Homelnd Security Critical Releases

Every two weeks, the Homeland Security Digital Library identifies "Critical Releases in Homeland Security," a targeted collection of recently-released documents that are expected to influence homeland security policy & strategy development.
Secure Borders and Open Doors: Preserving Our Welcome to the World in an Age of TerrorismSecure Borders and Open Doors Advisory Committee
National Response Framework: January 2008United States. Dept. of Homeland Security
Homeland Security Advisory Council Report of the Administration Transition Task ForceUnited States. Dept. of Homeland Security. Homeland Security Advisory Council
Changing Homeland Security: The Year in Review 2007Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Homeland Defense and Security

FREE TRIALS

I am pleased to provide you with free access to some of Gale's core databases to help our users find the authoritative information they need when they need it:
History Resource Center U.S
History Resource Center World
Literature Resource Center

Some of Gale's free trials are already in ICONN. The Health and Wellness Resource Center has a new interfaces and significant new content. Both Academic and General OneFile are now the world's largest two periodical resources and they are cross-searchable, giving our students access to more than 18,000 periodicals. Business and Company Resource Center recently was updated to include real-time financials, investment information, podcasts and blogs. These databases are already available to us.

Please use the link below to access these databases for the next two weeks, free of charge. And, as always, please let me know how I can help serve you better.
http://trials.gale.com/public/go/?key=1353_22222

Career Resources

EBSCO representatives demonstrated the Career Community and Coin Career Library online databasess here last week. An extended free trial is now available to any of you who are interested. Please contact me for user name and password. These resources provide high school and college students with information on careers and college programs as well as valuable assessment tools to help match their skills with the appropriate academic/career paths. The library staff would be happy to provide a demonstration of the features: careers, assessment, academic planning, skill development, curriculum and lesson plans, administrative reports/management.

Members of WALDO

The Goodwin Library is now a member of WALDO (Westchester Academic Library Directors Organization). Our membership was announced in the January newsletter. Also joining at this time are Boston University, School for International Training (VT), and Southern Vermont College. WALDO is a membership organization supporting the procurement and administration of electronic information services for libraries since 1982. Through WALDO, the library has purchased a discounted subscription to CQ Global Researcher. WALDO offers members free trials and discounted subscriptions to many electronic resources. Members also receive free access to The Charleston Advisor, the library industry's leading consumer report and review tool for electronic resources.

Free Health Research Toolkit

The Health Research and Educational Trust Disparities Toolkit team has released this updated Toolkit. The Toolkit is a Web-based tool that provides hospitals, health systems, clinics, and health plans information and resources for systematically collecting race, ethnicity, and primary language data from patients.

This Toolkit is useful for educating and informing health professionals about the importance of data collection, how to implement a framework to collect race, ethnicity, and primary language data and ultimately how to use these data to improve quality of care for all populations. For more information on how to use this Toolkit, click here.

Registration Now Free
To access the full Toolkit, including all resources, please click here to register. Because of the importance of collecting good data on patient race, ethnicity, and primary language data, HRET and the American Hospital Association have decided to allow access to the Toolkit for free without purchase.
Source: http://www.hretdisparities.org/

New Books

A Practical Guide to Connecticut School Law by Thomas B. Mooney of Shipman & Goodwin--a review of Connecticut school law offered as a guide to the various education law questions that arise most frequently.

Public School Law: Teachers' and Students' Rights by Cambron-McCabe, McCarthy and Thomas-a comprehensive treatment of the evolution and current status of the law governing public schools. A new chapter on the rights of children with disabilities has been added to reflect the expansion of litigation in this area.

New Database: CQ Global Researcher

The Goodwin Library has added a new database--CQ Global Researcher. This database provides students and faculty with definitive, in-depth coverage of global affairs from a number of international viewpoints. Available exclusively online, CQ Global Researcher offers focused, readable, single-topic reports on vital world issues. These reports make use of such popular sections as "current situation," "pro-con," and a new feature called "voices from abroad." By exposing students to a wide range of viewpoints CQ Global Researcher provides a comprehensive snapshot of today's most pressing issues and supports the global perspective goals of the college.

