U.S. Health Benefits Continue to Rise

Total U.S. health benefit cost rose by 6.1 percent in 2007, the same pace as last year, to an average of US$7,983 per employee, according to the National Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Plans, conducted annually by Mercer and released today.

The good news is that cost increases have held steady for three years (after spiking to nearly 15 percent in 2002) and are likely to slow a bit further in 2008. The bad news is that’s still more than twice the rate of inflation. Health cost growth is outpacing wages and material costs and eroding business profitability.
Source: Mercer Consulting

Big Bucks, Red Tape for Colleges

The U.S. House of Representatives education committee unanimously approved sweeping legislation last week that would create a plethora of new grant programs for colleges and students while holding institutions accountable for skyrocketing tuition.

The 747-page bill to reauthorize, or renew, the Higher Education Act would impose dozens of new reporting requirements on colleges, requiring institutions to disclose everything from their transfer-of-credit policies to the details of their arrangements with lenders.It would also require colleges to crack down on illegal downloading and soften some of the restrictions on the receipt of federal aid by for-profit institutions.
Source Chronicle of Higher Education November 20 2007

Americans Closing the Book on Reading

Americans aren't just reading fewer books, but are reading less and less of everything, in any medium. That's the doleful conclusion of "To Read or Not to Read," a report scheduled for release today by the National Endowment for the Arts. Subtitled "A Question of National Consequence," the report piles on the bad news delivered by "Reading at Risk," the NEA's 2004 warning about the nation's rapidly declining literacy. This is not true of the Goodwin community; our library statistics show a continued increase in circulation.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Educaton Novemberr 19

Learning Languages in U.S.

Interest in language study at American colleges and universities has increased significantly since 2002, according to a comprehensive new survey released today by the Modern Language Association of America (MLA). Interest in language study has been increasing steadily since 1998. While the study of the most popular languages, Spanish, French, and German, continues to grow and together represents more than 70% of language enrollments, their dominance is slowly decreasing in the face of growing interest in languages such as Arabic (up 127%), Chinese (up 51%), and Korean (up 37%). Enrollments in American Sign Language increased nearly 30% from 2002, making it the fourth most studied language on college campuses, slightly ahead of Italian.
Enrollments in Languages Other Than English in United States Institutions of Higher Education, Fall 2006
Source: Modern Language Association

Critical Release in Homeland Security

Every two weeks, the Homeland Security Digital Library identifies "Critical Releases in Homeland Security," a targeted collection of recently-released documents that are expected to influence homeland security policy & strategy development.
Terrorism Risk Modeling for Intelligence Analysis and Infrastructure ProtectionRAND Corporation
Terrorism 2002-2005United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation
National Strategy for Information Sharing: Successes and Challenges in Improving Terrorism-Related Information SharingUnited States. White House Office
National Strategy for Combating Terrorism: Background and Issues for Congress [November 1, 2007]Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service
Critical Infrastructure Protection: Sector-Specific Plans' Coverage of Key Cyber Security Elements VariesUnited States. Government Accountability Office
Source: Homeland Security Digital Library

U.S. Loses in Math and Science

Students in the highest-performing U.S. states rank well below their peers in the world’s top-achieving countries in mathematics and science skill, according to a new study that judges American youths on an international scale.
Source: Education Week Online November 13 2007

History of the "Topping Off" Ceremony

The last steel beam of the new building at Goodwin College's river campus goes up today. The topping off ceremony includes the placing a tree on the top of the building. The beam and the tree represent one of the construction industry’s oldest customs – the "topping out" or "topping off" of a completed project.

This ancient European tradition lives on among American steelworkers. No-one really seems to know exactly how it started, but the tradition of topping out has become a cherished custom whenever the skeleton of a bridge or building is completed, a signal that the uppermost steel member is going into place. As that final beam is hoisted, an evergreen tree or a flag or both are attached to it as it ascends.

How did this custome start? Here is one version. Scandinavian mythology suggests that humans originated from trees and our souls returned to the trees after death, giving each tree a spirit of its own. Before cutting a tree, they would formally address the forest, reminding it of the consideration they had always shown toward the trees and asking the forest to grant use of a tree for construction of their home. When the house was complete, the topmost leafy branch of the tree used would be set atop the roof so that the tree spirit would not be rendered homeless. The gesture was supposed to convince the tree spirit of the sincere appreciation of those building the home. As time passed, the early conception of tree worship gradually changed, but the custom is continued across the world.

Source: Modern Steel Construction December 2000

National Book Awards

Tree of Smoke, a sweeping novel by Denis Johnson about the Vietnam War that features intersecting stories of an array of American and Vietnamese soldiers and intelligence officers, won the National Book Award for fiction last night in Manhattan.

In the nonfiction category, Tim Weiner, a reporter at The New York Times, took the prize for Legacy of Ashes: The History of the C.I.A. Weiner, who won a Pultizer Prize for his reporting on national security programs, examined more than 50,000 documents and interviewed hundreds of C.I.A. veterans for his book, a critical history of C.I.A. failures.

