Crowded Course at Harvard

The final numbers came in this week: Positive Psychology, a class whose content resembles that of many a self-help book but is grounded in serious psychological research, has enrolled 855 students, beating out even Introductory Economics.

Every Tuesday and Thursday at 11:30 a.m., students crowd into Sanders Theatre to learn about creating, as the course description puts it, ''a fulfilling and flourishing life," courtesy of the booming new area of psychology that focuses on what makes people feel good rather than the pathologies that can make them feel miserable.

In the last several years, positive psychology classes have cropped up on more than 100 campuses around the country. But with such an enormous course enrollment, Tal D. Ben-Shahar, the lecturer who teaches Harvard's course, ''is the leader of the pack right now." Ben-Shahar has written book that covers some of the material in the class; it is called "Happier."
Source: Boston.com Local News

Evaluating Teaching under NCLB

Evaluating Teacher Quality Under No Child Left Behind
This research brief summarizes the progress that states, districts, and schools have made in implementing the teacher qualification provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

Source: RAND Corportion
Available in HTML or PDF (117 KB

Educator's Reference Complete

This collection of more than 1,100 periodicals and 200 reports is a great resource for any educator -- from the school teacher and administrator to those studying in the field at the collegiate and graduate level. Educator's Reference Complete is the perfect complement for any library that utilizes the ERIC database, because it provides full-text results for nearly half of the journal titles found in ERIC. This database covers multiple levels of education from preschool to college, and every educational specialty -- such as technology, bilingual education, health education, and testing. Educator's Reference Complete also focuses on issues in administration, funding and policy. Find it under "Electronic Resources A-Z" on the Goodwin library page.

Where is IT in Higher Education?

Where Is IT in Higher Education Headed?
Join The Chronicle of Higher Education editors Thursday at noon for the Brown Bag, an online discussion on technology in higher education.

Technology changes at a rapid pace, yet higher education traditionally moves slowly to adopt new ways. How will the growth of technology change the college campus, from the classroom to the backroom? Gartner Inc., a technology-research and information company, publishes an annual report, the "Hype Cycle for Higher Education," that looks ahead to the predicted effects of technology on colleges and universities. The latest report highlights claims that technologies integral to the transformation of higher education in the next 10 years will be global library-digitization projects, personal devices with campus-network access, Internet2, e-learning repositories, quantum computing, and virtual worlds.

Join the discussion
Submit a question

Don't Forget the Internet Public Library

Drexel University took the reins of the Internet Public Library at the beginning of this year, and the institution is now starting to put its stamp on the project. Drexel announced this week that it intends to turn the online library — which was created by researchers at the University of Michigan — into “a virtual teaching and learning laboratory for digital reference."Now would be a good time to visit this great resource.

SOSIG: Social Science Information Gateway

SOSIG (pronounced, yes, "sausage") is now known as Intute: social science. No matter what it is called, this is a great place to start if you are looking for resources in the areas of social science, government, politics, or business.
Source: Web Search Pacific

Newly Licensed RNs: Job Retention Study

The September issue of AJN features an article, "Newly Licensed RNs' Characteristics, Work Attitudes, and Intentions to Work" The objective of the study was to understand turnover rates in hospitals. The authors surveyed new RNs in 35 states and DC. More than 41% reported that if they were free to go into any job, they would want another job. Those whosse first professional degree was an associate's degree were more intent on leaving than those whose first professional degree was a bachelor's degree. This is recommended reading for nursing faculty and students.
Source: AJN September 2007, 58-69

Future Students: Make it in Scrubs

http://www.makeitinscrubs.com/

Youth and young adults interested in working in health care can go here to explore job options, research financial aid possibilities and take a quiz that matches their personalities with careers in the field. They can find details on duties, salaries and educational requirements for more than 100 jobs, and advice about what high school and college courses to take.

Don't Miss Sicko!

Now playing at Cinestudio in Hartford today and tomorrow! For times and directions, go to http://www.cinestudio.org/.

