Reading Banned Books

Banned Books Week, which runs September 27 to October 3 this year, draws attention to the issue of censorship and how it can best be combated.

Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read is observed during the last week of September each year. Observed since 1982, this annual American Library Association event reminds Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted. This year, 2008, marks BBW's 27th anniversary.

BBW celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met. Check the blog each day next week for more information.

I'll Take My Lecture to Go, Please

It looks like students can be open-minded after all: When provided with the option to view lectures online, rather than just in person, a full 82 percent of undergraduates kindly offered that they’d be willing to entertain an alternative to showing up to class and paying attention in real time.

A new study released yesterday suggests not only a willingness but a “clear preference” among undergraduates for “lecture capture,” the technology that records, streams and stores what happens in the classroom for concurrent or later viewing.

Source: Inside Higher Education September 23 2008

Respiratory Class: APA Paper

Click here for a copy of a research paper in APA format titled "Can Medication Cure Obesity in Children?" This is a research paper written by Luisa Mirano, a student in a psychology class. The assignment was to write a review of the literature paper documented with APA style citations and references. This sample research paper was published in The Bedford Handbook by Diana Hacker. The library staff is prepared to help you with research and the APA format.

Tell-All Campus Tour: Unigo

"The Tell-All Campus Tour" is an article about Unigo in yesterday's New York Times magazine section. Unigo is the world’s largest platform for college students to share reviews, photos, videos, documents, and more with students on their campus and across the country.

Jordan Goldman, orignator of Unigo, says it’s also the best place for high school students to find out what life is really like at America’s colleges, and to make friends to help them find the school that’s right for them. Unigo is the result of a nationwide grassroots movement to get the truth out about college life, and it’s growing bigger every day. The story of how this young man brought this idea to Internet life is fascinating. Read the article here. To see the site itself, go to www.unigo.com.



Source: New York Times September 21 2008

Constitution Day Quiz

GOODWIN COLLEGE CELEBRATES CONSTITUTION DAY
WHAT’S YOUR CONSTITUTION IQ? TAKE THE QUIZ NOW!

1. Our country’s first constitution was called:
a. the Articles of Confederation
b. the Declaration of Independence
c. the “Federalist Papers”
d. the Emancipation Proclamation

2. Laws for the United States are made by:
a. the President
b. the Senate
c. Congress
d. the Supreme Court

3. The longest possible time a person could now
serve as President is:
a. 4 years
b. 8 years
c. 10 years
d. 12 years

4. A man accused of a crime in court has a right to:
a. hear the witnesses against him
b. be tried wherever he wants
c. have any judge he wants
d. change courts

5. Invoking the Fifth Amendment means an accused
man:
a. refuses to testify against himself
b. refuses to be tried again
c. demands a grand jury
d. wants to appeal his case

6. Our first Vice-President was:
a. Alexander Hamilton
b. Thomas Jefferson
c. Benjamin Franklin
d. John Adams
7. The Bill of Rights is:
a. the first ten amendments
b. the Fifteenth Amendment
c. the entire Constitution
d. all of the amendments

8. If neither the President nor Vice-President can
serve, the position would be filled by:
a. the Speaker of the House
b. the Chief Justice
c. the elected President of the Senate
d. the Secretary of State

9. The major department head who is appointed by
the President to deal with foreign countries is the:
a. Secretary of Defense
b. Secretary of State
c. Attorney General
d. Secretary of Commerce

10. The President is elected if he:
a. wins a majority of the electoral votes
b. wins most of the country’s vote
c. wins all of the States’ votes
d. wins most of the States’ votes

ANSWERS ARE AVAILABLE ON ANOTHER ENTRY ON THIS BLOG.
•Learn more about the Constitution — the people, the events, the landmark cases—lots of information in the library, on the library page, and on the library blog.
•Be an informed citizen!
•Register to vote! Registration forms are available in the library.
•Vote!

Constitution day
September 17, 2008

Answers to the Constitution Quiz

ANSWERS TO THE CONSTITUTION QUIZ

1-a Articles of Confederation
2-c Congress
3-b two terms or 8 years. Under the 22nd Amendment, a vice president succeeding to the presidency would still be eligible to two elected terms provided he had served not more than two years of the unexpired term—10 years.
4-a hear the witnesses against him
5-a refuses to testify against himself
6-d John Adams
7-a the first 10 amendments
8-a Speaker of the House
9-b Secretary of State
10-a wins a majority of the electoral vote

Constitution Day

Today we join schools across the country to celebrate Constitution Day. On September 17, 1787, 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention gathered in Independence Hall in Philadelphia to sign the document that would determine the structure and function of our federal government. The original Constitution is on permanent display in the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom and the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

It is one of the oldest written constitutions in the world. Its genius lay in its solutions to such problems as balancing strong government against too much individual or institutional power and preventing large states from dominating smaller ones.

The first issue was dealt with by dividing the government into three branches. The second issue, negotiating power between states, was resolved by having a senate with two senators from each state and a House of Representatives based on population. Four years after the Constitution was written, the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights specified a list of individual freedoms, including freedom of speech, assembly, and worship.

U.S. Copyright Records

U.S. Copyright Records are Available to download.

This article from Google BookSearch explains resources for determining the copyright status of a work, and links to a new downloadable XML file Google's engineers have created from US Copyright Office records.

Financial Literacy on College Campuses

Financial-literacy training is gaining ground on college campuses, according to a survey released today by Student Lending Analytics, a college advisory firm.

Nearly 40 percent of financial-aid administrators surveyed said their colleges provided financial-literacy training to students. Of those who said their colleges did not offer such a program, half indicated the institution planned to start one in the next 12 to 18 months. Only 15 percent of respondents said that financial-literacy programs at their colleges were mandatory for students.

The most popular topics covered in such programs were budgeting, planning for loan repayment, credit cards, identity theft, and understanding a credit report, according to the survey, which covered 200 financial-aid professionals and was conducted from September 3 to 5. Almost 90 percent of respondents said such training was handled by the financial-aid office on their campus.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

Significance of Ramadan

When he was forty years old, a man named Ubu'l Kassim went into the Cave of Hira (located in Saudi Arabia) during the Arabic month of Ramadan in the year 610 C.E. A world-changing event began when, alone in the cave, he heard someone say the Arabic word "Iqraa!" Ubu'l Kassim (later known as the Prophet Muhammad) thought he must be dreaming. Muslims believe the voice was that of Gabriel, an angel who began dictating - to Muhammad - the words one now sees in the Koran. Ramadan is significant for Muslims worldwide because it is the month when the Koran was first dictated. This year, Ramadan began at sunset on September 1st.

Xi'an Ancient Culture Festival.

In September we have Labor day and Constitution Day. In September, China celebrates the Xi'an Ancient Culture Festival for the entire month. Beautiful Xi'an adds some fine traditional dance, music, song and opera to its formidable list of attractions for this festival. The Ancient Culture Festival celebrates traditions that originate back in the mists of the past 4000 years - at the very dawn of Chinese civilisation.

Xi'an is a must-see destination for any traveller to China. From 1000 BC to 1000 AD it served as the imperial capital for 11 dynasties, and its famous landmarks are a fascinating history lesson. The highlight for most people is the underground Terracotta Army, just north of Xi'an. Vault one alone contains 1000 figures of solidiers, each with individual facial expressions, dating from the last centuries BC and only discovered in 1974. The Banpo Museum is the excavated site of a Neolithic village - confirming Xi'an as among the oldest cities in the world.

Source: New England Library Association

Classroom Assessment Techniques for College Teachers

This revised and greatly expanded handbook of Classroom Assessment Techniques o by Angelo and Cross offers college teachers how-to advice on classroom assessment, including what classroom assessment entails and how it works. It includes twelve case studies that detail the real-life classroom experiences of teachers carrying out successful classroom assessment projects, fifty classroom assessment techniques, step-by-step procedures for administering the techniques, and practical advice on how to analyze your data. This book is now available in the Goodwin Library.

