Educating Students About Plagiarism

"Who would have thought educating students about plagiarism could be this entertaining? Rutgers University's Paul Robeson Library has produced a four-part video that tells students not to steal one another's work and warns them that they could receive a failing grade from a course or be expelled from the university if they are caught. It's a serious message but an amusing video, with a photograph of a bobblehead professor speaking in an exaggeratedly schoolmarmish tone to students, represented by 1950s-style headshots, who respond with gasps and bulging eyeballs." --Andrea L. Foster
Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education Daily Report May 15, 2007


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Take me Out to the Metaphor

As a Cub fan and friend of Yankee and Red Sox fans, I could not resist this report from the Pierce Law Review that a fellow Cub fan shared with me. Please forgive me for calling attention to each time the Cubs are mentioned and including something that has nothing whatsoever to do with any programs offered by this college.

"Comparatively speaking, a couple of patterns emerge from my examination of judicial references to the Cubs, Red Sox, and Yankees. First, the Cubs and the Red Sox are about even in terms of the raw numbers of references. Both teams trail the Yankees, but by a small margin. References to the Cubs and the Yankees skew a bit up the judicial food chain. Yankees references appear in four opinions from the federal courts of appeals, three federal district court opinions, one opinion from the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, one intermediate state appellate court opinion, and two state trial court opinion, while Cubs references appear in a United States Supreme Court opinion, two opinions from the federal courts of appeals, four federal district court opinions, and one intermediate state appellate court opinion. By contrast, Red Sox references appear in two federal trial court opinions, one state supreme court opinion, two opinions from intermediate state appellate courts, and four state trial court opinions. Consequently, about half the Red Sox references appear in unreported decisions, compared with less than a third for the Yankees and none at all for the Cubs.

There are geographic patterns as well. Opinions referring to the Cubs tend to cluster in the midwest. Those referring to the Red Sox tend to cluster in New England. But there are outliers, and, rather remarkably, the Texas Court of Appeals has issued one opinion referring to the Cubs and one referring to the Red Sox, albeit rather tangentially in both cases. On the other hand, references to the Yankees do not tend to cluster in or around New York; rather, they come from courts around the country as if, gulp, the Yankees are somehow “America’s Team.” "
If you should be interested in the entire article, here it is: Take Me Out To The Metaphor,

What's Wrong with Bottled Water?

The world’s fastest-growing beverage is a boon to the industry but a bust for the environment and for the more than 1 billion people worldwide who lack access to clean drinking water, according to a new Vital Signs Update from the Worldwatch Institute. Which country consumes the most bottled water? Find out here: Consumption of bottled water, total and top 10 countries, 2000 and 2005

Excessive withdrawal of natural mineral or spring water to produce bottled water has threatened local streams and groundwater, and the product consumes significant amounts of energy in production and shipping. Millions of tons of oil-derived plastics, mostly polyethylene terephthalate (PET), are used to make the water bottles, most of which are not recycled. Each year, about 2 million tons of PET bottles end up in landfills in the United States; in 2005, the national recycling rate for PET was only 23.1 percent, far below the 39.7 percent rate achieved a decade earlier. Here is the report: Bottled Water Pricey in More Ways than One.

Source: Worldwatch Institute

Homeland Security Information

Avoiding the Plague: an Assessment of U.S. Plans and Funding for Countering Bioterrorism
Biological weapons can cause massive casualties under the right circumstances. Moreover, compared to nuclear weapons, they may be substantially easier for a terrorist group to acquire. CSBA’s newest study, Avoiding the Plague: An Assessment of US Plans and Funding for Countering Bioterrorism, examines the nature of this threat, and both budgetary and non- budgetary aspects of current US efforts to counter bioterrorism.

Source: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) May 11, 2007

Observing Your Government

Observing Your Government In Action: Protecting your Right to Know
The League of Women Voters (LWV) is pleased to announce the release of Observing Your Government In Action: Protecting your Right to Know. This comprehensive resource guide, part of the League’s Citizen Transparency Initiative, provides useful best practices and tips for observing government activities and promoting transparency.
Source: League of Women Voters from Press release

CQ Researcher This Week: HPV Vaccine

Should it be mandatory for school girls? A new vaccine that prevents infections from a sexually transmitted disease (STD) that causes cervical cancer is being hailed as a major achievement in women's health. The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, Gardasil, is recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for girls ages 11-12, and could be used by females ages 9-26. Some state lawmakers moved quickly to make inoculations mandatory for school attendance to ensure vaccine access regardless of socioeconomic status. The requirement was approved in the District of Columbia and Virginia. But reactions to an aggressive lobbying campaign by vaccine manufacturer Merck coupled with general concerns about immunization safety stalled efforts to mandate the shots in many states. Conservative groups joined the opposition, saying the vaccine would encourage inappropriate sexual activity and override parental autonomy.
Source: This is the summary from CQ Researcher May 11, 2007

Free Web Resource for Education & Research

Intute is a free online service providing you with access to the very best Web resources for education and research. The service is created by a network of UK universities and partners. Subject specialists select and evaluate the websites in our database and write high quality descriptions of the resources. The database contains 115645 records.

A number of new FREE Internet tutorials for the Social Sciences have been released in the Intute Virtual Training Suite this term. The tutorials are designed to help students develop Internet research skills for their university or college work, and can be used by instructors to support research methods, information literacy and study skills.
Source: Mary Laine, Librarian Without Walls

Debates as Entertainment

"With the first debate of the Republican presidential candidates, the second primary season debate, now over, there's one clear loser: The American people. Aside from the war in Iraq, nothing looms more among the legitimate concerns of the American electorate than health care. But not a single question was asked to draw out the candidates' thoughts on this major issue. The hallmark legislation of the Bush administration, currently up for reauthorization, is No Child Left Behind. Yet, not a single question on No Child Left Behind in particular or education in general was asked. The press today, unfortunately, wants to be in the entertainment rather than the information business. We're all losers as result. The public deserves better. "
Source: Some quotes from "Debates as Entertainment" by Star Parker in the Washington Times May 9, 2007

Library for the Blind & Physically Handicapped

The Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped is a network library of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Library of Congress. The participating library in Connecticut is the state library in Rocky Hill.

The state Library provides free mail loan of recorded and Braille books and magazines and necessary playback equipment to eligible state residents unable to read conventional print because of a visual or physical disability.

Recorded materials are provided by the National Library Service. The NLS Catalog lists these titles. Additional materials of interest to Connecticut readers are recorded by the Connecticut Volunteer Services for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. Catalogs of these recordings are available from the Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. Please contact the Goodwin Library Staff for further information.

Cheating in the Information Age

"The recent cheating scandal among first-year M.B.A. students at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business -- 33 students were found guilty of inappropriate collaboration on a take-home test and one was found guilty of lying (The Chronicle, April 30) -- reflects how technology has changed the world, why the notion of what constitutes cheating may need to be re-evaluated, "and how academia and corporations are confused about it all, sending split messages," according to Michelle Conlin, a senior writer at the magazine.

We're told it's all about teamwork and shared information," one of the accused students writes, "But then we're graded and ranked as individuals. We assess everybody as single entities. But then we plop them into an interdependent world and tell them their success hinges on creative collaboration."

While professors and employers "need to be able to test individual ability," according to that student, " it may be time for a fresh take on the assessment process. At Stanford University's Institute of Design, for instance, the emphasis on collaboration makes cheating almost impossible. As one professor at the school said, "If you found somebody to help you write an exam, in our view that's a sign of an inventive person who gets stuff done."

What do you think? Is learning becoming more and more of a social process embedded in a larger network?