"Sicko may not tilt next year’s elections one way or the other, but Michael Moore’s devastating and hilarious documentary will make it harder to ignore the disasters of our health care system. Returning to the gentler populist humor of Roger & Me, Moore interviews patients and doctors in France and Canada (happy), doctors in the U.S. (less happy) and American patients (very much less happy). But before you think Moore has lost his confrontational edge, he’s hauling a boatload of 9/11 rescue workers off to Cuba, to take advantage of what the administration boasted were the excellent medical facilities for enemy combatants held at Guantánamo Bay. '...generates a feeling of outrage that seems to be reverberating in every theater.'" Andrew Sarris, New York Observer. " (quoted from Cinestudio online calendar)

National Preparedness Month: Homeland Security

Throughout September there will be activities across the country to promote emergency preparedness. Over 1,300 organizations – national, regional, and local public and private organizations – are supporting emergency preparedness efforts and encouraging all Americans to take action.
You can join the effort by following 3 steps:
• Get a kit.
• Make a plan.
• Be informed.

September 2007 marks the fourth annual National Preparedness Month, sponsored by the US Department of Homeland Security. One goal of Homeland Security is to educate the public about how to prepare for emergencies, including natural disasters, mass casualties, biological and chemical threats, radiation emergencies, and terrorist attacks. As part of National Preparedness Month, CDC has launched a new Web site, Emergency Preparedness and You. CDC has teamed up with the American Red Cross to identify and answer common questions about preparing for unexpected events.
Source: Center for Disease Control and Prevention

What is ChemSpider?

ChemSpider is a chemistry search engine. It has been built with the intention of aggregating and indexing chemical structures and their associated information into a single searchable repository and making it available to everybody, at no charge. I am told that ChemSpider offers the fastest chemical structure searches available online and delivers them with the flexibility and usability necessary to encourage repeat usage. Try it.
Source: http://www.chemspider.com/

Early Childhood Education: Reading Event

Jumpstart and Association of Library Service to Children (ALSC) invites you to share The Story of Ferdinand with children in your community on Thursday, September 20, 2007.

By taking part in Jumpstart's Read for the Record (http://www.readfortherecord.org/) you will be a part of this nationwide movement connecting children and adults and reinforcing the importance of providing all children with the learning experiences they need in order to be successful.

Source: Children's Literature Comprehensive Database

Challenges of 21st Century Classrooms

Some students are "speaking" the new language of IM while other students are struggling to learn academic English. These earmarks of today's classrooms can give a teacher pause. But two NCTE policies provide insight on how to work with our students in this challenging 21st century environment: the CCCC Position Statement on Teaching, Learning, and Assessing Writing in Digital Environments and NCTE Position Paper on the Role of English Teachers in Educating English Language Learners (ELLs).
Source: National Council of Teachers of English

Reading Connects Faculty, Students

College campuses are discovering the possibilities that open up when students, faculty and staff make a point to read the same book. In the process, such "common readings" serve a range of purposes, especially for incoming students who are navigating a big transition.

"When students have more active involvement in school, when they have closer relationships with faculty, they're more likely to persist and more likely to graduate," says Carol Geary Schneider, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities. "The common readings are a signal to students that this is going to be a very intentional, very engaging first year of college."

In recent years, hundreds of colleges and universities have come to assign common readings for new students to complete over the summer. The readings seldom include classics but instead feature today's hot-selling books on timely topics. Among this year's themes: justice for developing nations, global warming and individuals making a difference in society. Here are a few examples:

College of Holy Cross: The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
LaGuardia Community College: An Inconvenient Truth
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology: Life of Pi
University of Vermont: Long Way Gone and a screening of "Blood Diamonds."
Meredith College: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
Texas State University: The Water Planet: A River Runs Through It
Goucher College: The Death of Vishnu
Source: National Council of Teachers of English from USA Today story

Homeland Security: Reference Guide

The Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has released a new reference guide that outlines existing legal requirements and standards relating to access for people with disabilities. A Reference Guide for Accommodating Individuals with Disabilities in the Provision of Disaster Mass Care, Housing and Human Services is the first of a series of disability-related guidelines to be produced by FEMA for disaster preparedness and response planners and service providers at all levels.

“Federal law is very clear about accommodating people with disabilities in emergencies and disasters. Everyone involved in emergency management needs to understand and know what their responsibilities are in preparedness, response and recovery operations,” FEMA Administrator R. David Paulison said. “This Reference Guide is an important tool for emergency planners, responders and government agencies as they work toward meeting the needs of people affected by emergencies and disasters. FEMA is committed to ensuring that its programs and emergency operations meet the needs of people with disabilities.”