Learning-Centered Assessment: Important New Book

Learner-Centered Assessment on College Campuses by Huba and Freed integrates current thinking and research regarding the learning of undergraduate students with principles of best practice in assessment and teaching. The book helps us see the connection among three powerful trends in higher education today: the focus on learning and learners, the emphasis on the assessment of learning, and the need to continually improve what those in higher education do. Grounded in principles of constructivist learning theory and continuous improvement, the book provides opportunities to make connections with what we already know about assessment, integrate new information with current knowledge, and try new approaches to enhance the learning of students.

The authors emphasize the shift from a teacher-centered paradigm of instruction to a learner-centered paradigm. The book also offers practical approaches to help formulate intended learning outcomes, gather feedback from students to guide instruction, and develop scoring criteria for guiding and evaluating student work. Reading the book will help us learn how to assess students' ability to think critically, address enduring and emerging issues and problems in their disciplines, and use portfolios to promote and evaluate student learning. Numerous questions to guide implementation, as well as examples from a variety of disciplines and institutions are provided. This is a must for administrators and/or those in faculty development. It is available now in the Goodwin Library.

Get Moving and Think Better

Exercise is strongly associated with improving cognition. As the majority of mortality benefit of exercise is at the highest level of cognition, and declines as cognition declines, the net effect of exercise should be to improve cognition at the population level, even with more people living longer. This information comes from "Changes in Cognition and Mortality in Relation to Exercise in Late Life: A Population Based Study."
Source: PLoS ONE September 3rd, 2008

CareLINK Web Based Training Directions

Nursing 100 students, save yourself some frustration. Directions on accessing the CareLINK Web Based Training from the library computers are available at the reference desk and on the bulletin board in my office.

Dropout and Completion Rates in the U.S. Report

This report builds upon a series of National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reports on high school dropout and completion rates that began in 1988. It presents estimates of rates for 2006 and provides data about trends in dropout and completion rates over the last three decades (1972-2006), including characteristics of dropouts and completers in these years. Report highlights include: The averaged freshman graduation rate (AFGR), which provides an estimate of the percentage of public high school students who graduate with a regular diploma 4 years after starting 9th grade, was 74.7 percent for the class of 2005. Students living in low-income families were approximately four times more likely to drop out of high school between 2005 and 2006 than were students living in high-income families. In October 2006, approximately 3.5 million civilian noninstitutionalized 16- through 24-year-olds were not enrolled in high school and had not earned a high school diploma or alternative credential.
Source: National Center for Education Statistics

How Should We Teach the 'Digital Natives'?

Last month, Thomas H. Benton in the Chronicle of Higher Education reviewed a collection of recent books "arguing that Americans, particularly those now entering college, have been rendered "stupid" by a convergence of factors including traditional anti-intellectualism, consumer culture, the entertainment industry, political correctness, religious fundamentalism, and post-modern relativism, just to name some of the usual suspects." This week Benton's Part 2 on Stupidity is available in the Chronicle. He is an English professor who grades at least 1,000 essays a year. His focus is on those skills, not on math or science.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education Section C September 5, 2008

What the Survey Didn't Say...

I am an avid listener to BBC World News and a reader of BBC News magazine. The magazine ran a series recently on understanding surveys, polls, studies and statistics. Since they are everywhere (especially during an election year), wouldn't it be good to have the mental agility to separate the wheat from the chaff? In the first of a weekly series, author Michael Blastland gives some hints at getting to grips with surveys. Here is installment one.
Source: BBC World News

McCain & Obama on Healthcare Reform

The New England Journal of Medicine published an article in August comparing the McCain and Obama plans for U.S. healthcare reform. This is valuable information from a trusted source for health science and nursing students--and all of the rest of us.

Here is the first paragraph of that article. "In the face of escalating costs, uneven quality of care, and the growth of the uninsured population, there is broad agreement that the U.S. health care system requires reform. However, Democrats and Republicans remain sharply divided over how to reform it, as evidenced by the health care plans offered by the parties' presidential candidates. The ambitious reform agendas of Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Barack Obama (D-IL) would take the U.S. health care system in very different directions."

Read the entire article by Jonathan Oberlander, Ph.D.
"The Partisan Divide: The McCain and Obama Plans for U.S. Healthcare Reform."

WildFilmHistory

WildFilmHistory is a unique multi-media guide to the history and heritage of wildlife filmmaking. As well as bringing together the most important wildlife films, the project is collecting ‘behind the scenes’ photographs, and recording oral histories with industry pioneers. This historically valuable material has been donated by the most famous names in Natural History broadcasting, as well as from a whole host of specialist and private collections. The resulting collection is freely available at www.wildfilmhistory.org. as an interactive multi-media resource, and is being stored at high resolution in the WildFilmHistory media vault for the benefit of future generations.

Consumer Health Websites

The Medical Library Association has a "top ten" list of the most useful consumer health websites. Each week we are featuring one of these. This week it is cancer.gov.

Cancer.gov is the official website for The National Cancer Institute (NCI), a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), one of eight agencies that compose the Public Health Service (PHS) in the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). The NCI, established under the National Cancer Act of 1937, is the Federal Government's principal agency for cancer research and training. NCI coordinates the National Cancer Program, which conducts and supports research, training, health information dissemination, and other programs with respect to the cause, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of cancer, rehabilitation from cancer, and the continuing care of cancer patients and the families of cancer patients.

Source: Cancer.gov (http://www.cancer.gov/)

Science Videos Online

http://sciencehack.com/

ScienceHack is a unique video search engine for science videos. Every video is screened and approved based on accuracy and quality by scientists. The fields of science are featured on the main page. Search for science experiments, science projects, science movies and science news. The project aims to index every science video on the Internet. Popular categories to search include physics, checmistry, space, psychology, robotics, biology, mathematics, computer science, nature, green energy, and civil engineering. The latest videos include:
quantum mechanics
wind turbines make bat lungs explode,
solve the cube in less than 100 moves
slime mold and mushrooms
from cell to embryo

Welcome New Students

All new students are invited (enthusiastically encouraged even) to come to the Library. Drop by anytime to meet the library staff and learn about how you can take advantage of the library's great resources. You will be studying in our new library overlooking the Connecticut river in only a few months. We are delighted that you have chosen goodwin College.

Patient Care for Diverse Populations

A new grant from The Commonwealth Fund will be used by The Joint Commission to revise and develop accreditation standards for culturally competent patient-centered care in hospitals across America. Access a free copy online of the latest research report, "One Size Does Not Fit All: Meeting the Needs of Diverse Populations." (60 pages)

This standards development initiative builds upon The Joint Commission’s ongoing Hospitals, Language, and Culture: A Snapshot of the Nation study that examines how hospitals in the United States respond to the diverse cultural and language needs of their patients. The Institute of Medicine’s “Crossing the Quality Chasm” report identified patient-centered and equitable care as important elements of quality. However, The Joint Commission study found that practices used to promote effective communication and cultural competence – critical elements of patient-centered and equitable care - vary widely from hospital to hospital.

Source: Nursing & Allied Health Resources Section of the Medical Library Association

New Periodical: Trusteeship

Issues of Trusteeship, the publication of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB), are now available in the library. Trusteeship reports trends, issues, and practices in higher education to help board members and chief executives better understand their distinctive and complementary roles and to strengthen board performance. Digital Trusteeship is an interactive, electronic version of Trusteeship magazine.

New Online Reference Book

Propaganda and Mass Persuasion: A Historical Encyclopedia, 1500 to the Present has been added to the CredoReference list of online reference books. This is a truly international, authoritative A-Z guide to five centuries of propaganda, in both wartime and peacetime, which covers key moments, techniques, concepts, and some of the most influential propagandists in history.

