Read the First Chapter: Brother, I'm Dying

This is a new weekly feature on the library blog that gives you the opportunity to sample the first chapter of recent books.

Brother, I'm Dying by Edwidge Danticat (nonfiction)

Edwidge Danticat employs the charms of a storyteller and the authority of a witness to evoke the political forces and personal sacrifices behind her parents' journey to this country from Haiti and her uncle's decision to stay behind. Her previous book, Breath, Eyes, Memory, was chosen as the one book for Greater Hartford in 2002.

Read the first chapter provided by the Washington Post book section.
Source: Washington Post First Chapters and book reviews

OSHA Records 2007

In FY 2007, OSHA conducted 39,324 total inspections, a 4.3 percent increase over its stated goal of 37,700. Total violations of OSHA’s standards and regulations were 88,846, a 6 percent increase from Fiscal Year (FY) 2006. The agency cited 67,176 serious violations, a 9 percent increase from the previous year and a more than 12 percent increase over the past four years. The number of cited repeat violations also rose from 2,551 in FY 2006 to 2,714 in FY 2007.
OSHA Enforcement: Striving for Safe and Healthy Workplaces
Source: Occupational and Safety Health Administration

First Interlibrary Loans of 2008

Here are the first Interlibrary Loan requests of Goodwin College in 2008:

The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross 2008
loaned to Watertown Library Association

Three Cups of Tea by Mortenson and Relin 2006
loaned to New Fairfield Free Public Library

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini 2003
loaned to Levi E. Coe Library (Middlefield)

The Goodwin College community has requested these books from other libraries at the beginning of 2008:

Intuition by Allegra Goodman 2006
borrowed from Middletown Library Service Center

Secret History by Donna Tartt 2004
borrowed from the Mark Twain Library Association (Redding)

New Amerian Militarism: How Americans are Reduced by War by A. J. Bacevich 2005
borrowed from Housatonic Valley Regional High School (Falls Village)

Selected Letters of John Keats 2002
borrowed from Southern Connecticut State Unversity

Leading Change by John Kotter 1996
borrowed from Sprague Library (Baltic)

Nursing and Allied Health Source

The Goodwin Library has just subscribed to theProQuest Nursing & Allied Health Source database that provides our students with reliable healthcare information covering nursing, allied health, alternative and complementary medicine, and much more. This versatile database is designed to meet the needs of researchers at healthcare facilities as well as nursing and allied health programs at academic institutions. ProQuest Nursing & Allied Health Source provides abstracting and indexing for more than 700 titles, with over 580 titles in full-text. You can access it from the library homepage on and off campus.

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.
www.nationalgeographiccom/geobee/index.html

GovGab: Your U.S. Government Blog

http://blog.usa.gov/roller/govgab
Some U.S. government employees have gotten together and created a blog to share bits of consumer information from federal Web sites in a very readable way. The tone is familiar and conversational, so much so you might not realize you're learning about energy conservation, safe online shopping, personal health, and responsible spending and saving. Posts are peppered with links to the vast resources of the U.S. government. So far, there are five regular bloggers, each assigned a different day, and a substitute. All work for the Office of Citizen Services and Communications at the General Services Administration.
Source: Information Outlook

Congress Backs Away from Science Education

The money and priority given to science and engineering education in the coming year by Congress and President Bush is woefully inadequate, says the Task Force on the Future of American Innovation, whose members include a wide spectrum of scholarly and industry groups ranging from Google to the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges.
The occasion for the slam is the 2008 Omnibus Appropriations bill, according to a blog post today by the Computing Research Association, a task-force member.
“The President and Congress, for all their stated support this year for making basic research in the physical sciences and engineering a top budget priority, ended up essentially cutting, or flat-funding, key science agencies after accounting for inflation,” reports the blog."
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education: Wired Campus