The Reference Guide summarizes equal access requirements for people with disabilities within Disaster Mass Care, Housing, and Human Services functions. The Guide explains how applicable Federal laws relate to government entities and non-government, private sector and religious organizations.
Accommodating People With Disabilities In Disasters: A Reference Guide To Federal Law
Source: Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)

Beloit College Mindset List

Beloit College has released its annual Mindset List -- 70 items that offer a glimpse of the "cultural touchstones" of this year's college freshmen, most of whom were born in 1989, the graduating class of 2011. For them, Nelson Mandela has always been free. They have never rolled down a car window. The expression "off the hook" does not bring images of a telephone. But think of the things they do and use that did not exist in 1989. The Mindset List is not a chronological listing of things that happened in the year that the entering first-year students were born. The effort is to identify a worldview of 18 year-olds in the fall of 2007.
Here is the list for the Class of 2011.

Lens That Distorts

No child Left Behind (NCLB) put schools under the microscope by requiring that they report, annually, the test-score performance of students in grades 3 through 8, and, again, for grade 10. As President Bush said shortly before he signed the bill into law, “We need to know whether a curriculum is working. We need to know whether the teachers, the methodology that teachers use is working. We need to know whether or not people are learning. And if they are, there will be hallelujahs all over the place. But if not, we intend to do something about it.”

Five years later, it has become clear that the microscope NCLB uses to get the information the president said he wanted contains a lens that distorts. Many good schools—both charter schools and inner-city public schools serving the disadvantaged—are not recognized as such, while many poorly performing schools are given a pass. If NCLB is to fulfill its mission, Congress needs to make some major repairs or risk seeing those opposed to all forms of school accountability assume control of the political battleground.
Source: Will NCLB Hit the Wall? (Forum)

Princteon Review Rates Colleges

It is rankings season once again, and on Monday the Princeton Review added its annual "best" and "worst" lists to the fray. Gone this year is its "best overall academics" category, leaving room for a new one: "best career/job-placement services."

The University of Texas at Austin offers its students the best career counseling, according to the test-preparation company's rankings. But it is no longer home to the best parties, having dropped from last year's No. 1 spot on that notorious list to third place, behind West Virginia University and the University of Mississippi.

Princeton Review does not decide who ranks where on its lists; students do. This year 120,000 of them from 366 colleges responded to the company's survey. "It is the opinion of current college students informing college-bound students," said Mr. Franek. "We're simply the messengers." All 62 "best" and "worst" lists are available on the Princeton Review's Web site.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education August 21 2007

Art for College Teaching

Art Images for College Teaching (AICT) is a personal, non-profit project of its author, art historian and visual resources curator Allan T. Kohl . AICT is intended primarily to disseminate images of art and architectural works in the public domain on a free-access, free-use basis to all levels of the educational community, as well as to the public at large. The images displayed on this site have been photographed on location by the author, who consents to their use in any application that is both educational and non-commercial in nature. Pictured here is Guanyin (Bodhisattva of Compassion) in posture of "Royal Ease," 12th century from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Source: http://www.arthist.umn.edu/aict/html/

Problems with High School Math and Science

Results from the ACT test's science section show that a meager 20 percent of those who took general science, biology, and chemistry -- the minimum core courses in science -- were ready for college biology, while 40 percent of those who took physics instead of general science met or surpassed the benchmark.

"These data make it clear that students are not, by and large, learning all the essential skills they need to succeed in college simply by taking the minimum core curriculum in high school," Richard L. Ferguson, chief executive of ACT Inc. and chairman of its board, said during a telephone news conference. "It suggests also that these courses, in most cases, lack the proper level of rigor. Taking the minimum courses should enable most students to be ready for their first year of college, and, unfortunately, that doesn't appear to be the case, particularly in math and science."
Source: Today's News in the Chronicle of Higher Education August 15

Take a closer look at students

"Put this story down for a moment and take a look at the undergraduates around your desk, outside your office, or out on the quad. Do you know what makes them tick? Where and how they study, the ways they spend each hour of the day, the steps they go through when writing their papers? Or are they enigmas?