What were the secrets of both Hitler's and Stalin's success? Why did so many Americans approve of Senator Joseph McCarthy? How did FDR maintain his image with the electorate? The answers to these questions can be found in the realm of propaganda: the art of mass political persuasion. This fascinating survey provides a comprehensive introduction to propaganda, its changing nature, its practitioners, and its impact on the past five centuries of world history.

CredoReference is prominently displayed on the library page.

Educational Leadership

The library has joined the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) and now receives their publication, Educational Leadership. It is published monthly throughout the school year (except for the combined issue in December/January). Our first issue will arrive in September, but we have received a complimentary May issue as a sample of the tips, techniques, and case studies in this publication. The May issue focuses on reshaping high schools. It is available in the library.

Sol LeWitt Retrospectives

An originator of “conceptual art,” Sol LeWitt was born in Hartford and lived mostly in Chester until his death in April last year. LeWitt consistently pushed the limits of art history and contemporary trends, making him one of the most influential artists of the mid-Twentieth Century. LeWitt’s monumental wall drawings—produced for public and private spaces since the 1960s—may be the works for which he is best known. The New York Times described his wall paintings as “ecstatically colored and jazzy.”

Nearly an acre of these wall drawings are now in preparation for a fall showing at MASS MoCa in North Adams, MA. The Williams College Museum of Art also features LeWitt’s art in November. If you happen to take drive to the Berkshires this fall, don’t miss these exhibits. Few art venues have space to display massive wall drawings. A retrospective also takes place at Yale University Art Gallery with two wall drawings on display. This is a major collaboration between these three institutions conceived by the Yale gallery before LeWitt’s death.

This is special opportunity to view the work of an important American artist. See it this fall: don't waituntil 2033. For further information on the exhibitions, read the article from the Yale gallery.

Sol LeWitt A Wall Drawing Retrospective: Two wall drawings currently on view
Yale Art Gallery

Sol LeWitt: A Wall of Drawing Retrospective
MASS MoCa
Opens Nov. 16 and will be on view for 25 years

The ABCDs of Sol LeWitt
Williams College Museum of Art
Nov. 14 through March 8, 2009

Nursing & Health Science: PubMed Update

PubMed Now Indexes Videos of Experiments and Protocols in Life Sciences!
PubMed Central, the National Library of Medicine’s online database, is now indexing videos from The Journal of Visualized Experiments. According to the publication’s official blog, JoVE is “the first video-journal to ever be accepted for publication in PubMed.” The Goodwin Library Staff strongly commends this PubMed decision to support new ways of communicating information,

The online, open-access journal publishes videos of experiments and protocols in the biological and life sciences and offers its video-articles to science bloggers to illustrate their posts. You will see some of them featured on this blog weekly.

Watch the article "Human Embryonic Stem Cells: Starting Culture From Frozen Cells"
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education August 21

Resources for English Teachers

Quality, Value, Flexibility—
NCTE resources delivered to your desktop!

With National Council of Teachers of English Web seminar series, you’ll get high-quality, professional development delivered by some of NCTE’s most experienced presenters in an easy-to-use format that is perfect for individuals or learning communities. I know spending a day away from your classroom isn’t always an option. Whether you’re participating on your own or planning professional development for an early release day, you’ll find these sessions informative, interactive and a great value!

What is a Web seminar?
NCTE Web seminars are interactive, multimedia professional development experiences delivered over the Internet. During a Web seminar, attendees are able to participate in the session by responding to polls, providing feedback on the whiteboard, and asking/answering questions in the chat area. Elluminate Live!TM, the application used for the NCTE Web seminars, ensures that all participants are in sync, regardless of Internet connection speeds.

See Frequently Asked Questions

Book to Read Again and Again: Native Son

Richard Wright's story of his childhood, Black Boy, made him one of America's most popular writers in the 1940s. In addition to Black Boy, which he dedicated to his 3-year-old daughter, he also wrote Native Son, a fictional account of a black youth in the segregated North.

Native Son tells the story of Bigger Thomas, an uneducated black man from Chicago who unintentionally kills a young white woman. Bigger is a study in contrasts: Strong, ignorant and angry, he's also confused, vulnerable and at a loss about how to deal with a racist society. Wright's novel makes Bigger into America's native son — the offspring of a nation's bigotry.

(from the library's "Books to Read Again and Again" shelf)

Workforce Clinging to the Status Quo?

Here is today's management tip from Harvard Business Publishing.

Your major change initiative won't succeed if the people who must lead the charge lack a sense of urgency--the conviction that the status quo is dangerous. How to spot a lack of urgency so you can address it? Red flags include the following:
1) Managers over-rely on consultants to analyze the business and recommend changes.
2)Key people aren't participating in the task force charged with executing the initiative.
3)Task-force members procrastinate in setting up their meetings.
4)Task-force discussions only generate complaints about the company's situation, not active decisions.
5)Task-force members focus more on office politics and finger-pointing than on what's causing the company's problems.

(This Management Tip was adapted from Chapter 2 of A Sense of Urgency, bestselling author John P. Kotter's latest book from Harvard Business Press.)

Terrorism: Locating Sources

Doing research on this topic requires not only knowing the definition of the topic but looking at all of the racest involved and breaking down and analyzing the topic of research to insure looking in all the relevant sources available. Here is a list prepared by Kay Collins, U.S. government information librarian at the University of California.
Source: CRL News June 2008

Global Researcher: Race for the Arctic:

With oil prices soaring, revelations that the Arctic could contain up to 22 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas have given extra impetus to an international race to claim the region's $1 trillion in oil and other riches. Russia kick-started the race last summer when it stunned the world by planting its flag on the North Pole seabed — two miles below the Arctic Ocean. Global warming has dramatically shrunk the ice covering the ocean, raising the prospect of new, shorter transcontinental shipping routes and spurring the United States, Canada, Russia, Denmark and Norway to begin gathering data to prove they own large swaths of offshore Arctic territory. But environmentalists warn that tougher international rules are needed — possibly an Arctic treaty — to prevent energy exploration from exacerbating global warming and damaging the fragile region. The Inuit and other indigenous groups also fear their concerns will be ignored in the dash to extract riches from the region.
Source: Full report available online (password protected)

CQ Researcher: Political Conventions

Political Conventions
Have they outlived their usefulness?

The Democrats and Republicans share a fundamental goal for their upcoming national conventions: to produce scripted television shows that will boost their candidates' prospects in the general election without showcasing any intra-party squabbling. Under that scenario, convention delegates seem to have nothing to do but cheer Barack Obama and John McCain, whose nominations were virtually assured before. . . .

Source: CQ Researcher August 8 available online (password protected)

What the Goodwin Community is Reading This Month

Blindness (Saramago)
Boleyn Inheritance (Gregory)
Cheating at Canasta (trevor)
Eat Pray Love (Gilbert)
Flat Belly Diet (Vaccariello)
Friday Night Knitting Club (Jacobs)
Game Changer (Lafley & Charan)
Gravedigger's Daughter (Oates)
Twenty Years at Hull House (Addams)
Last Lecture (Pausch)
No Country for Old Men (McCarthy)
Secret Life of Bees (Kidd)
You Never Call! You Never Write! (Antler)

Focus on International Education

In a set of policy recommendations for the next administration released this week, NAFSA: Association of International Educators urges presidential leadership for a “revived public diplomacy” that would put international education and exchange front and center in the effort to repair the country’s reputation in the world and advance its global leadership.

The report goes on to set out specific policy recommendations in the areas of attracting international students and scholars; internationalizing U.S. education, especially through study abroad; and bolstering educational exchanges and volunteer-service programs. Among the priorities outlined in the report are: passage and implementation of the Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Foundation Act; security and immigration policies that strike a better balance between control and openness; a proactive approach to attracting the world’s talented students and scholars to the United States; and expanding support for time-tested educational exchanges and the Peace Corps. Read the entire report HERE.

