Around the World in 80+ Books

"It's just a book, just ink on paper. But be careful when you open it. There's a universe inside. A good travel book has wings and the ability to transport us, word by word, tale by tale. It introduces us to the people and places that make travel—and, one could argue, life itself—worthwhile. Good travel stories are, in a word, magic. Not only do they show us the world, they help us define our place within it."
(National Geographic)

National Geographic has asked dozens of travelers (writers, photographers, explorers, editors, and others) to name the books that have most enriched their sense of place. The editors of National Geographic added their own to complete the ultimate library of travel books—not guidebooks, but novels and narrative nonfiction and classic photography books--organized by geographic region. If the price of gas is keeping your travel plans low or non-existent, live vicariously by reading one or more. Bon voyage!(If we don't have it, we can usually get it for you through Interlibrary Loan.)

Around the World in 80+ Books
National Geographic July/August 2008

Future of Reading

The Future of Reading
Digital Versus Print

Last Sunday, July 27, the New York Times printed the the first in a series of articles that will look at how the Internet and other technological and social forces are changing the way people read. Access first article HERE.

African Americans in Connecticut

Citizens All: African Americans in Connecticut 1700-1850
Yale University

"Citizens All" is the collaborative work of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition (GLC) and the Center for Media and Instructional Innovation (CMI2) at Yale University. Aimed at both students and teachers, this project illustrates the importance of local history in creating as well as challenging how national and global histories are retold. The stories of international history begin with local events, with the stories of individuals, real people and places in our own backyards.

The project provides a scholarly introduction to the history of slavery in Connecticut, the process of gradual emancipation, and the struggle for citizenship rights by free blacks and abolitionists both within and beyond the state's boundaries.

The story of African Americans' efforts to become full citizens raises important questions about the very definition of "citizenship" and the ideals upon which the United States was founded. We hope that the project contributes to larger discussions of issues such as freedom, education or citizenship and stimulates new discoveries about the legacies of slavery and racism at local, regional, national and international levels. "Citizens All" grew out of GLC involvement with the US Partnership of the UNESCO Transatlantic Slave Trade Education Project: Breaking The Silence.

Don't forget other resources for local history.

CT Freedom Trail.Developed by the CT Historical Commission, this site includes information on ites in the state that are associated with the movement towards freedom of African-American citizens.

CT Historical Society. This website includes an online guide to African American Resources at the historical society.

Connecticut State Library. The library has a research guide on African Americans in CT and Slavery in CT.

Does Google Go Deep Enough?

Does Google's Web Search Go Deep Enough Into Scholarly Archives?

Many scholarly archives on college and public Web sites don’t show up in Google because the search engine doesn’t index them — they’re in what many call the “deep Web,” below the level that most search engines look. A new study found that fewer than half — just 44 percent — of a sample group of deep-Web pages from scholarly archives showed up in Google searches. This is just another reason to use the databases provided by the Goodwin Library.

Source: Wired Campus: The Chronicle of Higher Education July 29 2008

Digital Collection: New York Public Library

New York Public Library Digital Gallery.

Launched in 2005, the NYPL Digital Gallery is one of the largest open-access image databases available on the Internet. Featuring more than 600,000 digital images, content covers a variety of subjects from the arts to science and technology and includes all kinds of primary materials, such as manuscripts, maps, photographs, prints, restaurant menus, sheet music covers, and much more from the special collections of the NYPL Research Libraries and the Mid-Manhattan Library Picture Collection. The Digital Gallery offers basic and advanced searches and also allows users to browse alphabetized lists of names, subjects, and libraries. As an added enhancement, users may select and store around 50 or more images for later viewing using the “selections” option.

(Illustration: Charting North America: Maps from the Lawrence H. Slaughter Collection: Part of New England, New York, east New Iarsey and Long Iland)

Access: New York Public Library Digital Gallery

Frontiers of Science

U.S. News & World Report features "Frontiers of Science" in the August 4-11 issue. The editors pulled together some of the big scientific questions with these stories:
How will humanity evolve?
What will we eat?
Where will global warming hit home?
How did life begin?
Will we find it in the heavens?

The magazine is in the library and may be checked out. This issue makes for very interesting reading.

Try a New Search Engine: CUIL

Welcome to Cuil—the world’s biggest search engine. (Cuil is an old Irish word for knowledge--pronounced "cool".)

