Reading Crisis? CQ Researcher

Do today's youth read less than past generations?

The number of Americans who read for pleasure has been dropping for decades, and now recent data show the lowest levels ever, especially among Americans ages 15 to 24. At the same time, reading scores among teenagers are dropping. America may soon lack not only the skilled workers needed for an information-based economy but also the informed voters crucial to democracy. Others dismiss such views as alarmist, arguing the data don't capture the large amount of online reading today. Technology experts also note that computers and video may be simply changing the form of literacy needed today, just as the printing press and typewriter did in ages past. While book reading formed the core of 20th-century literacy, in the 21st century literacy is more likely to mean writing blogs and instant messages as well as skimming online video and audio, along with text, to gather information. Read the whole report in this week's CQ Researcher accessible from the library page.

Source: CQ Researcher

American Literature Reference

If you are looking to brush up on your literary knowledge, check a favorite author's work, or see a year's bestsellers at a glance, The Chronology of American Literature is the perfect resource. At once an authoritative reference and an ideal browser's guide, this book outlines the indispensable information in America's rich literary past - from major publications to lesser-known gems - while also identifying larger trends along the literary timeline. Who wrote the first published book in America? When did Edgar Allan Poe achieve notoriety as a mystery writer? What was Hemingway's breakout title? With more than 8,000 works by 5,000 authors, The Chronology makes it easy to find answers to these questions and more. Authors and their works are grouped within each year by category: fiction and nonfiction; poetry; drama; literary criticism; and publishing events. Short, concise entries describe an author's major works for a particular year while placing them within the larger context of that writer's career. The result is a fascinating glimpse into the evolution of some of America's most prominent writers. Perhaps most important, The Chronology offers an invaluable line through our literary past, tying literature to the American experience - war and peace, boom and bust, and reaction to social change. You'll find everything here from Benjamin Franklin's "Experiments and Observations on Electricity" to Davy Crockett's first memoir; from Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" to Edith Wharton's "Ethan Frome"; from meditations by James Weldon Johnson and James Agee to poetry by Elizabeth Bishop. Also included here are seminal works by authors such as Rachel Carson, Toni Morrison, John Updike, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Lavishly illustrated - and rounded out with handy bestseller lists from throughout the twentieth century, lists of literary awards and prizes, and authors' birth and death dates - The Chronology of American Literature belongs on the shelf of every bibliophile and literary enthusiast. It is the essential link to our literary past and present. You will find this full text reference work in the CredoReference database accessible from the ibrary homepage.

Source: CredoReference Database

Water, Water, Not Everywhere

Take the tour to investigate your water saving opportunities in each area of your home. Click on each location to show you both the facts and specific advice. Check out the Top 5 Actions to discover some of the best ways to save water in and around your home. Visit the Garden Guide to find inspiration for beautiful water conserving gardens.

This website was developed by the California Urban Water Conservation Council under a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Source: http://h2ouse.org/.

Do we Need to Forget in Order to Remember?

Having a "good mind" usually connotes the ability to stuff one's brain with memories, from useless details to important ideas, and to be able to retrieve them on cue. To help out, most of us formulate mnemonics to make ideas difficult to forget.But what if forgetting is key to the proocess of remembering?

Several years ago, neuroscientists found that the brain is able to predict which memorie will be important later, ultimately affecting the volume of retention. Further research suggested that dreaming erases our useless memories to make space for new and more relevant ones.

A recent study allowed researchers to test whether the brain benefitted from eliminating irrelevant thooughts. Participants memorized word pairs and were then asked to retrieve only some of them when prompted. Those who forgot more of the irrelevant word pairs were better able to retrieve the relevant pairs when prompted. Keep dreaming!
source: Quoted from New Ideas section of Seed magazine
September/October 2007

2008 Horizon Report

The annual Horizon Report describes the continuing work of the New Media Consortium's Horizon Project, a research-oriented effort that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have considerable impact on teaching, learning, and creative expression within higher education. The 2008 report focuses on these areas:
Grassroots Video
Collaboration Webs
Mobile Broadband
Data Mashups
Collective Intelligence
Social Operating Systems
Horizon Project is a collaboration between the NMC and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. This is important research for higher education communities to consider as they plan for the future.

