Melting Pot Overflows

This fall 55 million students are enrolling in schools across the country. This is the largest public school student enrollment ever, and in terms of ethnic diversity, it is the most diverse student population since the immigration boom 100 years ago.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/27/education/27education.html
(free registration required)

Spelling Report on Higher Education

After almost a year of discussion and debate, the federal Commission on the Future of Higher Education has issued its proposals, but the work of divining their effects is just beginning. The commission made proposals on accountability and aid. Many observers say it would be foolish for institutions to ignore the report, which warns of the perils of complacency and calls for sweeping changes in American higher education. Read the extensive article in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
http://chronicle.com/free/v53/i02/02a00101.htm?cch

Make Your Searches Private

As disturbing, funny, and nutty some searches are one thing is pretty clear — people ran them in private. Or thought they did anyway. More disturbing is that the entire web is now reading about them, blogging them, doing news stories on them. So much for privacy.
Luckily, you can go a long way to keeping your secret searches safe. Here’s a few tools that will help:

Lost In The CrowdThis site allows you to search your favorite engines while automatically mixing your searches with a large number of other searches essentially creating “search noise”. The idea is that that your sexy/sneaky/sick searches will be harder to find and appear less prominent if they are found. Nice that it works with any browser and all major engines.
TrackMeNot FireFox ExtentionThis extention does pretty much the same thing as Lost In The Crowd. One bit that TrackMeNot has over Lost In The Crowd is that you can add your own list of keywords for the autogenerated searches to be created from which should add a little more safety.
TorCreates a network of onion proxies allowing all data (not just searches) to flow through what is essentially an anonymous peer to peer network. I’m not the most techy guy in the world so if that description doesn’t do it for you here’s a great overview of how Tor works (scroll down a bit to the pics). Appears to be the most robust solution, but a bit complicated for people like me.
FoxyProxy FireFox ExtentionThis extention can be configured to use a multiple proxies to help keep everything you do online (including your searches) do anonymous. Works with Tor out of the box.
Don’t Leave Traces FireFox/Greasemonkey ExtentionThis new one is similar to FoxyProxy although a little more simplistic since it uses only one proxy and works for searches only. Easy add though if you already use Greasemonkey.
Use a Web-Based ProxyThere are 100s of free proxies out there that you can use to surf the web. Most should give you some level of anonymity and work in any browser, but be careful since you never know who is running the proxy!

Featured Journal: Nature

Nature is a weekly international journal publishing the finest peer-reviewed research in all fields of science and technology on the basis of its originality, importance, interdisciplinary interest, timeliness, accessibility, elegance and surprising conclusions. Nature also provides rapid, authoritative, insightful and arresting news and interpretation of topical and coming trends affecting science, scientists and the wider public.

The library subscribes to Nature. Check out the current issue's table of contents!

College Student Mindset

"A rite of autumn is under way with the arrival of first-year students at thousands of colleges and universities for registration. Most 18-year-old students entering the class of 2010 this fall were born in 1988. They grew up with a mouse in one hand and a computer screen as part of their worldview. They learned to surf the internet as they learned to read. While they were still in their cribs, the 20th century started to close as the Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet bloc disintegrated, and frequent traditional wars in Latin America gave way to the uncontrolled terrors of the Middle East.

Each August since 1998, as faculty prepare for the academic year, Beloit College in Wisconsin has released the Beloit College Mindset List. A creation of Beloit’s Keefer Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride and Public Affairs Director Ron Nief, it looks at the cultural touchstones that have shaped the lives of today’s first-year students. " Read the rest of the article-
http://www.beloit.edu/~pubaff/mindset/

Patterns of Global Terrorism Reports

Patterns of Global Terrorism Reports
As a public service, Berkshire Publishing is posting here large sections from its Patterns of Global Terrorism 1985-2005: U.S. Department of State Reports with Supplementary Documents and Statistics for free pdf download. Also provided in html format will be a document of particular current relevance from each section of the volumes.
Of special note is the Chronology of Significant Terrorist Incidents from 1964-2005.134 pages; PDF.

Children and Environmental Health

Several New Papers on Children and Environmental Health Issues (PDFs)
+ Trials and Tribulations of Protecting Children from Environmental Hazards
+ An Exploration of Ethical Issues in Research in Children’s Health and the Environment
+ The Politics of Risk: A Human Rights Paradigm for Children’s Environmental Health Research
+ Privacy and Ethics in Pediatric Environmental Health Research Part I: Genetic and Prenatal Testing
+ Privacy and Ethics in Pediatric Environmental Health Research Part II: Protecting Families and Communities
Source: Environmental Health Perspectives

Archive for Homeland Security

New Online From the Federal Research Division/Library of Congress
U.S. Army Field Manuals, War Department/Department of the Army Pamphlets

The full text of selected U.S. Army Field Manuals (FMs), War Department Pamphlets (WD PAMs), and Department of the Army Pamphlets (DA PAMs), which particularly address some of the current research needs and interests of The Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center & School Library will be added regularly to this site.
Source: Docuticker

The Almanac of Higher Education

The Chronicle's 2006-7 "Almanac of Higher Education" is now online. It includes national and state-by-state data on colleges and universities and their students, faculty and staff members, and finances.
http://chronicle.com/free/almanac/2006/

STATE-BY-STATE ROUNDUPS
Profiles and data for higher education in the 50 states and
the District of Columbia.
http://chronicle.com/free/almanac/2006/states/states.htm

ACROSS THE NATION
National data on college enrollment trends, faculty salaries,
test scores, degrees awarded, tuition and fees, spending on
research and development, student aid, and more.
http://chronicle.com/free/almanac/2006/nation/nation_index.htm

50 Popular Science Blogs

Weblogs written by scientists are relatively rare, but some of them are proving popular. Out of 46.7 million blogs indexed by the Technorati blog search engine, five scientists' sites make it into the top 3,500. This list gives you a chance to get acquainted with these five sites (Pharyngula, Panda's Thumb, RealClimate, Cosmic Variance, Scientific Activist) and many more.
50 Popular Science Blogs
Source: Nature Journal

U.S. Government Manual 2006-2007

As the official handbook of the Federal Government, the United States Government Manual provides comprehensive information on the agencies of the legislative, judicial, and executive branches. It also includes information on quasi-official agencies, international organizations in which the United States participates, and boards, commissions, and committees. The Manual begins with reprints of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. The new edition of the Manual is available annually in late summer. You may search or browse.
Source: U.S. Printing Office

Lower Cost for College Textbooks

“In response to growing student concern about the high price of college textbooks, the major publishers have developed lower-cost versions of a few of their textbooks. In addition, alternative and online publishers have emerged on the market, offering free or lower-cost versions of some textbooks to students and professors. In order to provide a snapshot of the lowercost textbook market, we examined the lowercost options offered by the major publishers in their online catalogues and identified several alternative publishers offering textbooks for a lower price or for free.”
Textbooks For the 21st Century: A Guide To Free And Low Cost Textbooks
Source: Student Public Interest Research Groups

U.S. Census FactFinder Database

Changes and New Data Made to U.S. Census FactFinder Database

+ 2004 ZIP Code Business Patterns
+ 2005 American Community Survey - Wave 1 - Social and Demographic Estimates released on AFF
+ Changes to the Fact Sheet, People and Housing pages
+ 2004 Nonemployer Statistics released
+ 2002 Economic Surveys made more visible in American FactFinder
+ Download Center - more data available from the Economic Census and Annual Surveys

What's Inside a JPEG File?