Thursday Brainteaser # 1

This brainteaser is about places - real or fictitious - where films were set.
1. The largest city in Morocco was the setting for a famous 1943 film staring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. Name the city.
2. Was the 1971 film "Walkabout" set in Australia, New Zealand or Hawaii?
3. Which postwar city was the setting for the 1949 film "The Third Man"?
4. In a 1999 film written by Richard Curtis, Julia Roberts played a celebrated US film actress who falls for a British bookshop manager, played by Hugh Grant. In which area of London was the film set (The area gave the film its title)?
5.The picturesque Scottish fishing village of Pennan was the location for the village shots in which 1983 film directed by Bill Forsyth?
6. Which county in Iowa was the setting for a 1995 film about a man (played by Clint Eastwood) who has come to photograph the seven covered bridges in the location?
7. The film "The Bridge on the River Kwai" was about a bridge being built in which country: China, Japan or Burma?
8. What was the name of the Georgia plantation which was the home of Scarlett O'Hara in the film "Gone With the Wind"?
9. The 1996 film "Trainspotting" was about young heroin addicts in which city?
10. In which 1937 film was Ojai in southwestern California the location for "Shangri-La"?
Look on the blog tomorrow for the answers!

December Additions to Credo Reference

The Credo Reference database added these full text reference books this month:

Collins Irish Dictionary,

Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Twentieth Century ,

RoutledgeEncyclopedia of the United States in the Nineteenth Century ,

New Penguin Business Dictionary,

New Penguin Dictionary of Music,

Penguin Dictionary of Sociology,

Penguin Dictionary of Economics,

Penguin International Dictionary of Finance.

Credo Reference is a completely customizable general reference solution for the Goodwin community of learners. Its full-text, aggregated content covers every major subject from the world's best publishers of reference.

Gallup Poll Publications

I want to inform you that two important Gallup Poll publications have been added to LexisNexis Academic database. In addition to the Gallup Management Journal, which was already available, as subscribers to this database we will now be able to access the following two titles:

Gallup Poll News Service
Description: The Gallup Poll News Service is the internet's leading polling-based news source. The Gallup Poll News Service provides news centered on public opinion. Published each business day, articles from the Gallup Poll News Service analyze findings and trends in politics, business, social issues, and Americans' lifestyles.
Full source description: http://w3.nexis.com/sources/scripts/info.pl?263351
Direct search link: http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/api/version1/sf?shr=t&sfi=AC00NBGenSrch&csi=263351
*Note: Updating of this source is temporarily suspended during a data format conversion; current coverage will be reinstated shortly.

Gallup Poll Tuesday Briefing
Description: The Gallup Poll Tuesday Briefing is Gallup's premier weekly online news publication. Each Tuesday, the Gallup Poll Tuesday Briefing publishes in-depth articles on the opinions and issues Gallup is investigating in government, in the workplace, in schools, in hospitals, and in faith communities.
Full source description: http://w3.nexis.com/sources/scripts/info.pl?263354
Direct search link: http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/api/version1/sf?shr=t&sfi=AC00NBGenSrch&csi=263354

Those needing opinion poll data should also try using the Polls & Surveys SmartIndexing term in combination with news searches run from the Power Search form or the News search form. This will retrieve news stories that report on the contents of public opinion polls.

LexisNexis Academic Enhancements

I’m very pleased to announce several important enhancements to LexisNexis Academic database that went into effect last weekend.

1. Individual States added to Federal & State Codes Search Form source selection
They have added the combined statutes, constitution, annotated code, and court rules file for each state to the source selection box.

2. Improved tools for Results Groups
The results classification tools at the left of the results window now allows you to sort alphabetically in addition to the previous arrangement by number of hits. There is also a new “View Multiple Groups” feature that allows you to combine any of the groupings displayed into a customized subset of your results.

3. Findable People and Companies
This new feature exploits the XML tagging LexisNexis has been adding over the past few years. Companies and personal names that have been identified and tagged in full text documents are now highlighted with links to related searches. For companies, a single click takes you to the full Company Dossier report, or you can choose a Company Profiles search or a news search. For people you can choose a biographies & news search or a straight news search.

Instruction on using LexisNexis Academic database can be arranged with library staff.

