Harry Potter Review

The seventh and last Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, arrives in bookstores Friday, July 21. If Harry Potter is little more than a name to you, some background is in order so that you won't feel left out as the talk over the next few days swirls around all things Harry. Each day this week I will provide a summary of one of the previous books.

The story's backdrop is that Harry was left an orphan at the tender age of one when his wizard parents were killed by the evil curse of the dark Lord Voldemort. Harry survived the curse -- although it did leave a distinctive scar on his forehead -- and was raised by the singularly ordinary Dursleys, a Muggles (non-magical) family.At 11, Harry is enrolled at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, which is where book 1 really gets rolling.

Book 1. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
On the train to Hogwarts, Harry meets Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, with whom he's to become fast friends, as well as the hateful Draco Malfoy, a subsequent player on the side of evil. At Hogwarts, he encounters the kindly headmaster Albus Dumbledore and other professor-wizards like Minerva McGonagall, Harry's head of house, and the evil-seeming Severus Snape, who are to play roles throughout the series. Harry turns out to be an expert flier, allowing him to play the school sport Quidditch, a kind of soccer on broomsticks, for his house team Gryffindor. He also joins forces with Ron and Hermione to find out what is being hidden in Hogwarts -- and guarded by a three-headed dog. The three discover that it's the Philosopher's Stone, which produces the elixir of life. Voldemort wants the stone and he and Harry battle it out. Harry saves the stone, but Voldemort escapes. Harry returns to the Dursleys for the summer.

Tomorrow: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

America's Wildest Places on DVD

From the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service the library has acquired a three DVD set of America's Wildest Places

Volume 1--A Video Tour of Eight National Wildlife Refuges.This two hour DVD contains a tour of refuges from Alaska to the Caribbean.
Volume 2-National Wildlife Refuge Overview Plus Six Refuge Tours. This DVD takes you to six more of Americans outstanding refuges from Missippi's Noxubee refuge to the majesty of Alaska's Yukon flats and includes a 12 minute overview of the whole system.
Volume 3-Touring America's National Wildlife Refuges.The theme for this volume is water in Parker River National Wildlife Refuge in Massachusetts, Missisquoi National Wildlife Refuge in Vermont and four others.

Summer Science Reading

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver

Although best known as a novelist, Barbara Kingsolver is also a biologist, mom, wife, and former science writer. In this lively and informative book, all those facets of her life shine through. Husband Steve Hopp and daughter Camille also contribute to this family story of " a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew...and how our family was changed." Highly recommended.

Book Reviews from Critical Compendium

ABOUT CRITICAL COMPENDIUM, a daily dose of book reviews from around the world!
What you'll find at this site: Book reviews, and lots of them. Every day they post links and a few lines from or about reviews from newspapers, journals, magazines and web zines. You will also find a sizable list of links to book review sections around the world. For a librarian, this is too good to be true!

The goal of Critical Compendium is to maximize the economy of mouse clicks in getting you to book reviews and book review sites. Some sites - like Mother Jones and The Nation - only list their book reviews on general arts/entertainment pages or home pages and require an extra click or two. Unfortunately, this cannot be avoided.
http://criticalcompendium.com/index.html

Bottled Water Information

Estimated amount of oil, in barrels, used to make the bottled-water containers sold in the U.S. last year: 16,000,ooo

Ratio of the amount of water used to make the containers to the amount of bottled water consumed: 2:1

Average number of liters of bottled water delivered to U.S. troops in Iraq eacxh day: 1,400,000
Source: Harper's Magazine August

Xrefer is now Credo Reference

Xrefer is now Credo Reference! They have changed the name of the company and the online reference service to Credo Reference, a name which is easy to remember and stands for a place where you can find dependable information.

The following updated titles were recently added to the database. Expect more soon!
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia, 2006, Encyclopaedia Britannica (North America only)
Collins Dictionary of Astronomy, 2006
Mosby’s Dictionary of Medicine, Nursing, & Health Professionals, 7th edition, 2006, Elsevier
Saunders Comprehensive Veterinary Dictionary, 3rd edition, 2007, Elsevier

See a complete list of all titles.

One Million Life Sciences Articles Free

PubMed Central (PMC), the National Library of Medicine's free digital archive of full-text journal articles, reached the one million-article mark in June. The millionth article reportedly came from the American Journal of Pathology. Now in its seventh year, PMC is enhanced each week with articles from over 350 important life sciences journals whose publishers have agreed to deposit current issues. All of the content submitted to PMC is converted to a normalized electronic format for long-term storage and display on the web.

Recommended Business Site

Doing Business Guides <http://www.buyusa.gov/home/worldwide_us.html
The US Department of Commerce maintains this fantastic website that will answer just about any question you have on doing business in a given foreign country. It hasn't always been this easy.

