Economic Survey U.S. 2007

The Economic Survey of the United States 2007 was just released by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). An economic survey is published every 11/2-2 years for each OECD country. The Executive Summary is free; full document is available for purchase.

Source: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

Condition of Education 2007

"The Condition of Education 2007 summarizes important developments and trends in education using the latest available data and by presenting 48 indicators on the status and condition of education and a special analysis on high school coursetaking. The indicators represent a consensus of professional judgment on the most significant national measures of the condition and progress of education for which accurate data are available. The 2007 print edition includes 48 indicators in five main areas: (1) participation in education; (2) learner outcomes; (3) student effort and educational progress; (4) the contexts of elementary and secondary education; and (5) the contexts of postsecondary education. "
Source: National Center for Education Statistics

Take a Hike

This Saturday is Connecticut Trails Day with over 100 events around the state (even some on Sunday) sponsored by Connecticut Forest & Park Association. An 18 page brochure of all events is available online at www.ctwoodlands.org. It's free and it's healthy--enjoy!

Librarian is a Top Career

U.S. News &World Report listed "librarian" as one of the best careers of 2007. Even Parade Magazine called " librarian" one of the hottest jobs for those with a degree. The personal financial advisor, Kiplinger.com, listed "librarian" as one of its seven great careers of 2007. That report wrote this about librarians: "Forget about the image of librarian as mousy bookworms. Today's librarian is a high-tech informtion sleuth...a master of mining cool databases well beyond Google to unearth the desired nuggets." You all knew that, didn't you?

Congratulations Graduates

CONGRATULATIONS

TO ALL GOODWIN GRADUATES

FROM THE LIBRARY STAFF.

KEEP USING LIBRARIES!

Wiki Enters Oxford English Dictionary

Wiki is included in the latest update to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) joining 287 other new words in the online dictionary. OED defines wiki as "a type of Web page designed so that its content can be edited b yanyone who accesses it, using a simplified mark-up language."

Other new words making it into OED include bimbette, blokey, blondie, irritainment, ta-da, tighty-whities, and virtualize. A full list of entries and their definitions can be found at www.oed.com. Remember we will be starting a book club wiki next week. We also will have a 30 day free trial of OED next week.

Why Libraries & Librarians are Extremely Important

Every Thursday for a few weeks I will remind you of why libraries and librarians are extremely important. Here is reason number one.

Not everything is available on the Internet. The amazing amount of useful information on the Internet has some people thinking that everything can be found online for free. Not so! Despite Google's digitizing efforts, contemporary authors and publishers will not allow their work to be freely accessible over the Internet. Copyright law already prohibits making copyrighted books fully accessible through Google, only small selections. It will be a long time before the New York Times bestsellers will be free online. Current copyright protects works for 70 years beyond the death of the author. Even some works in the public domain are off limits. If an out of copyright includes prefaces, introductions, or appendices that are still in copyright, the whole work falls under copyrighted status. And it took a librarian to tell you this.
Source: The idea and some information comes fromWill Sherman in Information Outlook v11 n06

No Bottled Water at This Restaurant

You won't find San Pellegrino or any other fancy imported water at Incanto, an Italian restaurant in San Francisco. In fact, you won't find any bottled water at all. Despite significant profit loss, owner Mark Pastore refuses to pollute the oceans and air by shipping heavy glass water bottles across the ocean. Water bottled in plastic, produced domestically, is also out of the question because of the plastic building up in landfills and the large amount of petroleum needed to make it. But he provides clean, bubbly water with filtering equipment. Other restaurants have also stopped selling bottled water.

Good for them. Bottled water undermines cour confidence in local water systems, allowing those with the resources the illusion of buying themselves out of "dirty" water. Illusion? Despite what water marketers say, bottled water faces less stringent regulation than tap water because it’s regulated as a food product, falling under the jurisdiction of FDA rather than the EPA.
Source: Enviornmental Working Group

CQ Researcher This Week

Are stronger measures needed to protect society?