Online Journal of Nursing Informatics

The Online Journal of Nursing Informatics (OJNI) is a professional, refereed, electronic journal for healthcare professionals who are interested in nursing informatics. Topical areas covered deal with the theoretical and practical aspects of nursing informatics as it relates to the art of nursing.

OJNI is published every 4 months and is launched at the end of February, June, and October. OJNI publishes peer-reviewed, original, high quality scientific papers, review articles, practice-based articles, and databases related to nursing informatics. And it's free!

Have You Read?

Now that we are more than half way through 2008, have you read any of the 10 best books of 2007 (New York Times list)? Here is the list:
FICTION
Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas*
Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson*
Savage Detectives by Robert Balafio
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris*
Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson*

NONFICTION
Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Little Heathens: Hart Times & High Spirts on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish*
The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court by J. Toobin*
Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History by Linda Colley*
The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Rosa*

*Available in the Goodwin Library. The other two are available through interlibrary loan.

An Academic in America: On Stupidity

A cartload of recent books suggests that it's time to reverse the customer-service mentality plaguing academe. Here is an excerpt from English teacher Thomas Benton's article in the Chronicle of Higher Education yesterday. Read the entire article here.

"'No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public,' said H.L. Mencken in the era of Babbitt and the Scopes "monkey" trial. Several generations later, one might speculate that no publisher has ever lost money with a book accusing Americans — particularly young ones — of being stupid.

As an English professor, I can attest to the power of that element in American culture, as can just about anyone in any academic field without direct, practical applications. When a stranger asks me what I do, I usually just say, "I'm a teacher." The unfortunate follow-up remarks — usually about political bias in the classroom and sham apologies for their poor grammar meant to imply that I am a snob — usually make me wish I had said, "I sell hydraulic couplers," an answer more likely to produce hums of respectful incomprehension.

Now, in the post-9/11 era, American anti-intellectualism has grown more powerful, pervasive, and dangerous than at any time in our history, and we have a duty — particularly as educators — to foster intelligence as a moral obligation. Or at least that is the urgent selling point of a cartload of books published in the past several months."

(Thomas H. Benton is the pen name of William Pannapacker, an associate professor of English at Hope College, in Holland, Mich. He welcomes mail directed to his attention at careers@chronicle.com.)

Is Information on the Internet Reliable?

Wikipedia banned Stephen Colbert, host of Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report," from editing articles on the popular online site after he made joke edits. So how reliable is the Internet really?

That is the subject of this week's CQ Researcher available online in the library. The Internet has been a huge boon for information-seekers. In addition to sites maintained by newspapers and other traditional news sources, there are untraditional sources ranging from videos, personal Web pages and blogs to postings by interest groups of all kinds — from government agencies to hate groups. But experts caution that determining the credibility of online data can be tricky, and that critical-reading skills are not being taught in most schools. In the new online age, readers no longer have the luxury of depending on a reference librarian's expertise in finding reliable sources. Anyone can post an article, book or opinion online with no second pair of eyes checking it for accuracy, as in traditional publishing and journalism. Now many readers are turning to user-created sources like Wikipedia, or powerful search engines like Google, which tally how many people previously have accessed online documents and sources — a process that is open to manipulation comic and otherwise.

Source: CQ Researcher
Image Source: Getty Images for Meet the Press/Alex Wong

Fitness Pill: A Dream Come True

Scientists are moving closer to developing a pill which could deliver some of the benefits of exercise - even for those who do not move a muscle. The journal Cell reports US researchers now have two possible pills which appear able to build muscle, increase stamina and even burn fat. In tests, mice were able to run 44% further - suggesting humans may be able to do the same without prior training.

Source: BBC World News August 1

Around the World in 80+ Books

"It's just a book, just ink on paper. But be careful when you open it. There's a universe inside. A good travel book has wings and the ability to transport us, word by word, tale by tale. It introduces us to the people and places that make travel—and, one could argue, life itself—worthwhile. Good travel stories are, in a word, magic. Not only do they show us the world, they help us define our place within it."
(National Geographic)

National Geographic has asked dozens of travelers (writers, photographers, explorers, editors, and others) to name the books that have most enriched their sense of place. The editors of National Geographic added their own to complete the ultimate library of travel books—not guidebooks, but novels and narrative nonfiction and classic photography books--organized by geographic region. If the price of gas is keeping your travel plans low or non-existent, live vicariously by reading one or more. Bon voyage!(If we don't have it, we can usually get it for you through Interlibrary Loan.)

Around the World in 80+ Books
National Geographic July/August 2008

Future of Reading

The Future of Reading
Digital Versus Print

Last Sunday, July 27, the New York Times printed the the first in a series of articles that will look at how the Internet and other technological and social forces are changing the way people read. Access first article HERE.

African Americans in Connecticut

Citizens All: African Americans in Connecticut 1700-1850
Yale University

"Citizens All" is the collaborative work of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition (GLC) and the Center for Media and Instructional Innovation (CMI2) at Yale University. Aimed at both students and teachers, this project illustrates the importance of local history in creating as well as challenging how national and global histories are retold. The stories of international history begin with local events, with the stories of individuals, real people and places in our own backyards.

The project provides a scholarly introduction to the history of slavery in Connecticut, the process of gradual emancipation, and the struggle for citizenship rights by free blacks and abolitionists both within and beyond the state's boundaries.

The story of African Americans' efforts to become full citizens raises important questions about the very definition of "citizenship" and the ideals upon which the United States was founded. We hope that the project contributes to larger discussions of issues such as freedom, education or citizenship and stimulates new discoveries about the legacies of slavery and racism at local, regional, national and international levels. "Citizens All" grew out of GLC involvement with the US Partnership of the UNESCO Transatlantic Slave Trade Education Project: Breaking The Silence.

Don't forget other resources for local history.

CT Freedom Trail.Developed by the CT Historical Commission, this site includes information on ites in the state that are associated with the movement towards freedom of African-American citizens.

CT Historical Society. This website includes an online guide to African American Resources at the historical society.

Connecticut State Library. The library has a research guide on African Americans in CT and Slavery in CT.

Does Google Go Deep Enough?

Does Google's Web Search Go Deep Enough Into Scholarly Archives?

Many scholarly archives on college and public Web sites don’t show up in Google because the search engine doesn’t index them — they’re in what many call the “deep Web,” below the level that most search engines look. A new study found that fewer than half — just 44 percent — of a sample group of deep-Web pages from scholarly archives showed up in Google searches. This is just another reason to use the databases provided by the Goodwin Library.

Source: Wired Campus: The Chronicle of Higher Education July 29 2008

Digital Collection: New York Public Library

New York Public Library Digital Gallery.

Launched in 2005, the NYPL Digital Gallery is one of the largest open-access image databases available on the Internet. Featuring more than 600,000 digital images, content covers a variety of subjects from the arts to science and technology and includes all kinds of primary materials, such as manuscripts, maps, photographs, prints, restaurant menus, sheet music covers, and much more from the special collections of the NYPL Research Libraries and the Mid-Manhattan Library Picture Collection. The Digital Gallery offers basic and advanced searches and also allows users to browse alphabetized lists of names, subjects, and libraries. As an added enhancement, users may select and store around 50 or more images for later viewing using the “selections” option.

(Illustration: Charting North America: Maps from the Lawrence H. Slaughter Collection: Part of New England, New York, east New Iarsey and Long Iland)

Access: New York Public Library Digital Gallery

Frontiers of Science

U.S. News & World Report features "Frontiers of Science" in the August 4-11 issue. The editors pulled together some of the big scientific questions with these stories:
How will humanity evolve?
What will we eat?
Where will global warming hit home?
How did life begin?
Will we find it in the heavens?

The magazine is in the library and may be checked out. This issue makes for very interesting reading.