Each single-themed, 12,000-word CQ Global Researcher report is researched and written by an experienced observer of the given issue. The consistent, reader-friendly organization provides researchers with an introductory overview; background and assessment of the current situation; pro/con statements from representatives of opposing positions; chronology on the topic, followed by short features for extensive context; a sampling of related international perspectives; maps and graphs; bibliographies of key sources; next steps for additional reading; and author profiles. The current report is "China in Africa: Is China Gaining Control of Africa's Resources?",

Most Literate U.S. Cities 2007

Drawing from a variety of available data resources, the America’s Most Literate Cities study ranks the 69 largest cities (population 250,000 and above) in the United States. This study focuses on six key indicators of literacy: newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment, and Internet resources. Dr. John W. Miller, president of Central Connecticut State University, is the author of this study.
Source: http://www.ccsu.edu/Amlc/

Distance Learning using Second Life

This the brave new world in college education that we all have to adapt to. I just read recently about a college professor whose surgery keeps him homebound. He teaches his courses in Second Life -- http://secondlife.com/ -- which his colleagues in his department can hardly imagine.

How do his students respond to this? Well, some of his students employ the following strategy to write an assigned paper:
- Flickr -- to get ideas for images to include in report (or store their own images there)
-Del-icio-us -- to store bookmarked research sites (from the library home page, no doubt)
- Wikipedia -- to clarify the definitions of key terms
- Consults relevant blogs
-Searches YouTube -- to find videos related to her topic
- Checks in with friends at Facebook -- to see if anyone has ideas about the project

Critical Releases in Homeland Security

The Homeland Security Digital Library identifies "Critical Releases in Homeland Security," a targeted collection of recently-released documents that are expected to influence homeland security policy & strategy development. Here are the latest documents:

Pandemic Preparedness: The Need for a Public Health-Not a Law Enforcement/National Security-ApproachAmerican Civil Liberties Union

Maritime SecurityLexington Institute

Keeping an Eye on an Unruly Neighbor: Chinese Views of Economic Reform and Stability in North KoreaCenter for Strategic and International Studies (Washington, D.C.); United States Institute of Peace

Information Security Breach at TSA: The Traveler Redress WebsiteUnited States. Congress. House. Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

How Crime in the United States Is Measured [January 3, 2008]Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service
Source: Homeland Security Digital Library

Reel Fiction: Read the Book, See the Movie

What is better in cold, snowy January and February than reading books and watching movies? Some recent and classic books that have been transferred to screen would be a great combination. Some suggestions:

Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men (a Coen Brothers film)
Ian McEwan's Atonement (Joe Wright, director)
Marjarie Satrapi's Persepolis (She wrote it and directed the movie)
Dennis Lehane's Gone Baby Gone (Ben Affleck, director)
Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (Three Academcy Awards)
Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (won all five major Oscars)
Dorothy Johnson's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (a John Ford western, of course)

What do you want to add to the list? Post your suggestions! Make a New Year's resolution to involve yourself in Web 2.0.

Science in America

Are we falling behind in science and technology?

Many leaders in business, government and education warn that a shortage of scientists is jeopardizing the nation's world leadership in science and technology, along with its military supremacy and high standard of living. For a short-term fix, they propose loosening immigration restrictions to allow more high-skilled workers from overseas. Long term, they say the United States must greatly improve pre-college education, produce more college graduates with mathematics and science degrees and increase investment in research and development. Others argue the alarm is just a scare tactic by employers who want to import more high-tech workers and pay them low wages. Across the country, meanwhile, businesses are joining thousands of schools in innovative efforts to convince more children to study science and to teach them more effectively.

Does the United States need to import more foreign-born scientists to maintain a robust economy? Does the U.S. education system discourage young Americans from studying science?
Is becoming highly educated the key to long-term job security?

To read the Overview of this week's report, click here.To view this week's entire report on CQ Researcher Online, click here. For that last "click here" you will need the user name and password from the library staff.
Source: CQ Researcher

Agents of Change

Since all politicians now are agents of change and will "change" the country and "change" the world, may we suggest they consult a thesaurus for some synonyms? It would make listening to them so much more pleasant. For example:

Main Entry:
change
Part of Speech:
noun 1
Definition:
alteration
Synonyms:
about-face*, addition, adjustment, advance, break, compression, contraction, conversion, correction, development, difference, distortion, diversification, diversity, enlargement, innovation, metamorphosis, modification, modulation, mutation, novelty, permutation, reconstruction, refinement, remodeling, reversal, revision, revolution, shift, surrogate, switch, tempering, transformation, transition, transmutation, turn, turnover, variance, variation, variety, vicissitude