The shooting rampage at Virginia Tech on April 16 has raised new questions about safety on college campuses and renewed the nation's perennial debate on gun control. Virginia Tech officials face questions about whether the 32 deaths could have been prevented or limited by more effective police action at the time or by more proactive steps earlier to deal with shooter Sueng-Hui Cho's history of mental disturbance. Nationally, the incident has focused attention on how to reduce gun violence, which annually claims around 30,000 lives — 82 each day, far more than twice the Virginia Tech toll. A bill to strengthen the federal background-check system for gun purchasers is gaining support on Capitol Hill, even from the powerful National Rifle Association. But some gun advocates want states to ease weapons laws. They argue that allowing more people to carry weapons will deter gun crimes and enable potential victims to protect themselves.
Source: CQ Researcher May 25, 2007 (Full report available online--password protected)

Global Terrorism Database

The world’s largest unclassified database of terrorism attacks is now available online for general use by researchers, policy-makers, media and the general public — an important tool that the researchers say may aid in the development of more effective responses to terrorism.…The database, five years in the making, includes 80,000 terror incidents from 1970 through 2004. START plans to update the database through 2007 within the next 12 months. The Internet site is designed to be as user friendly as possible. Each attack is coded on more than 100 variables to aid in the identification and explanation of trends in domestic and international terrorism. The
Global Terrorism Database is a resource for homeland security students.
Source: National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism

Quantitative Molecular Microscopy

Quantitative Molecular Microscopy
Article By Jeffrey Perkel

"Technique overcomes difficulties with traditional histopathology
Traditional histopathology analysis has several basic problems. Yale University pathologists Bob Camp and David Rimm developed a series of algorithms called AQUA (Automated Quantitative Analysis) to overcome these shortcomings, providing compartment-specific staining-intensity data over the range of 0 to 255, which has been shown to be directly proportional to absolute protein concentrations. "
Full Text

Source: The Scientist

High Court Backs Parents

"The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that parents have their own broad, enforceable rights under federal special education law, and thus they may represent themselves in federal court without the assistance of a lawyer.

The decision in Winkelman v. Parma City School District (Case No. 05-983) was unanimous on the idea that parents have some rights to represent themselves without a lawyer under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. But it split 7-2 on the idea that parents have substantive and procedural rights that encompass their child’s right to a free, appropriate public education under the law."
Source: Education Week online May 21, 2007

Keep up with Nursing Journal Articles

Nursing students can benefit from the experiences of other nurses -- it's how we all learn. Don't miss "Field Expediency: an ability to improvise is a valuable nursing skill, on and off the battlefield" in the May issues of AJN (American Journal of Nursing) in the library now.

The report on developing cultural competence to eliminate health disparities in ethnic minorities and other vulnerable populations is in the library now in the Journal of Transcultural Nursing. The report is the result of work by the Expert Panel on Cultural Competence of the American Academy of Nursing.


Read in-depth collections of articles on line focusing on key clinical topics.
Chronic Kidney Disease An American Journal of Nursing (AJN) article series
Essentials of a Magnetic Work Environment Nursing2004's four-part series
Nursing Care of Older Adults: A New Look at the OldAmerican Journal of Nursing series
Palliative Nursing SeriesThe American Journal of Nursing's (AJN's) award-winning 16-part series
Women's Health OnlineProduced with support from Ethicon Women's Health & Urology, a division of Ethicon, Inc.

World Health Statistics

Tje World Health Organization (WHO) recently released key world health statistics from its 193 Member States. This edition also highlights trends in 10 of the most closely watched global health statistics. It is the authoritative annual reference for a set of 50 health indicators in countries around the world.
Download Report or Highlights
Source: WHO




















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LexisNexis Academic Database Update

LexisNexis Academic is releasing a new interface in mid-2007. Among its many improvements, it will feature Easy Search, General Search, and Power search and will make use of results clustering by subject category, publication name, industry, company, geography, and language. Tutorials and training in the new interface via the web are available.

LexisNexis Academic database delivers fast access to thousands of credible sources from more than 5,800 publications spanning news, legal, financial, medical, and general reference information. Students and faculty monitor current events, work with primary or secondary legal sources, locate detailed financial information, and read about medical advances reported in medical journals. This database is available to the Goodwin community on and off campus.

UCONN Dairy Plant Making Cheese

The UCONN Dairy Plant added cheese to its repertoire in December 2006. Because there are small dairy farmers in New England that are interested in making cheese, it seemed natural for the agriculture department to provide training. Cheddar, colby, and juustoleipa, a specialty Finnish cheese, are available so far.