As common as these files are in everyone’s life, very few of us actually know what goes on inside a JPEG file and still fewer understand the many pitfalls associated with using this choice when storing their digital photographs. This essay describes the inner working of this file format that we so commonly use, highlighting its many merits and it many flaws. Like any tool that is available to us, there are correct ways to use the JPEG file format and there are times when it is a poor choice.
What is inside a JPEG file?
Source: The Society for Imaging Science and Technology

Booker Prize For Fiction 2006

The long list for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2006, one of the most prestigious book awards, was announced this week. Now in its thirty-eighth year, the prize aims to reward the best novel of the year written by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. The winner receives £50,000 and both the winner and the short listed authors are guaranteed a worldwide readership plus a dramatic increase in book sales.

The short list will be published by September 14. The winner will be announced on October 15. The choices for the long list, short list, and the winner create great excitement in the book world. The bookmakers in England have Mitchell’s Black Swan Green as the 5-1 favorite so far. I hear that Messud’s The Emperor’s Children is excellent. Many of the authors have been on the list before or have won.

Here is the long list:
Carey, Peter Theft: A Love Story
Desai, Kiran The Inheritance of Loss
Edric, Robert Gathering the Water
Gordimer, Nadine Get a Life
Grenville, Kate The Secret River
Hyland, M.J. Carry Me Down
Jacobson, Howard Kalooki Nights
Lasdun, James Seven Lies
Lawson, Mary The Other Side of the Bridge
McGregor, Jon So Many Ways to Begin
Matar, Hisham In the Country of Men
Messud, Claire The Emperor’s Children
Mitchell, David Black Swan Green
Murr, Naeem The Perfect Man
O’Hagan, Andrew Be Near Me
Robertson, James The Testament of Gideon Mack
St Aubyn, Edward Mother’s Milk
Unsworth, Barry The Ruby in her Navel
Waters, Sarah The Night Watch

If you are interested in reading any of these, contact the library.
Source: Booker Prize Online

College Campuses & Security

Some college campuses – especially small ones – might believe they are immune from terrorist activity. But that sense of security is false, says Paul M. Cell, chief of the Montclair State Police Department. “Each institution has its own unique appeal to the various terrorist causes,” says Cell, who is certified in terrorism response and prevention training for law enforcement. In addition to the more publicized dangers campuses face – the bombing of a large research university’s nuclear facilities, for example – incidents that are smaller in scope but still threatening to the campus community can also occur – such as targeting an individual staff or faculty member because of controversial research, or running a Web site that supports a terrorist organization.

Another common misconception is that a general emergency plan will be adequate in responding to such incidents, Cell says. “The most commonly overlooked security concern at many colleges and universities is the belief that just having an emergency plan is enough,” he says. “All too often, emergency plans are not exercised, updated, or properly disseminated to the community.” On August 23, Cell will detail how to conduct thorough campus risk, threat, and vulnerability assessments for all types of institutions during a live, 90-minute audio conference on “Level Red: A Community Approach to Mitigating Campus Terrorism.” The focus will be on a multidisciplinary, multijurisdictional approach to campus preparedness.
For more information, click here.

Book Donations

The library is now working with HANDS ACROSS THE WATER, INC. (HATW) to collect books for needy libraries and schools in book starved areas in our country and globally. HATW is a nonprofit charitable organization that has strengthened community and school libraries everywhere from Mississippi to the Fiji Islands. We are collecting every kind of book for all age levels, fiction/nonfiction, general reading books on all subjects, textbooks, encyclopedia sets, hard cover and paperbacks. We also accept books on tape plus DVD’s, but not magazines or journals. HATW has provided a container on campus to store books for pickup.

The library is donating books that we no longer need. Please join us in this charitable reuse project by bringing your surplus books to the library. Thank you.

Education Statistics for 2005

The National Center for Education Statistics posted on Thursday its complete 2005 Digest of Education Statistics. In May the center, the statistical arm of the U.S. Education Department, published many of the report’s tables and charts, which provide raw numbers on, among other things, the number of colleges, enrollments, and graduates, as well as educational attainment, finances, federal funds for education, attitudes on education, and education characteristics of the labor force.

On Thursday the center published the full Digest, a seven-chapter opus that eventually will be available in print. The new material largely repeats what was available in May, but it is broken up into a series of large data files and each chapter bears a lengthy headnote on the broad findings illustrated in the charts and tables that follow.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

Beautiful Email

Certain email programs can badly "mess up" what you thought of as a beautifully crafted piece of HTML. For example, many programs - such as Outlook 2003-- won't display images in the email unless the user specifically permits this. Someone told me about a product that might help: Email Advisor from the Lyris company. http://www.lyris.com/products/emailadvisor/

Lyris' website says "EmailAdvisor offers you the first-ever view of exactly how your messages will appear in every single email client on the market today. What's more, after you send a message, you'll see how each of the 40 major ISPs is processing it–in real time–including which ones are inappropriately blocking or filtering it to a bulk folder."

School Matters

Despite a 50 percent increase in per pupil spending over the past two decades, nearly one third of public high school students fail to graduate, and two thirds of all students leave high school unprepared for a four-year college, according to the Manhattan Institute. Given the diminishing economic prospects for Americans without a quality education, the need for reform is clear

Here is a place for parents, educators and leaders to research information about public schools. Type in the school or district name to get performance, finance, and relevant demographic data. School Matters is a service of Standard and Poor's.
http://www.schoolmatters.com/

FedStats

FedStats is the new window on the full range of official statistical information available to the public from the Federal Government. Use the Internet's powerful linking and searching capabilities to track economic and population trends, education, health care costs, aviation safety, foreign trade, energy use, farm production, and more. Access official statistics collected and published by more than 100 Federal agencies without having to know in advance which agency produces them.
www.fedstats.gov

JOIN THE GOODWIN WIKI BOOK CLUB

Join the Goodwin wiki book club!

The wiki format makes it easier for the busy Goodwin community to have a commmunal discussion without the burden of meeting at a specified time in a specified place.This is a protected space that can be viewed by anyone but can only be edited by members of the space. As we grow in membership, the wiki book club can have sections devoted to different types of books.I will choose the first book and invite readers to read along. We will request copies through interlibrary loan for interested readers. I will post information and comments every week (or I may ask another reader to do so), and a discussion will follow in the comments section. This will become a regular feature, with a posting every Friday.Please let me know what you think of the book club idea in general. Suggestions are welcome!
http://goodwinlibrary.wikispaces.com

The first book will be announced Thursday, August 10.

Kafka on the Shore: Notable Book of the Week

Japanese fiction writer Haruki Murakami has had nine of his books published in the United States in translation. His latest novel has recently appeared, under the title Kafka on the Shore, in a translation by Philip Gabriel. This novel was chosen as one of 2006 notable books of fiction.

It's an engrossing two-pronged quest narrative, about a fifteen-year-old boy named Kafka Tamura and an old illiterate man named Nakata who, after a war-time accident as a child, acquires the ability to speak to animals and call down very unusual rainstorms from the clear blue sky.

Reading Murakami, clearly a world-class entertainer with a mysterious metaphysical bent, is a striking experience in consciousness expansion, of which the act of reading itself is a part. As one of the main characters, Kafka Tamura, says--holding up a book and sinking down onto a sofa at the library where he hides out for a while, on the run from his destiny and at the same time moving toward it--"Slowly, like a movie fadeout, the real world evaporates. I'm alone, inside the world of the story. My favorite feeling in the world." When you’re reading a Murakami novel, you may feel this way, too.

(Goodwin Library is featuring a selection of Notable Books. The Notable Books Council, a division of the American Library Association, selected these titles for their significant contribution to the expansion of knowledge or for the pleasure they can provide to adult readers. So far our readers have agreed with the selections.)

Library Resource of the Week: CINAHL Plus

CINAHL Plus with Full Test is an expanded version of the original Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) and a recommended resource for all health science fields. CINAHL Plus is an online subscription database available to Goodwin students on and off campus.

In addition to the original content, CINAHL Plus includes over 300 additional journals; new materials such as Evidence-Based Care Sheets, Quick Lessons, and Search Strategies; expanded searchable cited records; and indexing for important journals in nursing and allied health dating back to 1937. Let’s focus today on the Evidence-Based Care Sheets.