The Internet has grown. It’s time searching did too. The Internet has grown exponentially in the last fifteen years but search engines have not kept up—until now. Cuil searches more pages on the Web than anyone else—three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft.

Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. When it finds a page with your keywords, it stays on that page and analyzes the rest of its content, its concepts, their inter-relationships and the page’s coherency.

Then Cuil offers you helpful choices and suggestions until you find the page you want and that you know is out there. Cuil developers believe that analyzing the Web rather than users is a more useful approach. Cuil doesn't collect data about you and your habits. With Cuil, your search history is always private. Very cuil!


Source: www.cuil.com

Highlighting Academic OneFile

This week's highlighted database is Academic OneFile. Academic OneFile is a comprehensive, subscription-based database that currently contains more than 12,000 journals covering topics from Science, Technology and Medicine to the humanities. This easy-to-use database is the perfect fit for academic libraries, providing both academics and students at undergraduate and postgraduate levels with the ultimate periodical resource for serious research.

Use Basic Search to define your own search strategy. Results are presented in reverse chronological order. Choose Basic Search from the navigation bar. For a broader or more limited search, you may use and, or and not connectors, or limit the results to documents with full-text, peer-reviewed publications, documents with images, publication date or publication title. You may select one or more articles for viewing from the results list in full-text. Academic OneFile is available 24/7 and effortlessly delivers quality content researchers can trust.

Occupational Outlook-Summer 2008

Occupational Outlook Quarterly — Summer 2008

Occupational Outlook Quarterly provides practical information on jobs and careers. Articles are written in straightforward, non-technical language and cover a wide variety of career and work-related topics such as new and emerging occupations, training opportunities, salary trends, and results of new studies from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In this issue:
+ Working in politics (PDF; 881 KB)
+ The class of 1993: Earnings and occupations by college major, 1 and 10 years after graduation (PDF; 2.1 MB)
+ Healthcare jobs you might not know about (PDF; 664 KB)
+ Brief items of interest to counselors and students
+ You’re a what? Home stager (PDF; 216 KB)
+ Job openings by industry (PDF; 280 KB)

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Randy Pausch

Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch, author of The Last Lecture, died Friday morning at his Virginia home.

Diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given three to six months to live, Pausch responded last September 12 by delivering a last lecture at Carnegie Mellon called "Achieving Your Childhood Dreams." A videotape of the lecture became a YouTube hit and Pausch expanded its text into the best-selling book, The Last Lecture. Full of humor and common sense, and addressed to his three young children, the lecture urged listeners to dream and play and to not allow obstacles to discourage them. The book is available in the Goodwin Library.

Today in History: Collision at Sea

July 25, 1956

En route from Genoa, Italy, to New York City on a foggy July night, Italy's postwar pride, the passenger liner SS Andrea Doria, collides with the eastbound liner MS Stockholm off Nantucket, Massachusetts, and sinks, killing 46 Andrea Doria passengers and 5 crew members from the Stockholm. Later investigations determine the accident is a result of faulty radar signals and poor ballast. Legal claims against the two shipping firms, who established a joint legal fund, eventually exceed $40 million.
Source: Smithsonian Magazine July 2008

CQ Researcher: Human Rights in China

When the curtain rises on the Summer Olympics next month in Beijing, China will eagerly showcase its hypersonic economic growth and its embrace of what it calls the "rule of law." But 19 years after its bloody suppression of protesters in Tiananmen Square, China will also be displaying its human-rights record for all to judge. Human-rights advocates say the sheen of Chinese progress and prosperity hides repression and brutality by the Chinese Communist Party, including the violent repression of pro-independence protesters in Tibet, forced abortions stemming from China's one-child policy and the trampling of basic freedoms of speech, religion and assembly. Chinese government officials say their nation of 1.3 billion people has made huge strides on the legal and human-rights fronts and that the West has no business interfering in China's internal affairs

(The picture: A Tibetan protester in Brussels, Belgium, last April calls for a boycott of the Summer Olympics in Beijing following a violent crackdown by Chinese security forces on pro-independence demonstrators in Tibet. (AFP/Getty Images/John Thys)) CQ Researcher is available online from the Goodwin Library (password protected)