Content Management Challenge

Temple University solved the content management challenge. With roughly half a million pages of content on more than 500 well used Web sites, Temple University faced a huge challenge in getting content management under control. Temple has some 34,000 students across 17 campuses around the world. Using a Web publishing product from Adobe called Contribute, thousands of users--literally anyone at the university with the right permissions--now can participate in posting and updating website content themselves. The decentralized system is saving the university significantly by allowing university departments, rather than the IT department, to create, edit, publish, and control their own Web content….
Read Complete Article:
http://www.1105newsletters.com/cghbblu_dzhchgyq.html

Visual Sources and Elementary Education

The Language Arts article "Let's Go to the Movies: Rethinking the Role of Film in the Elementary Classroom" argues that elementary language-arts teachers should expand their definition of "text" to include film, a valuable instructional resource. The article notes that today's elementary students come to class with a great deal of knowledge about films -- prior experiences which teachers can tap into -- and discusses the application to film of reader-response theories.
Source: National Council of Teachers of English Notes

Eye Generation

We should know by now that students do not all learn the same way. The "Eye Generation", for example, prefers not to read all abou it. Students today take in as much as 50 percent of the information they receive through visual images. Teachers are using visual media such as television, movies, video games, photography, and Facebooking both to engage this "eye-curious" culture and to help students think critically about what they see. The National Council of Teachers of English have focused on nonprint texts as part of their focus in English language arts and composition classrooms for decades. Read about it in this week's NCTE Inbox Blog.
Source: Washington Post July 6, 2007

World's New Wonders

Yes, the Great Wall of China was voted one of the new seven wonders of the world. The new seven wonders of the world were finally announced in Lisbon on Saturday. Not everybody was happy with the results. In the end, of course, it was a popularity contest. Not a single site from North America was selected.

By midnight on Friday, the number of people who had cast their ballots had risen to 100 million. The winners are: the Great Wall of China, the ancient city of Petra in Jordan, Brazil's Christ the Redeemer statue, Machu Picchu in Peru, the Mayan city of Chichén Itzá in Mexico, Rome's Colosseum and India's Taj Mahal.

See them all here.

Bachelor degrees for Head Start Teachers

On June 19th, the U.S. Senate approved the Head Start for School Readiness Act (S. 556), which would: 1) terminate the use of the National Reporting System, the controversial test that was required of all four-year-olds enrolled in Head Start; 2) increase the set aside for Early Head Start; 3) create state early learning councils for systems coordination; 4) establish state training offices; and 5) set a goal that by September 2013, 50 percent of all center-based Head Start teachers in each state attain a bachelors degree.

The House version of the Head Start reauthorization bill, H.R. 1429, the Improving Head Start Act of 2007, was passed on May 2nd. The House and Senate versions of the bill now go to conference in order to work out the differences between the two bills and agree on a single version.

Source: NAEYC e-News

Locating Free Full-Text Articles

While PubMed can often point to the location of free full-text articles for allied health and nursing students, it does not link to all potential sources of free full text. Consider using PubMed Gold that saves time and effort by searching PubMed and Google simultaneously. Search results are returned with links to a wider selection of matching full-text articles.
www.neurotransmitter.net/ftsearch.html

Vote for New Wonders of the World

This is the last day to vote! From India’s Taj Mahal to Mexico’s Mayan ruins or New York's Empire State building, suggestions for seven new Wonders of the World have flooded in from more than 60 million people in one of the biggest global polls ever conducted. The leading sites so far included the Taj Mahal, the Coliseum in Rome, the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the mysterious stone statues of Easter Island. The results will be announced in Portugal’s Benfica Stadium of Light tomorrow. Cast your votes here today!
http://www.new7wonders.com/index.php?id=351

The Pyramids of Giza are the only one of Seven Wonders of the ancient world still standing. Quick, what are the other six?

Hartford Circus Fire

Sixty-three years ago today, one of the deadliest fires in the nation's history struck the circus in Hartford. Nearly 9,000 people had crowded into the big top that day. Shortly after the show began, the tent caught fire. It was waterproofed with a mixture of gasoline and wax, causing the tent to be completely consumed in less than 10 minutes. The fire claimed 167 lives — more than one-third of them children.

Maureen Krekian, who was 11 at the time, survived the disaster and recounts the day's harrowing events for National Public Radio's Story Corps. Listen to her telling her daughter's about that day.

New iCONN Databases

iCONN has announced that it will be providing Gale's Biography Resource Center and Biography and Genealogy Master Index beginning August 1, 2007 - for all Public and School ibraries. These resources will replace iCONN's subscription to Wilson's Biography Illustrated Plus.

The iCONN Database Committee evaluated these resources and highly recommended this change. The Gale interface was considered to be superior for its ease of use and the reference content was evaluated as being highly desirable for biographical research needs. For more information about these resources:
Biography Resource Center Click Here
Biography and Genealogy Master Index Click Here

Points of View Reference Center: Global Warming

Global warming is spotlighted this week in the Points of View reference Center. Points of View Reference Center is a full text database designed to provide students and schools with a series of controversial essays that present multiple sides of a current issue. Essays provide questions and materials for further thought and study and are accompanied by thousands of supporting articles from the world’s top political and societal publications. You can reach it from the library home page.

CQ Researcher This Week: Justice Department

The CQ Researcher this week examines the politicalization of the justice department. The Bush administration's firing of nine U.S. attorneys has left Attorney General Alberto Gonzales clinging to his job while accusations of undue partisanship at the Justice Department intensify. Gonzales has admitted misleading Congress in minimizing the White House's involvement in the dismissals — an unprecedented step midway through a president's term. Some of the fired prosecutors say they may have been targeted for their handling of politically charged corruption and vote-fraud cases, but Gonzales and his former top aide deny any political motivations. Another former Gonzales aide, however, has admitted taking political affiliation into account in some Justice Department hiring decisions. Democrats in Congress want top White House aides to testify about the firings. Many Democrats — and a handful of Republicans — have called for Gonzales to resign. But he is vowing to stay, and President Bush says he has confidence in his longtime friend and aide.
Source: CQ Researcher Abstract

New Journal for Health Professionals

The library recently received the inaugural issue of Journal of Best Practices in Health Professions Diversity: Research, Education, and Policy. This new journal is dedicated to the education and professional development of diverse students for careers in health professions. There simply are not enought people of color entering health careers. While they represent over 23 percent of the current population, less than 10 percent are health professionals. This issue has seven articles, including "A splash of color: Increasing diversity among nursing students and faculty" by Dana Carthron. The book, Ethniciy, Race and Health in Multicultural socieites is reviewed and recommended for health professionals engaged in teaching and related work with ethnic populations.