Evidence-Based Care Sheets provide two page portable document format (PDF) summaries of treatment care for many conditions and include a list of references. They are intended to be general informational overviews of the subjects for health care professionals. Students may browse for a term or select a topic from an extensive list. While these care sheets are certainly useful at point-of-care, one must consider the caveat of authority. Care sheets are written by CINAHL Information Systems. Reviewers and their affiliation (generally members of a Clinical Research Council) are duly noted at the end of the material. To further aid users in evaluating the effectiveness of recommendations, a “coding matrix”' classifies references at the end of the care sheet, listing everything from “M” for meta-analysis to “GI” for general or background information, texts, or reports.

Please contact the library staff if you need help finding and using this powerful database.

Kids and Family Reading Report

“Yankelovich, a leader in consumer research and trends, and Scholastic, the global children’s publishing, education and media company, unveil for the first time, the results of The Kids and Family Reading Report™. While studies have investigated how kids spend their time outside of school, this is the first to reveal some surprising insights about why kids and their parents do or don’t read, and how the power of one book, Harry Potter, can impact kids’ reading and school work. This is a national survey of kids 5-17 years old and one parent or primary guardian.”
+Full Report (PDF; 285 KB)+
Harry Potter: The Power of One Book (ppt; 234 KB)

Source: Yankelovich and Scholastic

English the National Language?

The Washington Post recently explored current opinions on the move to make English the national language. The best practice for improving literacy, according to that article, is not creating a national language however, but supporting the diverse linguistic background of all citizens.

Here are some articles that suggest additional perspectives and strategies related to this important subject. The Language Arts article "What's New in the English Language Arts: Challenging Policies and Practices, ¿y qué?" examines "the ways in which we have not taken up social and cultural understandings of the teaching and learning of literacy" and emphasizes the importance of supporting diverse language knowledge in the classroom.In "Unlock Their Lonely Hearts" from Voices from the Middle, author Danling Fu argues that, for new immigrant children, literacy education that challenges students to speak and engage in meaningful work (not worksheets and handwriting practice) is the key to initiating them into American culture, to helping them feel this country is their home, and to unlocking their lonely hearts. Rather than outlawing everything but English, the English Journal article "Democracy, Dialect, and the Power of Every Voice" asserts that "rich experiences in the exploration of dialect serve as a precursor to mastering Standard English." The article includes specific strategies for empowering students as language users. "Linguistic Memory and the Politics of U.S. English" from College English argues for a national language policy that moves beyond the notion of language as a right, with its lingering assumptions of English monolingualism as an ultimate goal, and instead fosters a linguistic culture where being multilingual is both normal and desirable.

National Criminal Justice Reference Service

National Criminal Justice Reference Service

The goal of the NCJRS is to provide "justice and substance abuse information to support research, policy, and program development worldwide." From the home page users may access the Library Abstracts database containing summaries of more than 180,000 criminal justice publications and the NCJRS Virtual Library containing 7,000+ full-text publications from various government agencies. Entries in the Abstracts Database, which cover resources from the 1970's to the present, include title, author, sponsoring agency, purchasing address, and journal citation, as well as short summaries. Together, these two databases provide free access to a wealth of information, including statistics, research findings, program descriptions, congressional hearing transcripts, and training materials on topics such as crime, criminology, law enforcement, corrections, courts, juvenile justice, victims of crime and the justice system.

NEW LIBRARY SERVICE-INFOANYTIME

WHAT IS IT?
InfoAnyTime is a real-time, web-based reference service that provides live librarians to assist students, faculty and the public in finding information to support their research.

InfoAnyTime allows students and faculty to connect to a professional librarian 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Sessions are conducted via online chat, using pushing and co-browsing technology to display information found on the web and in the iCONN databases. Anyone with a web browser can access the service - there is no special software required.

HOW DOES IT WORK?
Users of the service click on the InfoAnyTime link on the student intranet site, enter their name and wait a few moments for a librarian to come online.
Professional, highly-trained librarians conduct reference interviews via online chat, and provide answers and further resources in the form of web sites and online database citations. These online resources appear directly on the user's screen, next to the chat session window. The user may interact both with the web sites provided and with the librarian until his/her question has been answered satisfactorily.

At the end of each session, both the participant and the reference librarians at the college receive transcripts of the session via email. This is a new service, so it may have a few glitches, but it has been working on a trial basis in a few colleges in the state with no problems.

WHERE IS IT?
Currently, you will find it on the student intranet. Just click on "Great Library Service" to get started!

Deleting Online Predators Act: References

Here is a list of resources explaining the effect this bill would have on libraries and on social networking sites, and some alternative ways of dealing with online predators.
http://www.beiffert.net/wordpress/deleting-online-predators-act-dopa-hr-5319-ih/

Avoiding Medical Errors

Medication errors are among the most common medical errors, harming at least 1.5 million people every year. The problem is so serious that, on average, a hospital patient is subject to at least one medication error per day.

These are among the findings in a report released Thursday by the Institute of Medicine, chartered by Congress to advise the government on science and medical issues.
The extra costs of treating medication-related injuries occurring in hospitals alone conservatively amount to $3.5 billion a year, the report states. The IOM panel estimates that at least a quarter of these injuries are preventable. This is the bad news.

The better news is that the Institute of Medicine provides a Fact Sheet on what you can do to avoid these errors at home, as outpatient or inpatient, and at the pharmacy.

Own Your First Home Contest

What are you waiting for? Enter Black Enterprise's 2nd annual Own Your First Home contest and get a chance to win $10,000 toward your down payment. Closing the wealth gap between black and white households remains at the heart of the Black Enterprise Mission. Read more about the contest in the current issue of Black Enterprise in the library or you can get the contest rules by logging on to blackenterprise.com.
Source: Black Enterprise August 2006

Podcasts and RSS from NEJM

Now you can use the latest technology to keep up with medical research and clinical analysis. The New England Journal of Medicine offers two podcasts each week as well as weekly RSS feeds--FREE. To receive NEJM podcasts automatically, subscribe to NEJM Weekly Audio Summaries or NEJM Interviews at iTunes--easy to use. RSS feeds ae available for the current issue plus the three previous issues of NEJM. Each RSS feed contains article titles, brief summaries for selected articles, and links to the complete article.
Source: New England Journal of Medicine

New Resource for Marketing Statistics

American Demographics is a magazine for marketers. The content is available and searchable online (http://www.demographics.com/). it is full of information about who we are and how we live, above and beyond what the government collects. It's a repository of statistics from government reports, polls, and surveys from diverse groups such as the American Toy Institute, the Travel Industry Association of America, and the National Frozen Pizza Institute. Try it out and be amazed.
Source: Ex Libris

New Power Searching For Gale Databases

The future of search and information retrieval is here in August! Thomson Gale's new technology platform is the ultimate one-stop search solution. Our Thomson Gale databases will begin using the revolutionary new platform, PowerSearch, August 1. This new platform allows for the cross-search of Gale databases -- more than 11,000 InfoTrac periodicals and hundreds of Thomson Gale and partner eBooks. We will also introduce a new service called AccessMyLibrary. The Goodwin Library provides the Goodwin community with the following Thomson Gale databases: Professional Collection, Business & Company Resource Center with Newsletters, Expanded Academic ASAP, General Reference Center Gold, Health & Wellness Resource Center and Alternative Health Module, Informe, InfoTrac, InfoTrac (Junior, Kid's, and Student editions), What do I Read Next?, Kids InfoBits, Kid's Edition, and Gale Virtual Reference Library.