CQ Gobal Researcher: Looming Water Crisis

Are we running out of water? "In the past decade drought has marched across much of the globe, hitting China, the Mediterranean, southeast Australia and the U.S. Sun Belt. The amount of water used by humans has tripled since 1950, and irrigated cropland has doubled. About one-fifth of the world's population lacks sufficient water, a figure that could reach 40 percent by 2025 by some estimates, in part because of growing world economies. In the poorest societies more than a billion people lack access to clean water, and dirty water kills 5,000 children — enough to fill 12 jumbo jets — every day. By century's end drought is expected to spread across half the Earth's land surface due to climate change, causing hunger and higher food prices. The United Nations says it would cost an extra $10 billion or more annually to provide clean water and sanitation for all. Some recommend privatizing water supplies, while others suggest that charging more for water to encourage conservation would help to avoid future crises." (quote from the Global Researcher this week) Read the full report in the Global Researcher, an online resource available through the Goodwin Library.

Rethinking Wikipedia

Scholars often take swipes at Wikipedia, claiming that it dumbs down education and encourages intellectual laziness. Some professors have even banned their students from using it for research. But in an article this week in Science Progress, a scholar at the University of Texas at Dallas argues that such bans are irresponsible.

David Parry, an assistant professor of emerging media and communications at the university, writes that students need to become familiar with new and non-static forms of communication. He encourages his students to read Wikipedia’s “history” and “discussion” pages, saying they explain how articles were produced. And he says the online encyclopedia’s entry on global warming does a good job of explaining both the controversy and the science surrounding the issue. “Like it or not, the networked digital archive changes our basis of knowledge,” Parry writes “and training people for the future is about training them for this shift.”—Andrea L. Foster
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education February 15 2008

Biodiversity Heritage Library

Ten major natural history museum libraries, botanical libraries, and research institutions have joined to form the Biodiversity Heritage Library Project. The group is developing a strategy and operational plan to digitize the published literature of biodiversity held in their respective collections. This literature will be available through a global “biodiversity commons." The participating libraries have over two million volumes of biodiversity literature collected over 200 years to support the work of scientists, researchers, and students in their home institutions and throughout the world. The 10 member libraries of the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) members now have over 1.124 million pages of key taxonomic literature available on the web.

http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/

Greenwood Digital Collection: Free Trial

The Goodwin Library is planning to subscribe to a digital collection of from 3,000-15,000 books. The Greenwood Digital Collection has just started a month long free trial of reference, academic, and general interest ebooks of 3,000 titles. Please feel free to access this trial immediately and often. Please let us know if you like it.

Greenwood eBooks Complete Set (Trial)
Subscription Dates: 02/14/2008 - 3/13/08
To Access Go To: http://ebooks.greenwood.com/
.Enter UserName: GoodwinCollege
Enter Password: library
Click on submit.

Harvard Business Review

The Harvard Business Review is the featured journal from the Goodwin Library this week. The March issue has an article entitled "Survival of the Richest." According to this article, "in financial markets, as in many human endeavors, there’s a battle between reason and madness. On one side are the disciples of the efficient-markets hypothesis: the notion that markets fully, accurately, and instantaneously incorporate all relevant information into prices. These adherents assume that market participants are rational, always acting in their own interest and making mathematically optimal decisions. On the other side are the champions of behavioral economics: a younger discipline that points to bubbles, crashes, panics, manias, and other distinctly unreasonable phenomena as evidence of irrationality." Readers also recommend these articles:
Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership · Executive Summary
Mastering the Management System · Executive Summary
The Institutional Yes · Executive Summary
The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy · Executive Summary
Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time · Executive Summary

Snoopy's Revenge

SNOOPY would be pleased. His breed, long passed over for glory at the Westminster Kennel Club's annual dog show, has finally triumphed. Uno, a 38-centimetre beagle, has won the coveted title of best in show. Through 131 previous events, no beagle has celebrated what terriers have more than 40 times Uno beat out two poodles, a top Sealyham terrier, a sleek Weimaraner, a lively Australian shepherd, and a spry Akita. (Frankly, I am glad. I have grown weary of so many golden retrievers and labs. Maybe beagles will become popular now.)

Spring Training

Will this be the year that I can say what it feels like to be a fan of the world champion Chicago Cubs? Anyway, it's that time of the year--time to think about baseball and spring training. Thousands of baseball fans read Spring Training Online.because this is a very cool site.
http://www.springtrainingonline.com/

College Board News

College Board Announces Advanced Placement Results: A Greater Percentage of the Nation’s Students Succeed on AP® Exams, Predictors of Success in College
More than 15 percent of the public high school class of 2007 achieved at least one AP® Exam grade of 3 or higher1—the score that is predictive of college success. This achievement represents a significant and consistent improvement since the class of 2002 when less than 12 percent of public school graduates attained this goal. Out of all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, Vermont captured the largest increase in the percentage of high school graduates who scored a 3 or higher on an AP Exam.
Source: College Board