The prize for young people’s literature was awarded to Sherman Alexie for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, an autobiographical story of a 14-year-old Spokane Indian who leaves his poverty-stricken reservation school and moves to a wealthy, all-white school. Robert Hass, a former poet laureate, won the award for poetry for Time and Materials. Each of this year’s winners received a bronze statue and $10,000.
Source: New York Times

Rummaging in the Government Attic

This is a quick intro to GovernmentAttic.org, a new site digitizing materials accessed using the Freedom of Information Act. If they gain access to similar to the work being done by National Security Archive and Cryptome, they will digitize and make that available also. The aim of this web site is to make available materials unavailable elsewhere.
Source: Information Archives and Special Collections

On-Line Guide for Members of Congress

GPO Creates Its First Ever On-Line Guide To Members Of Congress
The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) creates a one stop website with easy searchable information on all Members of Congress. A simple click will bring the user to a picture and biography of any current member of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. This information previously was available in separate databases, but now can be accessed from one central point.
Source: GPO

Fishy Farms: Environmental Issues

“Offshore aquaculture is not ready for primetime,” said Wenonah Hauter, Food & Water Watch Executive Director. “So far the industry has failed to demonstrate that the practice is environmentally sustainable, financially viable, or technically possible on a commercial scale.”

Commercial-scale open ocean aquaculture will neither ease pressure on collapsing wild marine fish populations, nor eliminate our seafood trade deficit, according to a new report by Food & Water Watch. The U.S. government has been pushing to open public waters to offshore aquaculture – growing fish in nets or cages between three and 200 miles from shore.
Source: Full Report

Brush up Your Shakespeare, Start Doing it Now

Shakespeare has been a staple of management training for a long time. But only in the last few years have programs used Shakespeare’s works to teach chief executives the vulnerabilities to which the powerful are susceptible.

“C.E.O.’s are the modern kings and queens of the global world,” says Kevin Coleman, a Shakespearean actor who dramatizes for chief executives how a mistake made in the global economy might have vast and unintended consequences.

James Dimon rediscovered Shakespeare shortly after he was fired from his job as president of Citigroup (by a man who was like a father to him). Then he was invited to talk at Columbia Business School to students who had been studying power and succession using "King Lear." That day Dimon learned that Shakespeare had written a case study predicting his dismissal from Citigroup.
Source: New York Times November 10, 2007

What I've Been Reading

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

At a café table in Lahore, a bearded Pakistani man converses with an uneasy American stranger. As dusk deepens to night, he begins the tale that has brought them to this fateful meeting...

The novel is relatively short (184 pages) and since it is written as one extended conversation, it is next to impossible not to read the entire book at one sitting: leaving the story even for a moment would be like leaving a personal encounter - rude. The story is superb, written with elegance, and contains views from outside our American perspective that refreshingly inform us to re-examine our point of view. For those who want a different voice, a different view of the aftermath of 9/11, The Reluctant Fundamentalist is well worth reading. Highly Recommended.

What are you reading?? Click on Comments below and let us know--even just the title will do. You will have to register briefly just once and then you can comment like crazy every day.

Live Chat: Battling Staph Infections

Live Chat
Battling Staph Infections in Schools
When: Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2 p.m. to 3 p.m., Eastern standard time
Submit questions here in advance.

Please join in for a live chat about measures that school leaders can take to prevent an outbreak of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, infections in their schools, and soothe students' and parents' anxieties about the illness. The key, school leaders say, is releasing accurate information to parents and students quickly, while collaborating closely with school-based and local health officials.
Source: Education Week

Norman Mailer

A major voice in American literature, Norman Mailer died Saturday at Mount Sinai Hospital. From his classic debut novel "The Naked and The Dead" to such masterworks of literary journalism as "The Armies of the Night," the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner always got credit for insight, passion and originality. His 1968 account of the peace march on the Pentagon, "The Armies of the Night," won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. "The Executioner's Song" (1979), an epic account of the life and death of petty criminal Gary Gilmore, whom Mailer never met, won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. He wrote much more, not all of it as well received.

In 2005, Mailer received a gold medal for lifetime achievement at the National Book Awards, where he deplored what he called the "withering" of general interest in the "serious novel."Authors like himself, he said more than once, had become anachronisms as people focused on television and young writers aspired to screenwriting or journalism.When he was young, Mailer said, "fiction was everything. The novel, the big novel, the driving force. We all wanted to be Hemingway ... I don't think the same thing can be said anymore. I don't think my work has inspired any writer, not the way Hemingway inspired me." I have read that he had a great distrust for technology and wrote in long hand--usually about 1500 words a day.

Quotes from Normal Mailer:
"I don't think life is absurd. I think we are all here for a huge purpose. I think we shrink from the immensity of the purpose we are here for.

If a person is not talented enough to be a novelist, not smart enough to be a lawyer, and his hands are too shaky to perform operations, he becomes a journalist.

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing."
Source: Obituaries in national newspapers

History Yesterday

1918 - The armistice was signed between the Allies and Germany in Compiègne, France, effectively ending World War I.