Electronic Voting Machines Need Safeguards

With November elections fast approaching, computer scientists are stepping up pressure on Congress to improve the accuracy and security of electronic voting. Eugene H. Spafford, a computer-science professor at Purdue University, wrote to Rep. Vernon Ehlers, Republican chairman of the Committee on House Administration, urging him to support legislation that would require voting-machine results to be documented by a paper trail. Spafford is chairman of the U.S. Public Policy Committee of the Association for Computing Machinery. "As experts in computing, we have grave reservations about the safeguards in place with many of the computerized voting technologies being used," the letter read. David Wagner, a computer-science professor at the University of California, alsodescribed his concerns before a joint hearing of two House committees. "A single person with insider access and some technical knowledge could switch votes, perhaps undetected, and potentially swing an election," Mr. Wagner warned members of Congress. --Andrea L. Foster in Wired Campus

The Blog Misses You

The Goodwin Library blog provides information, but it also was intended to be symbiotic, accretive of the wisdom of many, a fragile thread of eclectic conversation. That means anyone reading it, if anyone is, would occasionally be moved to comment. Such has not been the case-- so far. Warning: I am not giving up.

Blog Explosion

"The term “blog” was coined only in 1997, but less than 10 years later the blogging phenomenon is sweeping across the United States and around the world. Millions of bloggers are filling the blogosphere with everything from personal journals and family photographs to political advocacy and journalistic commentary. Blogophiles say the blogging revolution is changing politics, business and popular culture for the better by reducing the influence of elites and institutions and allowing for wider public participation and greater interactivity. Some skeptics, however, question whether blogging is anything more than an Internet fad. And some critics say public-policy blogs spew too much unchecked information and overhyped rhetoric into the political process. But with easy-to-use software and growing interest among individuals as well as businesses and government, the blogging phenomenon appears unlikely to peak any time soon."

Are blogs a passing fad or a lasting revolution? Click on comment below this or any entry to add your opinion.

Source: CQ Researcher June 9, 2006

The Big Here: Eco Awareness

"You live in the big here. Wherever you live, your tiny spot is deeply intertwined within a larger place, imbedded fractal-like into a whole system called a watershed, which is itself integrated with other watersheds into a tightly interdependent biome. (See the world eco-region map ). At the ultimate level, your home is a cell in an organism called a planet. All these levels interconnect. What do you know about the dynamics of this larger system around you? Most of us are ignorant of this matrix. But it is the biggest interactive game there is. Hacking it is both fun and vital." (from Kevin Kelly's blog)

Answer the 30 questions on this site to elevate your awareness (and literacy) of the greater place in which you live.

International Primary Documents

With so much international news making headlines of late, Diplomacy Monitor has become an essential resource for primary documents and news releases from various governments and government agencies. This free service from the St. Thomas University School of Law offers direct access to information (communiques, news releases, etc) from governments around the globe, gathered and posted to this database very soon after they are released on the web.

Material is searchable and also browsable in various compilations. Examples include:• Documents By Region• Documents By Issue• By Nation (Source)• By Nation (Affected)
Additionally, material is cached and non-English docs are also linked to mechanical translations into English. (be careful, of course).

Searching for Full Text Aticles

If you are searching for journal articles and you want the instant gratification of full text articles, let me give you some advice. Most of our database search screens have boxes to check that will limit your search to full text and scholarly (peer reviewed) articles. Not all of our databases provide full text; some will give you only the citation and often an abstract as well. So it is even more important to SEARCH IN DATABASES THAT PROVIDE FULL TEXT ARTICLES!

Here are a few examples. The PsycINFO database indexes only citations and sometimes abstracts. For that reason, we have subscribed to PsycARTICLES database that provides full text articles for you. CINAHL usually only provides citations and abstracts, but we have linked our full text database, Health Source: Nursing Academic Edition to CINAHL. If CINAHL has indexed an article that is full text in Health Source, it will show up in your search. WE also have subscribed to CINAHL with Full Text and that should be self-explanatory. In MEDLINE, search in Pub Med Central (PMC) to limit your results to full text articles only. For general academic research, the InfoTrac OneFile database provides the optional limit of full text and journal articles only.

We can often arrange for articles through interlibrary loan, but with shrewd searching or slight refocusing of your topic, you should find what you need in our databases. If you are having difficulty, please contact the library staff for help. We want to be sure that you have the information you need.
860.528.4111 #6782
mnowlan@goodwin.edu

Nursing Care for Older Adults

"The Atlantic Philanthropies has awarded two grants to increase the knowledge and skills of those providing care to older adults. Information about the care of those over 65, derived from cutting-edge research and best practices, is now available to nurses and other providers in either print format or streaming video, at any time and at no cost, through this series called A New Look at the Old.

The print series began in the August 2004 issue of AJN, and will continue every other month until December 2006. You can read or download the articles already publishedby clicking on the 'titles listed below.'

The broadcast series is based on the content of the articles found in AJN, but includes additional content. Those interested in viewing the 60-minute or 30-minute programs which began in January 2005, can click on the titles under the broadcast heading. These programs are archived for viewing at any time."
Source: www.nursingcenter.com

Digital Native or Digital Immigrant?

Technology is dividing us into digital natives and digital immigrants - and changing the way we think. A “digital native” is one who has never known a world without instant communication whereas a “digital immigrant” may still be coming to terms with a culture ruled by mobiles, PDAs, blogs, e-mails, and interactive websites. Librarians (and everyone else) must come to terms with this because it impacts the effectiveness of our work.

This generational divide has been evident for a while, but only now is its impact becoming clear. Last month, Lord Saatchi, doyen of the British advertising world, virtually declared the death of traditional advertising — because digital technology is changing the way people absorb information. The digital native’s brain is physically different as a result of the digital input it has received growing up, he claims.

Many of our current and most of our potential college students may appear to live in Connecticut, but they actually spend time in another galaxy — out there, in the digital universe of websites, e-mails, text messages and mobile phone calls. Some may be checking their wall on facebook.com Even young children today are multitasking left, right and center — downloading tracks, uploading photos, sending e-mails, visting chatrooms, instant messaging. They may find sitting down and reading, even watching TV, too slow and boring.

Behaviors are being shaped by digital technology as never before, taking us boldly where no generations have gone before. The experts say it may even be the next step in evolution, transforming brains and the way we think.

What do you think? Are you a digital native, a digital immigrant, or somewhere in between?

The Best Cities for Doing Business

As part of their annual report, Inc. studied 393 population centers across the nation, identifying job creation and other signs of business vitality. What did they find? The big cities are idling, and the real entrepreneurial hot spots are on the periphery -- where low costs and favorable regulatory environments make it possible to thrive. Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford area ranked 298th out of the 393 population centers.

Which metropolitan areas are really booming? The online report is a searchable database, the full 2006 rankings broken down by small, medium, and large cities, an interactive map, stories explaining why -- and where -- companies are flourishing today, and much more. This might be of interest to sociology and business classes.
http://www.inc.com/bestcities/

Friday Poetry Club

The Poetry Club will meet in the Libray Annex every Friday from 10:50-11:40. Come share your poetry or just listen and support others. If you have any questions, contact Cynthia McHale-Hendricks at writecmchale@earthlink.net.

Biology Blog

While in Minneapolis and St. Paul last week, I heard abou this biology blog. Paul Z. Myers, an associate professor of science and math at the University of Minnesota , is something of an accidental blogger: he only started after setting up a Web site for students enrolled in one of his courses.

“When the class ended, it was just sitting there,” he says of his blog, now called Pharyngula. “I started typing and haven’t stopped for three years now.” Mr. Myers’s site is now the most visited science blog on the Web. Be warned--he is very opinionated!

Librarians Fight for Facebook

The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet is discussing a bill that would prohibit anyone younger than 18 from using social-networking sites on computers at public schools and libraries. The “Deleting Online Predators Act,” as it is called, would also prohibit minors from using public machines to log on to chat rooms and some online forums .