Security Spotlight

The 2 Mistakes Schools Make in Deploying Wireless Networks
An interview with WiFi expert Frank Keeney

When the School District of Philadelphia announced last fall that it was deploying wireless Internet access at every school in the district--some 268 campuses--it was hyped as one of the world's largest enterprise wireless local area networks. Aside from the scale of the project (which involves the equivalent of 14,000 access points), the news barely raised an eyebrow among K-12 administrators. After all, announcements of new school deployments of WiFi have practically become a monthly occurrence on THEJournal.com.
Read Complete Article:
http://www.1105newsletters.com/t.do?id=877202:1202597

Free Country Report

ISA (International Strategic Analysis) Country Reports provide detailed coverage and analysis of the political, economic and demographic issues and trends in 117 countries. Each ISA Country Report provides you with the information you need to make strategic business decisions in international markets. Moreover, each ISA Country Report provides you with detailed economic and political forecasts that give you the insights you need to anticipate the changes that can impact your business, both in the near- and long-term.
Free Report: Japan
PDF File

Open Access, Here we Come

Publish or perish has long been the burden of every aspiring university professor. But the question the Harvard faculty will decide this week is whether to publish — on the Web, at least — free.

Faculty members are scheduled to vote on a measure that would permit Harvard to distribute their scholarship online, instead of signing exclusive agreements with scholarly journals that often have tiny readerships and high subscription costs.

Although the outcome of Tuesday’s vote would apply only to Harvard’s arts and sciences faculty, the impact, given the university’s prestige, could be significant for the open-access movement, which seeks to make scientific and scholarly research available to as many people as possible at no cost.
Source: The New York Times, February 12, 2008

Higher Education Act

House, focusing on cost, approves Higher Education Act. The next step is for members of the House and Senate to meet in conference committee to write the compromise bill that will go to the president. Once the compromise bill is produced and signed by the president, the HEA will finally be reauthorized -- five years overdue.
Source: Inside Higher Education http://insidehighered.com/news/2008/02/08/hea

Monthly Labor Review-January 2008

+ State labor legislation enacted in 2007
+ Changes in State unemployment insurance legislation, 2007
+ Older workers: increasing their labor force participation and hours of work

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Demonstration Today: TLC Solutions

Brad Cole of TLC Solutions will demonstrate their integrated automatic library system at 2 p.m. in the conference room. The system includes the world's most advanced technologies, cataloging with access to millions of MARC records, and Web-based acquisitions that incorporate all the necessary resources into one place. This one of several automated systems that the library staff is considering.

ReferenceUSA Trial

The Goodwin ReferenceUSA trial is now set up and ready to go!
Please sign onto http://www.referenceusa.com/ and enter username/password listed below.

Username: goodwin
Password: college

The trial begins Tuesday, February 12, 2008 and expires at noon on Monday, February 18, 2008. Please try to use it and give me some feedback. Thank you very much. Information about the database was posted to this blog last week.

CQ Researcher this week: Fighting Crime

Introduction to the Report
Efforts to reduce violent crime are succeeding in some, but not all, areas of the country. The number of violent crimes fell by about 2 percent during the first half of 2007. But crime still grips parts of cities large and small, where guns remain plentiful and many young men are caught up in a cycle of attack and revenge. In Washington, D.C., for example, there were 181 killings last year, up from 169 in 2006. But in the capital and elsewhere, homicide rates are significantly lower than during the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s and early '90s. Experts attribute some of the improvement to better policing techniques, such as closely tracking neighborhood crime and quickly responding to upticks. But a countertrend of persistent violent crime is plaguing impoverished inner cities, where city officials and grassroots activists are struggling to keep young men from joining the ranks of victims and perpetrators. Read the full report (password protected).

End of the Week Library Notes:

40% of the new books that came in yesterday are already in circulation. Thank you, Goodwin community. Goodwin reads!

Vera Branch of info USA yesterday demonstrated a reference and research database, referenceUSA. Representatives from career services, institutional advancement, alumni services, and the library staff attended.This database is a powerful market research tool that contains data on millions of consumers and businesses coupled with census data and a lifestyle information. Information on accessing a free trial of ReferenceUSA will be available today.

