Points of View Reference Center Database

The Hoffman Family Library now has Points of View Reference Center This database contains a balance of materials from all viewpoints, including more than 1,300 main essays, leading political magazines from both sides of the aisle, newspapers, radio & TV news transcripts, primary source documents and reference books. Features include:

• Hundreds of topics, each with an overview, point, counterpoint, and Critical Thinking Guide
• Guides to debate, develop arguments and write position papers, as well as the Video Encyclopedia of the 20th Century
• A unique and easy-to-use interface
• Full-text database containing essays and articles that present multiple sides of an issue

 The Points of View Debate Blog is a forum for students to voice their opinions and exchange ideas about topics in the news.  Classes can read up on topics, and use the comment field to debate the issues with their peers. Each month, the student with the most thought-provoking and well-crafted comment will win a prize. Learn from each other; join the debate!

You can access it from the Free Trials section of our research databases. It will soon be in the list of databases.

Try it now! 

Academics stay with Obama

The Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has bashed President Obama for spending too much time in the faculty lounge during his time at Harvard University. If Mr. Romney—who holds two graduate degrees from Harvard himself—is right, that time may have been well spent, as the president continues to reap the bulk of campaign-contribution dollars from the academic community.

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

Cheating Goes High Tech Online

Excerpt from article:

"Easy A's may be even easier to score these days, with the growing popularity of online courses. Tech-savvy students are finding ways to cheat that let them ace online courses with minimal effort, in ways that are difficult to detect.
Take Bob Smith, a student at a public university in the United States. This past semester, he spent just 25 to 30 minutes each week on an online science course, the time it took him to take the weekly test. He never read the online materials for the course and never cracked open a textbook. He learned almost nothing. He got an A".

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education June 3, 2012

Alcohol Abuse: CQ Researcher Report

 Alcohol Abuse: Can Underage Drinking be Curbed?

Americans are abusing alcohol less than in the past with one exception: college students, who drink more and binge drink more often than nonstudents of similar age. And alcohol continues to extract a high toll from those who abuse it at any age, killing 80,000 Americans a year and draining more than $220 billion from the economy. Although high school students drink and binge less, bingeing accounts for 90 percent of the alcohol consumed by teens who drink. Health experts also worry about the effects of new products, especially flavored alcoholic drinks, which seem to encourage young women and girls to drink and drink more. To combat alcohol abuse, many educational institutions, community organizations and government agencies are stepping up efforts to promote abstinence among the young and responsible drinking by adults who do imbibe.Full report is online through the Hoffman Library (user name and password required).

Source: CQ Researcher June 8, 2012

New Book Club Meets in August

The new book club will be meeting in August to discuss why are women reading 50 Shades of Grey and the other books in that trilogy plus other books that the Goodwin Community have read this summer. Watch for the date! It should be an interesting discussion, to say the least. Newsweek in April featured an article about the Grey books called "The Fantasy Life of Working Women: Why Surrender is a Feminist Dream." You can read it before the book club. There are plenty of others.
 

70,000 More Books in the Library

Ebook Academic Collection

The library this week has added 70,000 new books to our collection—just like that! The library now has EBSCO’s Ebook Academic collection, a new database somewhat comparable to the collection we have from ebrary. Both subscription packages with unlimited simultaneous users and downloads contains a large selection of multidisciplinary eBook titles representing a broad range of academic subject matter—from Business and Science, to Engineering and Humanities. Nearly 70,000 titles are included in this package, and additional titles will be added to the package each month at no additional cost. The library staff will offer instruction classes on how to use this exciting new resource.

You can view EBSCO e-books on your mobile devices now! Popular devices that are compatible with e-books on EBSCOhost include: Barnes & Noble Nooks. Sony Readers, Apple iPads, and many smart phones. Please contact the library for a complete list. Instructions for downloading will be on the library page this week.

We will be comparing this product with ebrary’s,  so please share your comments in the comments below or email me directly. In particular, we would like comments on ease of downloading, search capabilities, on-screen display, marking, saving and emailing capabilities, and any other feature you may consider important

You may access the Ebook Academic Subscription Collection on or off campus from the library page in the research database section--www.goodwin.edu/library.

This is very special Applause, please!

Plagiarism Research from Turnitin

Classroom instructors who deal with plagiarism regularly are acutely aware that plagiarism takes many forms; not all plagiarized material can be defined as a simple act of cut and paste. Turnitin recently compiled data from nearly 900 secondary and higher education instructors about the types of plagiarism they most frequently encounter and the problematic nature of each type.

The resulting white paper, "The Plagiarism Spectrum: Instructor Insights into the 10 Types of Plagiarism," classifies the most common types of plagiarism and includes a severity scale based on student intent. This study moves plagiarism beyond the black-and-white definition of “literary theft” to one that captures the nuances of how plagiarism can take form in student writing. The paper includes recommendations for educators on how to address plagiarism through academic integrity policies, honor codes and classroom intervention. The paper,  webcast, and video are available at Turnitin's web page or contact the library for the report.

Ebrary Apps

Yesterday, less than six months after launching a dedicated iOS app, ebrary announced a new Android app that will be freely available on Google Play this summer. With the increasing popularity of smart phones, tablets, and other devices, students and faculty will have a more optimized way to discover and use e-books, online and offline, on any Android device in addition to the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. ebrary’s Android and iOS apps work with e-books acquired under all of ebrary’s acquisition models including the 75,000 titles available through Academic Complete, which we have.

Statistical Abstract of US is alive

 ProQuest has rescued one of researchers’ most valued reference tools when it took on publication of the Statistical Abstract of the United States beginning with the 2013 edition. This ensures continuation of this premier guide to an extraordinary array of statistics, which has been published since 1878. 

The U.S. Census Bureau, responsible for publishing the work, announced in March 2011 that it would cease production of the Statistical Abstract after the 2012 edition. Why?