"When the days of rejoicing are over,
When the flags are stowed safely away,
They will dream of another wild 'War to End Wars'
And another wild Armistice Day."
[Robert Graves: poem, 'Armistice Day' - 11 Nov 1918]

TurnOff the Cellphones

Like many of his colleagues, Ali Nazemi tells his students that they'd better turn their cellphones off before they come to class. But Mr. Nazemi, a professor of business administration and economics at Roanoke College, has gone to unusual lengths to drive home that message. When a student's phone rang during a recent lecture, the professor confiscated it and proceeded to demolish with a hammer. The incident was staged--Mr. Nazemi had arranged it with the student before class--but it had plenty of shock value. And that was precisely the point: As Samuel G. Freedman notes in The New York Times, plenty of professors are considering drastic measures to keep students from spending lecture-hall time fiddling with cellphones, iPods, and laptops. One such tactic seems particularly interesting. A Canadian company called Smart Technologies has developed a program, called SynchronEyes, which lets professors monitor their students' computers and freeze any machines that are not being used for note-taking.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

Human Service Worker Shortage

Students in Human Services, there are jobs out there! Youth servicing agencies are having difficulty filling empty job slots. In North Carolina, for example, UNC Chapel Hill’s recruitment and retention project recently focused on action steps that frontline staff, supervisors, administrators and agency directors can take to address workforce issues. The January 2007 issue of Children’s Service Practice Notes, issued by the North Carolina Division of Social Services and the Family and Children’s Resource Program focused on issues being faced by the child welfare workforce and strategies that can be used to address these issues.

In Massachusetts, the state’s Council of Human Service Providers commissioned two reports that focus on examining the state’s workforce challenges. Help Wanted: The Future of the Human Services Workforce in Massachusetts was released in April 2006, and Help Wanted 2: Recruiting and Retaining the Next Generation of Human Services Workers in Massachusetts was issued a year later, in April 2007. In the state, there are more than 100,000 workers in the human services workforce, and these employees serve more than one in ten of the state’s residents

Help Desk Hours

With more and more students — especially those taking online courses — demanding access to technology help at all hours of the day and night, colleges are responding by extending help-desk hours. More than half are open late into the evening, according to a recent survey by Educause, the educational technology consortium, and a few are available 24/7. But colleges are not set up for the extra hours. Their staffs are too small, and their budgets too tight. So many institutions are outsourcing the service to Presidium and similar companies. Presidium Learning, Inc., is a company in a rural Kentucky town that handles technology help desks for about 450 institutions.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

Librarians and Surveillance Bills

Librarians Say Surveillance Bills Lack Adequate OversightA little-remarked feature of pending legislation on domestic surveillance has provoked alarm among university and public librarians who say it could allow federal intelligence-gathering on library patrons without sufficient court oversight. Read the full article in The Washington Post.

Recommended site: Maps of the World

I love maps and I love Maps of the World. This site is a fantastic repository of Physical Maps, Political Maps, Outline Maps, and Location Maps of all countries. One can also find Printable World Map, Blank World Map, Continent Map, World Time Zone Map, World Geography Map, World Economy Map, World Travel Map, and many more maps in the site.This is so good I think I will put it on the library page.

Five Assessment Myths

"America has spent 60 years building layer upon layer of district, state, national, and international assessments at immense cost—and with little evidence that our assessment practices have improved learning. True, testing data have revealed achievement problems. But revealing problems and helping fix them are two entirely different things. As a member of the measurement community, I find this legacy very discouraging. It causes me to reflect deeply on my role and function. Are we helping students and teachers with our assessment practices, or contributing to their problems?" This commentary by Rick Stiggins in Education Week considers five problematic myths about assessment:
Myth 1: The path to school improvement is paved with standardized tests.
Myth 2: School and community leaders know how to use assessment to improve schools.
Myth 3: Teachers are trained to assess productively.
Myth 4: Adult decisions drive school effectiveness.
Myth 5: Grades and test scores maximize student motivation and learning.
Stiggins is the founder of the Educational Testing Service's Assessment Training Institute in Portland, Ore.
Source: "Five Assessment Myths and Their Consequences" Education Week October 16, 2007

Early Childhood Education: Reading

Much attention has been devoted to parent-child interactions that involve the reading of printed materials; such interactions have been labeled joint book reading (JBR). JBR has been identified as the most imprtant activity in which parents can engage their children that will influence later academic success. However, there is still some debate about the impact of JBR on child development. The article, "Joint Book Reading in the Second Year and Vocabulary Outcomes", in the Journal of Research in Childhood Education provides evidence supporting the positive impact of JBR. Call off the debate; now we know.
Source: Journal of Research in Childhood Education Spring 2007 (available in the library)

Teacher Professionnal Development Sourcebook

The publisher of Education Week has launched a new biannual resource guide on teacher professional development, available online for free. The first issue of the Teacher Professional Development Sourcebook focuses on the role of teacher collaborative work in improving instruction, and includes research overviews, data on current practices and requirements, a professional development calendar, and an exclusive directory.
Source: Education Week Update

Did You Know?

Did you know that the Credo Reference database accessible from the library home page has 273 full-text reference books online for you? Today we will look at just one--The Ultimate Business Library--one of at least twenty in the field of business.

Hundreds of new business and management books have been and continue to be published every year. With time as your most valuable asset how can you ensure that you absorb only the best and most influential thinking from this seemingly inexhaustible supply?
This new edition of worldwide bestseller The Ultimate Business Library is a one-stop guide to the world's leading business thinkers. It is a unique summary of those books which have had the most significant impact on management thinking, drawing out the lessons any business can learn. Navigating the cross-currents of management thinking from Tom Peters to Peter Drucker, Rosabeth Moss Kanter to Charles Handy, The Ultimate Business Library will ensure you are rapidly up to speed with the ideas shaping modern business.