Chris Kelly, Facebook executive, depicted Facebook’s security as robust before suggesting, rather gently, that the bill is a bit too broad. But Beth Yoke, executive director of the American Library Association’s Young Adult Library Services Association, didn’t mince words. The bill, she argued, “creates barriers to information literacy” by discouraging librarians and schoolteachers from teaching young students about responsible use of the Web. “This flies in the face of logic and hundreds of years of educational theory,” Ms. Yoke said of the act. WHAT DO YOU THINK? COMMENT??
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

MagPower Reading

MagazineLiteracy.org has teamed with Texterity.com to create the MagPower Reading demonstration project, which is an online portfolio featuring access to select children's magazines in a digital format. The organizations are now looking for teachers and other educators to participate in the project as literacy agents, providing feedback via an online survey that will help evaluate the benefits of providing online access to children's magazines as a literacy resource for teachers in classrooms, mentors in after-school programs, and literacy agents in community reading programs.
http://magazineliteracy.org/?tp=magpower

Just for Fun

To live and enjoy life requires more than just information. RecipeZaar <http://www.recipezaar.com/> is my favorite cookery site. After all you have done this week you deserve something good to eat. On this site, you can save favorite recipes in a personalized cookbook, rate and review recipes, or get cooking advice from their chefs. Bon Appetit.

College Cost Crunch

Rising tuition and student loan debt is a national problem. No state has escaped the college cost crunch. But individual states have been affected to different degrees. This report provides information on the college affordability problem in each state.

"Individualized state reports provide information for each state on:
• The rising cost of college;• The erosion of the value of the Pell Grant;• The amount of student loan debt incurred by college graduates;• The amount of family income needed to pay for college;• The amount of savings if student loan interest rates were cut in half;• The reduction in monthly costs if student loan payments were capped at 15 percent of a borrower’s discretionary income;• The increase in the average Pell Grant award and the number of studentseligibleif the maximum Pell Grant were increased to $5,100; and• The number of students and families who are likely to benefit from re-instituting the college tuition tax deduction, which expired at the end of 2005."
Source: Reference Shelf

New Subscriptions

The Goodwin Library has several new periodicals:
Sporting News
Black Enterprise
Wine Enthusiast
Architectural Digest
Information Week
Spin
Vibe
Men's Health
Women's Health

Katrina Web Archive

For anyone doing research on Katrina, here are some resources. The Internet Archive and individual contributors produced a comprehensive list of Web sites to create a historical record of the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina and the massive relief effort which followed. The collection contains over 25 million unique pages, all text searchable, from 1,500 sites. The Web archive consists of Web sites indexed between the dates of September 4 and October 17th. Two recent books on Katrina were reviewed in the New York Times yesterday: Hurricane Katrina: New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast by Douglas Brinkley and Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City by Jed Horne--both available through Interlibrary Loan.
Web Archive: http://websearch.archive.org/katrina/May30,2006

College Transfers and College Graduation

Forty percent of all first-time freshmen begin their post-secondary careers in community colleges. Among all community college students who were eligble for transfer to a college or university and who declared that their goal was a bachelor's degree, only 14% actually earned a degree. The number of credits accepted by four year universities greatly influences a student's success rate, according to a study by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. "Among those who had all of their credits accepted 82 percent had graduated within six years with a bachelor's degree," while "among those who had only some of their credits accepted, 42 percent had attained a bachelor's degree" during the study period. This has some relevance for Goodwin College as well.
Source: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

Book Recommendation: The Hungry Tide

The Hungry Tide is the work of a powerful novelist, Amitav Ghosh. It is a novel of adventure and romance set in the exotic Sundarbans--treacherous islands in the Bay of Bengal. It’s similar in style and tone to Ghosh’s overlooked masterpiece, The Glass Palace. But despite the similarities, its smaller scope and more limited range of characters makes it feel somewhat more accessible than the earlier book. Ghosh has managed to turn The Hungry Tide into a page-turner -- beautifully controlled and plotted -- while sacrificing none his historical sweep. Please don't miss this. (The book is featured in our Notable Books section.)

Understanding Nutrition Labels

A recent class assignment in Environmental Science focused on food labels. Most people look at food labels for reasons other than an assignment. But whatever the reason, many consumers need to know how to use this information more effectively and easily.

If the label says a food has 20% of your daily value of calcium, do you know if that's good? Or what the yellow part of the label signifies? Or how much difference there is between "reduced fat" milk and non-fat milk?

Research for that class uncovered the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's excellent online site on nutrtion label information. The site makes it easier for all of us to use nutrition labels to make quick, informed food choices that contribute to a healthy diet.
Source: "How to Understand and Use the Nutrition Facts Label"

Scientific American: Featured Periodical

Scientific American is published monthly by Scientific American, Inc. in New York City. It has been published for more than 150 years and for good reason. It is a highly respected, informative and accessible magazine. There are numerous features covering science and the citizen, technology and business, and mathematical recreation. An interesting feature is"50,100, 150 Years Ago", short sections from earlier issues. There are many color illustrations that add interest to the stories. Scientific American is a valued part of our collection. A recent issue featured articles on stem cell research and cancer, Hubble's top 10 discoveries, what birds see, power grids for hydrogen economy, reality of criminal investigations, and much more.

Goodby, Mr. Keating

Thomas Benton, an assistant professor of English, offers his take on academic life and work.

He writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education that "to succeed as an English Ph.D., you have to give up all of the things that attracted you to the subject in the first place."

He treasured the film "Dead Poets Society" in which Robin Williams plays an English professor, Mr. Keating. That portrayal reinforced many of the romantic feelings that led Benton to become an English major.

In the end, he decided that the romanticized Keating model was not for him. "It is not that I want to privilege some form of literary dilettantism as a substitute for professionalism. I simply want to demonstrate that the reasons most people get into English are different from the motives that will make them successful in graduate school and in professional life beyond that. They must, ultimately, purge themselves of the romantic motives that drew them to English in the first place -- or pretend to do so. If you want to be a literary professional, you must say goodbye to Mr. Keating."
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

Did Blond Mammoths Have More Fun?

"Woolly mammoths, ice-age pachyderms that died out thousands of years ago, probably came in blond and red as well as the black and gray favored in museum reconstructions. According to a paper to appear in today’s issue of Science, a team of European scientists isolated a gene affecting hair coloration from a 43,000-year-old mammoth bone found in Russia. The gene, which appears in other mammals, can produce red or yellow hair.

The Science paper does not discuss whether the gene conferred any behavioral traits on blond mammoths."
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

Libraries are Going Green

Many new library buildings are taking advantage of sustainable “green” technology. Some libraries are LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified, which is a green building rating system of the U.S. Green Building Council.

This National Resources Defense Council website explains how building green can boost the bottom line. There are tips for streamlining design and construction with strategies that deliver the biggest paybacks.
Source: National Resources Defense Council (NRDC)

Facts About Connecticut's Foreign Born Population

• Connecticut ranks 13th among the 50 states and the District of Columbia for the percent of the total population who are foreign born: 12%
• Connecticut's immigrants come from Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (38%); Asia (22%); Latin America (22%); Caribbean (14%) and Africa (5%).
• The top 10 birth countries for Connecticut's foreign born are Poland (8%); Jamaica (7%); Canada (5%); India (5%); Italy (4%); Mexico (4%); Brazil (4%); Portugal (3%); China (3%) and the United Kingdom (3%).
• Almost three-quarters (72%) of Connecticut's foreign born speak a language other than English at home. Of those, 45% say they speak English "very well" and 6%, "not at all."

Source: CBIA News June

Espionage, Intelligence, Security

The Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence and Security, ebook version, is now available to Goodwin students. This encyclopedia is a comprehensive guide to the history, uses, related scientific principles and technology of espionage and intelligence. The Encyclopedia includes approximately 800 entries, written by experts in the field, ranging in length from 300 to 2,500 words. Topics covered range from the historical use of espionage to the emerging use of technology in modern espionage and counterintelligence. Additional features include more than 300 photographs and illustrations; a chronology, glossary and bibliography; and a comprehensive subject index.