Try a New Search Engine: CUIL

Welcome to Cuil—the world’s biggest search engine. (Cuil is an old Irish word for knowledge--pronounced "cool".)

The Internet has grown. It’s time searching did too. The Internet has grown exponentially in the last fifteen years but search engines have not kept up—until now. Cuil searches more pages on the Web than anyone else—three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft.

Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. When it finds a page with your keywords, it stays on that page and analyzes the rest of its content, its concepts, their inter-relationships and the page’s coherency.

Then Cuil offers you helpful choices and suggestions until you find the page you want and that you know is out there. Cuil developers believe that analyzing the Web rather than users is a more useful approach. Cuil doesn't collect data about you and your habits. With Cuil, your search history is always private. Very cuil!


Source: www.cuil.com

Highlighting Academic OneFile

This week's highlighted database is Academic OneFile. Academic OneFile is a comprehensive, subscription-based database that currently contains more than 12,000 journals covering topics from Science, Technology and Medicine to the humanities. This easy-to-use database is the perfect fit for academic libraries, providing both academics and students at undergraduate and postgraduate levels with the ultimate periodical resource for serious research.

Use Basic Search to define your own search strategy. Results are presented in reverse chronological order. Choose Basic Search from the navigation bar. For a broader or more limited search, you may use and, or and not connectors, or limit the results to documents with full-text, peer-reviewed publications, documents with images, publication date or publication title. You may select one or more articles for viewing from the results list in full-text. Academic OneFile is available 24/7 and effortlessly delivers quality content researchers can trust.

Occupational Outlook-Summer 2008

Occupational Outlook Quarterly — Summer 2008

Occupational Outlook Quarterly provides practical information on jobs and careers. Articles are written in straightforward, non-technical language and cover a wide variety of career and work-related topics such as new and emerging occupations, training opportunities, salary trends, and results of new studies from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In this issue:
+ Working in politics (PDF; 881 KB)
+ The class of 1993: Earnings and occupations by college major, 1 and 10 years after graduation (PDF; 2.1 MB)
+ Healthcare jobs you might not know about (PDF; 664 KB)
+ Brief items of interest to counselors and students
+ You’re a what? Home stager (PDF; 216 KB)
+ Job openings by industry (PDF; 280 KB)

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Randy Pausch

Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch, author of The Last Lecture, died Friday morning at his Virginia home.

Diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given three to six months to live, Pausch responded last September 12 by delivering a last lecture at Carnegie Mellon called "Achieving Your Childhood Dreams." A videotape of the lecture became a YouTube hit and Pausch expanded its text into the best-selling book, The Last Lecture. Full of humor and common sense, and addressed to his three young children, the lecture urged listeners to dream and play and to not allow obstacles to discourage them. The book is available in the Goodwin Library.

Today in History: Collision at Sea

July 25, 1956

En route from Genoa, Italy, to New York City on a foggy July night, Italy's postwar pride, the passenger liner SS Andrea Doria, collides with the eastbound liner MS Stockholm off Nantucket, Massachusetts, and sinks, killing 46 Andrea Doria passengers and 5 crew members from the Stockholm. Later investigations determine the accident is a result of faulty radar signals and poor ballast. Legal claims against the two shipping firms, who established a joint legal fund, eventually exceed $40 million.
Source: Smithsonian Magazine July 2008

CQ Researcher: Human Rights in China

When the curtain rises on the Summer Olympics next month in Beijing, China will eagerly showcase its hypersonic economic growth and its embrace of what it calls the "rule of law." But 19 years after its bloody suppression of protesters in Tiananmen Square, China will also be displaying its human-rights record for all to judge. Human-rights advocates say the sheen of Chinese progress and prosperity hides repression and brutality by the Chinese Communist Party, including the violent repression of pro-independence protesters in Tibet, forced abortions stemming from China's one-child policy and the trampling of basic freedoms of speech, religion and assembly. Chinese government officials say their nation of 1.3 billion people has made huge strides on the legal and human-rights fronts and that the West has no business interfering in China's internal affairs

(The picture: A Tibetan protester in Brussels, Belgium, last April calls for a boycott of the Summer Olympics in Beijing following a violent crackdown by Chinese security forces on pro-independence demonstrators in Tibet. (AFP/Getty Images/John Thys)) CQ Researcher is available online from the Goodwin Library (password protected)

MapJack

Immerse yourself in panoramic views of Yosemite National Park; Chiang Mai, Thailand; and San Francisco using MapJack, a new alternative to Google Street View and Microsoft's Live Search Maps. MapJack has brighter, sharper photos than the others, and better navigation tools. To start exploring, just click and drag the icon of a person along the map in the bottom half of your browser; the photographic images in the upper portion will automatically refresh. Start-ups like Earthmine and EveryScape are developing similar next-gen maps, but for now, MapJack offers the best preview of the future of digital mapping.
Source: www.mapjack.com

Visual Introduction to the Periodic Table

The Royal Society of Chemistry has provided a free, online visualization of the Periodic Table of Elements. Click on the info button for html and pdf files that provide background information on any element. Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to read pdf files.
AccessL Royal Society of Chemistry Periodic Table

Digital Collection: Duke University

Duke Digital Collections. Founded in 1995, the Duke University Libraries’ Digital Collections have amassed impressive digital image holdings from various collections. Subjects cover an array of national and international subjects. While the database allows for federated keyword searching across the featured collections, other collections must be browsed by subject or through the alphabetized list of collection names. Access the collection here

Featured collections are freely available on the Internet and include the Emergence of Advertising in America, Ration Coupons on the Home Front (1942–1945), and the 50,000 item William Gedney Photographs and Writings collection.

Cellphones and Your Health

The director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute sent a memo yesterday to his employees saying that, despite many published studies saying otherwise, cellphone use could be hazardous.

Ronald B. Herberman, director of the institute and a tumor immunologist, advised staff members to keep conversations short, to hold phones away from their heads, and not to allow children to use mobile phones. He said that the electromagnetic radiation emitted by the phones could cause “possible adverse health effects including cancer.”

Dr. Herberman based his memo on the recommendations of an international panel of scientists, on which he served. The panel reviewed unpublished data.

The studies that have been published have produced conflicting results, but the largest studies found no link between cellphone use and cancer, the Associated Press reported.
Source: Lila Guterman in The Chronicle of Higher Education

Statistics Research: Sports

Resources of the Week: Niche Statistics
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

In the course of the average workweek, we are often asked for something that involves statistics. Surprisingly, someone out there is collecting information no matter what the subject. Check out this sports business data collection. (You may need to do this off campus because your computer here is likely to be blocked from sports-related sites.)

Rodney Fort’s Sports Economics: Sports Business Data
Professor Fort, who teaches at the University of Michigan, is one of the nation’s preeminent sports economists. The collection of data here is staggering in both depth and breadth. Fort has assembled years of salary, attendance, and financial information for Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, the National Football League, the National Hockey League, and English and European football associations. If it’s not here, you are likely to have a very difficult time trying to find it — especially for free, on the open Web.

Source: Resource Shelf July 2008

Digital Collection from the Library of Congress

This is the second in our series of great digital collections:Library of Congress American History and Culture Collections.

The American History and Culture Collections, also known as the American Memory Historical Collections, began as a pilot project in 1990 to provide middle school as well as high school teachers and students with digital surrogates of collection material on CD-ROM. Over the years, the collection has become a “National Digital Library” with diverse institutions from all across the United States contributing content. Rich in imagery, the collection may be searched or browsed by way of alphabetized subject lists, time periods, and geographical locations. American Memory Historical Collections features more than 100 thematic subjects ranging from advertising to maps to women’s rights.
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Three FREE Databases

The Connecticut Digital Library (iCONN) announced this week that 3 free EBSCO databases have been turned on for libraries in Connecticut.