Source: http://www.thesaurus.com/

Business Information

I often rely on this general business site that compiles "approved" links in one place. CEO Express serves as a one-stop guide to a myriad of business resources on the Internet. It logically organizes most major classes of resources including news, business and technology magazines, government sites, international business resources, and company research sites on a single page.
http://www.ceoexpress.com/

Children's Author now Reading Ambassador

Jon Scieszka, author of "The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales" and the "Time Warp Trio" series, received the imprimatur of the Library of Congress last week as the first National Ambassador for Young People's Literature.

The appointment comes at a time when declines in Americans' reading proficiency and time spent reading have been widely noted -- most recently in "To Read or Not to Read," a report issued by the National Endowment for the Arts. For many reasons, including economic competitiveness, it is "a matter of crucial national importance" that young people read, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington said.
Source: National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)

Khaled Hosseini's Most Important Books

Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner has s become an international bestseller, published in 38 countries and now a popular movie. It is one of the books we share most often with other libraries through interlibrary loan. Many of you have read it. His second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, was published last year. and once again is a best seller. Hosseini recently told Newsweek about his five most important books. One book on the list was Shahnameh: The persian Book of Kings by Abolqasem Ferdowsi, an 11th century epic and a jewel of Persiana literature. Read about all five titles on Hosseini's list.

Boomer Generation Highlights

RELATIONSHIPS The average 62-year-old American……is married to the same spouse, who is 60 years old.…has 2.4 children over the age of 18, who are not living at home.…has two grandchildren, also not living at their home. Neither parent is alive, so they are truly empty-nesters.
HEALTH They……are in good to very good health.…have not experienced any major health problem in the past 12 months.…feel that they have done a good job of maintaining their health.…feel that their own health status and the age at death of their parents and grandparents most influences their own life expectancy.
EDUCATION They have at least some college education.
EMPLOYMENT They work full-time for an employer, who provides a defined benefit pension plan and health benefits.
Source: MetLife Mature Market Institute

Housing Bust Shatters Migration Patterns

Analysis of the new Census Bureau annual estimates of state population changes for 2006-7 shows that the sinking housing market has yanked back high-flying states like Nevada and Arizona. An even bigger tug in growth occurred in Florida, another housing-boom driven state. With credit harder to get and the disappearance of housing deals, the allure of these states appears to have dimmed. New York and some New England States are seeing fewer residents leave.
Source: Brooking Institue-Migration Report

CQ Researcher: Oil Jitters

Vastly increased demand for oil in rapidly modernizing China and India, warfare and instability in the Middle East and the weakening U.S. dollar have revived fears of a new energy crisis. Gasoline shortages — and the accompanying lines at gas stations — were thought to have ended with the Jimmy Carter administration. But as 2008 began, American drivers were paying more than $3 a gallon. Read the full report in the CQ Researcher on the library home page. Ask the library staff for user name and password.

Source: CQ Researcher

What They are Reading on College Campuses

1. I Am America (And So Can You!) by Stephen Colbert
2. Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert

3. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Màrquez

4. Our Dumb World: The Onion's Atlas of the Planet Earth, 73rd Editionby The Onion

5. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

6. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks

7. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

8. What Is the What by Dave Eggers

9. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
10. The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan

Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education

Generation Y Uses Libraries!

Generation Y Reports Greater Library Use Than Older Groups.
Students may not be abandoning libraries for the Internet, as some people have worried. The Pew Internet & American Life Project released a report Sunday that says Generation Y—18-to-30-year-olds, in particular—is more likely to turn to libraries to ferret out information than their older counterparts are. Adults do use the Internet to gain information more than any other source, including government agencies and experts, according to the report. However, 18-to-30-year-olds said they used library resources—mostly computers—more than older groups.
Steve Bell, associate university librarian for research and instructional services at Temple University, writes: “Now although the report mostly deals with public-library use, I would bet that a good number of respondents in this age category have regular access to an academic library.”