Floating Wind Turbines

While our oceans house not only diverse ecologies and possibly the lost city of Atlantis, they now have something else to brag about: serving as prime real estate for some very renewable energy. Norwegian energy group Norsk Hydro is to place giant floating wind turbines in the North Sea that will provide a reasonable, environmentally-friendly and economically feasible alternative to standard energy generation processes. Will they be in our future, too?

Source: inhabitat.com

Summer Reading List

Do you remember receiving that "summer reading list" on the last day of school before summer vacation? Those long lists of books to read before the next school year began were a burden back then. Most of us don’t feel this way any longer and many look forward to a great “summer read.” National Public Radio (NPR) has put together a collection of summer reading lists and articles, including critics’ lists, the “You Must Read This” series, cookbook suggestions, book excerpts, and interviews with “actors, academics, musicians and many others about what they are reading.” Get your homework from NPR. Then get the books from the Goodwin Library. Don't forget to sign up for our book people wiki to share your reading with all of us.

Don't Show Up for that Job Interview

It’s now possible to meet with recruiters without actually showing up for a job interview. Some employers are experimenting with Second Life, the online virtual community owned by San Francisco-based Linden Lab, to screen prospective hires. That program allows job seekers to create a computer generated image to represent themselves--known as an "avatar"--and communicate with prospective employers as though they were instant messaging. Read the article by Anjali Athavaley, The Wall Street Journal, June 20, 2007, Page D1 (in the library). It is not only different here; it is different out there!

Librarians in the Movies

How does pop culture view librarians? I know most of you have heard of the movies Desk Set, The Music Man, and Party Girl. Here is a movie that is more recent than that-- "The Hollywood Librarian: A Look at Librarians Through Film". Written and directed by Ann Seidl, a librarian from Denver, it shows "the realities of 21st century librarianship, including stereotyping, censorship and intellectual freedom, and the total impact of librarians in our culture and society." The trailer for the film is now available on YouTube, and the premiere of the movie has opened already in some regions of the country. In future blogs, I will mention some other movie images of librarians from a talk at the 2007 American Library Association conference.
Source: "How Does Pop Culture View Librarians" 2007 ALA Conference

Court Decision on School Integration

Despite striking down two voluntary school-integration plans in 5 to 4 ruling on Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court left intact its precedents dealing with affirmative action in higher education. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education article today, the decision is expected to have no impact on higher-education desegregation plans.

The two cases joined in the court's decision were Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education, involving public schools in Louisville, Ky., and its suburbs, and Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1. The cases differed from past disputes over race-based student-assignment policies brought before the Supreme Court in that neither of the two districts named in the complaints was under a court order to desegregate its schools. Because the integration policies were adopted voluntarily, they were subject to a higher level of judicial scrutiny than court-ordered efforts.

Here is the court decision.

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education and Cornell University Law School

This special issue of Health Services Research includes a set of case studies for countries that represent a spectrum of different situations in relation to nursing shortages and migration. Despite severe data deficiencies in most source countries, what emerged from this exercise was a continuum of situations that debunk the simple duality of source and destination countries. There is a spectrum of types of nurse shortages and policy reactions to the phenomenon of nurse shortages and migration. Several key variables define the diversity of situations, including nurse vacancy and unemployment rates, causes of the shortages, the level of education of the nurses who leave the country, nursing education capacity and, of course, the political will to retain and produce more nurses, and the policy reactions to migration itself.
Source Health Services Research

Part-Time Faculty

This study from Cornell University uses a cross-section national sample of four-year colleges and universities in the United States to examine the variation of part-time faculty employment. Results of this study suggest that higher educational institutions actively design and adopt contingent work arrangements to save on labor costs and to manage their resource dependence with constituencies. Furthermore, institutions that have small student enrollment and large proportion of part-time students are found to rely more heavily on part-time faculty employment. Private institutions, on average, have higher levels of part-time faculty than their public counterparts. Finally, institutions that rely more on tuition and fees revenue tend to employ more part-time faculty. Such a relationship is significantly moderated by institutional quality, suggesting that different institutions may adopt different strategies to attract students and secure their tuition revenues.
Source: Cornell Higher Education Resource Center

Join the Goodwin Book People Wiki

Joining the Goodwin Book People Wiki is easy!
Register by email. Send a note to mnowlan@goodwin.edu with Book People in the subject line. Don’t forget to tell us your name and contact information.
You can also join by calling 528.4111 x6782. Or, register in person at the library. Read whatever books you like and whenever you like. Listening to audio books also counts. When we have some registrations, there will be more information about the Goodwin Book People Wiki. Please join!

Digital Directions

Next Scheduled Chat: Thursday, June 28, 2 p.m. to 3 p.m., Eastern Time
Topic: Digital Directions: The Road Ahead in Educational Technology

Please join Education Week for this live chat to talk about the release of Education Week's new report, Digital Directions, and what's ahead in the world of educational technology for the 2007-08 school year and beyond.
Source: EdWeek Online

Web Cams and Online Testing

High school and college instructors have a new tool to help prevent cheating by students taking tests online: a special Web cam that captures a 360-degree image around the student as well as a microphone to detect sound.
Source: Boston Herald, June 19, 2007

Doing the Search Mash

"Recently, Google rolled a new user interface test bed, SearchMash, and it is worth checking out. You won't see the Google brand anywhere on the front page or the search results, but rest assured that, under the hood, the Google engine is purring.
You have almost all the search functionality of the regular Google web search; phrase searching works, as do the usual Boolean operators, and format and field limiters, although there is no advanced search page on SearchMash. And don't look for any sponsored links; there is no advertising on this beta search site. But what sets it apart is the search results page. For starters, SearchMash sorts the results into web pages, images, blogs, videos, and Wikipedia entries, all on one screen."
Source: Bates Information Services www.BatesInfo.com/tip.html.