What to Do ABout Darknets?

Ohio University's new ban on peer-to-peer networking may well be cutting down on piracy. But if they want to do a thorough job of stamping out unauthorized file swapping, college administrators will have to show that they can take down "darknets."

Darknets are private hubs that let students trade music, movies, and software without connecting to the broader Internet, and the networks' obscurity is their chief asset: A darknet is much harder to find and police than a typical peer-to-peer service. Plenty of colleges have darknets, and as The Post of Athens reports, Ohio is no exception.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education May 9

September Eat Local Challenge

Please take a moment to mark your calendars for the September 2007 Eat Local Challenge. In association with the Locavores, The Daily Table blog will sponsor an international month-long event in which over 1000 participants will challenge themselves to eat within a pre-determined radius of their home. Because this challenge will be occurring during the harvest season in most locations, there will be a particular emphasis on canning, preserving, and learning to put food up for the winter.

If you are interested in participating in this challenge, please sign up for email updates on the Locavores site.

Free Chronicle today

You are invited to experience The Chronicle of Higher Education absolutely for free today on the last day of their special open house. And enter to win an iPod just for stopping by. Click here for more information.

Greetings From Your Library and Xrefer

Do you need to check a definition, understand a literary reference or a scientific term? Tired of getting too many irrelevant results from Web search engines when you need quick, accurate answers? Need trustworthy reference information with properly formatted citations for your footnotes? Let your library and Xreferplus help.

Xreferplus is now a part of your library’s online reference collection, and it features full-text content from hundreds of reference books covering a broad range of subjects. It’s a search engine like Google, but instead of searching the entire Internet, your results come from a comprehensive library of trusted reference sources without advertisements, clutter, or irrelevant hits.

With Xreferplus, you get content from hundreds of reference books covering every major subject. There are over 2.5 million entries, 65,000+ images (art, diagrams, maps and photos) and over 93,000 audio pronunciation files. The content is enriched by a network of cross-reference links that cut across topics, titles and publishers to give you accurate, contextual results.

Portal Keeps Students, Alumni in Touch

By giving current students and all alumni a lifetime e-mail account accessed through a portal, Plymouth State University has enhanced its ability to stay in touch with graduates long after they leave the university.

Beginning in 1999, the New Hampshire university began giving graduating seniors lifetime e-mail accounts; in 2005, with the creation of a portal called MyPlymouth.com, every alum--some 25,000 people--received a lifetime e-mail address hosted by the university, along with use of other services offered free of charge through the portal site--something to think about.

Read Complete Article:
http://campustechnology.com/articles/47764/

Goodwin's MySpace account?

Is it time for Goodwin College to have a MySpace account? Drury University (MO) has had a MySpace account since 2006: www.myspace.com/druryuniversity. The web editor at Drury also runs www.myspace.com/collegesanduniversities and www.myspace.com/nonprofitorganizations.

The web editor, Heather Mansfield, says "every target audience that colleges and universities are trying to cultive is on MySpace in massive numbers: prospective students (traditional and nontraditional, international), current students, parents, alumni, athletics fans, nonprofit organizations, etc." She also publishes MySpace best practices for the higher education and nonprofit sectors: www.diosacommunications.com/myspaceforhighereducation.htmz and
www.diosacommunications.com/myspacebestpractices.htm.

Mansfield suggests that administrators often overreact when it comes to MySpace or Facebook because they do not social network themselves and they only hear about the worst case scenarois. A Pew Report this January showed that teens are much smarter and more cautious on MySpace than the media give them credit for.

Every major presidential candidate now has a profile on MySpace. The last time I looked, Barack Obama had 160,549 friends--MySpace friends. When I imagine colleges and presidential candidates with MySpace accounts it somehow makes me think of Prospero's lines from The Tempest: "O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't!"
Source: Campus Technology May 2007

Citizen's Almanac

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), [has] released The Citizen’s Almanac, a publication specifically developed for new citizens. The Citizen’s Almanac is a collection of America’s most cherished symbols of freedom and liberty. The Almanac links our newest citizens with the rich civic history we all share as Americans. In an effort to enhance the naturalization process for the more than 700,000 new citizens the United States welcomes each year, USCIS will distribute The Citizen’s Almanac at all naturalization ceremonies beginning this month.
Direct to full text
Source: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (via Homeland Security Digital Library Weblog)

Slowly, Slowly, Slowly, said the Sloth

Set in the lush world of the tropical rain forest, this original picture book is an beautiful example of Eric Carle's colorful collage art with a message: Slow down! Take time to enjoy your world. For a delightful day trip with young children, visit the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, MA.

Slowly, slowly, slowly . . . that's how the sloth lives. He hangs upside-down from the branch of a tree, night and day, in the sun and in the rain, while the other animals of the rain forest rush past him. "Why are you so slow? Why are you so quiet? Why are you so lazy?" the others ask the sloth. And, after a long, long, long time, the sloth finally tells them!

Don't forget to click on Comments and tell us some of your favorite children's books.

Six Higher Ed Learning Technologies

The New Media Consortium (NMC) and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) have just released the 2007 Horizon Report. The annual Horizon Report identifies six emerging technologies that the underlying research suggests will become very important to higher education over the next one to five years.

The six selected areas for 2007 are user-created content, social networking, mobile phones, virtual worlds, new scholarship and emerging forms of publications, and multiplayer educational gaming. A central focus of the discussion of each technology is its relevance for teaching, learning, and creative expression. The times-t0-adoption for the six technologies selected are:
one year or less: user-created content and social networking
two to three years: mobile phones and virtual worlds
Four to Five years: new scholarship/publication and multiplayer educational gaming.

The Report may be freely downloaded. The Horizon Report wiki may be accessed as well.
Source: Distance Education Report

Don't Mess With Our Chocolate!

Did you know that good chocolate's richness comes straight from the cocoa bean -- and that means cocoa and cocoa butter? But maybe you did not know that the nation's food manufacturers are asking for federal permission to make chocolate with vegetable oil instead of cocoa butter -- and still call it chocolate. Yes--vegetable oil! A typical chocolate bar is about one-fourth extra cocoa butter. Under the Grocery Manufacturers of America petition to the FDA, vegetable fat could replace the cocoa butter for about one-third of the cost. I can feel the rage building out there.

The chocolate provision is one detail in a much broader GMA petition to change food manufacturing standards. The FDA has promised to respond to the GMA by April 25.
Gary Guittard, president and CEO of Burlingame Chocolate, wants to stir up opposition before then, and has added a link for consumer comments to the FDA on its Web site, dontmesswithourchocolate.guittard.com. Rise up, chocolate lovers, wherever you are!

Curbing Climate Change

Somehow we let Earth Day on April 22 go by without comment. To make up for that oversight, here is the summary of "Curbing Climate Change" from Global Researcher, our new database on trial.

"The scientific consensus on global warming is sobering: It's real, it's happening now and carbon-dioxide emissions caused by the burning of fossil fuels are almost certainly responsible. Predicting what the exact effects will be on humanity and the planet's living resources is trickier, but a growing body of evidence suggests they will be profound. The international community generally — and the European Union in particular — take the threat very seriously, and most wealthy industrial nations have adopted mandatory limits on carbon emissions under the 2005 Kyoto Protocol. The United States — the world's largest carbon emitter — has refused to sign the protocol or adopt mandatory limits, and is seen by other nations as obstructing progress on the issue. Kyoto expires in 2012, and world governments are working on a successor agreement. Many experts say the effort will fail without active U.S. leadership and the participation of major developing-world polluters such as China and India, with potentially dire consequences."

For the complete report, access Global Researcher. (See previous posting on Global Researcher database.)