MapJack

Immerse yourself in panoramic views of Yosemite National Park; Chiang Mai, Thailand; and San Francisco using MapJack, a new alternative to Google Street View and Microsoft's Live Search Maps. MapJack has brighter, sharper photos than the others, and better navigation tools. To start exploring, just click and drag the icon of a person along the map in the bottom half of your browser; the photographic images in the upper portion will automatically refresh. Start-ups like Earthmine and EveryScape are developing similar next-gen maps, but for now, MapJack offers the best preview of the future of digital mapping.
Source: www.mapjack.com

Visual Introduction to the Periodic Table

The Royal Society of Chemistry has provided a free, online visualization of the Periodic Table of Elements. Click on the info button for html and pdf files that provide background information on any element. Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to read pdf files.
AccessL Royal Society of Chemistry Periodic Table

Digital Collection: Duke University

Duke Digital Collections. Founded in 1995, the Duke University Libraries’ Digital Collections have amassed impressive digital image holdings from various collections. Subjects cover an array of national and international subjects. While the database allows for federated keyword searching across the featured collections, other collections must be browsed by subject or through the alphabetized list of collection names. Access the collection here

Featured collections are freely available on the Internet and include the Emergence of Advertising in America, Ration Coupons on the Home Front (1942–1945), and the 50,000 item William Gedney Photographs and Writings collection.

Cellphones and Your Health

The director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute sent a memo yesterday to his employees saying that, despite many published studies saying otherwise, cellphone use could be hazardous.

Ronald B. Herberman, director of the institute and a tumor immunologist, advised staff members to keep conversations short, to hold phones away from their heads, and not to allow children to use mobile phones. He said that the electromagnetic radiation emitted by the phones could cause “possible adverse health effects including cancer.”

Dr. Herberman based his memo on the recommendations of an international panel of scientists, on which he served. The panel reviewed unpublished data.

The studies that have been published have produced conflicting results, but the largest studies found no link between cellphone use and cancer, the Associated Press reported.
Source: Lila Guterman in The Chronicle of Higher Education

Statistics Research: Sports

Resources of the Week: Niche Statistics
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

In the course of the average workweek, we are often asked for something that involves statistics. Surprisingly, someone out there is collecting information no matter what the subject. Check out this sports business data collection. (You may need to do this off campus because your computer here is likely to be blocked from sports-related sites.)

Rodney Fort’s Sports Economics: Sports Business Data
Professor Fort, who teaches at the University of Michigan, is one of the nation’s preeminent sports economists. The collection of data here is staggering in both depth and breadth. Fort has assembled years of salary, attendance, and financial information for Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, the National Football League, the National Hockey League, and English and European football associations. If it’s not here, you are likely to have a very difficult time trying to find it — especially for free, on the open Web.

Source: Resource Shelf July 2008

Digital Collection from the Library of Congress

This is the second in our series of great digital collections:Library of Congress American History and Culture Collections.

The American History and Culture Collections, also known as the American Memory Historical Collections, began as a pilot project in 1990 to provide middle school as well as high school teachers and students with digital surrogates of collection material on CD-ROM. Over the years, the collection has become a “National Digital Library” with diverse institutions from all across the United States contributing content. Rich in imagery, the collection may be searched or browsed by way of alphabetized subject lists, time periods, and geographical locations. American Memory Historical Collections features more than 100 thematic subjects ranging from advertising to maps to women’s rights.
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Three FREE Databases

The Connecticut Digital Library (iCONN) announced this week that 3 free EBSCO databases have been turned on for libraries in Connecticut.

GreenFILE: offers well-researched information covering all aspects of human impact to the environment. Its collection of scholarly, government and general-interest titles includes content on the environmental effects of individuals, corporations and local/national governments, and what can be done at each level to minimize these effects. Multidisciplinary by nature, GreenFILE draws on the connections between the environment and a variety of disciplines such as agriculture, education, law, health and technology. Topics covered include global climate change, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more. The database provides indexing and abstracts for approximately 384,000 records, as well as Open Access full text for more than 4,700 records.

Teacher Reference Center: Teacher Reference Center provides indexing and abstracts for more than 270 periodicals. In addition, 96% of journals indexed in TRC are peer-reviewed. Topics include: Assessment, Best Practices, Continuing Education, Current Pedagogical Research, Curriculum Development, Elementary Education, Higher Education, Instructional Media, Language Arts, Literacy Standards, School Administration, Science & Mathematics, and Teacher Education. It is EBSCO Publishing's intention to provide access to TRC on a continual basis at www.TeacherReference.com. It will also be added to the databases on the library page.

Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts(tm) (LISTA): indexes more than 500 core journals, more than 50 priority journals, and 125 selective journals; plus books, research reports and proceedings. Subject coverage includes librarianship, classification, cataloging, bibliometrics, online information retrieval, information management and more. Coverage in the database extends back as far as the mid-1960s.

New Additions to Credo Reference

Latest Additions to Credo Reference
• Companion Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy, Routledge
• Concise Encyclopedia of Latin American Literature, Routledge
• Concise Encyclopedia of Plant Pathology, Routledge
• Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs, Elsevier
• Encyclopedia of Ethics, Routledge
• Encyclopedia of Insects, Elsevier
• Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English, Routledge
• Encyclopedia of the Solar System, Elsevier
• Encyclopedia of Volcanoes, Elsevier
• An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Women in Early American Films: 1895-1930,
• Handbook of Research on the Education of Young Children, Routledge
• International Encyclopedia of Hospitality Management, Elsevier
• Science in the Ancient World: An Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO
• Science in the Early Twentieth Century: An Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO
• Science in the Enlightenment: An Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO

Credo Reference is a leading online reference services for libraries and information centers. There are over 300 titles consisting of an aggregate of 3.1 million entries all interconnected by over 100,000,000 links. Access from the library page!

Interlibrary Loans at Goodwin Library

In the first 15 days of July, Goodwin Library has had Interlibrary Loan transactions with:
Granby Public Library (PL), James Blackstone Memorial L (Branford), New Fairfield Free PL, Jonathan Trumbull L (Lebanon), Phoebe A. Noyes L (Old Lyme), Brooklyn PL, Hartford Seminary, E. Hampton PL, Scotland PL, Killingly PL, Cragin Memorial L (Colchester), Plumb Memorial L (Shelton), New London PL, Sprague PL (Baltic), Milford PL, Babbidge L (UCONN Storrs), Easton PL, New Britain PL, Buley L (SCSU), Briarwood College, and Prospect PL.

Are Your Wrists at Risk?

Learn About Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
You’re working at your desk, but you’re distracted by a tingling or numbness in your hand and wrist. Then a sharp, piercing pain shoots from your palm through your arm. If you’ve had symptoms like these for several days—or worse, weeks—or if they keep you up at night, you may have carpal tunnel syndrome.
full story

Illusion of Miles Per Gallon

(This information was recommended by T. Patrick Burke)

Richard Larrick and Jack Soll of Duke University ran a series of experiments to show that the current standard of miles per gallon leads consumers to believe that fuel consumption is reduced at an even rate as efficiency improves. But that’s not the case.

Soll and Larrick offered an alternative metric: gallons per mile. Expressed in gallons used per 100 miles, 18 m.p.g. becomes 5.5 gallons per 100 miles, and 28 m.p.g. becomes 3.6 gallons per 100 miles. And the difference is suddenly obvious: nearly two gallons every 100 miles, or a difference of more than $8.
Many European countries already list efficiency in terms of volume per distance traveled (liters per 100 kilometers or L/100km).

“Miles per gallon is misleading and can play tricks on our intuitions,” Prof. Soll said in a press release, which also links to an interactive quiz.

Source: New York Times Blog by Richard Chang June 20 2008

Book Recommendation

Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google
Available in the Goodwin Library

"While it may seem that we're in the midst of an unprecedented technological transition, author Nicholas Carr thinks that the direction of the digital revolution has a strong historical corollary: electrification. Carr argues that computing, no longer personal, is going the way of a power utility. Manufacturers used to provide their own power (i.e., windmills and waterwheels) until they plugged into the electric grid a hundred years ago. According to Carr, we're in the midst of a similar transition in computing, moving from our own private hard drives to the computer as access portal. Soon all companies and individuals will outsource their computing systems, from programming to data storage, to companies with big hard drives in out-of-the-way places. Carr's analysis of the recent past is clear and insightful as he examines common computing tools that are embedded in the Internet instead of stored on a hard drive, including Google and YouTube.

The social and economic consequences of this transition into the utility age fall somewhere between uncertain and grim, according toCarr. Wealth will be further consolidated into the hands of a few, and specific industries, publishing in particular, will perish at the hands of crowdsourcing and the unbundling of content. However, Carr eschews an entirely dystopian vision for the future, hypothesizing without prognosticating. Perhaps lucky for us, he leaves a great number of questions unanswered."