Climate Science Blog for Environmental Students

For students in environmental science classes, this is a collaborative blog from several climate scientists and geophysicists. Recent posts include the text of the G8 Summit declaration, and recommended one-stop sources. The site is searchable, browsable, and also includes a glossary. An RSS feed and/or e-mail notification is available.
http://realclimate.org/
Source: Mary Laine, Librarian

Assessment of Student Learning

The U.S. Department of Education has announced that it will set aside $2.5-million in the budget for the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, or Fipse, for a focused competition on student-learning assessment.

The money, which will finance at least one grant, will help in developing methods to “measure, assess, and report student achievement and institutional performance at the postsecondary level,” according to a notice that appeared yesterday in the Federal Register.
Source: Federal Register June 20, 2007

Plagiarism: Who is the Victim?

A graduate student at Capella University, an online for-profit institution, says her professor stole her work. The professor says it’s the other way around. The Pioneer Press, a Minnesota newspaper, has a lengthy article about the dispute, which is headed to court. This isn’t the first time that a student has accused a professor of plagiarism, as a special report in The Chronicle of Higher Education described in 2004.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

Dragon Boat Festival Today

Today, June 19, is Dragon Boat Festival day. A few years ago, Goodwin College competed in the dragon boat races in Hartford.

Chu’ü Yüan (343–289 B.C.) was a Chinese poet and statesman of the Ch’u kingdom who drowned himself in the Mi Lo River to protest the political corruption and injustice. The colorful dragon boat races that take place on lakes and rivers throughout China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan on this day are a reenactment of the search for his body, which was never found. Although the shape of the boats has changed over time, most are narrow shells about 30-feet long with a dragon’s head at the prow. This is also a traditional time for performing customs intended to drive away evil spirits and illness.
Source: Xreferplus Database

Xreferplus New Titles

A number of new titles have been added to Xreferplus in the past month, including the American Heritage Medical Dictionary. New treatments, new tests, and new insights into health and disease have resulted in an unprecedented explosion in medical terminology. The American Heritage Medical Dictionary provides students and health care professionals with a comprehensive reference that reflects the most recent developments in medicine and health care delivery. More than 45,000 clear, concise definitions are included, covering diseases and conditions, treatments, and microorganisms. Hundreds of entries for commonly prescribed and over-the-counter medications are also featured. Biographical entries describe the contributions of leading scientists and physicians from ancient times to the present. We will feature a new entry in Xreferplus each day this week. Xreferplus is accessible from the library page.

Free Library Database Trial

Free Goodwin College Library Database Trials
New Trial through August, 2007: A to Z Reader:

This is very cool! Easily locate and link to all the library's e-resources with EBSCO A to Z.
Search for journals by keyword or browse an alphabetical list by title or subject. Go ahead--try it. Some of the psychology classes are required to use the British journal, The Lancet, for research. See if our students have access to that journal.
click here.

New Books in the Library

The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon --At once a gripping whodunit, a love story, an homage to 1940s noir, and an exploration of the mysteries of exile and redemption, this is a novel only Michael Chabon could have written. He won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for fiction with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.

The Ministry of Special Cases by Nathan Englander--This first novel is a timeless story of fathers and sons told with exuberant wit and invention, a cosmic sense of the absurd, and a genius for balancing joyfulness and despair. Through the devastation of a single family, Englander captures the grief of a nation.

Gilgamesh, a new English version by Stephen Mitchell--Gilgamesh is considered one of the masterpieces of world literature. Mitchell's version allows us to enter this ancient masterpiece as if for the first time, to see how startlingly beautiful, intelligent, and alive it still is.

Copyright Law for Librarians and Educators: Creative Strategies and Practical Solutions by Kenneth D. Crews--Copyright in the world of digital information is changing at a fevered pace. It's essential to stay abreast of copyright law and fair use without information overload.

No Child Law Left Behind

Nearly two-thirds of American adults want Congress to re-write or outright abolish the landmark No Child Left Behind Act that mandates nationwide testing of elementary students to determine if public schools are performing adequately.Opposition is especially high among people most familiar with the law, according to a survey of 1,010 adults conducted by Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University.
Read the article here: http://newspolls.org/story.php?story_id=63

Source: Scripps Howard News Service

Teaching English Language Learners

As the numbers of English language learners increase in the nation, the numbers of English language learners increase in our classrooms. The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) recognizes bilingual and bicultural education as basic components of the English language arts field. Teachers of English can become familiar with bilingual education aims and methods and draw upon English as a Second Language literature for help in meeting the needs of those students through the suggestions in the "NCTE Position Paper on Educating English Language Learners."
Source: NCTE

FBI Warns New England Colleges

The FBI is cautioning colleges in New England to look out for potential terrorist or espionage threats, The Boston Globe reported this morning.As part of an outreach effort, federal agents are offering colleges tips on how to be alert to threats to their research — for example, foreign spies who could be posing as international students. The agents have already met with several college administrators in Massachusetts to discuss protecting research, and they plan to travel to other New England colleges in the coming months.

