Citing Indirect Sources: MLA format

I am quoting from the MLA Handbook (7th edition 6.4.7 page226)

"Whenever you can, take material from the original source, not a secondhand one. If only an indirect surce is availabe--for example,someone's published account of an author's spoken remarks [or published work]. If what you quote or paraphrqase is itself a quotation, put the abbreviation qtd. in ("quoted in") before the indirect source you cite in your parenthetical reference."

Y:ou may document the original source in a note (5.5.1 page 230)

Examples:
Parenthetical Reference:
In “On Her Own Work”, O’Connor suggested her interpretation of the gesture to the misfit (qtd.in Petit 312).

Works Cited
Petit, Susan. “Finding Flannery O’Connor’s ‘Good Man’ in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead and Home.” Christianity and Literature 59.2 (Winter 2010):
301-318. Web. 11 Aug. 2010.

Note
1.The original source of the paraphrase of O’Connor's comment on the grandmother’s gesture to the misfit was on page 112 in “On Her Own Work” Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose selected and edited by Sally and Robert Fitzgerald published in 1969 by Farrar.
[Notes would precede the Works Cited Page.]

CINAHL Features for Nursing Students' Research

Do you need articles on coronary thrombosis written by a nurse? Sometimes your instructors require you to find peer-reviewed articles written by a nurse. Perhaps you have already discovered that CINAHL has a new feature that will help you.

You can limit articles to those ”Written by a Nurse.” You can also limit to articles where the first author is a nurse, or you can limit to articles where any author is a nurse. These limits are only good for articles 2009-forward and a nurse is considered any author with RN, BSN, MSN, and in the case of international publications the appropriate international license/credentials/degree. I always emphasize that this is not a perfect solution either because it eliminates nurse authors in non-nursing journals. I do not know if this feature will become retroactive and include articles before 2009. Stay tuned.

Some additional information:

.The DOI (Digital Object Identifier) has been added to all records 2009-forward.
•The PMC ID (PubMed Central ID) has been added to records 2009-forward.

Credo Reference Concept Map

Have you used the Credo Reference Concept Map lately? The Concept Map is a great tool that enables you to quickly find information when you don’t know exactly what to look for or want to expand your knowledge of a given area. Students have had great success in using the Concept Map to help brainstorm and focus a topic, or to help them find a new angle or direction to research.

The concept map needs Java 1.4.19 or newer to work. That is the only requirement. For the users that don’t have Java installed this link provides installers for all operating systems: http://www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp. After installation the browser will need to be restarted. Windows users might need to reboot their computer.

In some cases Java is already installed but it is disabled in the browser. How to enable it is browser-specific but it usually means opening the browser’s Preferences dialog and enabling Java. In Firefox the checkbox to enable Java is in the Preferences window under the ‘Content’ tab. In Safari the option is under the ‘Security’ tab. The option is usually placed besides the option to enable Java Script. It is important to note, though, that ‘Java’ and ‘Java Script’ are two completely different/independent things and enabling one does not enable the other

New Gale Resource Centers

On Sunday, August 1, the following resources will have a significantly different look/feel in order to improve the relevancy and currency of search results:

History Resource Center: U.S.
History Resource Center: World
Science Resource Center

The names of these resources will change from Resource Center to In Context (e.g., Science Resource Center will become Science In Context). The Biography Resource Center will undergo a similar redesign in late August to early September. Other resource centers (Health, Business) will follow later.

We hope you like the changes!

You Thought the Library was Small? THINK AGAIN!

You thought the library was small? Think again! Besides what you see on the shelves in the library, we have 70,000 books you do not see. That's right--70,000. Where are they, you may ask?