The dairy plant began operation in 1953. Until about 1990, it supplied all the campus dining halls with milk, ice cream, yogurt, cottage cheese, and sour cream. Since then, the plant has been making only ice cream and selling it at the Dairy Bar next to the George White Building. In the dog days of summer, when you go to the dairy bar for that yummy ice cream, now you can pick up some cheese as well.
Source: Journal of College of Agriculture and Natural Resources Spring 2007

Great American History Fact-Finder

Our new reference database, XReferPlus, includes the full text of the Great American History Fact-Finder. From the Mayflower to the space shuttle, from the Boston Massacre to the Los Angeles riots, The Great American History Fact-Finder brings the kaleidoscope of U.S. history into focus. More than two thousand brief, fact-laden entries on people, places, issues and events - arranged in a convenient A-to-Z sequence - cover the spectrum of American society, culture and history. Topics include politics, the military, business, entertainment, the arts, sports and the media. Look for it on the library page and find the answers to:
• Who ran on the campaign slogan "Don't swap horses in midstream?"
• What were the key issues and consequences of the Dred Scott decision?
• Where were the "lost" states of Franklin and Deseret?

Summer Reading Wiki

Summer is the perfect time to catch up on your reading. So sign up for the Goodwin Book Lovers Summer Reading Wiki.

Sign up now or at the enrollment party in early June. A free suggested reading list will help you plan your summer reading. The date of the enrollment party will be announced next week.

On-campus/Online Parity

"How can a college assure parity between a distance program and its face-to-face counterpart? Is it possible to guarantee identical outcomes with two such different means of delivery? In some programs, educators may settle for a rough equivalence. But what about when parity of outcome is absolutely essential, as in health science programs, where the presence or absence of certain competencies can be life and death matters?"

The current Distance Education Report, quoted above, outlines Creighton University's nine steps toward providing parity for its online pharmacy degree. The Report, available in the library, also includes articles on retention and multimedia assessment for millennials.
Source: Distance Education Report May 1, 2007

MedlinePlus Adds Features

A number of new features have been introduced on the Health Topics pages of MedlinePlus. Highlights include a photograph or illustration on each page; a brief, easy to read summary of each disease or condition, composed by experienced medical writers and reviewed by the National Libray of Medicine staff; a list of synonyms right under the health topic name; a new category, Start Here, links users to overviews and important information; and a centrally located table of contents divides the MedlinePlus categories into six boxes to show users everything on a page at a glance.
http://medlineplus.gov
Source: Medical Library Association News May 2007

CQ Researcher:Fair Trade Labeling

Is it helping small farmers in developing countries?

Today's CQ Researcher addresses fair trade labeling. The number of products sold with fair trade labels is growing rapidly in Europe and the United States. Big chains like Wal-Mart, Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks and McDonald's have begun offering coffee and other items. Fair trade brands hope to raise their profile by targeting consumers who care about the environment, health and fair-labor standards. Fair trade supporters say small farmers in the developing world benefit by receiving a guaranteed fair price, while the environment gets a break from intensive industrial farming. But critics say consumers pay too much and that fair trade's guarantee of a good return — no matter what the market price — sends the wrong economic signal to farmers. When the price of a global commodity like coffee tumbles in response to oversupply, overcompensated fair trade farmers will remain in an uneconomic sector long after they should have switched to some other crop or livelihood, free-market economists argue. The complete report is available online from the Goodwin library page.

Source: CQ Researcher May 18, 2007

New Resource: Academic worklife

Today, college and university faculty members face many challenges, including an increasingly diverse workforce and new models for career flexibility. The National Clearinghouse on Academic Worklife (NCAW) provides resources to help faculty and administrators understand more about all aspects of modern academic work and related career issues, including benefits, climate and satisfaction, work/life balance, and policy development.
Get information here: National Clearinghouse for Academic Worklife,
Source: University of Michigan Center for the Education of Women

Healthy Vision Month

May is Healthy Vision Month (HVM), a national eye health observance devoted to promoting the vision objectives in Healthy People 2010. HVM 2007 focuses on Healthy People 2010 Vision Objective 28-6: Reduce visual impairment due to glaucoma. Keep Vision in Your Future is the theme for HVM 2007.

The focus this year is to educate people at higher risk for glaucoma. An estimated 2.2 million Americans have been diagnosed with primary open-angle glaucoma, the most common form of the disease. An additional 2 million Americans have glaucoma and don’t even know it.
People at higher risk for glaucoma include the following:
African Americans over the age of 40
Everyone over the age of 60, especially Mexican Americans
People with a family history of glaucoma.