Source: http://www.goodwincollege.org/library/index.htm

Future Reading: Digitization and Its Discontent

Here is an excerpt from an interesting New Yorker article by Anthony Grafton on the future of reading. Reading seems to be a theme of this week's blog.

"Sit in your local coffee shop, and your laptop can tell you a lot. If you want deeper, more local knowledge, you will have to take the narrower path that leads between the lions and up the stairs. There—as in great libraries around the world—you’ll use all the new sources, the library’s and those it buys from others, all the time. You’ll check musicians’ names and dates at Grove Music Online, read Marlowe’s “Doctor Faustus” on Early English Books Online, or decipher Civil War documents on Valley of the Shadow. But these streams of data, rich as they are, will illuminate, rather than eliminate, books and prints and manuscripts that only the library can put in front of you. The narrow path still leads, as it must, to crowded public rooms where the sunlight gleams on varnished tables, and knowledge is embodied in millions of dusty, crumbling, smelly, irreplaceable documents and books." Soon the sunlight will gleam on the varnished tables in the new Goodwin Library. Read the article here or in the library.
Source: The New Yorker Nov. 6, 2007 beginning on page 50--Anthony Grafton teaches European history at Princeton.

Time's Invention of the Year

Stop. I mean, don't stop reading this, but stop thinking what you're about to think. Or, O.K., I'll think it for you:
The thing is hard to type on. It's too slow. It's too big. It doesn't have instant messaging. It's too expensive. (Or, no, wait, it's too cheap!) It doesn't support my work e-mail. It's locked to AT&T. And—all together now—we're sick of hearing about it! Yes, there's been a lot of hype written about the iPhone, and a lot of guff too. But when that day is over, Apple's iPhone is still the best thing invented this year. Why? Five reasons:

1. It's pretty.

2. It's touchy-feely.

3. It will make other phones better.

4. It's not a phone. It's a platform.

5. It is but the ghost of iPhones to come.

Source: Time Magazine

Book Recommendation

FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION--AND EVERYONE ELSE
Proust and the Squid: The Story of and Science of the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolf

In her first book aimed at a general readership, Wolf (director, Ctr. for Reading and Language Research, Tufts Univ.) examines reading's extraordinary evolution. Beginning with an exploration of how the human brain evolved and adapted itself to become able to read, she then offers a history of linguistic development that concludes with the progress of alphabet-based languages. Wolf's detailed description of how children learn to read examines this process from combined social, psychological, and neurological perspectives. She illustrates how specific books and activities provide fundamental catalysts for developing cognitive paths. Wolf then examines dyslexia, providing a short historical foundation and analyzing current research. Particularly interested in how to teach those with reading difficulties, she writes from a researcher's perspective and a parent's (her son is dyslexic). Throughout, Wolf's intriguing combination of linguistic history, sociology, psychology, and neuroscience is engaging and clear. The figures and illustrations as well as the wonderful literary quotes enrich her readable prose. her text speaks to the changes the online information boom is bringing our world and provides a foundation for the importance of teaching information literacy.
Source: Library Journal Recommendation for Academic Libraries

NEEAN Fall Forum

Over the past few years, accountability issues have surfaced in higher education, much as they did for K-12 public schooling in recent years. At the New England Educational Assessment Network (NEEAN) fall forum Friday at the College of Holy Cross, keynote speaker Dr. Cecilia Lopez, Vice President for Academic Affairs at Harold Washington College, spoke forcefully on how current federal policy affects accreditation and assessment and why we should care. Dr. Daniel Fogel, president of University of Vermont, discussed the proposed Voluntary System of Accountability (VSA) proposed by National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC.) and American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU).

In individual sessions, colleagues discussed key issues in higher education assessment, including: general education and general outcomes assessment, discipline and program-based assessment, e-portfolios and other tools, and best practices in assessment implementation. You will hear more about this in the very near future. (Attending from Goodwin College: Janet Jefford, Judy Zimmerman, Marilyn Nowlan)

New Books

FICTION

Bone Garden by Tess Gerritsen
Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
World Without End by Ken Follett (sequel to Pillars of the Earth)
Playing for Pizza by John Grisham
Worst Thing I’ve Done by Ursula Hegi

NONFICTION
Assault on Reason by Al Gore
Proust and the Squid: Story and Science of the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolf
Yoga as Medicine by Timothy McCall
Giving by Bill Clinton
Peterson’s Two-Year Colleges 2008

Most of these were requests from the faculty and staff.

Great Thing About Reading

'The great thing about reading books is that it makes us better than cats. Cats are said to have nine lives. What is that compared to the girl, boy, man, woman who reads books? A book read is a life added to one’s own. So it takes only nine books to make cats look at you with envy.

And I’m not talking here only of “good” books. Any book—trash to classic—makes us live the life of another person, injects us with the wisdom and folly of their years. When we’ve read the last page of a book, we know more, either in the form of raw knowledge—the name of a gun, perhaps—or in the form of greater understanding. The worth of these vicarious lives is not to be underestimated. There’s nothing sadder—or sometimes more dangerous—than the person who has lived only his or her single, narrow life, unenlightened by the experience, real or invented, of others."