Bell admits that it might be too soon to jump to this conclusion, and the Pew report concludes that libraries should work to better understand why information seekers might or might not use them. It could be, however, that rather than the Internet replacing libraries, it creates a new niche for them to fill.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

Year in Questons 2007: Answers

I gave you the quiz yesterday by Ben Schott from the New York Times. about events, people, and places in 2007 news. Here are the answers.

You can view the complete quiz--questions and answers (pdf) here.

Public Access Mandate Made Law

President Bush has signed into law the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2007 (H.R. 2764), which includes a provision directing the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to provide the public with open online access to findings from its funded research. This is the first time the U.S. government has mandated public access to research funded by a major agency. Researchers will now be required to deposit electronic copies of their peer-reviewed manuscripts into the National Library of Medicine’s online archive, PubMed Central. Full texts of the articles will be publicly available and searchable online in PubMed Central no later than 12 months after publication in a journal. Congress has just unlocked the taxpayers’ $29 billion investment in NIH.
Source: Alliance for Taxpayer Access

Book Recommendation From Jack Matthews

Leading Change by John Kotter recommended by Jack Matthews, acting chair of the Business Department

Kotter, Professor of Leadership at Harvard Business School, shares his insights regarding organizations for the twenty-first century. He compares the structure, systems, and culture of the Twentieth Century with those of the Twenty-First Century and argues that organizations can't get where they need to be through incremental change.

He makes a convincing case that the twenty-first-century employee will need to know more about both leadership and management than his or her counterpart. Kotter suggests that the mental habits needed to support lifelong learning are: (1) risk taking, (2) humble self-reflection, (3) solicitation of ideas and opinions of others, (4) careful listening and (5) openness to new ideas. The last chapter of book includes a flow chart that succinctly outlines the relationship of lifelong learning, leadership skills, and the capacity to succeed in the future.

Leading Change should encourage a commitment to the process of change at Goodwin College and help us develop new leadership skills. Great recommendation!

The Year in Questions from the New York Times

Ben Schott on the Op-Ed page this week of the New York Times asked us "to cast our minds back on the incidents and accidents, alarums and excursions that populated the year 2007. This s a test. No conferring. Well, perhaps a little." Answers will appear tomorrow. Here is the test of your memory of events and people last year. You may surprise yourself.
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/opinion/20071230_Questions.pdf

Read the First Chapter: Brother, I'm Dying

This is a new weekly feature on the library blog that gives you the opportunity to sample the first chapter of recent books.

Brother, I'm Dying by Edwidge Danticat (nonfiction)

Edwidge Danticat employs the charms of a storyteller and the authority of a witness to evoke the political forces and personal sacrifices behind her parents' journey to this country from Haiti and her uncle's decision to stay behind. Her previous book, Breath, Eyes, Memory, was chosen as the one book for Greater Hartford in 2002.

Read the first chapter provided by the Washington Post book section.
Source: Washington Post First Chapters and book reviews

OSHA Records 2007

In FY 2007, OSHA conducted 39,324 total inspections, a 4.3 percent increase over its stated goal of 37,700. Total violations of OSHA’s standards and regulations were 88,846, a 6 percent increase from Fiscal Year (FY) 2006. The agency cited 67,176 serious violations, a 9 percent increase from the previous year and a more than 12 percent increase over the past four years. The number of cited repeat violations also rose from 2,551 in FY 2006 to 2,714 in FY 2007.
OSHA Enforcement: Striving for Safe and Healthy Workplaces
Source: Occupational and Safety Health Administration

First Interlibrary Loans of 2008

Here are the first Interlibrary Loan requests of Goodwin College in 2008:

The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross 2008
loaned to Watertown Library Association

Three Cups of Tea by Mortenson and Relin 2006
loaned to New Fairfield Free Public Library

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini 2003
loaned to Levi E. Coe Library (Middlefield)

The Goodwin College community has requested these books from other libraries at the beginning of 2008:

Intuition by Allegra Goodman 2006
borrowed from Middletown Library Service Center

Secret History by Donna Tartt 2004
borrowed from the Mark Twain Library Association (Redding)

New Amerian Militarism: How Americans are Reduced by War by A. J. Bacevich 2005
borrowed from Housatonic Valley Regional High School (Falls Village)

Selected Letters of John Keats 2002
borrowed from Southern Connecticut State Unversity

Leading Change by John Kotter 1996
borrowed from Sprague Library (Baltic)