or Virtual Learning Environments (VLE). One of the main advantages of Moodle over other systems is a strong grounding in social constructionist pedagogy.

This is National Library Week

National Library Week is a time to celebrate the contributions of our nation's libraries, librarians and library workers and to promote library use and support.

Get to know your library and library staff by visiting the library during National Library Week. The library staff works to make the library a friendly place where members of the Goodwin community want to study, research, and relax. So please stop by and say hello to us. Tell us what you like that we are doing and offer suggestions to change what you may not like. Thanks to the Board of Trustees and the administration who support us. Thanks to all of you who use the library services.

Deepest Sympathy

The library staff extend their deepest sympathy and prayers for each person touched by the tragedy at Virginia Tech University yesterday.

Did You Know?

Did you know that you can view The Chronicle' of Higher Education database of new campus architecture or submit information on our institution? The picture here is the 7000 square foot interior of the recently finished information commons at the University of Pennsylvania. A Modernist brick-and-concrete structure, the new Information Commons offers seating for close to 200 students. Group-study settings include private study rooms, cafe-like booths, and flexible open spaces. A digital-media lab and a 25-seat seminar room were part of the project, as are spaces for a writing center, oral-presentation coaching, and other kinds of academic assistance. (This is only one floor of the library. Yes they do have books.)

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

Week of the Young Child is Coming

This is an advance notice that the The Week of the Young Child 2007 will be celebrated on the Goodwin campus April 22-29. This year's theme is "Building Better Futures for All Children". The Week of the Young Child is a national event week sponsored by the National Association for the Education of the Young Child (NAEYC).

Of course the library is a member of NAEYC. In support of the early childhoold program, the library will be displaying many new and classic children's books. Other events for that week will be posted on the blog. Please remember to stop by the library during that week.

If you hadn't noticed, you can comment on blog entries. The library staff would like to hear from you about some of your favorite children's book. Comments, please! Just click on COMMENTS at the bottom of this post and send us a comment--very easy. You will feel so good afterwards.

Internet Seminar on Airport Security

Join a complimentary internet seminar on airport security April 26 from 2-3 p.m. presented by the San Francisco International Airport. REGISTER NOW.

San Francisco International Airport (SFO) is recognized as a leader in airport security. John Payne, the airport's CIO, will discuss how SFO meets tight security requirements and maintains support for tenants in an extremely competitive business environment. You will hear about real-world deployments that have utilized a centralized blade approach to improve control, security, and continuity of operations to allow a greater focus on the mission at hand vs. management of technology. This information was provided by the State-of-the-Art IT for Emergency Management Centers

This event will provide emergency management IT professionals (and students) with important information on how to take operations to what is being deemed the "next generation of Public Sector IT environments" through blade workstation technology. The experts will discuss:

• Pandemic outbreak critical operations support
• Removing the risks associated with "desk-side deployment"
• Improving control, security and management of IT operations
• Achieving state-of-the art high availability, asset utilization and redundancy
• Enhancing coordination with real-time access to shared workstations
• Ensuring continuity of operations through remote location and multi-site access

Should Museums Return Relics?

An ancient vase at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art is fueling an intensifying ethical and legal debate about some of the world's most celebrated works of art. Two years ago, Italian authorities produced evidence the ancient vessel had been smuggled from Italy and demanded its return. Such prized artifacts have raised thorny questions about the ownership of cultural treasures in private collections and museums around the world. The controversy — and attendant criminal trials of alleged smugglers — is also shedding new light on the secretive world of antiquities collecting — a realm populated by tomb robbers, wealthy connoisseurs and aggressive dealers and curators. Some experts estimate that up to $4 billion worth of precious art is being illegally traded. Whatever their worth, ancient artworks are priceless to Italy, Egypt and other nations increasingly using cultural artifacts to exert political leverage and stoke national pride. See the entire article in this week's CQ Researcher.

Source: CQ Researcher

Virtual Travel

Virtual Tourism is a mashup of YouTube travel videos of individual sites, their aerial location via Google Maps and text from Wikipedia. It's Web 2.0-licious!

Source: MetaFilter Community Weblog

Database for Homeland Security Students

I previewed Praeger Security Interational online database at the ACRL conference and now have set up a free trial.

To access please go to http://psi.praeger.com and enter "GoodwinCollege" for the username and "library" for the password.