They are electronic or ebooks. Libraries of the future,and we are one of them, want expanding space for users and less for books sitting on shelves. That’s why Goodwin Library has eBrary Academic Complete, a database with full text books. Ebrary has just added 1,100 new titles and they added 5,100 in June. They also provide 140 full-text books and other materials specifically for librarians and knowledge managers. That means that we now have that database of over 60,000 full text books. You won’t see them on the shelves, but you will if you go to the library page and click on eBrary. If you add Credo Reference’s full text reference books—also online-we have at least 70,000 electronic books. (By the way, we still plan to fill up the existing shelves.)

Letting Go: A Healthcare Issue

Atul Gawande, Doctor and author, has an article in The New Yorker called "Letting Go" about what medicine should do when it can't save our lives. It is an important discussion for healthcare students of how we deal with end of life issues.

"People have concerns besides simply prolonging their lives. Surveys of patients with terminal illness find that their top priorities include, in addition to avoiding suffering, being with family, having touch of others, being mentally aware, and not being a burden to others. Our system of technological medical care has utterly failed to meet these needs, and the cost of this failure is measure in far more than dollars. The hard question we face,then,is not how we can afford this system's expense. It is how we can build a health-care system that will actually help dying patients achieve what's most important to them at the end of their lives."

This is a quote from the article. Dr. Gawande is a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and a professor at Harvard Medical School, His most recent book, A Checklist Manifesto, is available in the library as is the article.
Source: The New Yorker August 2 2010

CPR with Chest Compression Alone

The current issues of the New England Journal of Medicine has three articles on CPR with chest compression alone. There was interesting commentary on these articles on the radio this morning. This might make a good research paper topic.

"in CPR, Less May Be Better" M. Weisfeldt
"CPR with Chest Compression Alone or with Rescue Breathing" T. Rea et al.
"Compression-Only CPR or Standard CPR in Our-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest L. Svensson et al.

New England Journal of Medicine
July 29

500 million Facebook Users

This week Facebook reached 500 million users. To give an idea of what 500 Million people would look like, using world population, the Resource Shelf staff built an estimate. 500 million people would mean that every citizen in the following countries were active Facebook Users (in alphabetical order):

The ENTIRE Populations of:

+ Australia
+ Bermuda
+ Canada
+ Cayman Islands
+ Guatemala
+ New Zealand
+ Singapore
+ South Africa
+ United Kingdom
+ United States

Source: BBC Press

Have you got anything by the Ugandan xylophonists?

The new BBC archive of indigenous music from around the world has!

BBC will tomorrow launch a globally-accessible online archive that features indigenous music from some of the world's most dangerous conflict zones, as well as its most inaccessible states. There are audio clips of singing waitresses performing sea shanties on the coast of North Korea, and harp-playing cowboys in rural Venezuela. In all, there will be 100 hours of programming on the BBC's World Music Archive, alongside dozens of photographs of recordings being made in the most remote locations. Essentially the resource comprises the output of Radio 3's world music programmes from the past decade an extraordinary collection of some of the most unlikely and most beautiful music ever recorded.

Listen here. new BBC archive of indigenous music from around the world

Source: The Independent July 22, 2010

Development Reading & Learning communities

Learning Communities for Students in Developmental Reading: An Impact Study at Hillsborough Community College

This report presents results from a rigorous random assignment study of a basic learning community program at Hillsborough Community College in Tampa Bay, Florida. Hillsborough is one of six community colleges participating in the National Center for Postsecondary Research’s Learning Communities Demonstration. The demonstration’s focus is on determining whether learning communities are an effective strategy for helping students who need developmental education. Hillsborough’s learning communities co-enrolled groups of around 20 students into a developmental reading course and a “college success” course. Three cohorts of students (fall 2007, spring 2008, and fall 2008) participated in the study, for a total of 1,071.
Full Report
Source: Education on Docuticker

Retaining Experienced Nurses

With the nation’s nursing workforce aging and many nurses approaching retirement just as the population ages, creating a greater demand for hospital care, retaining experienced nurses will be critical in coming years. Hospitals, medical centers and other health care organizations can keep more veteran nurses at patient bedsides by implementing a variety of employee-retention strategies identified in a new study supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Read the full report.
Source: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Livemocha for Learning Languages

Livemocha is a Web site for learning languages. The site was started by a group of former Microsoft employees who saw a need for language skills in the growing international economy. It combines immersion language learning with Web 2.0 features, allowing students to connect with others who are learning the same language as well as native speakers so that they can practice conversation, exchange study tips, and contribute new learning materials.