Glaucoma has no warning signs and, if left untreated, can result in permanent vision loss. NEI recommends that people at higher risk for glaucoma have a comprehensive dilated eye examination every one to two years. For more information, please visit the Glaucoma Education Webpage at www.nei.nih.gov/glaucoma.
Source: MedlinePlus

New Audio-Visual Material

DVDs (all in color) just arrived!
Gang terror (45 minutes)
Domino: interracial people and the search for identity (45 minutes)
Understanding prejudice (47 minutes)
Heart of the nation-competing in the new global economy (58 minutes)
Speaking to power with Bill Moyers (60 minutes)
Wefare reform: social responsibility (29 minutes)
Sexual exploitation of children: taking a stand (51 minutes)
These DVDs are all on reserve. Ask for them at the circulation desk.

High School Students not Prepared

Only one-quarter of high school students who take a full set of college-preparatory courses — four years of English and three each of mathematics, science and social studies — are well prepared for college, according to a new study of last year’s high school graduates released today by ACT, the Iowa testing organization. The study concluded that only 26 percent were ready for college-level work in all four core areas, while 19 percent were not adequately prepared in any of them.
Source: New York Times May 15, 2007

Homeland Security Database

The International Security and Counter Terrorism Reference Center database (ISCTRC) offers information on virtually every dimension of security & counter-terrorism and is designed to inform the analysis process, as well as enhance the general understanding of security and terrorism-related issues. ISCTRC provides a comprehensive Open Source Intelligence Resource for analysts, risk management professionals, and students. Content includes hundreds of full text journals and periodicals, hundreds of thousands of selected articles, news feeds, reports, summaries, books, blogs, FAQs, and proprietary Background Information Summaries that pertain to terrorism and security. ISCTRC also combines deep background from scholarly writings with expert commentary from a variety of organizations, agencies and publisher and timely reviews of recent developments across the international political, military, economic, social and technical spectrum. The Goodwin Library has a free trial of this EBSCO database accessible from the library page.
Source: The database information is provided by EBSCO.

Educating Students About Plagiarism

"Who would have thought educating students about plagiarism could be this entertaining? Rutgers University's Paul Robeson Library has produced a four-part video that tells students not to steal one another's work and warns them that they could receive a failing grade from a course or be expelled from the university if they are caught. It's a serious message but an amusing video, with a photograph of a bobblehead professor speaking in an exaggeratedly schoolmarmish tone to students, represented by 1950s-style headshots, who respond with gasps and bulging eyeballs." --Andrea L. Foster
Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education Daily Report May 15, 2007


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Take me Out to the Metaphor

As a Cub fan and friend of Yankee and Red Sox fans, I could not resist this report from the Pierce Law Review that a fellow Cub fan shared with me. Please forgive me for calling attention to each time the Cubs are mentioned and including something that has nothing whatsoever to do with any programs offered by this college.

"Comparatively speaking, a couple of patterns emerge from my examination of judicial references to the Cubs, Red Sox, and Yankees. First, the Cubs and the Red Sox are about even in terms of the raw numbers of references. Both teams trail the Yankees, but by a small margin. References to the Cubs and the Yankees skew a bit up the judicial food chain. Yankees references appear in four opinions from the federal courts of appeals, three federal district court opinions, one opinion from the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, one intermediate state appellate court opinion, and two state trial court opinion, while Cubs references appear in a United States Supreme Court opinion, two opinions from the federal courts of appeals, four federal district court opinions, and one intermediate state appellate court opinion. By contrast, Red Sox references appear in two federal trial court opinions, one state supreme court opinion, two opinions from intermediate state appellate courts, and four state trial court opinions. Consequently, about half the Red Sox references appear in unreported decisions, compared with less than a third for the Yankees and none at all for the Cubs.

There are geographic patterns as well. Opinions referring to the Cubs tend to cluster in the midwest. Those referring to the Red Sox tend to cluster in New England. But there are outliers, and, rather remarkably, the Texas Court of Appeals has issued one opinion referring to the Cubs and one referring to the Red Sox, albeit rather tangentially in both cases. On the other hand, references to the Yankees do not tend to cluster in or around New York; rather, they come from courts around the country as if, gulp, the Yankees are somehow “America’s Team.” "
If you should be interested in the entire article, here it is: Take Me Out To The Metaphor,

What's Wrong with Bottled Water?