Kurt Vonnegut Dies

Kurt Vonnegut Jr., the acclaimed American author of more than a dozen novels, short stories, essays and plays, died last night in New York city at the age of 84. His most famous work, Slaughterhouse Five, is one of the most powerful anti-war novels ever written. Vonnegut was captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge and imprisoned in Dresden. He survived the U.S. fire bombing of Dresden that destroyed the whole city by hiding in an underground slaughterhouse, thus the title.

Vonnegut's last work was a collection of essays called A Man Without a Country. In it, he suggested the way that music helped him through tragic times. Other works include Cat's Cradle, Breakfast of Champions, and Mother Night. Here is an excerpt from Slaughterhouse Five:

“When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in a bad condition in that particular moment, but that same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is 'So it goes.'”

Rest in peace, Kurt. We will miss you. So it goes.

Applachian Trail Thru-Hike

I know some of you are planning to hike the entire Applachian trail some day. Maybe you have already started making plans. Just for your information, the average thru-hike takes 5-7 months and that's at a 13-15 mile per day average, but only 20% of the people who start the hike actually finish. As of 2005, only 8,425 people have completed the whole trail. I know some of your names will be added to that list.

For those of you who don't know about this, the Appalachian National Scenic Trail is a 2,174-mile footpath along the ridgecrests and across the major valleys of the Appalachian Mountains from Springer Mountain in northern Georgia to Katahdin in Maine. The trail traverses Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia. Doing it all at once is very difficult!

Just for fun, you can follow two people from Connecticut who did the northerly hike of the entire trail last year. Carrie and Derrick Ellis have a web site with pictures, movies, a well-
researched gear list, and more. Keep hiking!
The web site: www.ellishiking.com

Environmental-Health Journal

Plan to privatize Environmental-Health Journal is on hold amid congressional inquiry.
The plans to turn a well-respected public-health journal, published by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, over to a private publisher should be put on hold, says a Congressional oversight committee that is investigating the matter.

The journal, Environmental Health Perspectives, consistently ranks among the top journals in environmental science and public health. It has been slated for privatization since September 2005, but that process has been marred by ethics concerns. The entire journal, including the student edition, is now freely available online. News, feature articles, and commentary, which account for about half of the printed edition, will also be curtailed if it is privatized.Reports of peer-reviewed original research are not slated for cuts at this time.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

New Books for Hospitality

These are new books in the library for the hospitality program:

Hospitality 2010 by Cetron, DeMocio, and Davies
At Your Service by the Culinary Institute of America
Art of the Event by James C. Monroe
I Like You: Hospitality under the Influence by Amy Sedaris
Hospitality Financial Accounting by Weygandt, Kieso, Kimmel & DeFranco

Partnership for Global Security Website

The Partnership for Global Security mounts a global effort to decrease the dangers posed by weapons of mass destruction by working for a world in which all such weapons are secured and the threat of their use is eliminated. The website offers Nuclear News; U.S., Russian, and United Nations documents; the partnership’s own reports; and news links.

Source: Weekly Homeland Security Newsletter

All Dogs Great and Small

A new study conducted by an international team of scientists led by researchers at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) has identified the gene responsible for this great range of dog sizes. The answer, it seems involve a number of different versions of the gene that encodes for insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1). The gene, IGF1, was identified following genetic analysis that began with screening 463 Portuguese water dogs, a breed that has a lot of diversity in size. The researchers measured the dogs, took X-rays, and then sequenced their DNA and looked for different regions of interest. This research team will plans on turning their attention to identifying genetic markers that control other aspects of canine appearance. Whether they find the gene for adorable remains to be seen. The study was published in Science today.

Measuring UP 2006

Measuring Up 2006 consists of the national report card for higher education and fifty state report cards. Its purpose is to provide the public and policymakers with information to assess and improve postsecondary education in each state. Measuring Up 2006 is the fourth in a series of biennial report cards.
This Web site provides state leaders, policymakers, researchers and others with access to the national report card as well as access to all fifty state report cards. In addition, the site can compare any state with the best-performing states in each performance category, compare indicator scores and state grades for any performance category, obtain source and technical information for indicators and weights, and allow visitors to download the reports. Further, the Measuring Up Web site has the capacity to view previous report cards from 2000, 2002, and 2004.
Source: Marylaine Block's Neat New Stuff

Homeland Security Information

The Homeland Security Information Center at NTIS (National Technical Information Service) is an invaluable resource for scientific and technical information from the U.S. government, its contractors, and complementary material from international sources. The site is divided into five major categories with subcategory listings of recent reports: health and medicine; food and agriculture; biological and chemical warfare; preparedness and response; and safety training.
Source: http://www.ntis.gov/hs