Livemocha is a useful resource for people who want to study a language without investing in expensive products such as Rosetta Stone. It is also a good way to supplement a language class or learn basic expressions for travel.

Source: Reference on the Web By Barbara Bibel

Students Not Encouraged to use Technology

According to the 21st-Century Classroom Report: Preparing Students for the Future or the Past? students think technology is important now and will be in the future, but their schools aren’t adequately preparing them to use technology in college and their careers. Students use technology extensively as a learning tool and expect to use technology in college and the workforce. 94% anticipate using technology to complete assignments in college.

Call to Action for Goodwin College
Survey students to understand their technology expectations. Consider using the 21st-Century Classroom survey tool, or your own survey, to get an accurate picture of what students and teachers want and need
Bring together faculty and IT to discuss must-have resources. Use that discussion to create or augment your district's technology plan
Leverage 21st-century tools to achieve educational goals. Focus on professional development to ensure faculty understand and use technology

Source: T.H.E. Journal, June 28, 2010

Recommended Books This Week

Patrons recommend this week:

Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Blindness by Jose Saramago
Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson
Differentiate or Die: Survival in Our Era of Killer Competition by Jack Trout
Making the Best of Basics: Family Preparedness Handbook By James Stevens
Fire by Kristin Cashore
Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson
Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson
Death and Life of the Great American School System by Diane Ravitch
Trick Baby by Iceberg Slim
No More Sheets by Juanita Bynum
American Women and World War II by Doris Weatherford

What are you reading??

American Library Association: Technology Trends

At the annual American Library Association Conference, a panel of expert technology librarians held forth on most interesting library-tech trends. I will be reporting on these all week.

Super Fast Book Scanning: 200 pages in one minute or less
University of Tokyo professor Masatoshi Ishikawa (covered a few months ago on IEEE Spectrum's Automaton blog), which could, in just a few years, allow a handheld device, such as a phone, to scan an entire 200-page book in one minute or less. I'm not really sure how we deal with this but it's not avoidable.

Click on Automaton blog in the previous paragraph for more information and to see the scanner in action on YouTube.

Credo Reference has Topic Pages

We're excited to announce the launch of Credo Topic Pages, now available on http://www.credoreference.com!

Topic Pages can now also assist you in finding your library. By allowing search engines to index Topic Pages, Credo aims to direct even more users to their local libraries - and to your library resources. After finding topic pages in a search engine, users can find their local library on our login page that lists nearby subscribers.

How to find Topic Pages
To find Topic Pages, simply start searching Credo. If a Topic Page exists for your query, it will appear at the very top of your search results.

Technology in Higher Education

The National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT), a small nonprofit considered to be the intellectual center of the technology-based course transformation movement, has labored mightily and with much success to help more colleges bring their undergraduate courses into the modern age. But it has labored precisely because colleges have yet to decide, en masse, that adopting a proven method to produce better student learning outcomes for less money is the kind of thing they should naturally do on their own.

At Fairfield University here in Connecticut, seven different professors all taught a general biology course with a total enrollment of 260 students. Fairfield consolidated the biology course into a single section co-taught by two professors and used technology, such as clickers and laptops, to supplement the learning experience and to make sure the larger setting was not too impersonal. The changes reduced course costs by 31 percent. At the same time, student retention of concepts covered in the course also improved, as measured by questions given to students in the required second-year course for biology majors specifically designed to test concepts covered in both the redesigned and traditional class.
Here is the full report.