This title is now available in eBook format through Gale Virtual Reference Library accessible by using www.iconn.org and looking under [eBooks for Colleges].

New Version NLM Gateway

A new version of the National Library of Medicine Gateway was released recently. Changes include the following:
Access to a new collection, "Bookshelf," was added to the NLM Gateway in the Bibliographic Resources category. The Bookshelf is a growing collection of full text biomedical books, and includes other resources such as GeneReviews and Health Services/Technology Assessment Text (HSTAT). The Bookshelf home page provides a complete book list.
Access to a new collection, "Household Products Database," was added to the NLM Gateway in the Consumer Health Resources category. The Household Products Database is a consumer's guide that provides information on the potential health effects of chemicals contained in more than 5,000 common household products used inside and around the home. The fact sheet provides additional information on this resource.
The results summary page will now display Error if an error is encountered in searching a particular collection or N/A if a search is not applicable to a particular collection. Previously, a hit count of zero was displayed. Default text and link colors are now being set. Visited results links will now change to the visited link color.
A warning message ("One or more search terms were dropped. See Search Details") is now displayed on the results page if part of a user search query is dropped, but the search is still run and results are returned to the user.
Additional fields - Investigator Link, Performing Organization Link, Performing Organization Phone, Supporting Agency Link, and Supporting Agency Phone - have been added to HSRPRoj.

For Your Reading Pleasure

The Notable Books Council of the American Library Association, annually selects titles for their significant contribution to the expansion of knowledge or for the pleasure they can provide to adult readers. Goodwin Library has the following titles from the current 2006 list:

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
Veronica by Mary Gaitskill
Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
American Sublime by Elizabeth Alexander
Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishguro
Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala
Saturday by Ian McEwan
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
Hummingbird’s Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea
Bound for Canaan by F. Bordewich

Stop in the library to find summer reading selections.

Goodwin College As Entrepreneur

Goodwin College's growth and riverfront campus are featured on the front page of the Hartford Courant today in an article by Dan Uhlinger. "Goodwin College as Entrepreneur" is the headline. Read the article here!
http://www.courant.com/hc-goodwin0703.artjul03,0,1938310.story

New ICONN Resources

We have added EBSCO's History Reference Center, Science Reference Center, Student Research Center and 5 new Gale e-book reference titles to iCONN. The new EBSCO resources replace the Gale History Resource Centers (U.S. and World) which have been removed from iCONN.

Check the E-Books page to see these new Gale Virtual Reference Library titles:
Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence and Security
Encyclopedia of Population
Fashion, Costume, and Culture: Clothing, Headwear, Body Decorations and Footwear through the Ages
Renaissance: an Encyclopedia for Students
Encyclopedia of Landforms and Other Geologic Features

New Orleans Library Conference

“You are pioneers, and you are sending a signal to the world that says New Orleans is okay,” Mayor C. Ray Nagin told librarians at the opening session of the American Library Association’s June 22–28 Annual Conference in the Big Easy, the largest convention in the city since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the region in August and September 2005. With some 17,000 llibrarians streaming into New Orleans, the conference was an economic shot in the arm estimated at about $20 million.

Among the other major conference speakers were Laura Bush, Madeleine Albright, Cokie Roberts, and Anderson Cooper. Keynoting the Opening General Session, Albright congratulated librarians for keeping the faith with the people of New Orleans. She called libraries “the laboratory of freedom” and “the biggest bargain on the face of the earth.”
(Your librarian was there!)

100 Years of US Consumer Spending

Students frequently come to the library looking for statistical information for sociology or business class assignments. This report offers a new approach to the use of Consumer Expenditure Survey data. Normally, the survey presents an in depth look at American households at a specific point in time. Here, the authors use consumer expenditure data longitudinally and draw on information from decennial census reports to present a 100-year history of significant changes in consumer spending, economic status, and family demographics in the country as a whole, as well as in New York City and Boston.
http://www.bls.gov/opub/uscs/

Children's Literature

THE HEROIC IDEAL REVISITEDJULY 30 - AUGUST 5, 2006, COLCHESTER, VERMONT
Children's Literature New England's twentieth and culminating annual summer institute will be held at Saint Michael's College in Colchester, Vermont (outside of Burlington). Participants will consider Paul Hazard's question "How would heroism be kept alive in our aging earth if not by each fresh, young generation that begins anew the epic of the human race."

Children’s Literature New England, Inc., is a nonprofit educational charity incorporated under the laws of Massachusetts to promote awareness of the significance of literature in the lives of children. It was founded in 1987.

New Browser Shelf: Notable Books

I heard Uzodinma Iewala speak about his first novel, Beasts of No Nation, at the American Library conference last week in New Orleans. It is the first addition to our new Browser shelf of Notable Books.

Few things can be more extreme than forcing a child to become a soldier. This is a slim novel with green grass, billowy clouds and a silhouetted group of youngsters on the cover. It all looks so nonthreatening, but don't be fooled. When you open this book, be ready. The story is told by Agu, who is somewhere between the age of nine and 12; and from page one, the writer snatches the reader in and does not let go until the end.

When Agu's West African village (the country is never specified) is attacked by soldiers and his father is killed, Agu (his name means "leopard" or "lion" in Igbo) escapes. He soon joins a group of militants and is forced to commit the most heinous atrocities. In turn, terrible things are done to Agu, Only another child-soldier named Strika helps Agu maintain his humanity.

Iweala was named the winner of the New York Public Library's Lions Fiction Award for this novel that honors a writer of distinction under the age of 35. He also won the Barnes and Noble “Discover Great New Writers Award” for fiction.

If you have a recommendation for the Browser Shelf, let me know.

Upgrades to ICONN and reQuest

Last night there was an upgrade to iCONN and reQuest. This message explains the buttons that appear under "What would you like to do next?" that displays on the left-hand side of a bibliographic record, just under the area that contains the book jacket art, table of contents, etc.

Under "What would you like to do next?" you will see:
* "Buy this item": this button currently contains links to Amazon, Addall, Alibris, and Barnes and Noble.
* "Request this item": this button contains a link to the ILL form.
* "Suggest My Library Purchase": this button contains a link to a Suggest form.

Mathematical Imagery

Mathematical Imagery is a site that explores the visualization of mathematics. The home page introduction notes that "the connection between mathematics and art goes back thousands of years. Mathematics has been used in the design of Gothic cathedrals, Rose windows, oriental rugs, mosaics and tilings. Geometric forms were fundamental to the cubists and many abstract expressionists, and award-winning sculptors have used topology as the basis for their pieces. Dutch artist M.C. Escher represented infinity, Möbius bands, tessellations, deformations, reflections, Platonic solids, spirals, symmetry, and the hyperbolic plane in his works." There are also links to galleries, museums, and articles.
Source: Mathematical Imagery

Four New DVDs

"Oil on Ice" is a vivid, compelling and comprehensive documentary connecting the fate of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to decisions America makes about energy policy, transportation choices, and other seemingly unrelated matters.

"French Fries to Go” is an award winning film that documents the origins of Telluride’s Biodiesel project, which resulted in the launching of the first city bus in the nation to run on 100% pure Biodiesel.

"Spotted in the Woods" shows the effects of the loss of habitat on the Northern Spotted Owl. This 8 minute video shows how our consumption of wood and paper is linked to the shrinking areas of old-growth forest that these owls need to survive.