New Titles for Early Childhood

Working together for Young Children
50 Early Childhood Strategies for Working and Communicating with Diverse Families
Observing and Understanding Child Development: Child Study Manual (with CD)
Write Now: Publishing with Young Authors
Colors of Learning: Integrating the Visual Arts Into the Early Childhood Curriculum
Early Care and Education Teaching Workforce at the Fulcrum: Agenda for Reform
Essential Literacy Workshop Book (with CD)

Mapping the Growth of Older America

This has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that I recently had a birthday. From the Brookings Institution, Mapping the Growth of older America: Seniors and Boomers in the Early 21st Century presents an overview of current and future geographic shifts of America's senior and pre-senior populations. It finds that emerging senior populations are different from those in the past, not only in their size, but also in their educational profiles, household diversity, greater gender equality, and potential for economic equality. The report offers interesting revelations and poses significant questions concerning the ramifications of the findings, with particular focus on the size, charateristics, and location of the Baby Boom generation of pre-seniors.
http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2007/0612demographics_frey.aspx

NLM Releases New Search Engine

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) has released a new search engine for MedlinePlus, MedlinePlus en espanol, and NLM website. NLM has selected search engine software from Vivisimo. The new search engine results feature enhanced relevance rankings, boldface search words in context, and an integrated tool to suggest alternative search terms and spelling. It also expands queries using synonyms specific to the sites and medical synonyms from the NLM Unified Medical Language System. Research is just getting too easy.
Source: Medical Library Association News

New Bibliography: Middle East

New Bibliography: Middle East
Comprehensive bibliography covers:* General Information* Arab Israeli Conflict* Culture and Language* Economic Issues* Foreign Policy — United States* Foreign Relations* Foreign Relations — United States* History* Hizballah* Human Rights* Islam* Kurds* Lebanon War, 2006* Oil and Petroleum Issues* Peace Process* Politics and Government* Security and Defense* Social Issues* Terrorism* Water Issues* Weapons of Mass Destruction

Source: Muir S. Fairchild Research Information Center (Air University)

Resource of the Week: Maps and More Maps

UN Environmental Programme Maps and Graphics Library
Are there any other map junkies out there besides me? Then you know that there is no such thing as too many maps. So enjoy this database at the UNEP/GRID- Arendal Maps and Graphics library currently containing more than 1,000 items.

What you need to know about UNEP/GRID-Arendal:
The mission of GRID-Arendal is to provide environmental information, communications and capacity building services for information management and assessment. They focus on making credible, science-based knowledge understandable to the public and supporting decision-making for sustainable development. Actually, there's a whole lot of stuff available on/from this website besides the maps and graphics library, including:
* Vital Ozone Graphics - resource kit for journalists
* Global Outlook for Ice & Snow report
* UNEP (coastal) Shelf Programme One Stop Data Shop
* The EarthWire news portal
* Globalis, an interactive world atlas

Administration Alert

Your competitors are reading these books. Shouldn't you?

Reframing Persistence Research to Improve Academic Success
Economic Inequality and Higher Education
Understanding and Reducing College Student Departure
College Student Retention
Reworking the Student Departure Puzzle
What Matters in College: Four Critical Years Revisited

These books are in the library now. Readers of the Blog can be the first to read them. Do I hear my phone ringing?

Bioethics Topics for Health Sciences

From the University of Washington School of Medicine we have a wide variety of topics in medical ethics. "Each topic begins with an overview and a series of commonly asked questions. In addition, there are several case-based scenarios with discussions linked to each topic. Links to additional readings and related websites are included at the end of topic."
http://depts.washington.edu/bioethx/topics/index.html

Selling the College to Students

Times are only getting tougher for small private liberal-arts colleges and small colleges in general, but a prominent management consultant said on Tuesday that they can help themselves by emphasizing their advantages.

The consultant, George Dehne, said that to attract the best students, small colleges need to update their marketing campaigns to advertise not just that they have small class sizes but why that is important.

Colleges should be emphasizing to students that "you have to be prepared—you can't hide in a small class," he said at a session of the annual meeting here of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. "You have to be able to defend your views. You are going to learn from others."
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education February 6

Where is the Goodwin Second Life Island?

S.A.T. Prep in Second Life
The Princeton Review already has its SAT LiveOnline courses, and Ohio University already has an island and an expert Second Life (SL) developer. Together, they are offering a series of SAT strategy sessions in a Second Life site within the Ohio University island at Second Life. Who is our Second Life developer?

Online Focus

U of Colorado Classroom Capture Supports Distance Learning for Military. Soldiers in the United States military who want to take college courses while they're deployed overseas face some tough challenges. But they can also represent an attractive market for universities.
Read Complete Article:
http://www.1105newsletters.com/t.do?id=862264:1202596
Source: Smart Classroom

WYSIWYG ???

