What to do if You Have Problems Voting

Some of the numerous voting problems already seen in early voting include machines flipping votes from your candidate to another, other kinds of machine failures, discovering that your name has been purged from the voter registration database, too few machines leading to waits as long as 6 hours, etc. Print this advice out and take it with you so that if you encounter problems, you'll know how to insist that your vote be counted.

Seeing Race and Seeming Racist?

White people—including children as young as 10—may avoid talking about race so as not to appear prejudiced, according to new research. But that approach often backfires as blacks tend to view this “colorblind” approach as evidence of prejudice, especially when race is clearly relevant.

These results are from two separate sets of experiments led by researchers from Tufts University and Harvard Business School. Their findings are reported in the October issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and the September issue of Developmental Psychology. Both journals are published by the American Psychological Association and available in the library.

"Seeing Race and Seeming Racist? Evaluating Strategic Colorblindness in Social Interaction" Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

"Learning (No,t) to Talk About Race: When Older Children Underperform in Social Categorization" Developmental Psychology

Source: American Psychological Association

Blackboard unites with Moodle

Blackboard has taken another step toward making the next version of its course-management system work alongside open-source competitors. The company announced today that it is working with Iowa State University to create a software plug-in for the company’s course-management system so that it can integrate with Moodle, a popular open-source alternative. The move comes just three months after the company announced the creation of a similar connection tool for Sakai, another open-source course-management system.

The new software tool, called the Learning Environment Connector for Moodle, will let students access course Web sites created with Moodle from within the Blackboard software interface. The goal is to let students see all of their course information in one space, regardless of which software was used to produce the Web pages.

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education Wired Campus October 28 2008

Focus on Native American Heritage

National American Indian Heritage Month is recognized each November as a time to learn more about the history and heritage of Native American peoples. Resources on the library web pge provide strategies for exploring Native American literature and heritage in your own classroom.

What is Happening To State Universities?

"State universities have been established as bold testament to the democratic belief that, regardless of students' race, status, or economic condition, the doors of learning and promise will be opened equally to all with the wit and will to master the challenge. But the universities don't always operate that way." (Gene Nichol)

Christopher Newfield, in his new book, Unmaking the Public University: The Forty-Year Assault on the Middle Class, writes about how certain myths exacerbate the financial plight of those institutions. Newfield, a professor of English at the University of California at Santa Barbara, talks about his book in an article in the current Chronicle of Higher Education. He claims that the crises threatening public universities are not primarily the result of economic downturns or altered cost structures. They stem, according to Newfield, from a conservative-led campaign to end higher education's democratizing influence on the nation.

Source: Gene Nichol's and Christopher Newfield's articles in The Chronicle of Higher Education

Last Day to Register!

IN CONNECTICUT, YOU HAVE UNTIL 8 P.M. TONIGHT TO REGISTER TO VOTE IN NEXT TUESDAY'S ELECTION.

Small Business Savings

Here are some tips, actually 78 tips, for Small Businesses To Save Money in This Economy. It includes technology that helps reduce utility and travel costs, and methods for reducing overhead, office expenses, insurance, and advertising costs.

New Titles in Academic OneFile

All of the titles below have been added to the Academic OneFile database and can be found on product using Basic or Advanced Search forms. Titles can be found via Publication Search within the next two weeks.

American Journal of Health Behavior
Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science
European Law Reports
Hebrew Studies Journal
Indian Journal of Industrial Relations
Journal of Australian Political Economy
Journal of Centrum Cathedra
Journal of Information, Law and Technology
Journal of Services Research
Law, Social Justice and Global Development Journal
PT: Magazine of Physical Therapy
Southwestern Naturalist (
The King's Law Journal
Revista Iberoamericana de Ciencia, Tecnología y Sociedad

Higher Educaton Assessment Resources

Colleges and universities are grappling with a need for new forms of assessment, often designed by faculty, that can address multiple types of learning and evaluate nuanced capacities, such as critical thinking and analytical ability.

This list of Internet resources includes some excellent comprehensive sites on all facets of assessment in higher education. Potentially even more valuable to faculty, however, are the selected links to university sites, which provide practical methods for creating a variety of alternative assessments and integrating them into college course work. Serving less as final measurements than as vital components of the classroom dynamic, these alternative or authentic assessments can inform ongoing course development and invigorate teaching and learning.

Source: Bonnie Chauncey, Northeastern Illinois University Education Librarian from
Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL)

Early Childhood Education Databases

Two popular iCONN databases will have a new feature soon. Kids InfoBits and the Discovering Collection will have ReadSpeaker added on about November 1st. ReadSpeaker is a simple to use audio text reader that will “speak” the text of items retrieved in searches.

The ReadSpeaker player will appear when a file has been selected for
viewing, printing, e-mailing, or listening. Users with questions about how ReadSpeaker works can click on the ReadSpeaker Help button.

ReadSpeaker comes with the ability to play or download the audio text as an MP3 file. To download the file, the user must first agree that the use will be for educational, noncommercial use only.

The White Tiger Wins Booker Literary Prize

Aravind Adiga, one of the two debut novelists on the 2008 shortlist, won the Man Booker prize this week for The White Tiger, a bracingly modern novel about the dark side of the new India. The White Tiger takes a sharp and unblinking look at the reality of India's economic miracle. Its antihero and narrator, Balram Halwai, is a cocksure, uneducated young man, the son of an impoverished rickshaw driver. By lying, betraying and using his sharp intelligence, Balram makes his ascent into the heady heights of Bangalore's big business.