Perhaps, to get some clues, you've read books about the so-called Net Generation, which brand them all as technophiles, gamers, and multitaskers. Or you might see them as younger versions of yourself during your college years — more plugged in, of course, but essentially the same. You're probably wrong." Read the rest of this article by Scott Carlson in the August 17th Chronicle of Higher Education--available in the library and online (password protected)
Source: " An Anthropologist in the Library" by Scott Carlson

Another Reference: Africana

Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African & African American Experience, 2nd edition
Kwame A. Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., editors

Appiah and Gates, both eminent African American scholars at Harvard, have edited a massive encyclopedia covering virtually every facet of Africa and the African Diaspora, although the focus is on political, social, and cultural history. With more than 400 contributors and 3000 articles, the work includes 12 Featured Essays by internationally known scholars like Cornell West ("W.E.B. DuBois") and David L. Lewis ("Harlem Renaissance"). These well-developed analyses are ten to 15 pages in length. Shorter entries, usually from half a column to five pages in length, run the gamut of topics from Nelson Mandela to Tupac Shakur. The contributors include major figures like Gates as well as junior scholars from a number of countries. While obviously focusing on Africana, the compilation avoids extreme ideological stands. The entry on "Afrocentrism," for example, is a model of balance and clarity. The editors have admirably fulfilled the dream of African American scholar and leader W.E.B. DuBois, who worked for much of his life to create such a monument. Africana is a very useful tool for Goodwin students.
Available in the Goodwin Library

Reference: Countries and Their Cultures

The four-volume Countries and Their Cultures is based on the collection of ethnographic information known as the Human Relations Area Files based at Yale University. This work's strength is that readers who know very little about a country can quickly obtain a good orientation to the major issues, history, and social structure of a nation. The 225 entries are between ten and 20 pages long and read like a cross between a well-written encyclopedia article, a travel guide, and a social science essay. They provide a good general overview of a country without greatly oversimplifying or distorting. All entries have the same structure, with sections on geography, history, demography, languages, food, economy, etiquette, politics, family, religion, and arts and humanities. A country's degree of cultural unity as well as its cultural variations are described in the sections on national identity, ethnic relations, and social stratification. Each entry has a map with a regional insert, black-and-white photographs, and a bibliography of recent scholarly books. This series is highly recommended for college students taking courses in history, literature, art history, women's studies, family studies, education, political science, religion and economics.
Source: Library Journal Review
Available in the Goodwin Library

GeoBee Challenge

"If you need a short break in your day, or are preparing for your Jeopardy debut, take the National Geographic GeoBee challenge, which pulls questions from the National Geographic Bee. There are ten new questions each day that test your knowledge of geography, climate, and history. If you miss a day, you can access the quizzes from the previous two days." (Carolyn Sosnowski, SLA information specialist)
Source: www.nationalgeographic.com/geobee/index.html

Zamzar File Conversion

Azmzar may sound like a magic potion from Harry Potter, but it is free online file conversion. File conversion used to be difficult; now with Amzar there aren't any software requirements. Just upload the file (from your local directory or a Web page, choose the format, and receive the converted file via e-mail. File types are split into four categories--documents, images, audio, and video-so your everday needs will be covered.
www.zamzar.com
Source: Carolyn Sosnowski, SLA information specialist

Yale Pulls out of BioMed Central

Citing rapidly rising costs, the science and medical libraries of Yale University are stopping paying for faculty members’ articles to be published by BioMed Central, one of the two largest open-access publishers. (The university is keeping its membership in the Public Library of Science, the other well-known open-access publisher.)

The libraries paid BioMed Central less than $4,700 in 2005, but in 2006 had to pay $31,625, to publish articles in the journals, which are all freely available online. “This experiment in open-access publishing has proved unsustainable,” wrote Ann Okerson, R. Kenny Marone, and David Stern, of the Yale libraries.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education August 13, 2007

National Trends : U.S. Environment

The draft 2007 Report on the Environment (ROE): Highlights of National Trends (2007 ROE HD) was released today for public comment and independent review. First issued in 2003, the ROE is a plain, easy-to-understand guide that provides the average citizen a resource to follow national trends in the condition of the air, water, and land in the United States.
Read the draft and submit comments.

Homeland Security Report

1) The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has released the latest version of doctrine for Homeland Defense as performed by the Armed Forces of the United States. From the doctrine: ” This publication provides doctrine for the defense of the US homeland across the range of military operations. It provides information on command and control, interagency and multinational coordination, and operations required to defeat external threats to, and aggression against, the homeland. ” Specifically, this includes command relationships and interagency responsibilities and considerations, air, land, maritime and space operations, and other operations key to homeland security and defense.
Source: DOD Joint Doctrine for Homeland Defense Released181 pages; PDF.

Early Childhood: Who's Ready for School?