These are the words of Yann Martel, Canadian author of The Life of Pi. Martel is sending a book every two weeks to Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister of Canada. Why Martel is doing this is a long and intriguing story. His choices and the accompanying comments explaining his selection are priceless. If you are interested in reading along with Prime Minster Harper, the first book was The Death of Ivan Ilych, by Leo Tolstoy because, says Martel, "I can’t think of a work of such brevity, hardly 60 pages, that shows so convincingly the power and depth of great literature." So here it is online: The Death of Ivan Ilych. (Next up is Animal Farm by GeorgeOrwell.)

Social Science Resource Par Excellence

Established in 1962, the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Science Research (ICPSR) is the world's largest archive of digital social science data. They acquire, preserve, and distribute original research data and provide training in its analysis. The site right now is featuring a collaborative psychiatric epidemiology service. Archives and research project websites at ICPSR provide access to data collections and other resources in many disciplines. There's something here for everyone!
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/

Early Childhood Education: StoryPlace

StoryPlace, presented in both English and Spanish, offers children the opportunity to view online stories, participate in interactive activities, and print activity pages. Five themes are currently available in the Pre-school Library: colors, teddy bears, crocodiles, animals, and monkeys. Each section features activities centered on the theme. For instance, in the teddy bear theme, children can choose to view and listen to the story 6 Little Teddy Bears, help Bella Teddy Bear choose the correct clothing for the weather, or print a teddy bear doll to cut out and put together. There is also an annotated booklist for each theme. The site developers plan to add an Early Elementary Library soon.

Homeland Security: Risk Reduction

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has adopted a focused approach to risk reduction. DHS is moving increasingly to risk analysis and risk-based resource allocation, a process that is designed to manage the greatest risks instead of attempting to protect everything. This report applies a probabilistic terrorism model that is broadly applied in the insurance industry to assess risk across cities, to assess risks within specific cities, and to assist intelligence analysis.
Terrorism Risk Modeling for Intelligence Analysis and Infrastructure Protection
Source: RAND Corporation

Teacher Sourcebook

The publisher of Education Week has launched a new, twice-yearly resource guide on teacher professional development, available online for free. The first issue examines the role of teacher collaborative work in improving instructon and student achievement.
http://www.teachersourcebook.org/
Source: Education Week October 31, 2007

Campus Safety and Student Privacy

The U.S. Department of Education released new guidance on Tuesday to parents and educators about the circumstances under which information about troubled students can be disclosed under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974, a federal law governing student records that is often criticized for being too complicated. The brochures have been sent to colleges and schools across the country and are available on the Department of Education's Web site.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

Website Worth a Look: JAMA Patient Page

This is a public service of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). This online collection currently contains over 400 topical overviews to assist in communicating medical information to patients. They are written with the patient in mind and address a wide variety of topics. Color and graphis are used, but the content can be photocopied in black and white. The AMA holds the copyright to these overviews, but health care professionals are encouraged to make copies to share with patients. Many are available in English and in Spanish.
www.jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/collection/patient_page
Source: Medical Library Association News October 2007

Suspension of Books

Pat Conroy Raps Nitro High's Suspension of His Books The Prince of Tides and Beach Music have been suspended from use at Nitro High School in Kanawha County, West Virginia, and author Pat Conroy has responded. The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) has sent a letter to the school board in support of retaining these texts. The Charleston Gazette, October 24, 2007.

NCTE's Anti-Censorship program is founded on the belief in the Students' Right to Read and teachers' right to teach meaningful quality literature.
Source: NCTE Online Newsletter

With World Growing Smaller, IB gets Bigger

Amid heightened concern about preparing students for a global economy, the academically demanding International Baccalaureate program is catching on fast in U.S. schools. The perception that the Geneva, Switzerland-based International Baccalaureate Organization’s academic programs offer just what American students need in today’s more globally competitive environment seems to be catching on.

After decades of obscurity and slow expansion, the pace of growth in IB—including courses of study for the primary and middle school years as well as the better-known high-school-level programs—has quickened considerably.

Favorable word of mouth among educators—along with an endorsement from President Bush and glowing accounts in national magazines—has helped catapult IB into U.S. classrooms. More than 225 American schools so far this year have started offering at least one IB program, bringing the U.S. total to 800.
Source: Education Week October 31, 2007

It Takes a Miracle to Sell Your House

Cari Luna is Jewish by heritage and Buddhist by religion. She meditates regularly. Yet when she and her husband put their Brooklyn, N.Y., house on the market this year and offers kept falling through, Ms. Luna turned to an unlikely source for help: St. Joseph. After Ms. Luna and her husband held five open houses, even baking cookies for one of them, she ordered a St. Joseph "real estate kit" online and buried the three-inch white statue in her yard. "I wasn't sure if it would be disrespectful for me, a Jewish Buddhist, to co-opt this saint for my real-estate purposes," says Ms. Luna, a writer. She figured, "Well, could it hurt?"