Global Researcher Free Trial

Are you looking for background and context on headline-making world news from an authoritative, global perspective? The new CQ Global Researcher meets the increasing demand for balanced, reliable reporting on international issues and crises. Modeled after the award-winning CQ Researcher, CQ Global Researcher delivers definitive, in-depth coverage of newsworthy global affairs from a multitude of international viewpoints. Available exclusively online, CQ Global Researcher offers focused, readable, single-topic reports on vital world issues.

The free trial is currently underway. You will find Global Researcher on the CQ Researcher page which you already know is accessed from the library home page. Call the library for the user name and password.

Threat to Small Publications

The U.S. Post Office is in the process of implementing new postage rates for magazines in a move that could put many independent and small publications out of business. According to the advocacy group Free Press, the rate change was proposed by Time Warner and was developed with no public involvement or Congressional oversight. Postal rates for smaller periodicals could increase by as much as 30 percent while some of the largest circulation magazines will face hikes of less than 10 percent.

Free Press founder Robert McChesney says the new postal rates could make it almost impossible to launch a new magazine, unless it is spawned by a huge conglomerate. Free Press is calling for a congressional hearing on the changes. The group has just launched a new website at stoppostalratehikes.com.
Source: Democracy Now Radio Showbhmqjxt

Another Book Recommendation

On the third day of the Week of the Young Child, the library staff recommends David Wiesner's Flotsam. A day at the beach like no other! A boy finds an old camera that has washed ashore and thus begins an incredible story-in-pictures. As beautiful and intriguing as any of his previous books, Flotsam is a Wiesner classic — a treat for kids and adults alike. Flotsam won the Caldecott medal and the New York Time's best illustrated children's book award. This beautiful book is available in the library for some very lucky child.

The Two-Year Attraction

The Sunday New York Times featured two-year college experiences in the Education Life section. Titles of some of the articles include "To Teach, to Nurse, to Dance Or Just to Do High School Math" and "Community Colleges for Achievers". The section is available in the library and online.
Source: The New York Times April 22, 2007

How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night?

It is the Week of the Young Child. Danielle Wilken recommends How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? by Jane Yolen with wonderful illustrations by Mark Teague. When bedtime comes, sleepy dinosaurs don't pout or shout. They simply give a great big dinosaur kiss and say good night. Young readers are delighted with the rhythmic text and delightful illustrations in this rollicking exploration of familiar bedtime rituals. (Ages 4-8 and perhaps older) This book and other children's books are on display in the library this week.

Xreferplus Free Trial

xreferplus is a giant online reference library that provides you with access to a selection of reference books from a total of 240. xreferplus includes encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri and books of quotations, not to mention a range of subject-specific titles covering everything from art to accountancy and literature to law. Find out about the titles in xreferplus. On the library home page you can access the free trial. We are considering this elibrary or others to support all of the programs on and off campus without the need for additional physical space.

While you are there, try using the concept map that enables you to quickly find information when you want to expand your knowledge of a given area or if you don't know exactly what to look for.
The Concept Map provides a visual map of how search terms and topics in Xreferplus are interconnected. Students really like this.

Since you are new to xreferplus, try the starter quiz of ten questions that puts this elibrary through its paces. Good luck and have fun. Comments are always welcome!


What does it do?The Concept

State of Black America 2007

Portrait of the Black Male

If the United States does not take immediate steps to address the black male crisis, the nation risks losing its “greatest untapped resource,” said National Urban League President Marc H. Morial in presenting the league’s annual State of Black America (SOBA) report, which assess conditions within the black community, at the National Press Club today.

“Empowering black men to reach their full potential is the most serious economic and civil rights challenge we face today. Ensuring their future is critical, not just for the African American community, but for the prosperity, health and well-being of the entire American family,” he said.
Source: National Urban League Executive Summary

Medicare Part D Drug Price Increase

Contrary to repeated assertions by the Bush Administration that the Medicare Part D prescription drug program would bring down pharmaceutical prices, a report released today shows quite the opposite has occurred. According to the report, Part D prices of the most-prescribed drugs for seniors rose steeply last year.

The report, released by the consumer health organization Families USA on the same day the Senate sustained a filibuster on a bill allowing Medicare to bargain for cheaper prices, examined Part D drug plan price changes from April 2006 to April 2007 for the top 15 drugs prescribed to seniors, such as Celebrex, Fosamax, and Lipitor.
According to the report, the median Part D drug price increase was 9.2 percent – almost four times the latest inflation rate (2.4 percent) and almost three times the increase in this year’s cost-of-living adjustment in Social Security (3.3 percent).
Source: Families USA Report

Libraries Alive and Well

Ten years after some experts predicted the demise of the nation’s system of libraries as a result of the Internet explosion, the most current national data on library use shows that the exact opposite has happened. Data released today by the American Library Association (ALA) indicates that the number of visits to public libraries in the United States increased 61 percent between 1994 and 2004.

According to the 2007 State of America’s Libraries report, there were nearly two billion visits to U.S. libraries in fiscal year 2004. The study was released this week by the ALA as the nation began its observance of National Library Week, April 15-21. In the case of academic libraries, the number of visits exceeded more than one billion for the first time in 2004, up more than 14 percent in just the previous two years.

National Medical Lab Professionals Week

National Medical Laboratory Professionals Week

April 22-28

This week provides the profession with a unique opportunity to increase public understanding of and appreciation for clinical laboratory personnel. Because medical laboratory professionals often work “behind the scenes,” few people know much about the critically important testing that lab professionals perform every day. Laboratory test results constitute an estimated 70% of the patient’s medical records and are vital to the diagnosis and treatment of illness and disease.

Pulitzer Prize Winner: The Looming Tower

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize this week for general nonfiction. "A sweeping narrative history of the events leading to 9/11", the publisher calls this book "a groundbreaking look at the people and ideas, the terrorist plans and the Western intelligence failures that culminated in the assault on America. Lawrence Wright’s remarkable book is based on five years of research and hundreds of interviews that he conducted in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, England, France, Germany, Spain, and the United States."The Pulitzer Prize is the American award regarded as the highest national honor in print journalism, literary achievement, and musical composition.

In addition to the Pulitzer prize, The Looming Tower was a National Book Award finalist and a New York Time's Editor's Choice. The book also received the Gelber Prize that honours the excellence of those who think and write about the local and global forces of change in international relations and the Lukas prize for the best American nonfiction writing. This book is available in the Goodwin Library.

National LIbrary Week Special

Thomson Gale is offering open access to all its databases during National Library Week (April 15 - 21). To access any database, you need to register at

www.accessmylibrary.com/libraryweek .

Thomson Gale is also sponsoring a contest on YouTube. From the press release:

"Make a video no shorter than 30 seconds and no longer than 2 minutes professing a deep, abiding love of libraries, librarians and those who depend on them. Load the video to the librareo group on YouTube before midnight EST on Friday, May 25, 2007. Go for it!

Support Teen Literature Day

The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), the fastest growing division of the American Library Association (ALA), is celebrating the first ever Support Teen Literature Day tomorrow, April 19. Support Teen Literature Day is celebrated in conjunction with ALA’s National Library Week (April 15-21, 2007).

The purpose of this new celebration is to raise awareness among the general public that young adult literature is a vibrant, growing genre with much to offer today’s teens. Support Teen Literature Day also seeks to showcase some award-winning authors and books in the genre as well as highlight librarians’ expertise in connecting teens with books and other reading materials. I will mention those tomorrow.