Most parents and teachers are concerned about the school readiness of America’s youngest children, says a new study by The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc.. But for those parents who may worry that their children don’t know the alphabet, numbers or colors before kindergarten, the findings may come as a surprise. In fact, teachers say they value social skills - such as following rules and directions, and being able to play and share well with others — over academic skills as a better predictor of children’s success in school.

Few parents (25 percent) and teachers (7 percent) describe U.S. children as being extremely or very prepared to learn upon entering kindergarten, PNC found, meaning that they know the basics like counting, spelling their names and that they are prepared to listen in class. Nearly three of five parents (57 percent) and two-thirds of teachers (66 percent) say that U.S. children are only somewhat prepared.
Source: Survey Highlights: Home and Classroom-Views of Parents and Teachers

CQ Researcher: Corporate Social Responsibility

Is good citizenship good for the bottom line?
Corporations across the country are embracing efforts to improve society. Unlike traditional efforts by businesses to appear socially responsible, the current movement emphasizes profit and long-term company success along with good works. Firms such as Whole Foods and Nike strive to make good citizenship a recognized part of their brand. General Electric, Coca-Cola and other more traditional corporations also support corporate social responsibility (CSR), motivated by advocacy group pressures, threatened government regulations and demands from employees, customers and investors. Some conservatives oppose CSR activities, arguing a company's only legitimate purpose is to enhance shareholder value. Some critics from the left label CSR a public relations ploy and say the government should expand corporations' legal responsibility to employees, the public and the environment.
Source: CQ Researcher August 3 available online (Goodwin subscription password protected)

Did You Know?

Today, August 10th is:Gutzon Borglum Day On this day in 1927, sculptor John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum began carving the faces of four American presidents out of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota. He chose this site because of its smooth-grained granite and the way it dominated the surrounding terrain. It took 14 years to bring the mountain sculpture to its present appearance, but because of delays caused by lack of funds and bad weather, only six and a half years were actually spent in carving. Gutzon Borglum died before the national memorial could be completed, but his son, Lincoln, continued to work on the project until funds ran out in 1941. Since that time no additional carving has been done, nor is any further work planned other than maintenance of the memorial.

Apollo Missions Online

For nearly 40 years, the photographic film from the Apollo moon missions has remained literally frozen in time, sitting in a freezer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, untouched by anyone but a handful of researchers. Now a team from Arizona State University, led by a geological sciences professor, Mark S. Robinson, from the university’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, has collaborated with NASA to create a public digital archive of each frame of the film -- more than 36,000 shots in all. The resulting archive will be made available to the general public via a Web site run by Arizona State students. It’s the first time the body of film from the nine manned moon missions has been digitized in its entirety, and t he first time that most people, even most lunar scientists, will get to see the images at such a high level of detail.

New Poet Laureate

Charles Simic was named the new U.S. poet laureate by the Library of Congress last week. Simic is the author of more than 20 books of poetry, including The World Doesn't End, a collection of prose poems for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1990.

Born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, Simic emigrated with his family to the United States after World War II. As a teenager, he learned English and began writing poetry. He is now a professor emeritus at the University of New Hampshire.

Every Child is Average

The current No Child Left Behind legislation is based on the idea that every student is capable of being proficient, with performance that falls “in the middle,” between basic and advanced achievement. The problem is that striving for an average level of proficiency actually dilutes student achievement. As the Education Week article “NCLB Seen as Curbing Low, High Achievers’ Gains” reports, the focus on teaching to the average level of student proficiency leaves students who achieve at higher and lower levels behind. Teachers work to to ensure students reach the mandated adequate yearly progress scores, but in the end, students who are above or below average lose. High achievers aren’t challenged to move beyond average performance, and struggling students are not given the support they need to reach proficiency.
Source: National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Inbox

Case for Intelligent Consumption

Part of the mission of this college is to build “a foundation for students to become responsible citizens and enhance their quality of life.” I thought of that when I read what other colleges are doing to promote intelligent consumption. Recently educators at Oregon State University developed an intelligent consumption program called “Sustainable Living Project.” “Creating a sustainable Community” is under development at the University of Connecticut now. “Educators with backgrounds in environmental sciences, psychology, economies, group facilitation, social sciences, youth development, communication and outreach”, according to the author Tom Worthleyof UCONN, “can be part of the educational effort to create and encourage communities of people committed to living in a more sustainable way.” Incorporating concepts of sustainable living across programmatic lines and into existing and new outreach programs—how cool would that be for Goodwin College?
Source: “The Case for Intelligent Consumption” by Tom Worthley in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources Journal September 2007
Suggested Sites: Environmental News Network and OSU Sustainable Living Project

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

It's here! The library has several copies of the final installment in the epic tale of Harry Potter. An astonishing 11,000,000 copies were sold in the first 24 hours! Don't miss the seventh and final book in J.K. Rowling's bestselling series.