With the worst housing market in recent years, St. Joseph is enjoying a flurry of attention. Some vendors of religious supplies say St. Joseph statues are flying off the shelves as an increasing number of skeptics and non-Catholics look for some saintly intervention to help them sell their houses. Existing-home sales fell 8 percent in September to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.04 million units, the lowest level in nearly 10 years, according to the National Association of Realtors. (The picture is from a St. Joseph real estate kit.)

Source: Wall Street Journal October 30, 2007

It was 6:30 p.m. The lights were still on at Needham High School, here in the affluent Boston suburbs. Paul Richards, the principal, was meeting with the Stress Reduction Committee. On the agenda: finding the right time to bring in experts to train students in relaxation techniques. No one is busier than Josh Goldman. Captain of varsity tennis, president of the Spanish club and a member of the student council and the Stress Reduction Committee, Josh was not able to squeeze in the meeting at all.

Mr. Richards is just one principal in the vanguard of a movement to push back against an ethos of super-achievement at affluent suburban high schools amid the extreme competition over college admissions. He has joined like-minded administrators from 44 other high schools and middle schools — most in the San Francisco Bay Area but others scattered from Texas to New York — to form a group known as S.O.S., for Stressed Out Students.
Source: New York Times October 29, 2007

Power of Birth Order

Of all the things that shape who we are, few seem more arbitrary than the sequence in which we and our siblings pop out of the womb. Maybe it's your genes that make you a gifted athlete, your training that makes you an accomplished actress, an accident of brain chemistry that makes you a drunk instead of a President. But in family after family, case study after case study, the simple roll of the birth-date dice has an odd and arbitrary power all its own.

The importance of birth order has been known—or at least suspected—for years. But increasingly, there's hard evidence of its impact. In June, for example, a group of Norwegian researchers released a study showing that firstborns are generally smarter than any siblings who come along later, enjoying on average a three-point IQ advantage over the next eldest—probably a result of the intellectual boost that comes from mentoring younger siblings and helping them in day-to-day tasks. My older sister always said she was smarter, but I didn't believe it. Now I wonder.

Source: Time Magazine October 29

Evaluating College Courses

Miami Dade College believes there are 10 key skills that graduates should take away with their diplomas. They are things such as the ability to communicate clearly, think creatively, and analyze data. So the college is examining every single one of its 2,000 or so courses to make sure that no student can go through an entire degree program without being exposed to all 10 skills.

The college then plans to test graduating students on what they have learned. The massive undertaking is an answer to the increasing push from lawmakers, businesses, and college leaders themselves to ensure that students leave higher education able to function in the modern work environment. The U.S. Department of Education, which has been pushing colleges to track student learning, has applauded the effort.

10 Key Skills That Miami Dade College Wants Students to Acquire
1. To communicate effectively using listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills.
2. To use quantitative analytical skills to evaluate and process numerical data.
3. To solve problems using critical and creative thinking, and scientific reasoning.
4. To formulate strategies to locate, evaluate, and apply information.
5. To demonstrate knowledge of diverse cultures, including global and historical perspectives.
6. To create strategies that can be used to fulfill personal, civic, and social responsibilities.
7. To demonstrate knowledge of ethical thinking and its application to issues in society.
8. To use computer and emerging technologies effectively.
9. To demonstrate an appreciation for aesthetics and creative activities.
10. To describe how natural systems function, and recognize the impact of human beings on the environment
What do you think?
Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education
Section: The Faculty Volume 54, Issue 10, Page A6

Did you Know?

28 billion plastic water bottles are purchased annually in the United States.
1.5 billion barrels of oil are used to make those bottles.
Americans spend $11 million on bottled water annually.
115 million African children could be fed for a year with that money.
Only 16% of plastic water bottles get recycled annually.
Americans discard 2.5 billion plastic water bottles every hour.
Tap water has to meet higher standards than bottled water.

So why not use your own tap water? Consider buying a washable stainless-steel water bottle and using the water you already pay for.

Source: Fussy Environmentally-friendly librarian

Classroom Copyright Crisis

College professors receive next to no training on copyright law and fair-use doctrine, a new report argues, and their students are suffering as a result. “The Cost of Copyright Confusion for Media Literacy,” released by American University’s Center for Social Media, is based on interviews that university researchers conducted with more than 60 media-literacy educators. Those interviews paint a fairly grim portrait of teachers, unsure about the specifics of fair-use doctrine, cowed into avoiding perfectly valid uses of copyrighted material.

“Too many teachers fear they will misinterpret fair use or are simply unaware of its expansive nature,” write the study’s authors, including Peter A. Jaszi, a professor of law. Because they are afraid of violating copyright, “teachers use less effective teaching techniques, teach and transmit erroneous copyright information, fail to share innovative instructional approaches, and do not take advantage of new digital platforms.” This would be a good topic for an in-service workshop.