What Do Colleges Want Students to Read?

"In the last decade, the number of colleges that assign summer reading to incoming freshmen has soared. The National Association of Scholars has tracked and analyzed 290 such programs—the most comprehensive study of “common reading” programs to date. The study reveals national patterns in book selection. Major findings include a widespread assignment of books that promote liberal political views; a preponderance of contemporary writing; and a surprisingly low level of intellectual difficulty."
Read the report.
Source: National Association of Scholars Web Page

Dr. Chocolate

Meet Andy McShea, a scientist using his training to make better—and healthier—chocolate. He’s known as Doc Choc, because he came to Theo Chocolate in 2007, after 7 years at the Seattle biotechnology company CombiMatrix and 3 years as a postdoctoral fellow at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. He’s now using his science background to make better—and healthier—chocolate.

Read more.
Source: Dr. Chocolate - The Scientist - Magazine of the Life Sciences

Visualizing U.S. Health Data

It was a busy day yesterday for tools from Bing (Microsoft's search engine) and Google to assist in visualizing health information.

Bing's application will allow you to overlay health data onto Bing Maps so you can better understand and visualize the health of a community.

Access the Bing Health Maps

Categories of Data Include:
+ Birth Measures (Low Birth Weight, Premature Births, etc.
+ Death Measures (Homicide, Lung Cancer, etc.)
+ Health Risk Factors (Smoker, Diabetes, etc.)
(Data sources: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
Institute of Medicine
The map is part of the Community Health Data Initiative)

Shortly after the Bing announcement hit the web, Google made their announcement.
HHS has published useful data about communities, hospitals and nursing homes and made it available for download. So Google combined some of this information using Google Fusion Tables, a database service in the cloud that makes it easy to explore, visualize and share structured data.

Access the Google Health Map (Hospital Data)

At the moment (of course this will likely change), the Bing Health Map has a lot more data to “play with.”
Source: Report of Greg Sterling from Search Engine Land (SEL)

Google Lists Top Most Visited Web Sites

June 2nd, 2010--In a resource prepared for its advertisers, Google has listed the top 1000 most-visited web sites based on unique visitors. Google.com is not on the list.

The Top 10

1. Facebook
2. Yahoo
3. Live.com
4. Wikipedia.org
5. MSN.com
6. Microsoft
7. Blogspot (owned by Google)
8. Baidu.com
9. QQ.com
10. Mozilla.com

Here are a few other rankings:

18. Twitter
22. Amazon.com
31. Flickr.com
44. IMDB
56. Linkedin.com
83. NY Times
102. Scribd
166. Reference.com
179. Reuters.com

Library Workshop June 3

Students, Faculty, Staff--you are invited!

We are repeating the workshop on accessing library resources from home presented by Dan Bonacum of the IT department.

Library Workshop
Accessing Library resources off-campus: Conquering the Virtual Private Network
Room 142 (next to the library)
Thursday, June 3
begins at 10 a.m.

Break free from Oil Addiction

This Memorial Day weekend the Sierra Club and the American Security Project released a joint report showing how America’s addiction to oil threatens our national security, our economy and our environment. Read "Ending Our Dependence on Oil" that highlights the connections between national security and energy and lays out solutions for mitigating the threats posed by continued oil dependence.
Source: Sierra Club Currents June 1

Need Info on the Go? Text a Librarian

Need Info On the Go? Remember to Text a Librarian!

Students, faculty and staff at Goodwin College now ask questions and get information from the library by text message. For patrons who are unable to ask a librarian in person or online, or those who simply prefer texting over talking, the Text a Librarian service provides a convenient option for getting info on their mobile phones. The service does not display phone numbers and generates an anonymous ID for each patron in order to reference conversation history.