Source: Publisher's Weekly

Evidence-based Handbook for Nurses

Nurses play a vital role in improving the safety and quality of patient care—not only in the hospital or ambulatory treatment facility, but also of community-based care and the care performed by family members. Nurses need to know what proven techniques and interventions they can use to enhance patient outcomes.

To address this need, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has prepared a comprehensive online handbook--Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses. (AHRQ Publication No. 08-0043).

Experts in the field reviewed the literature, and their contributions are grouped into sections. Click to see sections.
patient safety and quality;
evidence-based practice;
patient-centered care;
working conditions-work environment;
critical opportunities for patient safety and quality;
tools.

You may also select to download the Entire Volume as a PDF file (10 MB) or individual chapters. All PDF files are accessible.

Source: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (www.ahrq.gov)

Bioinformatics: Review of Web Resources

"Information sources in the biological sciences have grown far beyond journals and books. Sequencing projects and new molecular biology tools are creating vast amounts of new data and information in new formats. The manipulation, storage, and analysis of these new data constitute the growing field of bioinformatics. This field is diverse and interdisciplinary, drawing necessary expertise from information science and computer science, as well as biology. With our keen interest in the organization, provision, and management of information, it is natural for librarians to be intrigued by bioinformatics and play a role in bioinformatics teaching and research." (introduction to review by Tina O'Grady. This is a very useful list! It will also be available soon on the library page.)

Click here for Brief Review of Bioinformatics Resources

Source: ACRL Newsletter July/August 2008

Global Researcher: Child Soldiers

Since the mid-1990s, the world has watched in horror as hundreds of thousands of children and young teenagers have participated in nearly 50 wars, mostly in Africa and Asia. Children as young as 5 or 6 have served in combat, and thousands of abducted young girls were forced into sexual slavery. Some terrorist groups even strap explosive-rigged vests onto children and send them off as suicide bombers. Others have been recruited, sometimes forcibly, into the official armed forces or paramilitary units of several dozen countries. U.N. treaties prohibit the use of child soldiers, and the Security Council "names and shames" persistent violators. But only four former guerrilla commanders have been convicted by international tribunals, and some human-rights advocates urge more aggressive prosecution of perpetrators. However, some peace negotiators say threats of prosecution can obstruct cease-fire negotiations and prolong the fighting. In the U.S., where children under 18 serve in the military in non-combat roles, Congress is considering laws to combat the use of child soldiers overseas. Read the article online. (password protected)

(picture above: Preteen soldiers in the Karen rebel army fighting Myanmar's military government are among the estimated 250,000 children under age 18 in national and guerrilla armies worldwide. (Reuters/Jason Reed)

Source: Global Researcher July 2008

CQ Researcher: Global Food Crisis

Food prices have spiked around the world over the past year, bringing hunger and unrest to many developing countries, along with pain at the checkout counter for lower-income American families. In North Korea, for example, where 35 percent of the population is undernourished, the price of the major food staple, rice, soared 186 percent, and overall food prices rose 70 percent. With 2.1 billion people around the world living on less than $2 a day, such price increases may plunge hundreds of millions into malnutrition and starvation. Drought, high oil prices that make food transport pricey and diversion of corn for use as a biofuel all contribute to the price spike. The effect of globalization — which has led poor countries to abandon domestic food crops in favor of commodity crops for export — also has been blamed. The crisis also has sparked international tension over the impact of wealthy nations' farm subsidies and meat-heavy diets, which take many more resources to produce than grain- or legume-based diets. Read the entire report. (password protected)
Source: Introduction to report in CQ Researcher

New Feature: Digital Collections

The Internet is often the first and sometimes only research resource for scholars and educators, but many open-access digital image collections are part of the deep Web, keeping important visual content out of a search engine’s reach. In recent years, libraries, archives, and historical societies across the United States have created rich online visual resource collections that include a wealth of subjects and media formats. Researchers now have access to millions of primary materials from any Internet-accessible computer, which would otherwise require an in-person visit to the physical collection. Each week this blog will let you know about one of these collections. This week it is right here in Connecticut--Yale University.
Yale University Library Digital Collections. More than 100,000 digital images are accessible through the homepage for the Yale University Library Digital Collections. Although some subscription databases are not accessible to the public, content belonging to the collections at Yale University is searchable and viewable by the public. Visitors to the site may search for images across featured collections by using the basic or advanced search options, or they may browse collections by name, topic, medium, or by the owning repository, which include the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, and the Law Library.(Before I came to Goodwin College, I did some work with the digital collection of the Cushing/Whitney Medical Historical Library.)
Click here for Yale University Digital Collections