Getting More From the Web: Tip # 1

Use search engines and Wikipedia to find quality research. Yes, I included Wikipedia so read on. It often makes sense to start with search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and other favorites. It doesn't hurt to see if there is a good article on Wikipedia. But you use these sources to carry you to better places such as the library databases and other authoritative information--sources you can cite in research papers.

“Wikipedia itself is very hit or miss,” says Ann Cullen, an adjunct professor at Simmons College's library science program. “I have seen Wikipedia entries that shocked me because of what was not included. And others blew me away because they were so good.” Cullen adds that “Wikipedia is an excellent avenue for finding other resources, but Wikipedia itself should not be the source.”

W.E.B. Griffin Vacation Reading

Escape from the stress of shopping, ice, snow, cold, The Nutcracker, and too much Christmas music. Why not read a Griffin novel for relief?
Griffin is the author of 38 thrilling military and detective novels, all of which have been listed on The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and other best-seller lists. The Goodwin Library has twelve of them. Hurry to the library before they are all checked out.

Spiritual Changes iin Students

This report comes at just the right time of the year and appears to have nothing to do with Mike Huckabee. While attendance at religious services declines, college students nationwide show significant growth in a wide spectrum of spiritual and ethical considerations during their first three years of college, according to a UCLA study, the first longitudinal research project of its kind.

Compared to when they were entering freshmen, college juniors are more likely to be engaged in a spiritual quest, are more caring, and show higher levels of equanimity and an ecumenical worldview. While 41.2 percent of freshmen in 2004 reported they considered developing a meaningful philosophy of life “very important” or “essential,” just three years later in 2007 a 55.4 percent majority of those same students agreed. Additionally, “attaining inner harmony” was reported as “very important” or “essential” by 48.7 percent when they were freshmen in 2004, and jumped to 62.6 percent by 2007.

Source: Spirituality in Higher Education (Higher Education Research Institute, Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, UCLA)

Poverty Effects on U.S. Scores

Not only did many industrialized countries outperform the United States in science on a recent international exam, but American students’ academic achievement was also more likely to be affected by their wealth or poverty and family background than was their peers’ in higher-scoring nations.

That was one of several sobering findings for the United States included in the results of the 2006 Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, released this week. The program showed U.S. students lagging behind a majority of participating developed nations in both science and mathematics. On the same subject, an article in the Hartford Courant today states that "Connecticut must address the severe poverty in the inner cities and the achievement gap in its urban schools if it is to have a chance of staying competitive in this century."
Source: Education Week December 12 2007 and today's Courant

New York Times: 10 Best Books 2007

FICTION
Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas--This first novel explores the fragmented pesonal histories behind four desperate days in a black writer's life.**
Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson--In this short Norwegian novel translated by Anne Born, an Oslo professional hopes to cure his loneliness with a plunge into solitude.*
The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano. Translated by Natash Wimmer, this is a crafitlty autobiographical novel about a band of literary guerrillas.
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris--Layoff notices fly in Ferris's acidely funny first novel set in a white-collar office during the dot-com debacle.*
Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson. The author offers a soulful novel about the travails of a large cast of characters during the Vietnam War.**

NONFICTION
Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran--The author catalogs the arrogance and ineptitude that marked America's governance of Iraq.**
Little Heathens: Hard Times & High Spirts on an Iowa Farm During the Depression by Mildred Kalish--This long-titled book is a memoir of childhood memories filled with joy and wonder.**
The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin--An outsider's account of the cloistered court's inner workings.**
Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History by Linda Colley--Colley tracks the "compulsively itinerant" Marsh across the 18th century and several continents.**
Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross--In his own feat of orchestration, The New Yorker's music critic presents a history of the last century as refracted through its classical music.**
*-in library now
**ordered
Source: New York Times December 9, 2007

Really No Child Left Behind

The British government will today promise every pupil a dedicated tutor to support them through their secondary schooling and act as a personal contact point for parents who are worried about their child's progress. Pupils will be assigned one member of the school staff to act as behaviour mentor and to meet their parents, to allow swift action should their grades begin to slide.