The world’s fastest-growing beverage is a boon to the industry but a bust for the environment and for the more than 1 billion people worldwide who lack access to clean drinking water, according to a new Vital Signs Update from the Worldwatch Institute. Which country consumes the most bottled water? Find out here: Consumption of bottled water, total and top 10 countries, 2000 and 2005

Excessive withdrawal of natural mineral or spring water to produce bottled water has threatened local streams and groundwater, and the product consumes significant amounts of energy in production and shipping. Millions of tons of oil-derived plastics, mostly polyethylene terephthalate (PET), are used to make the water bottles, most of which are not recycled. Each year, about 2 million tons of PET bottles end up in landfills in the United States; in 2005, the national recycling rate for PET was only 23.1 percent, far below the 39.7 percent rate achieved a decade earlier. Here is the report: Bottled Water Pricey in More Ways than One.

Source: Worldwatch Institute

Homeland Security Information

Avoiding the Plague: an Assessment of U.S. Plans and Funding for Countering Bioterrorism
Biological weapons can cause massive casualties under the right circumstances. Moreover, compared to nuclear weapons, they may be substantially easier for a terrorist group to acquire. CSBA’s newest study, Avoiding the Plague: An Assessment of US Plans and Funding for Countering Bioterrorism, examines the nature of this threat, and both budgetary and non- budgetary aspects of current US efforts to counter bioterrorism.

Source: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) May 11, 2007

Observing Your Government

Observing Your Government In Action: Protecting your Right to Know
The League of Women Voters (LWV) is pleased to announce the release of Observing Your Government In Action: Protecting your Right to Know. This comprehensive resource guide, part of the League’s Citizen Transparency Initiative, provides useful best practices and tips for observing government activities and promoting transparency.
Source: League of Women Voters from Press release

CQ Researcher This Week: HPV Vaccine

Should it be mandatory for school girls? A new vaccine that prevents infections from a sexually transmitted disease (STD) that causes cervical cancer is being hailed as a major achievement in women's health. The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, Gardasil, is recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for girls ages 11-12, and could be used by females ages 9-26. Some state lawmakers moved quickly to make inoculations mandatory for school attendance to ensure vaccine access regardless of socioeconomic status. The requirement was approved in the District of Columbia and Virginia. But reactions to an aggressive lobbying campaign by vaccine manufacturer Merck coupled with general concerns about immunization safety stalled efforts to mandate the shots in many states. Conservative groups joined the opposition, saying the vaccine would encourage inappropriate sexual activity and override parental autonomy.
Source: This is the summary from CQ Researcher May 11, 2007

Free Web Resource for Education & Research

Intute is a free online service providing you with access to the very best Web resources for education and research. The service is created by a network of UK universities and partners. Subject specialists select and evaluate the websites in our database and write high quality descriptions of the resources. The database contains 115645 records.

A number of new FREE Internet tutorials for the Social Sciences have been released in the Intute Virtual Training Suite this term. The tutorials are designed to help students develop Internet research skills for their university or college work, and can be used by instructors to support research methods, information literacy and study skills.
Source: Mary Laine, Librarian Without Walls

Debates as Entertainment

"With the first debate of the Republican presidential candidates, the second primary season debate, now over, there's one clear loser: The American people. Aside from the war in Iraq, nothing looms more among the legitimate concerns of the American electorate than health care. But not a single question was asked to draw out the candidates' thoughts on this major issue. The hallmark legislation of the Bush administration, currently up for reauthorization, is No Child Left Behind. Yet, not a single question on No Child Left Behind in particular or education in general was asked. The press today, unfortunately, wants to be in the entertainment rather than the information business. We're all losers as result. The public deserves better. "
Source: Some quotes from "Debates as Entertainment" by Star Parker in the Washington Times May 9, 2007

Library for the Blind & Physically Handicapped

The Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped is a network library of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Library of Congress. The participating library in Connecticut is the state library in Rocky Hill.

The state Library provides free mail loan of recorded and Braille books and magazines and necessary playback equipment to eligible state residents unable to read conventional print because of a visual or physical disability.

Recorded materials are provided by the National Library Service. The NLS Catalog lists these titles. Additional materials of interest to Connecticut readers are recorded by the Connecticut Volunteer Services for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. Catalogs of these recordings are available from the Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. Please contact the Goodwin Library Staff for further information.

Cheating in the Information Age

"The recent cheating scandal among first-year M.B.A. students at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business -- 33 students were found guilty of inappropriate collaboration on a take-home test and one was found guilty of lying (The Chronicle, April 30) -- reflects how technology has changed the world, why the notion of what constitutes cheating may need to be re-evaluated, "and how academia and corporations are confused about it all, sending split messages," according to Michelle Conlin, a senior writer at the magazine.