GreenFILE: offers well-researched information covering all aspects of human impact to the environment. Its collection of scholarly, government and general-interest titles includes content on the environmental effects of individuals, corporations and local/national governments, and what can be done at each level to minimize these effects. Multidisciplinary by nature, GreenFILE draws on the connections between the environment and a variety of disciplines such as agriculture, education, law, health and technology. Topics covered include global climate change, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more. The database provides indexing and abstracts for approximately 384,000 records, as well as Open Access full text for more than 4,700 records.

Teacher Reference Center: Teacher Reference Center provides indexing and abstracts for more than 270 periodicals. In addition, 96% of journals indexed in TRC are peer-reviewed. Topics include: Assessment, Best Practices, Continuing Education, Current Pedagogical Research, Curriculum Development, Elementary Education, Higher Education, Instructional Media, Language Arts, Literacy Standards, School Administration, Science & Mathematics, and Teacher Education. It is EBSCO Publishing's intention to provide access to TRC on a continual basis at www.TeacherReference.com. It will also be added to the databases on the library page.

Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts(tm) (LISTA): indexes more than 500 core journals, more than 50 priority journals, and 125 selective journals; plus books, research reports and proceedings. Subject coverage includes librarianship, classification, cataloging, bibliometrics, online information retrieval, information management and more. Coverage in the database extends back as far as the mid-1960s.

New Additions to Credo Reference

Latest Additions to Credo Reference
• Companion Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy, Routledge
• Concise Encyclopedia of Latin American Literature, Routledge
• Concise Encyclopedia of Plant Pathology, Routledge
• Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs, Elsevier
• Encyclopedia of Ethics, Routledge
• Encyclopedia of Insects, Elsevier
• Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English, Routledge
• Encyclopedia of the Solar System, Elsevier
• Encyclopedia of Volcanoes, Elsevier
• An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Women in Early American Films: 1895-1930,
• Handbook of Research on the Education of Young Children, Routledge
• International Encyclopedia of Hospitality Management, Elsevier
• Science in the Ancient World: An Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO
• Science in the Early Twentieth Century: An Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO
• Science in the Enlightenment: An Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO

Credo Reference is a leading online reference services for libraries and information centers. There are over 300 titles consisting of an aggregate of 3.1 million entries all interconnected by over 100,000,000 links. Access from the library page!

Interlibrary Loans at Goodwin Library

In the first 15 days of July, Goodwin Library has had Interlibrary Loan transactions with:
Granby Public Library (PL), James Blackstone Memorial L (Branford), New Fairfield Free PL, Jonathan Trumbull L (Lebanon), Phoebe A. Noyes L (Old Lyme), Brooklyn PL, Hartford Seminary, E. Hampton PL, Scotland PL, Killingly PL, Cragin Memorial L (Colchester), Plumb Memorial L (Shelton), New London PL, Sprague PL (Baltic), Milford PL, Babbidge L (UCONN Storrs), Easton PL, New Britain PL, Buley L (SCSU), Briarwood College, and Prospect PL.

Are Your Wrists at Risk?

Learn About Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
You’re working at your desk, but you’re distracted by a tingling or numbness in your hand and wrist. Then a sharp, piercing pain shoots from your palm through your arm. If you’ve had symptoms like these for several days—or worse, weeks—or if they keep you up at night, you may have carpal tunnel syndrome.
full story

Illusion of Miles Per Gallon

(This information was recommended by T. Patrick Burke)

Richard Larrick and Jack Soll of Duke University ran a series of experiments to show that the current standard of miles per gallon leads consumers to believe that fuel consumption is reduced at an even rate as efficiency improves. But that’s not the case.

Soll and Larrick offered an alternative metric: gallons per mile. Expressed in gallons used per 100 miles, 18 m.p.g. becomes 5.5 gallons per 100 miles, and 28 m.p.g. becomes 3.6 gallons per 100 miles. And the difference is suddenly obvious: nearly two gallons every 100 miles, or a difference of more than $8.
Many European countries already list efficiency in terms of volume per distance traveled (liters per 100 kilometers or L/100km).

“Miles per gallon is misleading and can play tricks on our intuitions,” Prof. Soll said in a press release, which also links to an interactive quiz.

Source: New York Times Blog by Richard Chang June 20 2008

Book Recommendation

Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google
Available in the Goodwin Library

"While it may seem that we're in the midst of an unprecedented technological transition, author Nicholas Carr thinks that the direction of the digital revolution has a strong historical corollary: electrification. Carr argues that computing, no longer personal, is going the way of a power utility. Manufacturers used to provide their own power (i.e., windmills and waterwheels) until they plugged into the electric grid a hundred years ago. According to Carr, we're in the midst of a similar transition in computing, moving from our own private hard drives to the computer as access portal. Soon all companies and individuals will outsource their computing systems, from programming to data storage, to companies with big hard drives in out-of-the-way places. Carr's analysis of the recent past is clear and insightful as he examines common computing tools that are embedded in the Internet instead of stored on a hard drive, including Google and YouTube.

The social and economic consequences of this transition into the utility age fall somewhere between uncertain and grim, according toCarr. Wealth will be further consolidated into the hands of a few, and specific industries, publishing in particular, will perish at the hands of crowdsourcing and the unbundling of content. However, Carr eschews an entirely dystopian vision for the future, hypothesizing without prognosticating. Perhaps lucky for us, he leaves a great number of questions unanswered."

Source: Publisher's Weekly

Evidence-based Handbook for Nurses

Nurses play a vital role in improving the safety and quality of patient care—not only in the hospital or ambulatory treatment facility, but also of community-based care and the care performed by family members. Nurses need to know what proven techniques and interventions they can use to enhance patient outcomes.

To address this need, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has prepared a comprehensive online handbook--Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses. (AHRQ Publication No. 08-0043).

Experts in the field reviewed the literature, and their contributions are grouped into sections. Click to see sections.
patient safety and quality;
evidence-based practice;
patient-centered care;
working conditions-work environment;
critical opportunities for patient safety and quality;
tools.

You may also select to download the Entire Volume as a PDF file (10 MB) or individual chapters. All PDF files are accessible.

Source: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (www.ahrq.gov)

Bioinformatics: Review of Web Resources

"Information sources in the biological sciences have grown far beyond journals and books. Sequencing projects and new molecular biology tools are creating vast amounts of new data and information in new formats. The manipulation, storage, and analysis of these new data constitute the growing field of bioinformatics. This field is diverse and interdisciplinary, drawing necessary expertise from information science and computer science, as well as biology. With our keen interest in the organization, provision, and management of information, it is natural for librarians to be intrigued by bioinformatics and play a role in bioinformatics teaching and research." (introduction to review by Tina O'Grady. This is a very useful list! It will also be available soon on the library page.)

Click here for Brief Review of Bioinformatics Resources

Source: ACRL Newsletter July/August 2008

Global Researcher: Child Soldiers

Since the mid-1990s, the world has watched in horror as hundreds of thousands of children and young teenagers have participated in nearly 50 wars, mostly in Africa and Asia. Children as young as 5 or 6 have served in combat, and thousands of abducted young girls were forced into sexual slavery. Some terrorist groups even strap explosive-rigged vests onto children and send them off as suicide bombers. Others have been recruited, sometimes forcibly, into the official armed forces or paramilitary units of several dozen countries. U.N. treaties prohibit the use of child soldiers, and the Security Council "names and shames" persistent violators. But only four former guerrilla commanders have been convicted by international tribunals, and some human-rights advocates urge more aggressive prosecution of perpetrators. However, some peace negotiators say threats of prosecution can obstruct cease-fire negotiations and prolong the fighting. In the U.S., where children under 18 serve in the military in non-combat roles, Congress is considering laws to combat the use of child soldiers overseas. Read the article online. (password protected)

(picture above: Preteen soldiers in the Karen rebel army fighting Myanmar's military government are among the estimated 250,000 children under age 18 in national and guerrilla armies worldwide. (Reuters/Jason Reed)