The agents say the visits are not designed to infiltrate academe. “The academic community is designed to be open, and we just have to make the community aware,” Warren T. Bamford, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston office, told the Globe. “There are people who would be willing to establish relationships to take secrets.” —Lyndsey Lewis
Source: Boston Globe

College Presidents Going Green

American leaders of higher education are pledging to forge ahead with concrete steps aimed at making their campuses "climate neutral" as soon as possible. At a ceremony here on Tuesday, 70 college presidents and chancellors signed the Presidents Climate Commitment, which has been joined by a total of 284 presidents to date, representing institutions with a total enrollment of two million students in 45 states. Read the commitment.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

A Losing Battle

An independent review of the Sheff v. O"Neill school desegregation case reports little progress so far, according to Robert Frahm's front page article in the Hartford Courant this morning. The Trinity College report will be issued today.
Read more at http://www.courant.com/trinity-report.

Source: Hartford Courant

New Rules for College Loans

Colleges would be required to give students information to help them shop around among loan providers under proposed changes in student-loan programs announced by the U.S. Department of Education.

The proposed regulations represent the department's most significant response to date to the continuing controversy over conflicts of interest in the student-loan industry. They were issued in a 225-page document posted on the department's Web site on June 1, six weeks after negotiations over the changes ended in an impasse and a month after the attorney general of New York, Andrew M. Cuomo, accused the department of exercising lax oversight of the programs.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

Free Community College: A Plan or A Dream

Gov. Deval L. Patrick of Massachusetts has captured national attention with a plan to make community college free for all of his state's high-school graduates. But experts on higher-education policy and key players in Massachusetts politics say the details of his plan — which have yet to emerge — are what will determine whether his idea is the workable product of a visionary or the never-to-be-realized hope of a dreamer.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

No Edge for Technology

A major federal study of reading and mathematics software has found no difference in academic achievement between students who used the technology in their classrooms and youngsters who used other methods.
Source: Eduweek

Open Source Meeting

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Open Source
New England Library Association
Information Technology Section
Tower Hill Botanic Gardens, Boylston, MA
June 6, 2007

Alicia Cornelio and I attended this meeting specifically to hear about Koha, an open source integrated library sytem we are considering for the Goodwin Library. Joshua Ferraro of LibLime talked about open source integrated library systems, specifically Koha and Evergreen, and about his company, LibLime, which provides support and/or hosting for libraries who choose open source ILSs and can’t or don’t want to rely exclusively on in-house talent. The implementations of Koha that Joshua showed us were simply stunning. (Here’s one; here’s another, and another; and another [!!!]. Go play with them now. I’ll understand if you don’t come back.)

Campus Guide to Copyright compliance

The Copyright Clearance Center designed this guide to help answer questions ranging from basic copyright law to the more complex topics of ILL and e-reserves. Take the quiz to test your understanding of copyright compliance.
http://www.copyright.com/Services/copyrightoncampus/

Source: Copyright Clearance Center Online

Regional Accrediting Agencies

With an invitation from Education Secretary Margaret Spellings to play a bigger role in federal accreditation policy (see "Stacking the Deck"), the Education Department's National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity recommended last week that the department deny recognition to a division of one of the six regional accrediting agencies. The panel rejected a recommendation by the department’s staff to extend (for 18 months and with significant reservations) recognition of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges’s Commission on Technical and Career Institutions. Also see Inside Higher Ed, May 31, 2007

Benefits of College for Everybody

Jay Matthews, Washington Post Reporter wrote recently that "many colleges are worrying, with good reason, about the small portion of low-income students entering their freshman classes. The book "Passing The Torch," by Paul Attewell and David E. Lavin, sociologists at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, explains that the failure to welcome more such students into college not only reduces their chances for greater income and more choices, but ignores a golden opportunity to raise their children to a higher intellectual and social level, and increase the chances that they also will attend college." Read the article here. The book will be in the library soon!
Source: Washington Post Online, May 29, 2007

U.S. Faces Critical Shortage of Nurses

National Public Radio featured a segment on the nursing shortage Sunday, June 3. "The demand for nurses is soaring, but it isn't easy to get into nursing school these days because there aren't enough teachers.," according to the broadcast. Read about it or listen here. National Public Radio podcasts are great and free!
Source: National Public Radio

StemCells and Cloning: Critical Issues

The Scientist, a magazine about life science, pushed ahead recently with innovation that recasts the usual publication process. Taking a page from the likes of Wikipedia, OhMyNews, and even Scientific American, over a period of a month the editors asked readers to post their views on the critical issues surrounding stem cells and cloning, and how they might be solved (see www.the-scientist.com/news/display/53034/). This online forum formed the basis of their featured article here.
Source: The Scientist

Solution to Textbook Market

"College textbooks are expensive because the market for them is broken, and the solutions many colleges and state legislatures are developing are not enough, a federal panel says in a report scheduled for release today.

In the report, the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, an independent panel that advises Congress, discourages the passage of more state and federal laws on the textbook-cost issue. Instead, it proposes the creation of a "national digital marketplace" that would allow instructors to select and students to buy custom-designed texts -- a chapter from one book, a case study from another -- while protecting fair-use allowances and publishers' copyrights." This is quoted from an article by Sara Lipka in today's report in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Do you have any comments on the cost of textbooks or possible solutions to the broken market? What do you think about a digital marketplace? Click on [Comments] below and let us know what you think.

Health Science Students: PubMed Search Tip

I have been asked recently how to search for specific age groups in PubMed. I use the limits feature-- and sometimes the mesh heading for that group i.e. child, child preschool, infant, infant newborn, aged, middle aged, adult, adolescents etc.