Higher Education Act in Senate

The Senate continues debate on the Higher Education Act today, with final passage of the sweeping bill expected in the late morning or early afternoon. They voted on Monday to reject an amendment that would have created a federal loan program that would compete with private loans. Before adjourning yesterday, the Senate also passed a handful of amendments including: a federal clearinghouse that would allow students to shop around for the best loan terms, study the feasibility of collecting information on the employment of college graduates , federal funds for 80 Upward Bound programs that lost their grants this year, including 21 programs at historically black colleges and universities. The Upward Bound Program provides grants to colleges and organizations to prepare low-income high-school students for college, and program of technology grants for minority-serving institutions.

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

Classic Short Stories for English Classes

This Web site is dedicated to the short story and to those interested in reading light prose.Fewer and fewer people these days read short stories. This is unfortunate--so few will ever experience the joy that reading such fine work can give. The goal of this site is to give a nice cross section of short stories in the hope that these short stories will excite these people into rediscovering this excellent source of entertainment. This collection of classics includes Poe, Twain, Melville, James, and more. Enjoy!
Source: Classic Short Stories http://www.classicshorts.com/

Last Harry Potter Update

Book 6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Voldemort and his Death Eaters are wreaking havoc across Britain as Harry, now 16, enters his sixth year at Hogwarts. Harry learns that Voldemort has split his soul into seven objects known as Horcruxes which will give him immortality. Two Horcruxes have already been destroyed, and Harry and Dumbledore set out to retrieve another. Finding one in a locket, they return to Hogwarts. There they are ambushed by Death Eaters and Dumbledore is killed by Snape. Harry pursues Snape, who reveals he is the Half-Blood Prince before escaping. Harry discovers the Horcrux he has is a fake -- the real one was already destroyed by someone named "R.A.B." who has left a note in the locket. Harry decides not to return to Hogwarts the next year so that he can destroy the remaining Horcruxes, thereby killing Voldemort. Ron and Hermione vow to join him.

Book 7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
This is the last book in the series and is out this weekend. Reserve a copy in the library now!

Generation Hex

They grew up together, if in two different worlds, the boy wizard and a generation of college students. The darkest of Dark Arts, they say, couldn't keep them from diving into Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final book in the series, on July 21. Lucky for them, they won't need a "time-turner" to hold on to the magic.

Universities and colleges across the country are adding Harry Potter to the curriculum in a variety of disciplines — English, philosophy, Latin, history, and science — and professors say courses fill up as quickly as Honeydukes on a Hogsmeade weekend.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education July 18, 2007

Colldge Accreditation System Fails

The federal government's system for accrediting colleges is a misguided failure that should be largely replaced with a simpler method that relies on key institutional data about cost and quality, a trustees group is arguing.

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a conservative-leaning lobbying association led by Anne D. Neal, proposed in a report released on Tuesday that a process of "expedited accreditation" might begin to repair a system that the council regards as detracting from academic quality rather than improving it.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education July 18, 2007

Histology Laboratory

The July issue of Lab Medicine features an article on the automation of the histology laboratory. The field of histopathology has been enriched with new discoveries and technological advances during the last decades. This article presents a review of the specimen flow through the various stages of tissue handling from surgery to molecular assays, the steps facilitated by automation, and improved instrumentation. This issue is available in the library now.
Source: "Automation of Histology Laboratory" Lab Medicine July 2007

Harry Potter Update Continued

Book 4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Harry, now in his fourth year at Hogwarts, is selected to compete in the ancient and dangerous inter-school Triwizard Tournament, even though he is too young. Harry completes two tasks in the tournament alone, and the third -- a trip through a maze -- simultaneously with fellow Hogwartian, Cedric Diggory. The two winners touch the trophy together and are transported to a graveyard, where Peter Pettigrew kills Diggory on the spot and ties up Harry. Pettigrew then enacts a ritual that transfers some of Harry's blood to Voldemort, making him immune to the magic that protects Harry, as well as giving the Dark Lord a body. Voldemort and Harry enter a duel, but because their wands are "brothers," they connect (the Priori Incantatem effect if you really want to impress), causing spirit echoes of Voldemort's victims, including Harry's parents, to spill out from his wand. These odd ghost-like beings help Harry escape back to Hogwarts. Barely an hour later, Harry's life is again threatened, this time by a Death Eater masquerading as a teacher, but he is saved by Dumbledore, Snape and McGonagall.