All Acronyms
http://www.all-acronyms.com/

Maybe you should use this site if you don't know a WYSIWYG from a WHAP. The number of acronyms seems to grow by the day. Use this tool, which lists over 600,000 of them, to browse and search for acronyms across many subject areas: business, government, technology, military, and others. Once you get the definition, the site provides links to other sources that may provide further information. There are separate sections for abbreviations and acronyms for countries, the U.S., and Canadian postal organizations and time zones.
Source: Information Outlook January 2008

Entrepreneurship & American Economy

Each year, the Office of Advocacy of the U.S. Small Business Administration is tasked with documenting the importance of entrepreneurship to the American economy and with highlighting policy issues of relevance to small firms. This report summarizes the publications produced by the Office of Advocacy’s Office of Economic Research in 2007.
SBA — Research Publications, 2007

Finding Government Information

Did you know you can browse the US Code in LexisNexis Academic? The following is a list of browsable sources related to the USCS that you can access by entering their names (in quotes) in the Find option under the Sources tab.
USCS - Constitution of the United States
United States Code Service - Titles 1 through 50
USCS - Federal Rules Annotated
USCS - International Conventions
USCS-Title 26;Internal Revenue Code Annotated
CFR - Code of Federal Regulations

Electronic Reference Library Update

CREDOREFERENCE NOW HAS 300 BOOKS FROM 58 PUBLISHERS. The collection continues to expand and now includes over 3 million entries. 80 titles - 41 new and 39 updates - were added in the past year. You have easy access to all of this from the library page http://www.goodwincollege.org/library/index.htm.

This database recently added more in-depth, encyclopedic books, including 11 RUSA award-winners from Routledge (a $2700+ print value!). A few of the new titles include: Encyclopedia of African History • Encyclopedia of American Folk Art • Reader's Guide to the History of Science • Encyclopedia of Classical Philosophy • Cambridge Encyclopedia of Child Development • Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia including Atlas (with animations, sound clips, video and more) • Cambridge World History of Food • Contemporary Youth Culture: An International Encyclopedia. See a complete list of titles added in the past year.

AND COMING SOON - 7 key titles from Harvard University Presswill be added, including Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World • New Harvard Guide to Women's Health • The New Americans: A Guide to Immigration since 1965 • Keywords and Concepts In Evolutionary Developmental Biology. PLUS all 5 volumes of the Notable American Women series -- biographies of exceptional women from 1607 to the end of the 20th century. Exciting new titles are constantly being added to your subscription. See a complete list at corp.credoreference.com/forthcoming.

New Database Feature

Did you ever want to know whether our iCONN databases have a particular magazine, journal or newspaper? Now, there is a quick way to find that out without having to check the individual title lists of every database in iCONN. It is called "E-Journal Finder" and you will find it on a tab at the top of every iCONN search screen. It answers questions like:
Does iCONN have articles from Consumer Reports?
Can I get a Scientific American article from 1979?
What years of the Christian Science Monitor are in iCONN?

When you click on the tab, you will be taken to an intermediate page where you can select the appropriate version of E-Journal Finder: one for public/school databases and one for college databases. All titles listed are full-text titles. No authentication is required to access the E-Journal Finder site directly(http://www.iconn.org/staff/ejournals.aspx) or to search for a title.


The need to authenticate occurs when you click on a desired title in order to access its contents. If you are in a library, you will go directly to the title using IP authentication. If you are at home, you can access also if you have set up the virtual private network on your computer. (The instructions for doing this are on the library page and on the student intranet. If you have questions about this, call us.)

Black History Month Resource

In remembrance and celebration of Black History Month, Gale is providing free access to Biography Resource Center: African Americans for the entire month of February to all iCONN users. This resource is further described at http://gale.cengage.com/BRCAA

To access Biography Resource Center: African Americans, just access any Gale database from the Goodwin library page and from the Gale search screen select the link called "Change Databases" (or, in some cases, it is called "Gale Databases"), which will take you to the common menu listing of all Gale databases - from this menu you can then access this resource.
Gale is also providing promotional materials for Black History Month at http://gale.cengage.com/free_resources/bhm/

Homelnd Security Critical Releases

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.
Secure Borders and Open Doors: Preserving Our Welcome to the World in an Age of TerrorismSecure Borders and Open Doors Advisory Committee
National Response Framework: January 2008United States. Dept. of Homeland Security
Homeland Security Advisory Council Report of the Administration Transition Task ForceUnited States. Dept. of Homeland Security. Homeland Security Advisory Council
Changing Homeland Security: The Year in Review 2007Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Homeland Defense and Security

FREE TRIALS

I am pleased to provide you with free access to some of Gale's core databases to help our users find the authoritative information they need when they need it:
History Resource Center U.S
History Resource Center World
Literature Resource Center

Some of Gale's free trials are already in ICONN. The Health and Wellness Resource Center has a new interfaces and significant new content. Both Academic and General OneFile are now the world's largest two periodical resources and they are cross-searchable, giving our students access to more than 18,000 periodicals. Business and Company Resource Center recently was updated to include real-time financials, investment information, podcasts and blogs. These databases are already available to us.