When doing searching for age groups, do not use pediatrics, geriatrics, obstetrics etc. These are medical disciplines that deal with specific age groups but the medical subheadings refer to the medical discipline not the age range. Instruction on using PubMed and other databases is available free of charge at the library.

Economic Survey U.S. 2007

The Economic Survey of the United States 2007 was just released by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). An economic survey is published every 11/2-2 years for each OECD country. The Executive Summary is free; full document is available for purchase.

Source: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

Condition of Education 2007

"The Condition of Education 2007 summarizes important developments and trends in education using the latest available data and by presenting 48 indicators on the status and condition of education and a special analysis on high school coursetaking. The indicators represent a consensus of professional judgment on the most significant national measures of the condition and progress of education for which accurate data are available. The 2007 print edition includes 48 indicators in five main areas: (1) participation in education; (2) learner outcomes; (3) student effort and educational progress; (4) the contexts of elementary and secondary education; and (5) the contexts of postsecondary education. "
Source: National Center for Education Statistics

Take a Hike

This Saturday is Connecticut Trails Day with over 100 events around the state (even some on Sunday) sponsored by Connecticut Forest & Park Association. An 18 page brochure of all events is available online at www.ctwoodlands.org. It's free and it's healthy--enjoy!

Librarian is a Top Career

U.S. News &World Report listed "librarian" as one of the best careers of 2007. Even Parade Magazine called " librarian" one of the hottest jobs for those with a degree. The personal financial advisor, Kiplinger.com, listed "librarian" as one of its seven great careers of 2007. That report wrote this about librarians: "Forget about the image of librarian as mousy bookworms. Today's librarian is a high-tech informtion sleuth...a master of mining cool databases well beyond Google to unearth the desired nuggets." You all knew that, didn't you?

Congratulations Graduates

CONGRATULATIONS

TO ALL GOODWIN GRADUATES

FROM THE LIBRARY STAFF.

KEEP USING LIBRARIES!

Wiki Enters Oxford English Dictionary

Wiki is included in the latest update to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) joining 287 other new words in the online dictionary. OED defines wiki as "a type of Web page designed so that its content can be edited b yanyone who accesses it, using a simplified mark-up language."

Other new words making it into OED include bimbette, blokey, blondie, irritainment, ta-da, tighty-whities, and virtualize. A full list of entries and their definitions can be found at www.oed.com. Remember we will be starting a book club wiki next week. We also will have a 30 day free trial of OED next week.

Why Libraries & Librarians are Extremely Important

Every Thursday for a few weeks I will remind you of why libraries and librarians are extremely important. Here is reason number one.

Not everything is available on the Internet. The amazing amount of useful information on the Internet has some people thinking that everything can be found online for free. Not so! Despite Google's digitizing efforts, contemporary authors and publishers will not allow their work to be freely accessible over the Internet. Copyright law already prohibits making copyrighted books fully accessible through Google, only small selections. It will be a long time before the New York Times bestsellers will be free online. Current copyright protects works for 70 years beyond the death of the author. Even some works in the public domain are off limits. If an out of copyright includes prefaces, introductions, or appendices that are still in copyright, the whole work falls under copyrighted status. And it took a librarian to tell you this.
Source: The idea and some information comes fromWill Sherman in Information Outlook v11 n06

No Bottled Water at This Restaurant

You won't find San Pellegrino or any other fancy imported water at Incanto, an Italian restaurant in San Francisco. In fact, you won't find any bottled water at all. Despite significant profit loss, owner Mark Pastore refuses to pollute the oceans and air by shipping heavy glass water bottles across the ocean. Water bottled in plastic, produced domestically, is also out of the question because of the plastic building up in landfills and the large amount of petroleum needed to make it. But he provides clean, bubbly water with filtering equipment. Other restaurants have also stopped selling bottled water.

Good for them. Bottled water undermines cour confidence in local water systems, allowing those with the resources the illusion of buying themselves out of "dirty" water. Illusion? Despite what water marketers say, bottled water faces less stringent regulation than tap water because it’s regulated as a food product, falling under the jurisdiction of FDA rather than the EPA.
Source: Enviornmental Working Group

CQ Researcher This Week

Are stronger measures needed to protect society?

The shooting rampage at Virginia Tech on April 16 has raised new questions about safety on college campuses and renewed the nation's perennial debate on gun control. Virginia Tech officials face questions about whether the 32 deaths could have been prevented or limited by more effective police action at the time or by more proactive steps earlier to deal with shooter Sueng-Hui Cho's history of mental disturbance. Nationally, the incident has focused attention on how to reduce gun violence, which annually claims around 30,000 lives — 82 each day, far more than twice the Virginia Tech toll. A bill to strengthen the federal background-check system for gun purchasers is gaining support on Capitol Hill, even from the powerful National Rifle Association. But some gun advocates want states to ease weapons laws. They argue that allowing more people to carry weapons will deter gun crimes and enable potential victims to protect themselves.
Source: CQ Researcher May 25, 2007 (Full report available online--password protected)

Global Terrorism Database

The world’s largest unclassified database of terrorism attacks is now available online for general use by researchers, policy-makers, media and the general public — an important tool that the researchers say may aid in the development of more effective responses to terrorism.…The database, five years in the making, includes 80,000 terror incidents from 1970 through 2004. START plans to update the database through 2007 within the next 12 months. The Internet site is designed to be as user friendly as possible. Each attack is coded on more than 100 variables to aid in the identification and explanation of trends in domestic and international terrorism. The
Global Terrorism Database is a resource for homeland security students.
Source: National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism

Quantitative Molecular Microscopy

Quantitative Molecular Microscopy
Article By Jeffrey Perkel

"Technique overcomes difficulties with traditional histopathology
Traditional histopathology analysis has several basic problems. Yale University pathologists Bob Camp and David Rimm developed a series of algorithms called AQUA (Automated Quantitative Analysis) to overcome these shortcomings, providing compartment-specific staining-intensity data over the range of 0 to 255, which has been shown to be directly proportional to absolute protein concentrations. "
Full Text

Source: The Scientist

High Court Backs Parents

"The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that parents have their own broad, enforceable rights under federal special education law, and thus they may represent themselves in federal court without the assistance of a lawyer.