Book 5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
After Dementors attack Harry and his bullying cousin Dudley during the summer, our hero is escorted to the secret headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix, a secret group of wizards fighting the Dark Lord who is rallying his forces and trying to retrieve a secret weapon: a prophecy hidden in a glass sphere. Harry has a vision that Sirius Black is being held captive by Voldemort at the Department of Mysteries. Determined to retrieve Black, Harry, Ron and others are lured into a trap, but are saved from Death Eaters when Order members arrive. A battle ensues, the glass sphere is broken and the prophecy is lost. Black is killed by a Death Eater. Voldemort appears, fights Dumbledore, and then escapes. Dumbledore later reveals the prophecy: in effect, Harry must either destroy Voldemort or be killed by him. The movie version of this book is out now and getting good reviews. Tomorrow the Potter update will finish with Book 6, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

New Books

Assessing Academic Achievement by David E. Tanner
The Reagan Diaries by Ronald Reagan (edited by Douglas Brinkley)
Oracle Bones: A Journey Through Time in China by Peter Hessler (National Book Finalist)
The Doctor's Wife by Elizabeth Brundage
Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny by Suze Orman
Triple Crown: Three Complete Novels by Dick Francis
Learning to Breathe by Karen White
Love Walked In by Marisa De Los Santos
The Weather Makers: How Man is Changing the Climate by Tim Flannery
Famous by Kathleen Flenniken (Poems)
Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Harry Potter Review Continued

Book 2. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Despite dire warnings about returning to Hogwarts, Harry does so, only to learn that a monster has escaped from Hogwarts' chamber of secrets. It attacks several students -- including Hermione -- leaving them paralyzed. Because he is able to speak to snakes, Harry is suspected of being the Heir of Slytherin, the villain who has unlocked the chamber of secrets and is controlling the monster. Ron's sister Ginny is kidnapped and hauled off to the chamber, forcing Harry and Ron to take action. In the chamber, Harry encounters and kills Tom Riddle who -- it gets a bit confusing here -- is a sort of ghost-memory version of the teenage Voldemort, the real heir of Slytherin. (Bonus point: "Tom Marvolo Riddle" is an anagram of "Lord Voldemort.") That closes the chamber and Harry leaves Hogwarts for summer break.

Book 3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Harry is back at Hogwarts for a third year, eager to play Quidditch. Instead, Harry finds himself in apparent danger from the convicted murderer Sirius Black, who has escaped from Azkaban prison. Soul-sucking Dementors, who guard the prison, have been sent to Hogwarts, supposedly to protect Harry from the escapee, but who more than once attack our hero. Eventually, Harry learns that Black was once his parent's best friend and accused of having betrayed their whereabouts to Voldemort. Worse, Black, it turns out, is Harry's godfather. But when Harry finally confronts Black, he discovers that Black was framed for giving up Harry's parents and that he escaped Azkaban to kill the actual murderer, Peter Pettigrew (a.k.a. Wormtail), Voldemort's servant. Black is captured by the Dementors but, thanks to Hermione's time-travelling device, she and Harry return to the recent past to help Black escape.

Tomorrow--Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Global Researcher: Energy Nationalism

A world thirsting for imported oil and gas is seeking new supplies in Central Asia and Africa, where many nations have nationalized their energy resources. In a dramatic reversal from 30 years ago, government-owned or controlled petroleum companies today control 77 percent of the world's 1.1 trillion barrels of oil reserves. While the emergence of these rising petrostates has helped diversify the world's energy sources, many are considered oil “hot spots” — vulnerable to disruption from international terrorists or domestic dissidents. In addition, many of the petrostates are blending politics and energy into a new energy nationalism, rewriting the rules of the world's energy markets and restricting international oil corporations' operations. Russia's confrontational energy policies alarm its neighbors, and critics say a booming China is combing the world for access to oil and gas resources without concern for suppliers' corruption or human rights violations. Many also worry that growing competition for dwindling oil supplies will lead to greater risks of international conflict.

Source: summary from the report Global Researcher July 20, 2007. Read the report by going to CQ Researcher.

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.