"Architecture to Zucchini" is an educational video on the principles of sustainability and their application within a variety of industries. The DVD includes interviews and facility tours, featuring case studies of eight successful, socially responsible companies of various sizes and four nationally recognized non-profit organizations that support sustainability

Are You a Yankee or a Rebel

"If you say "pa-JAM-uzz" instead of "pa-JAHM-zz" or "yooz guys" instead of "ya'll," chances are, you're a Yankee. If you call a bag a sack, you're probably a rebel. Take the online quiz to determine where you are coming from."
"http://www.alphadictionary.com/articles/yankeetest.html
Source: National Public Radio

Small,Smaller, Smallest

Diminutive autos are all over in European cities where parking is almost nonexistent and gas is over $4.00 a gallon. You can see Tom Hanks zip around Paris in one in "The Da Vinci Code." Until recently, you couldn't buy one of these in the United States. But now, ZAP, a California company whose name stands for Zero Auto Pollution, has started importing the 60-mpg cars. The company believes that the tiny two seaters will ride the same wave of popularity that has made the Mini Cooper a hit and spawned a new class of compacts that includes the Honda Fit, the Toyota Yaris, and the Nissan Versa.
Source: Sierra Club

Friday's Featured Journal: The Hedgehog Review

This is a new feature on the blog, highlighting something from the Goodwin Library Collection every Friday.

The Hedgehog Review is an interdisciplinary, academic journal of critical reflections on contemporary culture, published three times a year by the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia.

Each issue addresses a single theme with articles, interviews, book reviews, and a bibliographic review written by leading scholars from throughout the disciplines. By focusing attention from many vantage points on one topic, the journal strives for both the breadth of the fox and the depth of the hedgehog. Working against the current fragmentation and isolation of academic inquiry, this journal poses hard questions, pursues knotty controversies, and pushes intellectual discussions beyond their current impasse. The current issue pursues the topic "After Secularization."

Where does the title come from?
"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing."--Archilocus

BMC Journals Integrate With CITULIKE

CiteULike is a free web site that allows you to keep track of your favourite articles, tag them with keywords, and share them with others. A key feature that makes CiteULike easy to use is that it provides a button to add to your web browser. When you click on that button, when viewing any article on a website supported by CiteULike, the bibliographic details for the article concerned will be automatically retrieved and added to your CiteULike library.

CiteULike now supports all 150+ BioMed Central journals, making it easy to add BioMed Central articles with a single click. What's more, the latest articles from all BioMed Central journals are now listed on the CiteULike electronic table of contents page.
Source: BMC Update, June 13, 2006

History Reference Center at Goodwin College

Beginning July 1, the Goodwin College Community will have access to Ebsco’s History Reference Center, the world’s most comprehensive full text history reference database. The database features full text for more than 1,500 reference books, encyclopedias and non-fiction books from leading history publishers The database also includes full text for more than 100 leading history periodicals including America's Civil War, American Heritage, American Historical Review, American History, Archaeology, Aviation History, Beaver, British Heritage, Chinese America: History & Perspectives, Civil War Times, Foreign Affairs, German History, History, History Review, History Today (back to January 1975), History: Review of New Books, Kansas History, Journal of American History, Manitoba History, Military History, Naval History, North Carolina Historical Review, Virginia Magazine of History & Biography, Wild West, World War II and more. Further, the database contains 58,000 historical documents; 43,000 biographies of historical figures; more than 12,000 historical photos and maps; and more than 80 hours of historical video. Imagine what you can do with this!

Our library will gain access to the full text content from 91 journals not currently available through InfoTrac OneFile, our largest aggregated database.

LABAs May Make Asthma Worse

Long-acting ß-agonists may make asthma worse. A study in Annals of Internal Medicine analyzed date from 19 clinical trials involving 33, 826 patients. Those using the drugs were twice as likely to have life-threatening asthma attacks as patients on a placebo and 2.5 times as likely to be hospitalized. LABAs may also be responsible for thousands of asthma deaths each year in the United States, according to this study.
Source: Online Annals of Internal Medicine June 20, 2006 Volume 144 Issue 12

It's All About You

"Why is everyone so happy in Silicon Valley again? A new wave of start-ups are cashing in on the next stage of the Internet. And this time, it's all about ... you."

"A little over two years ago, even the most sensitive entrepreneurial radar could not pick out two pairs of people on opposite ends of the West Coast starting companies that would make plenty out of nothing. The southern California guys head MySpace, the prime hangout for 65 million (mostly young) people, and thousands of rock bands, movie stars and marketers begging for their attention. Canadian-born Flickr, by building a 2.5 million-member community solely around a passion for sharing photos, has become a poster child on how a well-executed Net effort can make big changes in people's habits. Welcome to the new tech boom."
Source: "The New Wisdom of the Web" Newsweek April 3, 2006

English Club for ESL

Welcome to EnglishClub.com, an ESL web site designed for students or teachers of English. It's a club, where one can:
study English grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation
play ESL games and do ESL quizzes online
discuss anything with other students and teachers around the world
find English schools worldwide to learn ESL at home or abroad
find pen pals to email in English
find ESL learning aids to improve English
test levels in English
get help on English grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation

Virtual Reference for Goodwin

The Goodwin Library is participating in the 2006-2007 InfoAnyTime Pilot Project, a statewide virtual reference service sponsored by the Connecticut Library Consortium. InfoAnyTime is a real-time, web-based reference service that provides live librarians to assist students and faculty in finding information 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Sessions will be conducted via online chat, using pushing and co-browsing technology to display information found on the web and in the ICONN databases. No special software is required. Our participation is scheduled to begin July 1. Keep checking this blog for further details.

American Library Association Annual Conference

Will Manley, an American Libraries journal columnist, writes this month that the American Library Association (ALA) "is a caring and compassionate professional organization." Proof of that is certainly in the decision by ALA to hold its annual conference this month in the city of New Orleans. Although many other organizations decided to move their conventions to other cities because of the damage of Katrina, ALA held firmly to its commitment to the people and businesses there. This conference will be the first one in the city since the devastating hurricane. It is estimated that the conference will bring $20 million to the city and close to 20,000 librarians. Goodwin's librarian will be one of the 20,000.

Facts on File Databases FREE TRIAL

I have arranged a free trial of many Facts on File Databases. Facts on File is one of America’s leading publishers of online reference materials for the school and library market. The databases span a multitude of subject areas such as U.S. history, world history, language and literature, science and technology, careers, social issues, and many others. Literary Reference Online, Science Online, Curriculum Resource Center, and some of the history materials would be of particular interest to our students and faculty. Please take advantage of the free trial and let me know if you are interested in any of these for the Goodwin Library.

URL: http://www.fofweb.com/Demo
Username: Goodwin
Password: Trial

What is SETI@home?

I mentioned SETI@home in an earlier post. Since then, several people have asked me what it is. It is a scientific experiment that uses Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). You can participate by running a free program that downloads and analyzes radio telescope data.

Source: http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/

Google Spreadsheet

Google has released the beta of an online spreadsheet. It is aimed at the consumer/home office market -- in other words, at people who use their spreadsheets for reasonably simple accounting processes, data tracking, or other tasks. According to Information Week, "Google Spreadsheet is fun to play with, and has some interesting potential as far as sharing data online is concerned, but right now it's more a curiosity than a working model."

Google Spreadsheet is currently in "limited test" mode; you can apply for an invitation at http://spreadsheets.google.com. If you do not want to use Microsoft's spreadsheet application, go with one of the open-source applications, of which OpenOffice is the best known, according to IW.

Source: Information Week Review

Digital Technology and the Printed Book

According to a recent article in the New York Times, "from the days of Sumerian clay tablets till now, humans have 'published' at least 32 million books, 750 million articles and essays, 25 million songs, 500 million images, 500,000 movies, 3 million videos, TV shows and short films and 100 billion public Web pages. All this material is currently contained in all the libraries and archives of the world. When fully digitized, the whole lot could be compressed (at current technological rates) onto 50 petabyte hard disks. Today you need a building about the size of a small-town library to house 50 petabytes. With tomorrow's technology, it will all fit onto your iPod."