Parent-run school councils and a national parent panel to advise ministers on policy will be established under plans that ministers said should redraw the boundaries between home and school for the 21st century. Parents will be at the heart of a 10-year children's plan to improve children's education and happiness. What will they think of next!
Source: Guardian Unlimited December 11, 2007

Just in Time for Next Semester: Graphic Syllabi

Much like a concept map or mind map, a graphic syllabus uses spatial arrangement, connecting lines and arrows, and sometimes numbers to show the logical, temporal progression of the course through topics within the subject matter, according to author Linda Nilson. The library has just ordered her book, The Graphic Syllabus and the Outcomes Map: Communicating Your Course. Why use a graphic syllabus? Nilson suggests that a text syllabus is often not read by students unless the teacher reads it with them on the first day of class. A Great deal of research documents that students handle text poorly, especially when confronted with technical language--thus the graphic syllabus.
Source: The Teaching Professor December 2007

Electronic Book from ICONN

Gale Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine, 2005 Covers alternative and complementary medical practices, such as reflexology, acupressure, chelation therapy, kinesiology, polarity therapy, naturopathy, and Chinese medicine. Includes therapies for specific disorders and diseases, medicinal uses for plants and herbs, efficacy studies, and analysis of acceptance by traditional scientists and doctors. Access this from library homepage under ICONN.

Do Something

The staff of this website, Do Something, believe young people have the power to make a difference. It is their aim "to inspire, support and celebrate a generation of do-ers: people who see the need to do something, believe in their ability to get it done, and then take action."

This website is a community where young people learn, listen, speak, vote, volunteer, ask, and take action to make the world a better place. Currently, only 23% of this generation actively volunteers. The Do Something staff hopes to create a do something generation: a world where more than 51% of young people are involved with community action.
http://www.dosomething.org/

Happier?

Thousands of Harvard University students have discovered that you can become happier. They learned that secret from accalimed teacher Tal Ben-Shahar's class on positive psychology--a branch of psychology that combines the latest scientific research with good old common sense. Imagine that! Now by listening to the CD version of Shahar's book Happier, you can join his class and learn how positive psychology can make you happier right now--no lottery win, job promotion, or new love required. The Happier CDs are in the Goodwin library.

America's Best high Schools

A new study from U.S. News & World Report ranks America's best high schools. U.S. News & World Report, November 29, 2007

Then We Came to the End: Recommended Reading

Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris is widely recognized as one of the very best first novels of 2007. Anyone who has ever worked in an office will empathize and laugh reading this hilariousl novel of the humanity and cruelty of corporate life. It is available in the Goodwin Library.

The Academic Leader

The December issue of The Academic Leader, the newsletter for academic deans and department chairs, is here! In this issue you will find:
Simple Commitment but Long-Term Challenge (promotion and tenure)
A Case Study of a University Leadership Seminar (leadership development)
Creating and Sustaining Institution-wide Pedagogical Change (strategic initiatives)
College Faculty and the "Choice of Achilles" (faculty roles)
Notify the library staff if you are interested in a copy of this issue.

Free Resources for Children

The "Additional Research Resources" section of iCONN -- links to free resources -- has been substantially expanded in the areas of Children (K-12 Resources) and Science. I encourage you to check both out at http://www.iconn.org/AdditionalResources.aspx

History Tidbits for December 3

Tennessee Williams' drama of class conflict and self-deception, A Streetcar Named Desire, opened on Broadway December 3, 1947. Stanley Kowalski was played by 23-year old Marlon Brando with Kim Hunter playing his wife, Stella. The play won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 and made Brando a star.

Christiaan Barnard performed the first human heart transplant on December 3, 1967 in a nine hour procedure in Capetown, South Africa. The recipient of the first transplant died 18 days later of pneumonia. By this year, some 70,000 hearts will have been transplanted with some functioning more than 20 years.
Source: Smithsonian magazine December 2007

EXTENDED LIBRARY HOURS

The Library will have extended hours the week before final exams.
December 10-13
We will be open from 6:30 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Other hours stay the same.
Friday 6:30 a.m.-6:00 p.m.
Saturday 10:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m.
Sunday 12:00 p.m. -5:30 p.m.