One-Stop Shopping for Composition Instructors: Compile

This summer, The National Council for the Teachers of English (NCTE) is exploring a variety of Web sites and tools that teachers can use in the classroom and/or for their professional development. This week, NCTE explains why writing teachers at the college level should know about Compile.

So what is it? Compile is a database of 94956 records that catalog books, journal articles, and other publications in composition, rhetoric, technical writing, ESL, and discourse studies. The collection has a full range of search capabilities.

The purpose of Compile is to allow ready reference to the published twentieth-century work in post-secondary composition and rhetoric, from the beginning of WWII to the end of the century. It does not extend before 1939 or after 1999. It is an on-line, keyworded, searchable inventory for researchers and teachers and anybody else interested. Compile is offered in the spirit of free research and scholarship. (Use of this bibliography for profit, however, requires permission.)

CompPile's focus is on post-secondary writing. It integrates journal articles, review-essays, notes and comments, books, dissertations, ERIC items, and edited collections. It does not systematically cover textbooks, how-to books, conference notices, editor's forwards, or reviews of single works.
Source: NCTE

Is This a Mistake?

USA Today reports that in the past two years, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia and Oklahoma have refused in-state tuition benefits to students who entered the USA illegally with their parents but grew up and went to school in the state. That represents a reversal from earlier this decade, when 10 states passed laws allowing in-state rates for such students. Is this a mistake?

This is definitely a mistake, according to Fareed Zakaria who writes in Foreign Affairs that "the United States' potential advantages today are in large part a product of immigration. Foreign students and immigrants account for 50% of the science researchers in the country and in 2006 received 40% of the doctorates in science and engineering and 65% of the doctorates in computer science.... In short, the United States potential new burst of productivity,its edge in nanotechnology and biotechnology, its ability to invent the future--all rest on its immigration policies. If the United States can keep the people it educates in the country, the innovation will happen here." This essay is adapted from his book, The Post-American World. --currently on the New York Times best seller list.
Source of the quote: Foreign Affairs May/June 2008

Time Magazine Features Mark Twain

"Mark Twain has been called the inventor of the American novel. It might even be fair to call him the inventor of the American short story. And he surely deserves an additional encomium: the man who popularized the sophisticated literary attack on racism," according to Stephen Carter in his Time magazine cover story about Mark Twain this week. You must read this article, "Getting Past Black and White."
Source: Time Magazine

Evaluating Online Learning

The U.S. Department of Education last week released its first guide to the evaluation of online-learning programs in K-12 education. The report is designed to help school leaders gauge the effectiveness of online education, as its use grows rapidly across the United States.

“While online-learning programs that deliver courses have been around for about a decade, this report is the first to fully address the issues in evaluating online programs in K-12 education,” said Susan D. Patrick, the president and chief executive officer of the North American Council for Online Learning, or NACOL, which released its own standards for online programs earlier this year. Voluntary Online-Teaching Standards Come Amid Concerns Over Quality.
Source: Educaton Week July 8 2008

Community Guide to Environmental Health

Drawing the connections between people’s health and the environments in which we live, this groundbreaking book empowers health promoters, development workers, educators, activists, community leaders and ordinary people to take charge of their communities’ health.
…
Years in the making, this comprehensive guide has twenty-three chapters which break down the broad overview of environmental issues and concerns into specific examples of how they affect peoples’ health, and how communities have organized to improve their environment and thus their own lives. These chapters include: Promoting Environmental Health; Environmental Rights and Justice; Protecting Community Water; Building Toilets; Mining and Health; Solid Waste: Turning a Health Risk into a Resource; Preventing and Reducing Harm from Toxics; Sustainable Farming; Restoring Land and Planting Trees, The False Promise of Genetically-Engineered Foods; and Clean Energy.