Please use the link below to access these databases for the next two weeks, free of charge. And, as always, please let me know how I can help serve you better.
http://trials.gale.com/public/go/?key=1353_22222

Career Resources

EBSCO representatives demonstrated the Career Community and Coin Career Library online databasess here last week. An extended free trial is now available to any of you who are interested. Please contact me for user name and password. These resources provide high school and college students with information on careers and college programs as well as valuable assessment tools to help match their skills with the appropriate academic/career paths. The library staff would be happy to provide a demonstration of the features: careers, assessment, academic planning, skill development, curriculum and lesson plans, administrative reports/management.

Members of WALDO

The Goodwin Library is now a member of WALDO (Westchester Academic Library Directors Organization). Our membership was announced in the January newsletter. Also joining at this time are Boston University, School for International Training (VT), and Southern Vermont College. WALDO is a membership organization supporting the procurement and administration of electronic information services for libraries since 1982. Through WALDO, the library has purchased a discounted subscription to CQ Global Researcher. WALDO offers members free trials and discounted subscriptions to many electronic resources. Members also receive free access to The Charleston Advisor, the library industry's leading consumer report and review tool for electronic resources.

Free Health Research Toolkit

The Health Research and Educational Trust Disparities Toolkit team has released this updated Toolkit. The Toolkit is a Web-based tool that provides hospitals, health systems, clinics, and health plans information and resources for systematically collecting race, ethnicity, and primary language data from patients.

This Toolkit is useful for educating and informing health professionals about the importance of data collection, how to implement a framework to collect race, ethnicity, and primary language data and ultimately how to use these data to improve quality of care for all populations. For more information on how to use this Toolkit, click here.

Registration Now Free
To access the full Toolkit, including all resources, please click here to register. Because of the importance of collecting good data on patient race, ethnicity, and primary language data, HRET and the American Hospital Association have decided to allow access to the Toolkit for free without purchase.
Source: http://www.hretdisparities.org/

New Books

A Practical Guide to Connecticut School Law by Thomas B. Mooney of Shipman & Goodwin--a review of Connecticut school law offered as a guide to the various education law questions that arise most frequently.

Public School Law: Teachers' and Students' Rights by Cambron-McCabe, McCarthy and Thomas-a comprehensive treatment of the evolution and current status of the law governing public schools. A new chapter on the rights of children with disabilities has been added to reflect the expansion of litigation in this area.

New Database: CQ Global Researcher

The Goodwin Library has added a new database--CQ Global Researcher. This database provides students and faculty with definitive, in-depth coverage of global affairs from a number of international viewpoints. Available exclusively online, CQ Global Researcher offers focused, readable, single-topic reports on vital world issues. These reports make use of such popular sections as "current situation," "pro-con," and a new feature called "voices from abroad." By exposing students to a wide range of viewpoints CQ Global Researcher provides a comprehensive snapshot of today's most pressing issues and supports the global perspective goals of the college.

Each single-themed, 12,000-word CQ Global Researcher report is researched and written by an experienced observer of the given issue. The consistent, reader-friendly organization provides researchers with an introductory overview; background and assessment of the current situation; pro/con statements from representatives of opposing positions; chronology on the topic, followed by short features for extensive context; a sampling of related international perspectives; maps and graphs; bibliographies of key sources; next steps for additional reading; and author profiles. The current report is "China in Africa: Is China Gaining Control of Africa's Resources?",

Most Literate U.S. Cities 2007

Drawing from a variety of available data resources, the America’s Most Literate Cities study ranks the 69 largest cities (population 250,000 and above) in the United States. This study focuses on six key indicators of literacy: newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment, and Internet resources. Dr. John W. Miller, president of Central Connecticut State University, is the author of this study.
Source: http://www.ccsu.edu/Amlc/

Distance Learning using Second Life

This the brave new world in college education that we all have to adapt to. I just read recently about a college professor whose surgery keeps him homebound. He teaches his courses in Second Life -- http://secondlife.com/ -- which his colleagues in his department can hardly imagine.