Today I recommend two books for teachers of teens or relatives of teens. You Gotta BE the Book: Teaching Engaged and Reflective Reading with Adolescents by Jeffrey Wilhelm. Wilhelm argues that literary reading depends on a reader's entering and becoming involved in a story-world. He develops this theory through his study of three of the most engaged seventh grade readers that he taught the year he collected data. The other book, Going With the Flow: How to Engage Boys (and Girls) in Their Literacy Learning by Michael Smith and Wilhelm, shares powerful ways to build strong literacy habits in adolescent boys and girls.

Open Culture Podcasts

Open Culture explores cultural and educational media (podcasts, videos, online courses, etc.) that's freely available on the web, and that makes learning dynamic, productive, and fun.
They sift through all the media, highlight the good and jettison the bad, and centralize it in one place. You'll find engaging content here that will keep you learning and sharp. And you will find it much more efficiently than if you spend your time searching with Google, Yahoo or iTunes. This is a dynamite site! I particularly like the educational web resources and the university online courses., but there's much more. IT IS ALL FREE and terrific listening for treadmill, elliptical, walking, and long drives.

Almost Human

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Almost human, and sometimes smarter is the headline of one of today's science articles in the New York Times. Chimps display a remarkable range of behavior and talent. They make and use simple tools, hunt in groups and engage in aggressive, violent acts. They are social creatures that appear to be capable of empathy, altruism, self-awareness, cooperation in problem solving and learning through example and experience. Chimps even outperform humans in some memory tasks.

Source: New York Times Tuesday Science Section

Free Course Management System

Moodle is a course management system (CMS) - a free, open source software package designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help educators create effective online learning communities. You can download and use it on any computer you have handy (including webhosts), yet it can scale from a single-teacher site to a 50,000-student University.

Moodle is designed to help educators create quality online courses. Such e-learning systems are sometimes also called Learning Management Systems (LMS) or Virtual Learning Environments (VLE). One of the main advantages of Moodle over other systems is a strong grounding in social constructionist pedagogy.

This is National Library Week

National Library Week is a time to celebrate the contributions of our nation's libraries, librarians and library workers and to promote library use and support.

Get to know your library and library staff by visiting the library during National Library Week. The library staff works to make the library a friendly place where members of the Goodwin community want to study, research, and relax. So please stop by and say hello to us. Tell us what you like that we are doing and offer suggestions to change what you may not like. Thanks to the Board of Trustees and the administration who support us. Thanks to all of you who use the library services.

Deepest Sympathy

The library staff extend their deepest sympathy and prayers for each person touched by the tragedy at Virginia Tech University yesterday.

Did You Know?

Did you know that you can view The Chronicle' of Higher Education database of new campus architecture or submit information on our institution? The picture here is the 7000 square foot interior of the recently finished information commons at the University of Pennsylvania. A Modernist brick-and-concrete structure, the new Information Commons offers seating for close to 200 students. Group-study settings include private study rooms, cafe-like booths, and flexible open spaces. A digital-media lab and a 25-seat seminar room were part of the project, as are spaces for a writing center, oral-presentation coaching, and other kinds of academic assistance. (This is only one floor of the library. Yes they do have books.)

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

Week of the Young Child is Coming

This is an advance notice that the The Week of the Young Child 2007 will be celebrated on the Goodwin campus April 22-29. This year's theme is "Building Better Futures for All Children". The Week of the Young Child is a national event week sponsored by the National Association for the Education of the Young Child (NAEYC).

Of course the library is a member of NAEYC. In support of the early childhoold program, the library will be displaying many new and classic children's books. Other events for that week will be posted on the blog. Please remember to stop by the library during that week.

If you hadn't noticed, you can comment on blog entries. The library staff would like to hear from you about some of your favorite children's book. Comments, please! Just click on COMMENTS at the bottom of this post and send us a comment--very easy. You will feel so good afterwards.

Internet Seminar on Airport Security

Join a complimentary internet seminar on airport security April 26 from 2-3 p.m. presented by the San Francisco International Airport. REGISTER NOW.

San Francisco International Airport (SFO) is recognized as a leader in airport security. John Payne, the airport's CIO, will discuss how SFO meets tight security requirements and maintains support for tenants in an extremely competitive business environment. You will hear about real-world deployments that have utilized a centralized blade approach to improve control, security, and continuity of operations to allow a greater focus on the mission at hand vs. management of technology. This information was provided by the State-of-the-Art IT for Emergency Management Centers

This event will provide emergency management IT professionals (and students) with important information on how to take operations to what is being deemed the "next generation of Public Sector IT environments" through blade workstation technology. The experts will discuss:

• Pandemic outbreak critical operations support
• Removing the risks associated with "desk-side deployment"
• Improving control, security and management of IT operations
• Achieving state-of-the art high availability, asset utilization and redundancy
• Enhancing coordination with real-time access to shared workstations
• Ensuring continuity of operations through remote location and multi-site access

Should Museums Return Relics?

An ancient vase at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art is fueling an intensifying ethical and legal debate about some of the world's most celebrated works of art. Two years ago, Italian authorities produced evidence the ancient vessel had been smuggled from Italy and demanded its return. Such prized artifacts have raised thorny questions about the ownership of cultural treasures in private collections and museums around the world. The controversy — and attendant criminal trials of alleged smugglers — is also shedding new light on the secretive world of antiquities collecting — a realm populated by tomb robbers, wealthy connoisseurs and aggressive dealers and curators. Some experts estimate that up to $4 billion worth of precious art is being illegally traded. Whatever their worth, ancient artworks are priceless to Italy, Egypt and other nations increasingly using cultural artifacts to exert political leverage and stoke national pride. See the entire article in this week's CQ Researcher.

Source: CQ Researcher

Virtual Travel

Virtual Tourism is a mashup of YouTube travel videos of individual sites, their aerial location via Google Maps and text from Wikipedia. It's Web 2.0-licious!

Source: MetaFilter Community Weblog

Database for Homeland Security Students

I previewed Praeger Security Interational online database at the ACRL conference and now have set up a free trial.

To access please go to http://psi.praeger.com and enter "GoodwinCollege" for the username and "library" for the password.

Kurt Vonnegut Dies

Kurt Vonnegut Jr., the acclaimed American author of more than a dozen novels, short stories, essays and plays, died last night in New York city at the age of 84. His most famous work, Slaughterhouse Five, is one of the most powerful anti-war novels ever written. Vonnegut was captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge and imprisoned in Dresden. He survived the U.S. fire bombing of Dresden that destroyed the whole city by hiding in an underground slaughterhouse, thus the title.

Vonnegut's last work was a collection of essays called A Man Without a Country. In it, he suggested the way that music helped him through tragic times. Other works include Cat's Cradle, Breakfast of Champions, and Mother Night. Here is an excerpt from Slaughterhouse Five:

“When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in a bad condition in that particular moment, but that same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is 'So it goes.'”

Rest in peace, Kurt. We will miss you. So it goes.

Applachian Trail Thru-Hike

I know some of you are planning to hike the entire Applachian trail some day. Maybe you have already started making plans. Just for your information, the average thru-hike takes 5-7 months and that's at a 13-15 mile per day average, but only 20% of the people who start the hike actually finish. As of 2005, only 8,425 people have completed the whole trail. I know some of your names will be added to that list.

For those of you who don't know about this, the Appalachian National Scenic Trail is a 2,174-mile footpath along the ridgecrests and across the major valleys of the Appalachian Mountains from Springer Mountain in northern Georgia to Katahdin in Maine. The trail traverses Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia. Doing it all at once is very difficult!