Source: Kevin Kelly, "Scan This Book" New York Times, May 14, 2006

Vanishing Archives

The Information Security Oversight Office of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration performed an audit of all re-review efforts undertaken since 1995 by various government agencies. The audit found that of more than 25,000 historical documents withdrawn from public access, more than a third did not contain sensitive information justifying their classification. In a significant number of cases, agencies reclasssified records that had been previously declassified properly.
Source: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, May 1 2006
www.archives.gov

Digital Forensics Classes

"One of the hottest new courses on U.S. college campuses is a direct result of cybercrime.
Classes in digital forensics — the collection, examination and presentation of digitally stored evidence in criminal and civil investigations — are cropping up as fast as the hackers and viruses that spawn them. Traditional students, police officers, government employees and aspiring security consultants are taking the courses as more crooks stash ill-gotten data and goods on PCs, PDAs, cellphones, network servers, iPods and even Xboxes."
Source: USA Today

Medicine and Compassion

The library staff are frequently asked for sources of spirtuality in medicine. A recent article in The Library Journal suggests reasons. "Modern medicine boasts a wide range of tools for diagnosing and treating ailments . While potent drugs, radiation, and genetic analysis can kill bacteria, remove tumors, and predict risk, respectively, they also lead physicians to think in terms of a disease or a body part rather than a person. Making matters worse is the managed-care system, which encourages quick encounters that do not allow for doctors and patients to become acquainted and discuss options.

With alternative therapies, however, people can participate actively in their care and control aspects of their recovery. Spirituality, of course, is a key part of the alternative medicine approach. " (Quoted from article)

Here are a few selections representing approaches from both Eastern and Western cultures. Islam is not represented owing to few health materials available in English."
Weisman & Berman. Own your health: Choosing the best from alternative and conventional medicine health communications.
Boccio, F. J. Mindfulness yoga: The awakened union of breath, body and mind.
Rossman, M. L. Guided imagery for self-healing: An essential resource for anyone seeking wellness.
Sharples, B. Meditations and relaxation in plain English.
Shaw, S. The little book of yoga breathing: Pranayama made easy.
Cohen, K. Honoring the medicine: The essential guide to native American healing.
Source: The Library Journal May 1, 2006

Most Insecure place for Personal Data: Colleges

The largest percentage of security breaches in the United States happens at colleges, with higher-education institutions involved in 30 percent of all incidents, according to ChoicePoint, a consumer data-collection firm. It turns out that 845,000 college students, professors, or alumni have had data about them jeopardized because of security incidents at colleges since January. Soon colleges will be able to boast having over a million served to hackers or identity theives. Source: Los Angeles Times

Computing for the Cure

The cure for cancer might be found on your home computer. At least, if you string a bunch of idle computers together online and let them crunch numbers, the results could help in the discovery of the cures for some diseases. That's the hypothesis of David Baker, a biochemistry professor at the University of Washington, who is asking people to donate the screensaver time on their home and office computers to a project he calls Rosetta@home.

It's modeled after the popular SETI@home project, which connects hundreds of thousands of personal computers in analyzing radio waves from deep space to search for signs of alien civilizations. Rosetta@home has attracted 60,000 users, creating the equivalent of a supercomputer at a fraction of the cost.
Source: Associated Press

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Patient Education Information: Medem

Medem's award-winning Medical Library represents the full range of patient education information from partner medical societies and other trusted sources, and is unsurpassed in quality, breadth and depth of health care information. Selected one of the top ten most useful websites by the Medical Library Association, this Medical Library provides patients with reliable health care information from introductory to advanced texts. The library staff recommend this resource for health science students with patient brochure assignments.
Source: www.medem.com

Solving the Nursing Shortage

Several weeks ago, the New York Times published an article about solving the current nurse shortage by bringing in more nurses from other countries. A little-noticed provision in the Senate immigration bill would "throw open the gate to nurses and drain them from the world's developing countries." Read the article and the editorial.
Source: New York Times, May 24 and 27, 2006

What Really Saves Gas?

You may not need to buy a hybrid car after all. Auto experts tested several of the common gas-saving tips over a remote 55-mile route in the high desert of California, and found that "by changing your driving habits you can improve fuel economy up to 37 percent right away." Of course, that kind of savings depends on how bad a driver you are right now. Try these driving tips.

Chinese Tree Peonies in Bloom at Cricket Hill

If you want to see Chinese tree peonies, fly to China or visit Thomaston, CT. David and Kasha Furman have a luscious garden in Thomaston with a collection of 300 varieties of Chinese tree peonies that are blooming now. The garden is open to the public from 10-4 Tuesday through Saturday. This is truly a Connecticut treasure!

Every week, for a period of about 5 weeks, there will be different peonies in bloom. See these large, silky flowers and understand why the tree peony is China’s national flower for more than 1400 years. Hand-painted umbrellas shelter exquisite blooms on seven acres in a terraced, woodland setting.

Find directions and more information at their website.
http://www.treepeonies.com

Videos in Clinical Medicine

Our New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) subscription now includes a new video series that lets you view a common clinical procedure right on your computer. The Videos in Clinical Medicine series provides a concise review of a medical procedure — including preparation, indications, contraindications, complications and troubleshooting strategies, as well as a demonstration of the procedure itself. Great for a fast review, or to see how others perform the procedure! Each video runs aproxiimately 5-8 minutes. The first three videos in the series are available to view now: arterial line placement, nasogastric untubation, and arthrocentesis of the knee. For access, contact the library staff.

CQ Researcher Report on Teen Spending

Are teenagers learning to manage money wisely?

"Teenage American consumers spent a mind-boggling $159 billion last year on everything from movies and French fries to clothes and iPods. Experts say teens are spending more than ever before because they have more to spend. About 10 percent of teens have credit cards, nearly twice that number have debit cards and about 20 percent get money simply by asking their parents for it. Consumer advocates — as well as rappers and professional football players — say kids aren't learning how to use “plastic” wisely. In fact, parents themselves are setting poor examples. Credit card loan delinquencies are at record levels, while Americans' saving rate is at an all-time low. Critics say the credit card industry is too aggressive in marketing to younger and younger kids. The Bush administration and some members of Congress are pushing for more financial-literacy courses earlier in schools. Meanwhile, only a few states require schools to teach personal finance." CQ Researcher is an online subscription resource for the Goodwin community. Ask the library staff for user name and password to access the complete report. Join Mike Rotondo's Personal Finance club!
Source: CQ Researcher

Marketing for Students

"Marketing will grow in importance as institutions have to rely more heavily on adult students and online education to increase enrollments," according to industry experts at the annual Competing in Higher Education Conference that ended this week.

"While higher-education enrollments are expected to increase in the next decade, the overall rate of growth is projected to drop. But the adult-student market, which increasingly is geared to online programs, should remain robust. That shift in enrollment patterns will increase the attractiveness of the online market," but competition for those adult students will increase. Source: Chronicle of Higher Education Today's Report

Early Childhood Web Corner

The full title is Early Childhood Educators' and Family Web Corner. This site includes teacher pages with topical index of links to information on early childhood. You will find articles about topics of interest to teachers and families. Education, consumer information, childbirth, grandparenting, social issues and much more are all in the family pages section. For anyone connected to young children in some way, this is a place to check out.
Source: Early Childhood Web Corner

What magazines would you like to read?

The library would like suggestions for additions to our periodical collection. If there is a magazine or journal, serious or recreational, that you would find of interest for yourself or for others in the Goodwin Community, let the library staff know. Post a comment here, please. It's easy.

How much do you know about the world?

Can you name the world's most spoken primary language? The largest consumer of oil? The most heavily fortified border on the planet? The current population of the U.S.?
Nationanl Geographic tested the geography knowledge of 18- to 24-year-olds across the U.S. to see how much they know about our world. More know where the TV show CSI is set than can find Iraq on a map. The survey shows that too many young Americans have a limited understanding of the world. But do American adults do better? TEST YOURSELF: How much do you know?
Source: National Geographic