How do his students respond to this? Well, some of his students employ the following strategy to write an assigned paper:
- Flickr -- to get ideas for images to include in report (or store their own images there)
-Del-icio-us -- to store bookmarked research sites (from the library home page, no doubt)
- Wikipedia -- to clarify the definitions of key terms
- Consults relevant blogs
-Searches YouTube -- to find videos related to her topic
- Checks in with friends at Facebook -- to see if anyone has ideas about the project

Critical Releases in Homeland Security

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. Here are the latest documents:

Pandemic Preparedness: The Need for a Public Health-Not a Law Enforcement/National Security-ApproachAmerican Civil Liberties Union

Maritime SecurityLexington Institute

Keeping an Eye on an Unruly Neighbor: Chinese Views of Economic Reform and Stability in North KoreaCenter for Strategic and International Studies (Washington, D.C.); United States Institute of Peace

Information Security Breach at TSA: The Traveler Redress WebsiteUnited States. Congress. House. Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

How Crime in the United States Is Measured [January 3, 2008]Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service
Source: Homeland Security Digital Library

Reel Fiction: Read the Book, See the Movie

What is better in cold, snowy January and February than reading books and watching movies? Some recent and classic books that have been transferred to screen would be a great combination. Some suggestions:

Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men (a Coen Brothers film)
Ian McEwan's Atonement (Joe Wright, director)
Marjarie Satrapi's Persepolis (She wrote it and directed the movie)
Dennis Lehane's Gone Baby Gone (Ben Affleck, director)
Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (Three Academcy Awards)
Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (won all five major Oscars)
Dorothy Johnson's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (a John Ford western, of course)

What do you want to add to the list? Post your suggestions! Make a New Year's resolution to involve yourself in Web 2.0.

Science in America

Are we falling behind in science and technology?

Many leaders in business, government and education warn that a shortage of scientists is jeopardizing the nation's world leadership in science and technology, along with its military supremacy and high standard of living. For a short-term fix, they propose loosening immigration restrictions to allow more high-skilled workers from overseas. Long term, they say the United States must greatly improve pre-college education, produce more college graduates with mathematics and science degrees and increase investment in research and development. Others argue the alarm is just a scare tactic by employers who want to import more high-tech workers and pay them low wages. Across the country, meanwhile, businesses are joining thousands of schools in innovative efforts to convince more children to study science and to teach them more effectively.

Does the United States need to import more foreign-born scientists to maintain a robust economy? Does the U.S. education system discourage young Americans from studying science?
Is becoming highly educated the key to long-term job security?

To read the Overview of this week's report, click here.To view this week's entire report on CQ Researcher Online, click here. For that last "click here" you will need the user name and password from the library staff.
Source: CQ Researcher

Agents of Change

Since all politicians now are agents of change and will "change" the country and "change" the world, may we suggest they consult a thesaurus for some synonyms? It would make listening to them so much more pleasant. For example:

Main Entry:
change
Part of Speech:
noun 1
Definition:
alteration
Synonyms:
about-face*, addition, adjustment, advance, break, compression, contraction, conversion, correction, development, difference, distortion, diversification, diversity, enlargement, innovation, metamorphosis, modification, modulation, mutation, novelty, permutation, reconstruction, refinement, remodeling, reversal, revision, revolution, shift, surrogate, switch, tempering, transformation, transition, transmutation, turn, turnover, variance, variation, variety, vicissitude

Source: http://www.thesaurus.com/

Business Information

I often rely on this general business site that compiles "approved" links in one place. CEO Express serves as a one-stop guide to a myriad of business resources on the Internet. It logically organizes most major classes of resources including news, business and technology magazines, government sites, international business resources, and company research sites on a single page.
http://www.ceoexpress.com/

Children's Author now Reading Ambassador

Jon Scieszka, author of "The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales" and the "Time Warp Trio" series, received the imprimatur of the Library of Congress last week as the first National Ambassador for Young People's Literature.

The appointment comes at a time when declines in Americans' reading proficiency and time spent reading have been widely noted -- most recently in "To Read or Not to Read," a report issued by the National Endowment for the Arts. For many reasons, including economic competitiveness, it is "a matter of crucial national importance" that young people read, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington said.
Source: National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)

Khaled Hosseini's Most Important Books

Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner has s become an international bestseller, published in 38 countries and now a popular movie. It is one of the books we share most often with other libraries through interlibrary loan. Many of you have read it. His second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, was published last year. and once again is a best seller. Hosseini recently told Newsweek about his five most important books. One book on the list was Shahnameh: The persian Book of Kings by Abolqasem Ferdowsi, an 11th century epic and a jewel of Persiana literature. Read about all five titles on Hosseini's list.