Just for fun, you can follow two people from Connecticut who did the northerly hike of the entire trail last year. Carrie and Derrick Ellis have a web site with pictures, movies, a well-
researched gear list, and more. Keep hiking!
The web site: www.ellishiking.com

Environmental-Health Journal

Plan to privatize Environmental-Health Journal is on hold amid congressional inquiry.
The plans to turn a well-respected public-health journal, published by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, over to a private publisher should be put on hold, says a Congressional oversight committee that is investigating the matter.

The journal, Environmental Health Perspectives, consistently ranks among the top journals in environmental science and public health. It has been slated for privatization since September 2005, but that process has been marred by ethics concerns. The entire journal, including the student edition, is now freely available online. News, feature articles, and commentary, which account for about half of the printed edition, will also be curtailed if it is privatized.Reports of peer-reviewed original research are not slated for cuts at this time.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

New Books for Hospitality

These are new books in the library for the hospitality program:

Hospitality 2010 by Cetron, DeMocio, and Davies
At Your Service by the Culinary Institute of America
Art of the Event by James C. Monroe
I Like You: Hospitality under the Influence by Amy Sedaris
Hospitality Financial Accounting by Weygandt, Kieso, Kimmel & DeFranco

Partnership for Global Security Website

The Partnership for Global Security mounts a global effort to decrease the dangers posed by weapons of mass destruction by working for a world in which all such weapons are secured and the threat of their use is eliminated. The website offers Nuclear News; U.S., Russian, and United Nations documents; the partnership’s own reports; and news links.

Source: Weekly Homeland Security Newsletter

All Dogs Great and Small

A new study conducted by an international team of scientists led by researchers at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) has identified the gene responsible for this great range of dog sizes. The answer, it seems involve a number of different versions of the gene that encodes for insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1). The gene, IGF1, was identified following genetic analysis that began with screening 463 Portuguese water dogs, a breed that has a lot of diversity in size. The researchers measured the dogs, took X-rays, and then sequenced their DNA and looked for different regions of interest. This research team will plans on turning their attention to identifying genetic markers that control other aspects of canine appearance. Whether they find the gene for adorable remains to be seen. The study was published in Science today.

Measuring UP 2006

Measuring Up 2006 consists of the national report card for higher education and fifty state report cards. Its purpose is to provide the public and policymakers with information to assess and improve postsecondary education in each state. Measuring Up 2006 is the fourth in a series of biennial report cards.
This Web site provides state leaders, policymakers, researchers and others with access to the national report card as well as access to all fifty state report cards. In addition, the site can compare any state with the best-performing states in each performance category, compare indicator scores and state grades for any performance category, obtain source and technical information for indicators and weights, and allow visitors to download the reports. Further, the Measuring Up Web site has the capacity to view previous report cards from 2000, 2002, and 2004.
Source: Marylaine Block's Neat New Stuff

Homeland Security Information

The Homeland Security Information Center at NTIS (National Technical Information Service) is an invaluable resource for scientific and technical information from the U.S. government, its contractors, and complementary material from international sources. The site is divided into five major categories with subcategory listings of recent reports: health and medicine; food and agriculture; biological and chemical warfare; preparedness and response; and safety training.
Source: http://www.ntis.gov/hs

African-American Registered Nurses

"From Their Own Voices: The Lived Experiences of African American Registered Nurses"
Journal of Transcultural Nursing April 2007

"Within this century, the United States will experience drastic demographic and cultural changes in the population. The majority of the people living in this country will belong to groups now considered minorities. Because nurses will be caring for an increasingly diverse patient populations, the workforce must include more registered nurses who share similar backgrounds as the patients. Of the 2.7 million registered nurses in the United States (Bureau of Health Professionals, 2000), only 13.4% are minorities." (from the article)

The article by Deborah W. Wilson of Howard University describes a study of the lived experience of African American nurses providing nursing care in the south. She concludes with recommendations to address the immediate needs concerning diversity in the nursing profession. The article is available in the Goodwin Library

Source: Journal of Transcultural Nursing April 2007

Simplify FAFSA

This report outlines a plan for simplifying the financial aid application process by letting financial aid applicants ask the IRS to automatically answer many of the most difficult and important questions on the FAFSA. In addition to dramatically simplifying the process for students and families, this reform would cut down on costly verification paperwork for colleges and universities and improve accuracy and data security. (Don't hold your breath.)
Going to the Source: A Practical Way to Simplify the FAFSA
Source: The Institute for College Access & Success
+ Executive Summary
+ Full Report

Congressional Hearing and No Child Left Behind

Experts Tell Congress About Alternative Methods for Measuring Student Progress Under No Child Left Behind

At a House Education and Labor Committee hearing today, education experts offered specific ideas for changing the way states and schools measure schools’ progress under the federal No Child Left Behind law. Under the law, states are required to set benchmarks each year for the share of students who can read and do math at grade level. If the percentage of a school’s students who are proficient does not meet these annual benchmarks, then the school does not make adequate yearly progress. The experts at today’s hearing all testified that there may be more accurate and fair methods that to help schools measure their progress.
Source: U.S. House of Representatives Education and Labor committee

Spring has Sprung

On March 20, 2007, at precisely 8:07 P.M. EDT (March 21, 00:07 Universal Time), the Sun crossed directly over the Earth's equator. This moment is the vernal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. For the Southern Hemisphere, this is the moment of the autumnal equinox.
Translated literally,equinox means "equal night." Because the sun is positioned above the equator, day and night are about equal in length all over the world during the equinoxes. A second equinox occurs each year on September 22 or 23; in 2007, it will be on September 23 at 5:51 A.M. EDT (09:51 UT). This date will mark the autumnal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere and the vernal equinox in the Southern (vernal denotes "spring"). I do remember something from fifth grade and that was a long time ago.

Autism Video

Mary Ellen Bates says that BoingBoing pointed her to "this amazing YouTube video by a woman with autism, along with a translation of her language. The first part, she says, is in my 'native language," and then the second part provides a translation, or at least an explanation. "
Source: Mary Ellen Bates

Recommended book: Girls of Tender Age

Sandra Ward, Janet Jefford, and I strongly recommend Girls of Tender Age by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith. Smith's book is far and away the most in demand book on the Goodwin campus and generally across the greater Hartford area. Smith tells her story of growing up in low-income housing in Hartford just after WW II--a riveting family memoir like no other.

Call the library now--today. The Goodwin book club will meet to discuss this book in April.

Wikipedia's Growth

(The following is excerpted and condensed from an op-ed in the Washington Post earlier this year.)

"In the past year, Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that "anyone can edit," has been cited four times as often as the Encyclopedia Britannica in judicial opinions, and the number is rapidly growing. In just two years, YouTube has become a household word and one of the world's most successful Web sites. Such astounding growth and success demonstrate society's unstoppable movement toward shared production of information, as diverse groups of people in multiple fields pool their knowledge and draw from each other's resources." (College students are generally discouraged from using Wikipedia as an authoritative source in research papers.)

"Wikipedia is merely one of many experiments in aggregating knowledge and creativity, that have been made possible by new technology. The track record of the new collaborations suggests that they have immense potential. In just a few years, Wikipedia has become the most influential encyclopedia in the world, consulted by judges as well as those who cannot afford to buy books. If the past is prologue, we're seeing the tip of a very large iceberg."

Working Moms Find Time for Children

A new study finds that somehow, working mothers are spending the same amount of time with their children as stay-at-home moms did in the 1970s. They're giving up sleep, housework and time with the spouse. Listen to the broadcast online.
Source: National Public Radio Morning Edition March 21

For Sociology and Life Span Students

Here is a valuable site to find data for research in sociology and life span classes. The Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), begun in 1968, studies a representative sample of U.S. individuals and their family units. The study emphasizes the dynamic aspects of economic and demographic behavior, but also includes other sociological and psychological measures.