Source: Global Researcher July 2008

CQ Researcher: Global Food Crisis

Food prices have spiked around the world over the past year, bringing hunger and unrest to many developing countries, along with pain at the checkout counter for lower-income American families. In North Korea, for example, where 35 percent of the population is undernourished, the price of the major food staple, rice, soared 186 percent, and overall food prices rose 70 percent. With 2.1 billion people around the world living on less than $2 a day, such price increases may plunge hundreds of millions into malnutrition and starvation. Drought, high oil prices that make food transport pricey and diversion of corn for use as a biofuel all contribute to the price spike. The effect of globalization — which has led poor countries to abandon domestic food crops in favor of commodity crops for export — also has been blamed. The crisis also has sparked international tension over the impact of wealthy nations' farm subsidies and meat-heavy diets, which take many more resources to produce than grain- or legume-based diets. Read the entire report. (password protected)
Source: Introduction to report in CQ Researcher

New Feature: Digital Collections

The Internet is often the first and sometimes only research resource for scholars and educators, but many open-access digital image collections are part of the deep Web, keeping important visual content out of a search engine’s reach. In recent years, libraries, archives, and historical societies across the United States have created rich online visual resource collections that include a wealth of subjects and media formats. Researchers now have access to millions of primary materials from any Internet-accessible computer, which would otherwise require an in-person visit to the physical collection. Each week this blog will let you know about one of these collections. This week it is right here in Connecticut--Yale University.
Yale University Library Digital Collections. More than 100,000 digital images are accessible through the homepage for the Yale University Library Digital Collections. Although some subscription databases are not accessible to the public, content belonging to the collections at Yale University is searchable and viewable by the public. Visitors to the site may search for images across featured collections by using the basic or advanced search options, or they may browse collections by name, topic, medium, or by the owning repository, which include the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, and the Law Library.(Before I came to Goodwin College, I did some work with the digital collection of the Cushing/Whitney Medical Historical Library.)
Click here for Yale University Digital Collections

One-Stop Shopping for Composition Instructors: Compile

This summer, The National Council for the Teachers of English (NCTE) is exploring a variety of Web sites and tools that teachers can use in the classroom and/or for their professional development. This week, NCTE explains why writing teachers at the college level should know about Compile.

So what is it? Compile is a database of 94956 records that catalog books, journal articles, and other publications in composition, rhetoric, technical writing, ESL, and discourse studies. The collection has a full range of search capabilities.

The purpose of Compile is to allow ready reference to the published twentieth-century work in post-secondary composition and rhetoric, from the beginning of WWII to the end of the century. It does not extend before 1939 or after 1999. It is an on-line, keyworded, searchable inventory for researchers and teachers and anybody else interested. Compile is offered in the spirit of free research and scholarship. (Use of this bibliography for profit, however, requires permission.)

CompPile's focus is on post-secondary writing. It integrates journal articles, review-essays, notes and comments, books, dissertations, ERIC items, and edited collections. It does not systematically cover textbooks, how-to books, conference notices, editor's forwards, or reviews of single works.
Source: NCTE

Is This a Mistake?

USA Today reports that in the past two years, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia and Oklahoma have refused in-state tuition benefits to students who entered the USA illegally with their parents but grew up and went to school in the state. That represents a reversal from earlier this decade, when 10 states passed laws allowing in-state rates for such students. Is this a mistake?

This is definitely a mistake, according to Fareed Zakaria who writes in Foreign Affairs that "the United States' potential advantages today are in large part a product of immigration. Foreign students and immigrants account for 50% of the science researchers in the country and in 2006 received 40% of the doctorates in science and engineering and 65% of the doctorates in computer science.... In short, the United States potential new burst of productivity,its edge in nanotechnology and biotechnology, its ability to invent the future--all rest on its immigration policies. If the United States can keep the people it educates in the country, the innovation will happen here." This essay is adapted from his book, The Post-American World. --currently on the New York Times best seller list.
Source of the quote: Foreign Affairs May/June 2008

Time Magazine Features Mark Twain

"Mark Twain has been called the inventor of the American novel. It might even be fair to call him the inventor of the American short story. And he surely deserves an additional encomium: the man who popularized the sophisticated literary attack on racism," according to Stephen Carter in his Time magazine cover story about Mark Twain this week. You must read this article, "Getting Past Black and White."
Source: Time Magazine

Evaluating Online Learning

The U.S. Department of Education last week released its first guide to the evaluation of online-learning programs in K-12 education. The report is designed to help school leaders gauge the effectiveness of online education, as its use grows rapidly across the United States.

“While online-learning programs that deliver courses have been around for about a decade, this report is the first to fully address the issues in evaluating online programs in K-12 education,” said Susan D. Patrick, the president and chief executive officer of the North American Council for Online Learning, or NACOL, which released its own standards for online programs earlier this year. Voluntary Online-Teaching Standards Come Amid Concerns Over Quality.
Source: Educaton Week July 8 2008

Community Guide to Environmental Health

Drawing the connections between people’s health and the environments in which we live, this groundbreaking book empowers health promoters, development workers, educators, activists, community leaders and ordinary people to take charge of their communities’ health.
…
Years in the making, this comprehensive guide has twenty-three chapters which break down the broad overview of environmental issues and concerns into specific examples of how they affect peoples’ health, and how communities have organized to improve their environment and thus their own lives. These chapters include: Promoting Environmental Health; Environmental Rights and Justice; Protecting Community Water; Building Toilets; Mining and Health; Solid Waste: Turning a Health Risk into a Resource; Preventing and Reducing Harm from Toxics; Sustainable Farming; Restoring Land and Planting Trees, The False Promise of Genetically-Engineered Foods; and Clean Energy.

Eighty-two specific stories from communities around the world enliven the chapters, showing the environmental challenges faced, and what people and grassroots organizations have done to empower themselves and transform their communities. The book also includes 22 activities and 40 easy-to-build “how-to” projects.
Source: Hesperian Foundation

What Americans Know

The Newsweek Poll gauges what Americans know on a broad range of topics from the price of oil to the works of Shakespeare. A few of the results:
77% don't know who the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court is (answer: John Robers)
32% think that the popular vote determines the outcome if a presidential election ends in an Electoral College tie (Answer: US. House of Representatives breaks the tie)
67% know that a barrel of oil costs about $140 on the world market today.
80% know that TV broadcasts in the United States are scheduled to switch from analog to digital in 2009.
20% know that Sunnis are the largest group of muslims worldwide.
for the complete poll results, go to xtra.Newsweek.com

College-Educated Women Keep Working

Opting-Out Trend Doesn't Square With Census Data. There have been a number of high-profile articles about well- educated women "opting out" of the work force after having children. But a new study published in the June issue of the "American Sociological Review" says that this so-called opting-out revolution has been overblown.

Among the findings: Fewer than 8% of professional, college-educated women born since 1956 leave the work force for a year or more during their prime childbearing years, writes sociologist Christine Percheski, a doctoral student at Princeton, in an examination of census data. What's more, full-time employment levels of women with young children have risen dramatically in recent decades. And more women with young children are working longer hours.
Source: Wall Street Journal July 1 2008

Reading First Program Not Funded

The full Senate Appropriations Committee last week approved a fiscal 2009 spending measure that would eliminate funding for the Reading First program, while providing modest increases for other programs serving disadvantaged students and those in special education. See the full article in Education Week.
Source: Education Week June 27 2008

Virtual Library Day on the Hill

Today is Virtual Library Day on the Hill!We are looking for library advocates from across the country to call attention to the value of today’s libraries, as well as the issues the library community is facing. This is especially important in an election year, as many of our nation’s legislators will be looking to hear from their constituents. This is our chance to make the library voice heard!

Virtual Library Day on the Hill is an amazing opportunity to showcase the value and importance of libraries to Members of Congress and let them know how important federal funding is to our nation’s libraries. Go to www.capwiz.com/ala to write your Members of Congress about the importance of libraries.