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

Surfing History

Created by the University of Connecticut Libraries, these digitized volumes of public records of Connecticut during the colonial period include the transcription of the original records of the General Assembly. For those seeking more information on Connecticut's history online, here are some reliable starting points:

Colonial Connecticut Records 1636-1776 (colonialct.uconn.edu). Created by the University of Connecticut Libraries, these digitized volumes of public records of Connecticut during the colonial period include the transcription of the original records of the General Assembly.
Connecticut Historical Society (chs.org). Founded in 1825, this nonprofit center has special online exhibits highlighting the state's history and demographics.
Connecticut State Library ( http://www.cslib.org/). This portal provides access to state and local history, genealogy and public records.
Godfrey Memorial Library (godfrey.org). Based in Middletown, this celebrated collection of approximately 200,000 books and periodicals can be tapped into via its Godfrey Scholar Program, which enables members to access to a vast number of online databases.
iCONN (iconn.org). A part of the Connecticut Education Network, this service provides students, teachers and state residents with essential library and information resources, including access to The Courant and other newspaper archives. Specialized research information is also available to college students and faculty.

Source: (Hartford Courant)

College Sustainability Report Card 2008

zCollege campuses across the United States and Canada are stepping up green practices and policies, with more than two out of three schools showing improved performance over the last year, according to the new College Sustainability Report Card 2008.
College Sustainability Report Card 2008
Source: Sustainable Endowments Institute

APA 2007 Stress in America Report

One-third of Americans are living with extreme stress and nearly half of Americans (48 percent) believe that their stress has increased over the past five years. Stress is taking a toll on people — contributing to health problems, poor relationships and lost productivity at work, according to a new national survey released today by the American Psychological Association (APA).
Money and work continue as the leading causes of stress for three quarters of Americans, a dramatic increase over the 59 percent reporting the same sources of stress in 2006. The survey also found that the housing crisis is having an effect on many, with half of Americans (51 percent) citing rent or mortgage costs as sources of stress this year.
APA 2007 Stress in America Report
Source: American Psychological Association

CQ Researcher: Baby Boomers

In January, the oldest baby boomers will turn 62 — and become eligible to collect Social Security benefits. For the next 18 years, a member of the baby boom generation — the 78 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964 — will reach that age every eight seconds. Boomers have long been famous for their desire to stay or at least act young. What will they be like as seniors? Many predict they will reshape the nation's view of old age, as healthier boomers continue to work and stay active longer than their parents. Others worry that the vast expansion of the nation's senior population will put unaffordable strains on government entitlement programs.Still others worry boomers could upset the economy as they begin spending down their assets all at once. Boomers have left their imprint on every stage of American life they've passed through, and there's no reason to think that the senior years will be any exception. Read the entire CQ Researcher report online. Contact the library staff for user name and password.

Source: CQ Researcher

Web Site: Knowledgespeak

Knowledgespeak is the world's first online news service to report all the relevant developments within the STM publishing industry, on a daily basis. This is a free service that also offers additional resources including a blog area, calendar of events, articles, white papers and a directory of STM publishers.

Who is STM? STM is an international association of about 100 scientific, technical, medical and scholarly publishers, collectively responsible for more than 60% of the global annual output of research articles, over half the active research journals and the publication of tens of thousands of print and electronic books, reference works and databases.
Source: Mary Laine, Librarian

New Recruiting Idea

Have we been missing out? Should we be recruiting at Mohegan Sun? Can poker capture — and improve — the minds of young Americans? Charles R. Nesson, a Harvard law professor, insists that it can. He has set up a group called the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society with a clear mission: "the legitimation of poker."

While Congress has severely restricted online poker, Mr. Nesson and colleagues are creating an open, online poker community that hopes to persuade young, sharp-minded players to consider college. A good poker player makes a great college student, argues Mr. Nesson, an expert on evidence who has appeared several times before the U.S. Supreme Court and who founded and co-directs Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. The organization (http://www.gpsts.org/) is forming chapters at several universities, including Boston, Brown, Tufts, and Stanford.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

Education's End

I recommended this book, Education's End, in the Four Year Task Force meeting yesterday. According to author Anthony Kronman, the question of what living is for—of what one should care about and why—is the most important question a person can ask. Yet under the influence of the modern research ideal, our colleges and universities have expelled this question from their classrooms, judging it unfit for organized study. In this book, Kronman explores why this he thinks this has happened and calls for the restoration of life’s most important question to an honored place in higher education. Anthony T. Kronman is Sterling Professor of Law, Yale Law School. Since stepping down as Dean of the Law School in 2004, he has been teaching in the Directed Studies Program at Yale. It will soon be in the Goodwin collection.

Economics and Murder: New books in the Library

Murder at the Margins by Marshall Jevons is an amusing mystery story that introdced a new method of detection: Professor Henry Spearman's "little grey cells" use the framework of microeconomic analysis to solve a sequence of murders. This novel is used as text book in colleges and high schools. The novel, also valuable as supplementary reading for introductory economics courses, gives a vivid display of how economic choices affect human behavior. Marshall Jevons is the pseudonym of William Brett and Kenneth G. Elzinga, both university professors of economics. The library has two more mysteries by Jevons: The Fatal Equilibrium and A Deadly Indifference--a painless and enjoyable way to learn some economics.

MRSA in Health Care Settings

MRSA has been featured in the news and on television programs a great deal recently. MRSA stands for Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. This type of bacteria causes “staph” infections that are resistant to treatment with usual antibiotics. MRSA occurs most frequently among patients who undergo invasive medical procedures or who have weakened immune systems and are being treated in hospitals and healthcare facilities such as nursing homes and dialysis centers.