Please don't hesitate to contact us at 860.727.6782 with any questions you might have. We wish all Goodwin students well with their final exams!

Create Family Health Report

This web site allows you to create a personalized family health history report from any computer with an Internet connection and an up-to-date Web browser. View a sample report .


Information you provide creates a drawing of your family tree and a chart of your family health history. Both the chart and the drawing can be printed and shared with your family members or your healthcare professional. Used in consultation with your healthcare professional, your family health history can help you review your family's health history and develop disease prevention strategies that are right for you.
Source: My Family Health Report, a tool from the Surgeon General

Inventor of Gatorade:Robert Cade

I watched six baseball games last weekend and all of the teams were drinking Gatorade, of course. Yesterday the university of Florida researcher who invented Gatorade, Robert Cade, died at the age of 80. Cade brought home a windfall to Gainesville by inventing the sports drink. The invention, originally designed to help the university’s football team, the Gators, started the vast sports-drink industry and has been one of the most lucrative technology-transfer products in higher-education history. The drink has earned the university more than $150-million in royalties since 1973.
Source: Associated Press

Classroom Ideas This Week

The ideas this week suggest ways to ask students to explore the messages behind public language. The English Journal article "Doublespeak Detection for the English Classroom" explores examples from literature, newspapers, and advertisements.

Advertisements are a fertile source for examples. To explore advertising's use of doublespeak, look to the analytical techniques outlined in the Teaching English in the Two-Year College article "Advertising and Interpretive Analysis: Developing Reading, Thinking, and Writing Skills in the Composition Course".
Source: NCTE

George Orwell and Doublespeak Awards

Ted Gup, author of Nation of Secrets: The Threat to Democracy and the American Way of Life, was the winner of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) 2007 George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language. The award recognizes outstanding contributions to the critical analysis of public discourse.

The NCTE Public Language Award Committee presented the 2007 Doublespeak Award to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The award is an ironic "tribute" to American public figures who have perpetuated language that is grossly deceptive, evasive, euphemistic, confusing, or self-contradictory. These awards was announced at NCTE’s Annual Convention in New Yoirk City Sunday, November 18.
Source: NCTE

Twelve Reasons for Soaring College Costs

Today, the Center for College Affordability and Productivity (CCAP), a higher education think tank based in Washington, DC, released a new study outlining 12 reasons for soaring college tuition and questioning whether the government is spending too much money on higher education as a whole.
Source: New Study Outlines 12 Reasons for Soaring College Costs

Windfalls of War: Baghdad Bonanza: Useful Statistics

KBR, Inc., the global engineering and construction giant, won more than $16 billion in U.S. government contracts for work in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2004 to 2006—far more than any other company. In fact, the total dollar value of contracts that went to KBR—which used to be known as Kellogg, Brown, and Root and until April 2007 was a subsidiary of Halliburton—was nearly nine times greater than those awarded to DynCorp International, a private security firm that is No. 2 on the list of the top 100 recipients of Iraq and Afghanistan reconstruction funds.
Another private security company, Blackwater USA, is 12th on the list of companies and joint ventures, with $485 million in contracts.

Other key findings :

• Over the three years studied, more than $20 billion in contracts went to foreign companies whose identities—at least so far—are impossible to determine.
• Nearly a third of the companies and joint ventures on the Top 100 are based outside the United States. These foreign contractors, along with the $20 billion in contracts awarded to the unidentified companies, account for about 45 percent of all funds obligated to the Top 100.
• U.S. government contracts for work in Iraq and Afghanistan have grown more than 50 percent annually, from $11 billion in 2004 to almost $17 billion in 2005 and more than $25 billion in 2006.

Source: Center for Public Integrity Windfalls of War II: Baghdad Bonanza

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