Top 10 Most Re-Read Books List

Listed below is the Top 10 Most Re-Read Books List created in July 2004 byThe American Library Association's panel:

J.R.R. Tolkien - The Lord of the Rings

Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol

Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird

Shakespeare's collected works

F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby

Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice

J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter series

Laura Ingalls Wilder - Little House on the Prairie series

A.A. Milne - Winnie the Pooh

Alice Walker - The Color Purple

Alt Healthwatch Database--free trial

The library has a free trial of this database that focuses on the many perspectives of complementary, holistic and integrated approaches to health care and wellness. It offers libraries full text articles for more than 180 international, and often peer-reviewed journals and reports. In addition, there are hundreds of pamphlets, booklets, special reports, original research and book excerpts.

Full text titles include American Journal of Chinese Medicine, American Journal of Homeopathic Medicine, California Journal of Oriental Medicine, European Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms, Journal of Alternative & Complementary Medicine, Journal of Asian Natural Products Research, Journal of the Australian Traditional-Medicine Society, Journal of the Canadian Chiropractic Association and many others. Alt HealthWatch provides in-depth coverage across the full spectrum of subject areas covered by complementary and alternative medicine. Contact the library for access information.

Avoid High Price of Textbooks--Rent Them

With a college textbook often costing more than $100, it’s no wonder that students are protesting, and Congress has discussed legislation to lower the price of textbooks.

But what if students rented books instead of buying them? That’s the business model behind a company called Chegg, which was started a year ago and bills itself as “the Netflix for college textbooks.” Students identify the books they want to rent and place their order online. Then, Chegg ships the books to students’ residences. After using the books for a semester, students mail the books back to Chegg with prepaid shipping labels that they download from the Chegg Web site. Chegg literature says its rental model can save students 60 percent to 80 percent off the price of a book.
Source: Chronicle's Community College Newsletter July 1 2008

IT Business Hiring Strong

If error messages and bundles of wire get you enthusiastic, you're in luck, as the IT field continues to boast the greatest hiring demand, according to a nationwide CareerBuilder.com survey.

Nearly 40 percent of IT employers are looking to add full-time, permanent employees in the third quarter. But IT isn't the only burgeoning field.
Source: Hartford Business Journal July 1 2008

Is Google Making us Stupid?

What is the Internet doinig to our brain?
Remember in 2001: A Space Odyssey where the astronaut was coldy disconnecting the memory circuits as Hal pleads "Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it." Is that what the Internet is doing to our brains? In the article in the Atlantic, author Nicholas Carr writes that "media supplies the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski." For those of us who spend much time with the Internet medium, this article is definitely required reading.
Source: "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" Atlantic July/August 2008

Science Animations; Interactive Tutorials

This site makes it so much fun to understand scientific theories and phenomena, including plant life cycles, plate tectonics, bacterial growth, severe weather, how lasers works, and much more. It even has microbiology, Anatomy and physiology I & II, biology, ecology, geology, physics, and lots of general collections. The NASA simulations and downloadable multimedia from Penn State are awesome.

Science Animations: Movies and Interactive Tutorial Links

New Database: Campus Research

The Connecticut Digital Library (ICONN) is discontinuing access to LexisNexis Academic July 1 and replacing it with Thopmson's Campus Research. Campus Research is a comprehensive collection of news, business and law-related information for students--organized and packaged with timesaving tools and an easy-to-use interface. It offers full-text information on a wide range of academic disciplines – information that can't easily be found on the Internet or any other readily available source. Remember to try it out on July 1 and frequently after that.

You Get:
Thousands of news databases arranged geographically and topically
Hundreds of newspapers, newswires, magazines, and broadcast transcripts
Business, trade, and professional journals such as Financial Times and New England Journal of Medicine
More than 800 law reviews and journals, including Harvard Law Review and Yale Law Journal
Federal and state caselaw, including cases from the U.S. Supreme Court
The full text of the United States Code Annotated (USCA) and Code of Federal Regulations (CFR)

Instruction on use of the database is available for anyone in the Goodwin community.

Free Chemistry Audio Shows

Every other month the Nature journals are publishing a FREE audio show, 'ChemPod', specifically for the chemistry community, from interviews with Nobel Prize winners, to discussions on nanotechnology research and much, much more...

The shows feature important research from the Nature journals as well as interviews with the people behind the science, in-depth commentary, location reports and analysis from journalists covering chemistry around the world.

2008 podcasts
March/April 2008: Audio (mp3 file)

In this episode of Chempod, we get caught up in catalysis, discover drawbacks to some Alzheimer's drug candidates, and bring you a round up of the best of the American Chemical Society meeting in New Orleans.

January/February 2008: Audio (mp3 file)

In this show, we find out how DNA is helping researches build crystals out of nanoparticles, discover a clever chemical trick for manipulating uranium, explore the controversial field of DNA conductivity and talk to chemist Bruce Gibb about re-building life and lab after hurricane Katrina.

Go to Chempod
To download a show to your computer, right click the Audio link and select 'Save target as/Save link as' and save the file to your computer or a CD.

Source: Nature

Entrepreneurship: Not Just for Business Majors

Entrepreneurship is one of the fastest growing subjects in the undergraduate curricula, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education this week. Entreprenuerial ingenuity and risk-taking may seem like traits that can't be taught, but colleges are attempting to do just that--and in nontraditional contexts. More than 2,000 colleges are now offering some sort of entrepreneurship course. The artcle is highly recommended and essential reading for members of the curriculum and standards committees.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education June 20 2008

Case Against Assessment Tests

250 presidents, senior administrators, faculty leaders, and trustees gathered last week for The Chronicle of Higher Education's Executive Leadership Forum. What seems to worry these campus officials the most is proving the value of college to students, parents, and politicians at a time of rising tuition and tightening credit. In recent years, spurred in large part by Education Secretary Margaret Spellings's National Commission on the Future of Higher Education, some people have called for a better measure: assessment tests.

Higher-education leaders have railed against such one-size-fits-all efforts, and those at the Chronicle forum heard perhaps one of the strongest arguments against a test from the opening speaker, Daniel H. Pink, best-selling author of A Whole New Mind. Read the whole article in the Chronicle at the library or request an email copy from the librarian.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education June 20 2008

Homeland Security Critical Releases

Critical Releases in Homeland Security [June 2008]
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.

Report on Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq by U.S. Government Officials Were Substantiated by Intelligence Information, Together with Additional and Minority Views
United States. Congress. Senate. Select Committee on Intelligence

National Response Framework: FEMA Needs Policies and Procedures to Better Integrate Non-Federal Stakeholders in the Revision Process
United States. Government Accountability Office

Maritime Dimension of International Security: Terrorism, Piracy, and Challenges for the United States
RAND Corporation

Intelligence Community Legal Reference Book [U]
United States. Office of the Director of National Intelligence

Homeland Security Presidential Directive 24: Biometrics for Identification of Screening to Enhance National Security [June 5, 2008]
United States. White House Office
Source: Homeland Security Digital Library

Psychology Resources: PsycINFO & PsycARTICLES

PsycINFO gives members of the Goodwin community access to a critical mass of over 2.5 million abstracts of worldwide behavioral literature. From the historical perspective to cutting-edge research, the PsycINFO database is the largest resource devoted to peer-reviewed literature in behavioral science and mental health. Quickly find abstracts of specific types of documents such as journal articles, book chapters, book reviews, editorials, and research methodologies (such as clinical case reports, empirical studies, and literature reviews.

PsycARTICLEs is the largest full-text database of psychology journals. This databse provides student researchers with full-text access to the complete collection of peer-reviewed journals from the leading publisher in psychology,the American Psychological Association (APA). PsycARTICLEs contains more than 124,000 articles from APA-published content from 1894 to present. These are subscription databases available to Goodwin students on and off campus.