The sample size has grown to more than 7,000 families. The PSID has collected information about more than 65,000 individuals spanning as much as 36 years of their lives. The study is conducted at the Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan. The study includes a Child Development supplement.

The site includes tutorials that could be used in the classroom, a user guide, related sites of studies around the world, and updates. The PSID 2005 family, individual and family history files have been released recently been released.

Source: http://psidonline.isr.umich.edu/

Changing the Student-aid Application

"Congressional Democrats introduced legislation on Tuesday that would cut the basic federal student-aid application form in half by using financial information from income-tax returns.
College-access advocates and members of both political parties have long said that the complicated and slow process of applying for financial aid discourages thousands of low-income students from going to college or from receiving grants and loans. Cutting the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or Fafsa, would be a move toward simplifying the process."
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education March 21

Is the No Child Left Behind Act Working?

“President Bush says it is, pointing to student-achievement results from a single subsection of the National Assessment of Educational Progress and tentative Reading First data. But the evidence available to support his claim is questionable.

The data Mr. Bush cited at that event are from just the “long-term trend” NAEP in reading and math, researchers say. All available data, they add, show modest improvements that can’t be attributed to the 5-year-old law. Instead, progress in achievement is more likely a continuation of trends that predate the law.

“There’s not any evidence that shows anything has changed,” said Daniel M. Koretz, a professor of education at Harvard University’s graduate school of education.”
Source: Education Week March 9, 2007

This Week in the Chronicle's Brown Bag:

Are Accreditors the Education Department's Police Force?

Thursday, March 15, at 12 noon, U.S. Eastern Time

Live web chat with Judith S. Eaton

Even before the federal Commission on the Future of Higher Education delivered its final report last September, the secretary of education, Margaret Spellings, seems to have been leaning on accreditors to carry out some of the report's key recommendations on making colleges more accountable. She wants them to put more emphasis on "outputs," like graduation and employment rates, and on gauges of what students have learned. Join the Chronicle of Higher Education discussion on Thursday for a live Web chat at noon.

Judith S. Eaton, who represents the accreditors, has long championed a cooperative approach, even as she expresses accreditors' concerns that the Education Department has imposed new and arbitrary interpretations of the rules under which they operate. Ms. Eaton will take your questions about those and other issues, including new efforts in the fight against diploma mills.

Eaton, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, will take your questions about the changing role of accreditors, what the Bush administration wants accreditors to do, the fight against diploma mills, and other issues.
SEE http://chronicle.com/live/

Homeland Security: National Security Agencies

American military and intelligence agencies have increasingly been turning to anthropologists and other social scientists for "cultural knowledge" about actual and potential adversaries. But many anthropologists are deeply anxious about offering such assistance, fearing, among other things, that their insights might be used simply to help torture and kill people more effectively.

At a panel discussion that was Webcast from Brown University on Monday afternoon, several members of a temporary committee of the American Anthropological Association discussed how and where the discipline should draw ethical lines when anthropologists engage with national-security agencies. (An archive of the Webcast should be available later this week.)
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

Histology Learning System Database

Histology learning System is for all histology students! It has been recommended by Zoe Durkin.

Success in a histology course depends on the student's understanding of the course objectives. These are:
To learn microscopic anatomy of the tissues and organs of the human body.
To learn histological terms and concepts for the purpose of identification and precise communication.
To develop a systematic thinking process as a means to identify histological preparations correctly.
To understand the relationship between microscopic structure and function.
To understand the preparative procedures used in histology and how they affect the visual image.

By methodically reviewing images in this database you will learn to identify cells, tissues, organs, and parts of organs correctly. You learn to do this, not by memorizing the images, rather, by learning how morphological features relate to function and by understanding which features are most diagnostic of organ systems and organs of the systems. In medicine, as in histology, this intellectual process involves art as well as science. The art lies in knowing which questions to ask, and in what order, in your systematic process of elimination!
http://www.bu.edu/histology/m/index.htm

Financial Management for Nonprofit Organizations

We have a new book in the library, Financial Management for Nonprofit Organizations: Policies and Practices by Zietlow, Hankin, and Seidner. Written in the light of increased scrutiny and accountability of nonprofits, this book weaves legal and ethical considerations into a comprehensive treatment of nonprofit strategy and finance, furnishing financial officers with a firm knowledge of ethical business management--indispensable for all types and sizes of organizations.

Is College Worth It? What do you Think?

The cover story for U.S. News and World Report (March 12) is titled "The Measure of Learning." Can we test what colleges teach? Academics are appalled that the government wants to try but the government is going to demand an accounting by assessing college learning with one or a number of standardized tests. "We're the best in the wolrd, give us money and leave us alone, " says Charles Miller, the chairman of the Commission on Higher Education. "The higher-ed community needs to fess up to the public's concerns."

What should a student learn in college? And whatever that is, which colleges teach it most effectively? With the average cost of private college soaring, it's a question being asked more and more. There are currently two major tools used to measure student learning. The Collegiate Learning Assessment measures critical thinking and analytical reasoning. Many school use it, but they keep the results confidential. Hundreds of schools also administer the National Survey of Student Engagement, which tracks how much time students spend on education and other activities.

In a few weeks, colleges will hear how U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings intends to move forward. Colleges, meanwhile, according to this article, "continue to search for that elusive value-added measure that can lead to better teaching."It is important that we read this.
Source: U.S. News and World Report article by Alex Kingsbury (available in the library)

ICONN Statistics

Since its inception, users, including members of the Goodwin Community, have conducted 65 million searchs in ICONN. In FY 206 alone, Connecticut residents and students searched 33.5 million times, 75% increase over the previous year. In addition, reQuest was searched 2.1 million times, a 22 % increase over last year. Over 200 libraries successfully lent more than 91,000 items through reQuest interlibrary loan, a 23% increase over the previous year. Holdings in reQuest increased to 21.2 million items. Three resources were recently added: Academic OneFile, LegalTrac, and WorldCat.org.

Under consideration for the coming fiscal year:
Career & testing resources
Science resources
Historical Hartford Courant
Online Encyclpedias
Literature resources
Current Issues resources
Source: The ICONN Times

Past, Present and Future of Food

Here is a webcast on the past, present, and future of food from the co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey. He then discusses these issues with Michael Pollan, author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma." Whole Foods Market is the largest organic and natural retailer in the world.
View the Webcast (Real Player. The program runs 124 minutes. )
Source: Graduate School of Journalism, UC Berkeley

Health Science: Management of Chronic Disease

“Our study showed that participating in a collaborative improved the processes of care related to prevention and screening and disease monitoring and treatment for diabetes and asthma, but participating in a collaborative did not improve these processes for hypertension. The study did not show improvements in intermediate outcomes of care. Whether these differences in diseases and outcomes are related to the nature of each targeted condition, aspects of the participating organizations, ease of patient adherence, or the specific collaborative under study is not known. Finally, improvements over time were seen in both intervention and control centers for almost every individual measure. Whether this broad improvement reflects general secular trends or the general quality-improvement environment at community health centers is not known.”
Source: New England Journal of Medicine

Early Child Education: Language Skills

Very Early Processing Skills as Predictors of Later Language Disorders

“First concerns that a child is not developing language as expected typically arise when a child is 2-3 years old, and children up to 4 constitute a substantial proportion of first referrals to speech and language therapy services. Long-term outcome for these children is a critical issue for all concerned: are they simply ‘late bloomers’, or will they have persisting problems with language and communication? This project aimed to identify predictors of outcome in 2- to 3-year-olds referred with concerns about language.”
+ Full Report (PDF; 2.1 MB)
Source: Economic & Social Research Council