The decision in Winkelman v. Parma City School District (Case No. 05-983) was unanimous on the idea that parents have some rights to represent themselves without a lawyer under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. But it split 7-2 on the idea that parents have substantive and procedural rights that encompass their child’s right to a free, appropriate public education under the law."
Source: Education Week online May 21, 2007

Keep up with Nursing Journal Articles

Nursing students can benefit from the experiences of other nurses -- it's how we all learn. Don't miss "Field Expediency: an ability to improvise is a valuable nursing skill, on and off the battlefield" in the May issues of AJN (American Journal of Nursing) in the library now.

The report on developing cultural competence to eliminate health disparities in ethnic minorities and other vulnerable populations is in the library now in the Journal of Transcultural Nursing. The report is the result of work by the Expert Panel on Cultural Competence of the American Academy of Nursing.


Read in-depth collections of articles on line focusing on key clinical topics.
Chronic Kidney Disease An American Journal of Nursing (AJN) article series
Essentials of a Magnetic Work Environment Nursing2004's four-part series
Nursing Care of Older Adults: A New Look at the OldAmerican Journal of Nursing series
Palliative Nursing SeriesThe American Journal of Nursing's (AJN's) award-winning 16-part series
Women's Health OnlineProduced with support from Ethicon Women's Health & Urology, a division of Ethicon, Inc.

World Health Statistics

Tje World Health Organization (WHO) recently released key world health statistics from its 193 Member States. This edition also highlights trends in 10 of the most closely watched global health statistics. It is the authoritative annual reference for a set of 50 health indicators in countries around the world.
Download Report or Highlights
Source: WHO




















preview stats
FeedButton
Pages
About
Background
Editorial Team
Gary and Shirl
Sponsors
Guidelines
Getting value
Users suggest ...
RSS
Deep archive
Newsletter
Subscribe
Sample
Contact

Categories
Uncategorized
Web 2.0
Webcasts
Real-Time Information
Webcam Collection
Multimedia Search
Wireless Web and Search
Source File
Resources
Lists and Rankings
Year End Wrap-Ups
Statistics
Bibliographies, Webliographies
Online Exhibits
Databases, Directories, and Guides
Resource of the Week
Reviews
Archives and Special Collections
Geographic
Fast Facts
Best of DocuTicker
Software and Web-Based Applications
Glossaries
E-books
Chronologies and Timelines
Calendars and Special Events
New Websites and Resources
Arts and Humanities
Genealogy
History
Search Tools
News Search
Government Documents
Conference Presentations
RSS
Science
Business and Economics
Education
Online Education
Resources for Educators
Search News
Scholarly Publishing
Citation Reports
News
Web Search
Libraries and Librarianship
Information Industry
Technology and Internet
Intellectual Property
Access to Information
Information Science
Info Management and Retrieval
Digitization Projects
Digital Repositories
Preservation/Conservation
Digital Preservation
Cataloging and Metadata
Information Seeking
Information Literacy
Meta
Login
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
WordPress

LexisNexis Academic Database Update

LexisNexis Academic is releasing a new interface in mid-2007. Among its many improvements, it will feature Easy Search, General Search, and Power search and will make use of results clustering by subject category, publication name, industry, company, geography, and language. Tutorials and training in the new interface via the web are available.

LexisNexis Academic database delivers fast access to thousands of credible sources from more than 5,800 publications spanning news, legal, financial, medical, and general reference information. Students and faculty monitor current events, work with primary or secondary legal sources, locate detailed financial information, and read about medical advances reported in medical journals. This database is available to the Goodwin community on and off campus.

UCONN Dairy Plant Making Cheese

The UCONN Dairy Plant added cheese to its repertoire in December 2006. Because there are small dairy farmers in New England that are interested in making cheese, it seemed natural for the agriculture department to provide training. Cheddar, colby, and juustoleipa, a specialty Finnish cheese, are available so far.

The dairy plant began operation in 1953. Until about 1990, it supplied all the campus dining halls with milk, ice cream, yogurt, cottage cheese, and sour cream. Since then, the plant has been making only ice cream and selling it at the Dairy Bar next to the George White Building. In the dog days of summer, when you go to the dairy bar for that yummy ice cream, now you can pick up some cheese as well.
Source: Journal of College of Agriculture and Natural Resources Spring 2007

Great American History Fact-Finder

Our new reference database, XReferPlus, includes the full text of the Great American History Fact-Finder. From the Mayflower to the space shuttle, from the Boston Massacre to the Los Angeles riots, The Great American History Fact-Finder brings the kaleidoscope of U.S. history into focus. More than two thousand brief, fact-laden entries on people, places, issues and events - arranged in a convenient A-to-Z sequence - cover the spectrum of American society, culture and history. Topics include politics, the military, business, entertainment, the arts, sports and the media. Look for it on the library page and find the answers to:
• Who ran on the campaign slogan "Don't swap horses in midstream?"
• What were the key issues and consequences of the Dred Scott decision?
• Where were the "lost" states of Franklin and Deseret?