MRSA in healthcare settings commonly causes serious and potentially life threatening infections, such as bloodstream infections, surgical site infections, or pneumonia. In addition to healthcare associated infections, MRSA can also infect people in the community at large, generally as skin infections that may look like pimples or boils and can be swollen, painful and have draining pus. These skin infections often occur in otherwise healthy people.
Source: Center for Disease Control (CDC)

Berkeleyh puts Courses on YouTube

University of California, Berkeley began making its course lectures and special events freely available on YouTube. At present, this amounts to more than 300 hours of captured courses and events. The university said it will continue to expand the volume and range of videos it makes available to the public. "UC Berkeley on YouTube will provide a public window into university life--academics, events and athletics--which will build on our rich tradition of open educational content for the larger community," said Christina Maslach, UC Berkeley's vice provost for undergraduate education, in a prepared statement.
Source: Campus Technology

More Power to Government Regulators?

Americans have been alarmed by recent product recalls, including toothpaste containing an ingredient found in antifreeze, tainted pet food and millions of Mattel toys containing toxic lead paint. The recalls — all involving Chinese-made products — prompted government hearings that spotlighted problems at the underfunded and, critics say, overwhelmed Consumer Product Safety Commission. Meanwhile, inspectors found contamination in imported seafood as well as millions of pounds of U.S.-produced ground beef, triggering concerns that the two agencies responsible for food safety — the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture — were also understaffed and underpowered. While food and product safety scares are not new, the skyrocketing growth of Asian imports has forced even industry groups to call for stepped-up consumer protection. Consumer advocates salute the trend but warn that some industries may be seeking to regulate themselves in an effort to preempt Congress from passing tougher laws.

Source: CQ Researcher 10/12/07 (available in the library, password protected subscription)

Nobel Literature Prize to Lessing

It's about time. "Doris Lessing, the Persian-born, Rhodesian-raised and London-residing novelist whose deeply autobiographical writing has swept across continents and reflects her engagement with the social and political issues of her time, yesterday won the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature." (first paragraph from the New York Times article today)

Ms Lessing is best known for her series of novels Children of Violence , written in the 1950s and featuring her heroine Martha Quest, whose growth in consciousness reflected the author's concerns over social justice. Her first, semi-autobiographical novel, The Grass is Singing , addressed the culture clashes and racial discrimination she encountered during her childhood in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.

She was most influential with her 1960's novel, The Golden Notebook, which examined the multiple aspects of the life of a woman, Anna Wulf, in an experimental style. The feminist movement regarded it as a pioneering work. She went on to experiment with a variety of styles, publishing her most recent novel, Cleft, in January. She is 88 years old. The previous two winners were Orhan Pamuk of Turkey and Harold Pinter of Britain.

New Sunday Library Hours

TheGoodwin library will be open Sundays from 12 to 5:30. This is in reponse to student requests for expanded hours.

Racial Diversity in the Public School

Has the Supreme Court dealt a blow to integration?

CQ Researcher 9/14/07

Fifty years after the Supreme Court outlawed racial segregation in public schools, a new ruling has raised doubts about how far local school boards can go to integrate classrooms. The court's 5-4 ruling in cases from Seattle and Louisville bars school districts from using race as a factor in individual pupil assignments. Like many other school districts, the two school systems used racial classifications to promote diversity in the face of segregated housing patterns.

This 20 page report is available online, password protected. Contact the library staff for the user name and password.

New Feature: Famous Libraries I Have Seen

The Bodleian Library

The Bodleian Library is the main research library of the University of Oxford and one of the highlights of any visit to Oxford. Its collections are used by scholars from around the world.

The Bodleian Library is really not one library but many, housed in buildings all over the city of Oxford. The historic core of the Bodleian is located around Radcliffe Square, however, with the oldest parts being the magnificent Duke Humphrey's Library (1488)--shown here. It is now the second largest library in the UK (after the British Library in London).

The Bodleian receives a copy of every new book printed in Britain, a practice that began in 1610, so that the library contains an unrivaled 400 year record of British literature. The Bodleian is unique in that it is not a lending library - no books can be borrowed, only read on the premises. The Bodleian takes this restriction seriously; in a famous case, King Charles I was refused permission to borrow a book.

Open Course Ware

Tufts University http://ocw.tufts.edu/

Here's a treasure trove from one of our most prestigious universities: the site provides free access to the syllabus, calendar, lectures, and slides for a variety of courses, primarily in the health sciences.
Source: Mary Laine, Librarian

Play the Candidate Match Game

It seems like everyone is running for president. How will you decided whom to support? This quiz from USA Today asks you 11 questions on issues ranging from Iraq to taxes. Answer each question and see how the candidates stak up. When you're finished, see how that changes which candidates are on your side. Take the quiz!
Source: USA Today

Astronomy Media Player

This is a collection of the best astronomy podcasts from around the world." Includes astronomy courses, observations of the night sky, "ask an astronomer" podcasts, and podcasts from observatories and space agencies. The media player was created as something that will play both audio and video - specifically for astronomy (that includes the night sky, planetary science, astrophysics and cosmology). The aim was to make it easier for everyone to find the astronomy multimedia resources that are out there and perhaps be entertained at the same time.

http://www.jodcast.net/amp/index.html

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.