Search Mash

"This is an unbranded Google site, where Google is trying out a new search engine interface. For starters, it sorts the results by web pages, images, blogs, videos, and Wikipedia entries, all on one screen. The first 20 web pages are displayed in a somewhat abbreviated format, but with a new way to drill down into any of the retrieved web sites. And Google finally has something close to MSN Live's "infinite scroll." When you click SearchMash's link for "More web results", the next 20 results are added at the end of the search results list; you can now scroll through 40 results at a time. Click "More web results" and another 20 are added at the end of the list, and so on." (Mary Ellen Bates)
http://www.searchmash.com

Featured Podcast This Week

Civil Liberties in War Time (MP3)Two of our nation's constitutional law experts, Judge Richard Posner and Professor Geoffrey Stone, debate the tension between civil liberties and national security when America is at war. You can listen to it online or download to an MP3 device.
Source: National Constitution Center

Research & Authority in an Online World

The English Journal article "Research and Authority in an Online World: Who Knows? Who Decides?" (G) is a must-read on the evolving role of Internet-based research (and the research paper) for teachers at all levels. Though the specific activities mentioned take place in a secondary classroom, the general discussion of Wikipedia and online research is significant for any classroom.
Source: English Journal

Critical Literacy: Teacher Learning

As we think about the Nation's Report Card (NAEP Results), we should worry that the scores of many high school students did not demonstrate the high critical literacy skills essential to their future success. What part do teachers play? We know teachers greatly impact student learning, so teachers' own learning is vital as well. The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Principles of Adolescent Literacy Reform and Principles of Professional Development describe how teacher learning can take place in schools to build the capacity to support students' 21st century learning.
Sources: NCTE

Overhaul No Child Left Behind

Critics of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) ask Congress to overhaul it. The Forum for Educational Accountability has called on Congress to scrap the accountability system under the current No Child Left Behind Act in favor of an accountability system that holds schools responsible for teacher training and parental involvement.
Source: Education Week, February 23, 2007

Political Interference in Science

A-Z Guide to Political Interference in Science

The Union of Concerned Scientists produced this guide to the ways in which the work of scientists at federal agencies has been suppressed or distorted for political purposes. Browse alphabetically, by agency, or by topic, or view the timeline. See also Scientists and Engineers for America <http://www.sefora.org/index.php>, an organization devoted to explaining to the public the importance of scientific integrity. It includes a "scientific bill of rights.”
http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/interference/a-to-z-guide-to-political.html.
Source: Marylaine

The Big Read

The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts, designed to restore reading to the center of American culture. The NEA presents The Big Read in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and in cooperation with Arts Midwest.

The Big Read answers a big need. Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, a 2004 report by the National Endowment for the Arts, found that not only is literary reading in America declining rapidly among all groups, but that the rate of decline has accelerated, especially among the young.

The Big Read in the Hartford area is Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, an African American classic. Read it or read it again.

One Word Sets Off Uproar and Talk of Book Banning

You must have heard that The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron is this year's winner of the Newbery Medal.and that one word on the first page of the book is causing some school librarians to say they will pull the book from the shelves. This New York Times article explores the controversy. For advice, rationales and other help with challenges to literary works, films and videos, drama productions, or teaching methods, visit the NCTE Anti-Censorship Center.
The New York Times, February 18, 2007

More Students in Online Classrooms

According to the North American Council for Online Learning, one million students from kindergarten through 12th grade have enrolled in online classes. Nearly half of the states offer online learning for students. However, some educators are urging caution, saying teacher-student interaction in person is crucial in the learning process.
Source: The Boston Globe, February 18, 2007

Faculty Issues and the Law in Higher Education

Thursday, February 15, at 12 noon

Join Chronicle editors every Thursday at noon for the Brown Bag, a new online discussion. Each week you will be joined by an expert from the world of college finance, technology, management, or other fields for a free and freewheeling discussion on higher education's hot topics. Today's discussion is on faculty issues and the law in higher education.

One of the most vexing problems facing college administrators is hiring and managing faculty members and other college personnel. A leading expert on the law and faculty issues, Barbara A. Lee, will talk about negotiating some of the most common problems, such as how colleges can manage successfully through cutbacks and financial strains without disregarding anyone's rights. She will also talk about ever-evolving issues that colleges must watch, such as the increasing use of adjunct professors, threats to tenure, and rising legal risks for colleges prompted by blogging, file sharing, and other new technologies.

Join the discussion
Submit a question

Major Changes in Homeland Security

The Department of Homeland Security will merge three of its existing academic research centers and create four new centers, to study natural disasters, border security, explosives detection, and maritime security, Congressional Quarterly reported last week.
The merger, scheduled for 2010, is part of the department’s effort to eliminate overlap in its Centers of Excellence program, which finances homeland-security research by university consortia. The three centers that will be merged — the Center for Advancing Microbial Risk Assessment, the National Center for Foreign Animal and Zoonotic Disease Defense, and the National Center for Food Protection and Defense — all conduct research on chemical and biological terrorism.
Major Changes Planned for Academic-Research Centers in Homeland Security
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

YouNiversity

Imagine what would happen if academic departments operated more like YouTube or Wikipedia, allowing for the rapid deployment of scattered expertise and the dynamic reconfiguration of fields. MIT instructor Henry Jenkins calls this new form of academic unit a "YouNiversity."

Jenkins ask that we "Consider these developments: At the end of last year, Time named "You" its Person of the Year "for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game." Earlier in the year, Newsweek described such sites as Flickr, MySpace, Craigslist, Digg, and YouTube as "putting the 'We' in the Web." The business "thought leader" Tim O'Reilly has termed these new social-network sites "Web 2.0," suggesting that they represent the next phase in the digital revolution — no longer about the technologies per se but about the communities that have grown up around them. Some are even describing immersive online game worlds such as Second Life as the beginnings of Web 3.0. All of this talk reflects changes that cut across culture and commerce, technology and social organization."

His article about dramatic changes in higher education is in the latest Chronicle of Higher education-very interesting.

Demonstration Today of Xreferplus

The free trial to the Online Reference Library, Xreferplus, is now set-up for Goodwin College. For trial access, go to http://www.xreferplus.com/ . This trial will be available until March 15th, 2007. The reference library will be demonstrated in the conference room at 11:30 today.

The Xreferplus trial guide - an introduction to Xreferplus with links to sample Xreferplus images, dynamic tables, voice pronunciations, our interactive atlas, and concept maps can also be accessed at www.xrefer.com/trialguide

Xreferplus is the world's largest online reference service featuring over 200 full-text reference titles with over 2 million entries from 50 highly-respected publishers integrated in a robust search engine with many unique interactive features.

Xrefer has also recently launched a new Specialist Reference (SR) service with subject-specific expertise and added many new unique interactive features such as dynamic table functionality for world state, and county statistics, an interactive world atlas, and our concept map. Xrefer also features over 66,000 images, over 180,000 audio pronunciations, and a citation formatter in APA, MLA, and Chicago formats.
Source: James Slattery, Account Executive for Xrefer

Journal of Nursing Education

February issue of the Journal of Nursing Education is here with major articles focusing on content and competency for the 21st century:
Curriculum Revisited
Statistics Used in Current Nursing Research
Emancipatory Teaching-Learning Philosophy and Practice Education in Acute Care
Rescuing Nursing Education from Content Saturation: The Case for a concept-Based Curriculum
Cultural Competence Revisited: Nursing Students with Disabiities
Patient Safety: Where is Nursing Education
A Survey of Physical Assessment Techniques: Lessons for Nusing Education

New Directions for Youth Development

The winter issue of New Directions for Youth Development has arrived! The whole issue is devoted to rethinking programs for youth in middle years. The everyday life of a nine to fifteen year old is in the middle. This in-between-ness challenges our ideas about the purpose and design of youth programs and the roles and responsibilities of young people in these activities. This issue explores young people's journey into community during their nonschool hours.