We're told it's all about teamwork and shared information," one of the accused students writes, "But then we're graded and ranked as individuals. We assess everybody as single entities. But then we plop them into an interdependent world and tell them their success hinges on creative collaboration."

While professors and employers "need to be able to test individual ability," according to that student, " it may be time for a fresh take on the assessment process. At Stanford University's Institute of Design, for instance, the emphasis on collaboration makes cheating almost impossible. As one professor at the school said, "If you found somebody to help you write an exam, in our view that's a sign of an inventive person who gets stuff done."

What do you think? Is learning becoming more and more of a social process embedded in a larger network?

What to Do ABout Darknets?

Ohio University's new ban on peer-to-peer networking may well be cutting down on piracy. But if they want to do a thorough job of stamping out unauthorized file swapping, college administrators will have to show that they can take down "darknets."

Darknets are private hubs that let students trade music, movies, and software without connecting to the broader Internet, and the networks' obscurity is their chief asset: A darknet is much harder to find and police than a typical peer-to-peer service. Plenty of colleges have darknets, and as The Post of Athens reports, Ohio is no exception.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education May 9

September Eat Local Challenge

Please take a moment to mark your calendars for the September 2007 Eat Local Challenge. In association with the Locavores, The Daily Table blog will sponsor an international month-long event in which over 1000 participants will challenge themselves to eat within a pre-determined radius of their home. Because this challenge will be occurring during the harvest season in most locations, there will be a particular emphasis on canning, preserving, and learning to put food up for the winter.

If you are interested in participating in this challenge, please sign up for email updates on the Locavores site.

Free Chronicle today

You are invited to experience The Chronicle of Higher Education absolutely for free today on the last day of their special open house. And enter to win an iPod just for stopping by. Click here for more information.

Greetings From Your Library and Xrefer

Do you need to check a definition, understand a literary reference or a scientific term? Tired of getting too many irrelevant results from Web search engines when you need quick, accurate answers? Need trustworthy reference information with properly formatted citations for your footnotes? Let your library and Xreferplus help.

Xreferplus is now a part of your library’s online reference collection, and it features full-text content from hundreds of reference books covering a broad range of subjects. It’s a search engine like Google, but instead of searching the entire Internet, your results come from a comprehensive library of trusted reference sources without advertisements, clutter, or irrelevant hits.

With Xreferplus, you get content from hundreds of reference books covering every major subject. There are over 2.5 million entries, 65,000+ images (art, diagrams, maps and photos) and over 93,000 audio pronunciation files. The content is enriched by a network of cross-reference links that cut across topics, titles and publishers to give you accurate, contextual results.

Portal Keeps Students, Alumni in Touch

By giving current students and all alumni a lifetime e-mail account accessed through a portal, Plymouth State University has enhanced its ability to stay in touch with graduates long after they leave the university.

Beginning in 1999, the New Hampshire university began giving graduating seniors lifetime e-mail accounts; in 2005, with the creation of a portal called MyPlymouth.com, every alum--some 25,000 people--received a lifetime e-mail address hosted by the university, along with use of other services offered free of charge through the portal site--something to think about.

Read Complete Article:
http://campustechnology.com/articles/47764/

Goodwin's MySpace account?

Is it time for Goodwin College to have a MySpace account? Drury University (MO) has had a MySpace account since 2006: www.myspace.com/druryuniversity. The web editor at Drury also runs www.myspace.com/collegesanduniversities and www.myspace.com/nonprofitorganizations.

The web editor, Heather Mansfield, says "every target audience that colleges and universities are trying to cultive is on MySpace in massive numbers: prospective students (traditional and nontraditional, international), current students, parents, alumni, athletics fans, nonprofit organizations, etc." She also publishes MySpace best practices for the higher education and nonprofit sectors: www.diosacommunications.com/myspaceforhighereducation.htmz and
www.diosacommunications.com/myspacebestpractices.htm.

Mansfield suggests that administrators often overreact when it comes to MySpace or Facebook because they do not social network themselves and they only hear about the worst case scenarois. A Pew Report this January showed that teens are much smarter and more cautious on MySpace than the media give them credit for.

Every major presidential candidate now has a profile on MySpace. The last time I looked, Barack Obama had 160,549 friends--MySpace friends. When I imagine colleges and presidential candidates with MySpace accounts it somehow makes me think of Prospero's lines from The Tempest: "O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't!"
Source: Campus Technology May 2007