The Man Booker Prize for Fiction is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel written in the English language by a citizen of either the Commonwealth of Nations or Irleand. The White Tiger and other novels on the short list are available in the library.

Webcasts from the Library of Congress

Everyone can pick and choose from among the many, many webcasts available online from the Library of Congress. Browse by general topic (biography/history, culture/performing arts, education, government, poetry/literature, religion, science/technology), choose from among the current top ten (listed at the upper right), or check out what was recently added — such as playwright and screenwriter Mark Stein discussing How the States Got Their Shapes. You’ll even find webcasts and podcasts from the 2008 National Book Festival. Access Library of Congress Webcasts here.

Health Care and Presidential Candidates

The editors of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) asked both candidates to describe their plans for reforming the U.S. Health System. Their statements are published in the October 9th issue of NEJM. The Journal and the Harvard School of Public Health cosponsored a roundtable last month on health care in the next administration. A video of the symposium can be seen at www. nejm.org--could be used for class discussions. Be informed.

Source: NEJM

NLM's Haz-Map Updated

Haz-Map, from the National Library of Medicine (NLM), has been updated. The latest update includes 180 new chemical profiles, submitted by the United States Department of Labor. Haz-Map is an occupational health database designed for health and safety professionals and for consumers seeking information about the health effects of exposure to chemicals and biologicals at work. Haz-Map links jobs and hazardous tasks with occupational diseases and their symptoms. It covers 2030 agents, and 225 occupational diseases.

Source: National Library of Medicine

2008 Great Places in America

American Planning Association's flagship program celebrates places of exemplary character, quality, and planning. Places are selected annually and represent the gold standard in terms of having a true sense of place, cultural and historical interest, community involvement, and a vision for tomorrow.The 2008 designees are not ranked, but listed alphabetically. They are located in 21 states and the District of Columbia. My favorite, pictured here, is Summit Avenue in St. Paul, Minnesota. Check it out at 2008 Great Places in America.

Source: American Planning Association

Educational Data at Your Fingertips

DataLab, a new website from the Institute of Education Sciences’ National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), puts a wide range of survey data collected by NCES at your fingertips. Whether you want a quick number or an in-depth look at education data, the tools in the DataLab are designed to do both.

QuickStats, available now, is a guided table generator that allows users to produce a table with ease. Designed for those who are new to NCES data, or those who wish to answer basic questions — what percent of college students are from low-income families? what percent of adults are taking coursework outside of the traditional college setting? what are the teaching challenges most often cited by public school teachers? — QuickStats provides easy access to frequently used variables in many NCES studies of students, teachers, schools, and postsecondary institutions.

PowerStats, available in the spring of 2009, will permit users to produce complex tables and to run regressions, and to draw upon thousands of variables from many NCES studies. Powerstats will allow for many kinds of regression analyses, including weighted least squares and logistic regression. To view the site, please go to NCES.

Source: National Center for Education Statistics

French Writer Wins Nobel Prize

The Swedish Academy today awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize for literature to Jean-Marie Gustave lL Clézio, a French novelist, children’s author and essayist regarded by some French readers as one of the country’s greatest living writers. For more information, read this article.

Source: New York Times

Featured Goodwin Library ebook

Encyclopedia of Small Business, 3rd ed., 2007
Contains articles and overviews of all the key information needs of small business owners, including financing, financial planning, business plan creation, market analysis, sales strategy, tax planning, and human resource issues.

Music from the 1940's

For students in Paul LaRocca's class, you can find free music from the early 1940's online. You can listen to it and you can share it. It includes lots of artists--Nat King Cole, Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby, and many others that you have never heard before. HERE IS THE PLACE You can download Rhapsody Music software at the site.

Source: Play List Central

No Nobel Prizes for U.S>

October 1st, 2008

Bad news for American writers hoping for a Nobel Prize next week: the top member of the award jury believes the United States is too insular and ignorant to compete with Europe when it comes to great writing.

Counters the head of the U.S. National Book Foundation: “Put him in touch with me, and I’ll send him a reading list.” As the Swedish Academy enters final deliberations for this year’s award, permanent secretary Horace Engdahl said it’s no coincidence that most winners are European. “Of course there is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can’t get away from the fact that Europe still is the center of the literary world … not the United States,” he told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview Tuesday.
Source: AP News

EPA LibrariesOpen Doors--At Last

Shuttered EPA Libraries Open Doors…After Two Years

Under orders from Congress, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency tomorrow will again provide access to library services in 15 states and its own headquarters to agency employees and the public. This ends a 30-month campaign by the Bush administration to restrict availability of technical materials within EPA but leaves in its wake scattered and incomplete collections under new political controls of library operations.

Source: Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

Free Access to All SAGE Journals Online

Free Online Access to all SAGE Journals until October 31, 2008

Simply register HERE and you will have free online access to over 500 SAGE journals with content available from 1999-date. SAGE’s prestigious and highly cited journals are available electronically on the award winning SAGE Journals Online. Search more than 500 journals in Business, Humanities, Social Sciences, and Science, Technology and Medicine.

Source: Sage Journals Online

Banned Books Week--Day Five

Stop at our Banned Books Week exhibit in the education building today from 11-12. In the United States, the free expression of ideas is generally unlimited. But that doesn't prevent well-meaning people from trying to suppress information. As a college, we need to stand up and say we do not believe in censorship.