Boomer Generation Highlights

RELATIONSHIPS The average 62-year-old American……is married to the same spouse, who is 60 years old.…has 2.4 children over the age of 18, who are not living at home.…has two grandchildren, also not living at their home. Neither parent is alive, so they are truly empty-nesters.
HEALTH They……are in good to very good health.…have not experienced any major health problem in the past 12 months.…feel that they have done a good job of maintaining their health.…feel that their own health status and the age at death of their parents and grandparents most influences their own life expectancy.
EDUCATION They have at least some college education.
EMPLOYMENT They work full-time for an employer, who provides a defined benefit pension plan and health benefits.
Source: MetLife Mature Market Institute

Housing Bust Shatters Migration Patterns

Analysis of the new Census Bureau annual estimates of state population changes for 2006-7 shows that the sinking housing market has yanked back high-flying states like Nevada and Arizona. An even bigger tug in growth occurred in Florida, another housing-boom driven state. With credit harder to get and the disappearance of housing deals, the allure of these states appears to have dimmed. New York and some New England States are seeing fewer residents leave.
Source: Brooking Institue-Migration Report

CQ Researcher: Oil Jitters

Vastly increased demand for oil in rapidly modernizing China and India, warfare and instability in the Middle East and the weakening U.S. dollar have revived fears of a new energy crisis. Gasoline shortages — and the accompanying lines at gas stations — were thought to have ended with the Jimmy Carter administration. But as 2008 began, American drivers were paying more than $3 a gallon. Read the full report in the CQ Researcher on the library home page. Ask the library staff for user name and password.

Source: CQ Researcher

What They are Reading on College Campuses

1. I Am America (And So Can You!) by Stephen Colbert
2. Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert

3. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Màrquez

4. Our Dumb World: The Onion's Atlas of the Planet Earth, 73rd Editionby The Onion

5. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

6. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks

7. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

8. What Is the What by Dave Eggers

9. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
10. The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan

Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education

Generation Y Uses Libraries!

Generation Y Reports Greater Library Use Than Older Groups.
Students may not be abandoning libraries for the Internet, as some people have worried. The Pew Internet & American Life Project released a report Sunday that says Generation Y—18-to-30-year-olds, in particular—is more likely to turn to libraries to ferret out information than their older counterparts are. Adults do use the Internet to gain information more than any other source, including government agencies and experts, according to the report. However, 18-to-30-year-olds said they used library resources—mostly computers—more than older groups.
Steve Bell, associate university librarian for research and instructional services at Temple University, writes: “Now although the report mostly deals with public-library use, I would bet that a good number of respondents in this age category have regular access to an academic library.”

Bell admits that it might be too soon to jump to this conclusion, and the Pew report concludes that libraries should work to better understand why information seekers might or might not use them. It could be, however, that rather than the Internet replacing libraries, it creates a new niche for them to fill.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

Year in Questons 2007: Answers

I gave you the quiz yesterday by Ben Schott from the New York Times. about events, people, and places in 2007 news. Here are the answers.

You can view the complete quiz--questions and answers (pdf) here.

Public Access Mandate Made Law

President Bush has signed into law the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2007 (H.R. 2764), which includes a provision directing the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to provide the public with open online access to findings from its funded research. This is the first time the U.S. government has mandated public access to research funded by a major agency. Researchers will now be required to deposit electronic copies of their peer-reviewed manuscripts into the National Library of Medicine’s online archive, PubMed Central. Full texts of the articles will be publicly available and searchable online in PubMed Central no later than 12 months after publication in a journal. Congress has just unlocked the taxpayers’ $29 billion investment in NIH.
Source: Alliance for Taxpayer Access

Book Recommendation From Jack Matthews

Leading Change by John Kotter recommended by Jack Matthews, acting chair of the Business Department

Kotter, Professor of Leadership at Harvard Business School, shares his insights regarding organizations for the twenty-first century. He compares the structure, systems, and culture of the Twentieth Century with those of the Twenty-First Century and argues that organizations can't get where they need to be through incremental change.

He makes a convincing case that the twenty-first-century employee will need to know more about both leadership and management than his or her counterpart. Kotter suggests that the mental habits needed to support lifelong learning are: (1) risk taking, (2) humble self-reflection, (3) solicitation of ideas and opinions of others, (4) careful listening and (5) openness to new ideas. The last chapter of book includes a flow chart that succinctly outlines the relationship of lifelong learning, leadership skills, and the capacity to succeed in the future.

Leading Change should encourage a commitment to the process of change at Goodwin College and help us develop new leadership skills. Great recommendation!

The Year in Questions from the New York Times

Ben Schott on the Op-Ed page this week of the New York Times asked us "to cast our minds back on the incidents and accidents, alarums and excursions that populated the year 2007. This s a test. No conferring. Well, perhaps a little." Answers will appear tomorrow. Here is the test of your memory of events and people last year. You may surprise yourself.
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/opinion/20071230_Questions.pdf

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