Table of Visualization Methods

Visual-literacy.org is an "online introductory tutorial about how data, abstract thoughts, and concepts can be graphically represented to more easily gain useful insights. One of their knowledge map examples is this excellent Periodic Table of Visualization Methods. Rolling your mouse over each form of visualization brings up an example of the technique. It looks like it would very useful if you think a visualization is in order but you're not sure which specific kind to try." Very cool!
Link to Periodic Table
Link to PDF paper "Towards a Periodic Table of Visualization Methods for Management"
Source: boingboing and Mike Love

Science Times on Tuesdays

This is just a reminder that every Tuesday The New York Times publishes a science section. This week it included articles about the nuisance of orbiting junk, climate change, how we see red, the brain region linked to smoking, the debate on the wolf's comeback, the danger of teenagers with cars, and the ecosystem of the skin, treatment of sleep apnea, --and more. The New York Times is available to you from the library page.

Baghdad Day to Day: Librarian's Journal

When the Saddam regime was toppled in 2003, the Iraq National Library and Archive in Baghdad was set alight and looted. Much damage was done, in particular to the library’s archive collections. For several months, the diary entries ofDr. Saad Eskander, the director of Iraq's National Library and Archives, have apeared on the Web site of the British Library and they detail the daily hurdles of keeping Iraq's central library open, preserving the surviving archives and books and just staying alive. An article about Eskander and the library appears in the Arts section of the New York Times today available on the library page. You can read the diary entries at http://www.bl.uk/iraqdiary.html.

New England Watershed: Best New Publication

Place is an important part of how we construct our identities and now we have a new regional magazine. Utne magazine nominatedd New England Watershed as the best new publication of 2006. You will find the Winter 2006-2007 issue in the library.

According to Utne editors, "New England Watershed casts an exceptionally wide lens on a variety of questions pertaining to regional identity. Each issue of the magazine focuses on one them--food and farming, mental health, interstate 91, and examines it through a variety of cultural and historical perspectives." Don't miss out!

New Book: What's Toxic, What's Not

What's Toxic, What's Not by Gary Ginsberg and Brian Toal (published Dec., 2006)

The authors are toxicologists for the Connecticut Department of Public Health. This is a comprehensible bible of hazardous substances that impact every individual in the United States. While explaining the major toxins of lead, radon, mold, and asbestos, they also delve into pesticides and chemicals in consumer products, food, water, air, and soil. Chapters describe each toxin, address the myths and realities surrounding it, and discuss how people come into contact with the substance and how to avoid it. Charts illustrate the toxicity, exposure, and risk index for each contaminant. Suggestions for testing one’s own environment through local health department, water service, and so forth are concrete and achievable. Important points are boxed for emphasis. Tips are provided for diverse subjects such as how to microwave foods in plastic safely and how to make a homemade “green bubble” bath. This is a fascinating but frightening account that is well worth considering for class bibliographies.
Source: Library Journal December 2006

What They are Reading on College Campuses

• Iraq Study Group Report
• Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
• For One More Day by Mitch Alborn
• America (The Book) by writers of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart
• Next by Michael Crichton
• Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwrds
• The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
• Bad President by Rosen, Friedman, Prichett, and Battles
• Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner
• The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town by JohnGreisham

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

Annual Report on Nation's Health

The American College of Physicians, or ACP, has released its annual overview, which highlights problems in the U.S. health care system and calls for sweeping payment reforms designed to shift the nation’s focus back to patient-centered primary care and prevention. ACP’s report, “State of the Nation’s Health Care” contains a laundry list of red flags, including 47 million Americans without health insurance; astronomical per capita spending for health care; underuse of preventive care; overuse of invasive procedures; and a lack of patient-centered, coordinated care. And the situation is only getting worse, according to the ACP.
Source: American College of Physicians (via American Academy of Family Physicians)
+ Full Report

New Database: Academic OneFile

Academic OneFile is a comprehensive, subscription-based database of more than 8,000 journals covering everything from STM to the humanities. It was created in response to the academic community’s need for a sophisticated, up-to-date, easy-to-use database for serious research. All of the things you’ve come to love about InfoTrac® remain the same. The powerful search engine, Thomson Gale PowerSearch,™ continues to simplify navigation with a “breadcrumb trail” that shows the path a search has taken. An exciting, innovative added value is the inclusion of hundreds of podcasts and transcripts from NPR, CNN, and the CBC, as well as full-text New York Times content to 1995.
Find it at www.iconn.org!

LegalTrac is here

Iconn.org now provides us with the LegalTrac database. Drawing on a wide variety of the most highly regarded legal publications, LegalTrac provides indexing for approximately 1,300 titles: major law reviews, legal newspapers, law specialty publications, bar association journals and international legal journals. Each title included in LegalTrac is selected by a spe­cial advisory committee of the American Association of Law Libraries. LegalTrac also contains law-related articles from more than 1,000 additional business and gen­eral interest titles. It is easily accessible at www.iconn.org.

Spelling's Summit on Higher Education

The “summit” that Education Secretary Margaret Spellings promised (or threatened?) to hold as part of her plan to carry out the recommendations of her Commission on the Future of Higher Education will take place in Washington March 21-22, the Education Department said in invitations sent out just before Christmas. The summit was designed to “focus on galvanizing action and distributing leadership and accountability across all sectors.” Its work will emphasize five key priorities: “aligning K-12 and higher education expectations; increasing need-based aid; using accreditation to support and emphasize student learning outcomes; serving adults and other non-traditional students; expanding affordability through increased transparency of costs.”

The report, "A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U.S. Higher Education", was commissioned by Secretary of Education Margaret Spelling and completed last year. the work of the panel, which engaged in a year of study and debate, challenges college leaders, policy makers and the public to help improve an American higher education system that Spelling describes as slipping.
Source: U.S. Department of Education

Campus Pandemic Flu Planning

All Connecticut colleges and universities are encourage to send a campus team to a one-day conference on planning for pandemic influenza, capitalizing on the approach utilized by Yale University The Conference is at the Michael J. Adanti Student Center, SCSU on February 22 from 8:30 to 2:30.

In late 2005, the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began in earnest to alert the world’s countries to the possibilities of a pandemic flu outbreak on a scale similar to that of the Spanish Flu of 1918. Higher Education will be among the industries most severely impacted. The impact on college or university operations may include unprecedented demands on student health services, the establishment of quarantine sites, debilitating sickness among staff and faculty causing severe reductions in the work force, essential services hampered and perhaps unavailable, and significant loss of tuition revenues from closure of the institution, and non-returning students.Further information on the February conference is available at greimanj@theccic.org

New Book: A Hand To Guide Me

In A Hand to Guide Me, Denzel Washington shares his personal story of the mentors who helped guide his life--more than 70 of America's leading personalities in theater, sports, business, and politics who in turn tell their life-changing stories of mentorship. The library has four copies.

The book "showcases how the kindness of mentors has shaped the lives of people you know and respect. In their own words, legendary personalities tell how people stepped up to guide them. From Hank Aaron and Muhammad Ali to Bob Woodard and James Worth, the voices in this book may be household names now, but they credit their success to the guidance of others long ago." (book jacket)