Eighty-two specific stories from communities around the world enliven the chapters, showing the environmental challenges faced, and what people and grassroots organizations have done to empower themselves and transform their communities. The book also includes 22 activities and 40 easy-to-build “how-to” projects.
Source: Hesperian Foundation

What Americans Know

The Newsweek Poll gauges what Americans know on a broad range of topics from the price of oil to the works of Shakespeare. A few of the results:
77% don't know who the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court is (answer: John Robers)
32% think that the popular vote determines the outcome if a presidential election ends in an Electoral College tie (Answer: US. House of Representatives breaks the tie)
67% know that a barrel of oil costs about $140 on the world market today.
80% know that TV broadcasts in the United States are scheduled to switch from analog to digital in 2009.
20% know that Sunnis are the largest group of muslims worldwide.
for the complete poll results, go to xtra.Newsweek.com

College-Educated Women Keep Working

Opting-Out Trend Doesn't Square With Census Data. There have been a number of high-profile articles about well- educated women "opting out" of the work force after having children. But a new study published in the June issue of the "American Sociological Review" says that this so-called opting-out revolution has been overblown.

Among the findings: Fewer than 8% of professional, college-educated women born since 1956 leave the work force for a year or more during their prime childbearing years, writes sociologist Christine Percheski, a doctoral student at Princeton, in an examination of census data. What's more, full-time employment levels of women with young children have risen dramatically in recent decades. And more women with young children are working longer hours.
Source: Wall Street Journal July 1 2008

Reading First Program Not Funded

The full Senate Appropriations Committee last week approved a fiscal 2009 spending measure that would eliminate funding for the Reading First program, while providing modest increases for other programs serving disadvantaged students and those in special education. See the full article in Education Week.
Source: Education Week June 27 2008

Virtual Library Day on the Hill

Today is Virtual Library Day on the Hill!We are looking for library advocates from across the country to call attention to the value of today’s libraries, as well as the issues the library community is facing. This is especially important in an election year, as many of our nation’s legislators will be looking to hear from their constituents. This is our chance to make the library voice heard!

Virtual Library Day on the Hill is an amazing opportunity to showcase the value and importance of libraries to Members of Congress and let them know how important federal funding is to our nation’s libraries. Go to www.capwiz.com/ala to write your Members of Congress about the importance of libraries.

Top 10 Most Re-Read Books List

Listed below is the Top 10 Most Re-Read Books List created in July 2004 byThe American Library Association's panel:

J.R.R. Tolkien - The Lord of the Rings

Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol

Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird

Shakespeare's collected works

F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby

Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice

J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter series

Laura Ingalls Wilder - Little House on the Prairie series

A.A. Milne - Winnie the Pooh

Alice Walker - The Color Purple

Alt Healthwatch Database--free trial

The library has a free trial of this database that focuses on the many perspectives of complementary, holistic and integrated approaches to health care and wellness. It offers libraries full text articles for more than 180 international, and often peer-reviewed journals and reports. In addition, there are hundreds of pamphlets, booklets, special reports, original research and book excerpts.

Full text titles include American Journal of Chinese Medicine, American Journal of Homeopathic Medicine, California Journal of Oriental Medicine, European Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms, Journal of Alternative & Complementary Medicine, Journal of Asian Natural Products Research, Journal of the Australian Traditional-Medicine Society, Journal of the Canadian Chiropractic Association and many others. Alt HealthWatch provides in-depth coverage across the full spectrum of subject areas covered by complementary and alternative medicine. Contact the library for access information.

Avoid High Price of Textbooks--Rent Them

With a college textbook often costing more than $100, it’s no wonder that students are protesting, and Congress has discussed legislation to lower the price of textbooks.

But what if students rented books instead of buying them? That’s the business model behind a company called Chegg, which was started a year ago and bills itself as “the Netflix for college textbooks.” Students identify the books they want to rent and place their order online. Then, Chegg ships the books to students’ residences. After using the books for a semester, students mail the books back to Chegg with prepaid shipping labels that they download from the Chegg Web site. Chegg literature says its rental model can save students 60 percent to 80 percent off the price of a book.
Source: Chronicle's Community College Newsletter July 1 2008

IT Business Hiring Strong

If error messages and bundles of wire get you enthusiastic, you're in luck, as the IT field continues to boast the greatest hiring demand, according to a nationwide CareerBuilder.com survey.

Nearly 40 percent of IT employers are looking to add full-time, permanent employees in the third quarter. But IT isn't the only burgeoning field.
Source: Hartford Business Journal July 1 2008