Summer Reading Wiki

Summer is the perfect time to catch up on your reading. So sign up for the Goodwin Book Lovers Summer Reading Wiki.

Sign up now or at the enrollment party in early June. A free suggested reading list will help you plan your summer reading. The date of the enrollment party will be announced next week.

On-campus/Online Parity

"How can a college assure parity between a distance program and its face-to-face counterpart? Is it possible to guarantee identical outcomes with two such different means of delivery? In some programs, educators may settle for a rough equivalence. But what about when parity of outcome is absolutely essential, as in health science programs, where the presence or absence of certain competencies can be life and death matters?"

The current Distance Education Report, quoted above, outlines Creighton University's nine steps toward providing parity for its online pharmacy degree. The Report, available in the library, also includes articles on retention and multimedia assessment for millennials.
Source: Distance Education Report May 1, 2007

MedlinePlus Adds Features

A number of new features have been introduced on the Health Topics pages of MedlinePlus. Highlights include a photograph or illustration on each page; a brief, easy to read summary of each disease or condition, composed by experienced medical writers and reviewed by the National Libray of Medicine staff; a list of synonyms right under the health topic name; a new category, Start Here, links users to overviews and important information; and a centrally located table of contents divides the MedlinePlus categories into six boxes to show users everything on a page at a glance.
http://medlineplus.gov
Source: Medical Library Association News May 2007

CQ Researcher:Fair Trade Labeling

Is it helping small farmers in developing countries?

Today's CQ Researcher addresses fair trade labeling. The number of products sold with fair trade labels is growing rapidly in Europe and the United States. Big chains like Wal-Mart, Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks and McDonald's have begun offering coffee and other items. Fair trade brands hope to raise their profile by targeting consumers who care about the environment, health and fair-labor standards. Fair trade supporters say small farmers in the developing world benefit by receiving a guaranteed fair price, while the environment gets a break from intensive industrial farming. But critics say consumers pay too much and that fair trade's guarantee of a good return — no matter what the market price — sends the wrong economic signal to farmers. When the price of a global commodity like coffee tumbles in response to oversupply, overcompensated fair trade farmers will remain in an uneconomic sector long after they should have switched to some other crop or livelihood, free-market economists argue. The complete report is available online from the Goodwin library page.

Source: CQ Researcher May 18, 2007

New Resource: Academic worklife

Today, college and university faculty members face many challenges, including an increasingly diverse workforce and new models for career flexibility. The National Clearinghouse on Academic Worklife (NCAW) provides resources to help faculty and administrators understand more about all aspects of modern academic work and related career issues, including benefits, climate and satisfaction, work/life balance, and policy development.
Get information here: National Clearinghouse for Academic Worklife,
Source: University of Michigan Center for the Education of Women

Healthy Vision Month

May is Healthy Vision Month (HVM), a national eye health observance devoted to promoting the vision objectives in Healthy People 2010. HVM 2007 focuses on Healthy People 2010 Vision Objective 28-6: Reduce visual impairment due to glaucoma. Keep Vision in Your Future is the theme for HVM 2007.

The focus this year is to educate people at higher risk for glaucoma. An estimated 2.2 million Americans have been diagnosed with primary open-angle glaucoma, the most common form of the disease. An additional 2 million Americans have glaucoma and don’t even know it.
People at higher risk for glaucoma include the following:
African Americans over the age of 40
Everyone over the age of 60, especially Mexican Americans
People with a family history of glaucoma.

Glaucoma has no warning signs and, if left untreated, can result in permanent vision loss. NEI recommends that people at higher risk for glaucoma have a comprehensive dilated eye examination every one to two years. For more information, please visit the Glaucoma Education Webpage at www.nei.nih.gov/glaucoma.
Source: MedlinePlus

New Audio-Visual Material

DVDs (all in color) just arrived!
Gang terror (45 minutes)
Domino: interracial people and the search for identity (45 minutes)
Understanding prejudice (47 minutes)
Heart of the nation-competing in the new global economy (58 minutes)
Speaking to power with Bill Moyers (60 minutes)
Wefare reform: social responsibility (29 minutes)
Sexual exploitation of children: taking a stand (51 minutes)
These DVDs are all on reserve. Ask for them at the circulation desk.

High School Students not Prepared

Only one-quarter of high school students who take a full set of college-preparatory courses — four years of English and three each of mathematics, science and social studies — are well prepared for college, according to a new study of last year’s high school graduates released today by ACT, the Iowa testing organization. The study concluded that only 26 percent were ready for college-level work in all four core areas, while 19 percent were not adequately prepared in any of them.
Source: New York Times May 15, 2007

Homeland Security Database

The International Security and Counter Terrorism Reference Center database (ISCTRC) offers information on virtually every dimension of security & counter-terrorism and is designed to inform the analysis process, as well as enhance the general understanding of security and terrorism-related issues. ISCTRC provides a comprehensive Open Source Intelligence Resource for analysts, risk management professionals, and students. Content includes hundreds of full text journals and periodicals, hundreds of thousands of selected articles, news feeds, reports, summaries, books, blogs, FAQs, and proprietary Background Information Summaries that pertain to terrorism and security. ISCTRC also combines deep background from scholarly writings with expert commentary from a variety of organizations, agencies and publisher and timely reviews of recent developments across the international political, military, economic, social and technical spectrum. The Goodwin Library has a free trial of this EBSCO database accessible from the library page.
Source: The database information is provided by EBSCO.

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


-->

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