Try it now!
Text ASKGOOD to 66746 for instructions
Save 66746 in your contacts as ASKGOOD

LIBRARY CLOSED SUNDAY AND MONDAY

The library will be closed Sunday and Monday because of Memorial Day Weekend. We will be open Saturday from 9:30 to 1:30 as usual.

Please visit the library this week and next week to see the display of books related to Memorial Day.

Condition of Education 2010

The National Center for Education Statistics today released The Condition of Education 2010, a Congressionally mandated report to the nation on education in America today. It covers all aspects of education, with 49 indicators that include findings on enrollment trends, demographics, and outcomes.

The report projects that public school enrollment will rise from 49 million in 2008 to 52 million by 2019, with the largest increase expected in the South. Over the past decade, more students attended both charter schools and high-poverty schools (those in which more than 75 percent of the students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch). One in six U.S. students attends a high-poverty school; and the number of charter school students has tripled since 1999.

This year’s report features a special section that looks closer at these high-poverty schools in America, examining the types and locations of schools, the characteristics of the students and their teachers and principals; and student achievement. It finds a wide and persistent gap in educational achievement.

Read the report.The Condition of Education 2010
Source: National Center for Education Statistics

NEW MAGAZINE: URBAN FARM

It doesn’t take a farm to have the heart of a farmer. Now, with this burgeoning sustainable-living movement, you don’t have to own acreage to fulfill your dream of raising your own food. Urban Farm magazine will guide you down the path to self sustainability.

Goodwin Library now subscribes to Urban Farm. Published quarterly, this magazine promotes the benefits of self-sufficiency and provides the tools with which to do it on any size property. Between the covers, you’ll find how-to projects, backyard-livestock advice, profiles of urban farmers, “green” and innovative products, and of course, recipes for preparing your homegrown vegetables, eggs and other farm bounty.

Urban Farm reaches out to those in the city and suburbs, those who are inspired by the local-food movement, and those who want to raise chickens and grow food for themselves, supporting local agriculture and living more sustainably.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest is here!

The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo
The Girl Who Played With Fire
Now you can read the third novel in the Stieg Larsson's best selling trilogy--The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest--just arrived in the library today!

Also new to the library today:
Total Eclipse of the Heart by Zane
Savor the Moment by Nora Roberts

Google announces CloudCourse

When will Google stop? Google last week announced a new course-scheduling system, CloudCourse,that could potentially have implications for higher education. CloudCourse is integrated with Google Calendar and allows users to schedule classes, look up user profiles, and sync the service's data with internal university systems. CloudCourse was built entirely on Google's App Engine, which allows users to build and host Web apps. Google hopes that CloudCourse can serve as an example of how to use the App Engine.

One potential use for CloudCourse is to manage class rosters with tools that allow users to look at enrolled versus waitlisted students, mark student attendance, and change a student's enrollment status in a course. Universities typically already have an internal system to complete the tasks CloudCourse can perform.

CloudCourse might help university administrators who don't have the time or resources to worry about hardware hosting and dealing with traffic bursts that occur during class enrollment periods.
Source: Wired Campus

Workshop: Connect to Databases Off Campus

LEARN HOW TO CONNECT TO THE LIBRARY RESOURCES OFF CAMPUS!
Room 142 (next to the library)
10 a.m. May 27

Dan Bonacum of the IT Department will demonstrate how to use the Virtual Private Network successfully. Please tell everyone!

Guide to Online Learning

Power Up: A Practica Student's Guide to Online Learning by Barret, Poe, and Spagnola-Doyle (124 pages)

Many students have asked for help with online learning and not just how to get on to Blackboard. Now in the library, this book discusses the realities of online learning and highlights the resources available to online students. The tips and techniques will help you succeed in the virtual classroom. You will discover how to regulate your learning paces and processes--skills that will serve you well into the future. This book is published by Pearson Prentice Hall who also has a Student Success Supersite where students and faculty can find an arrray of resources.

Educational Video

Accessible Educational Technology Series

Australia's open access repository of research and scholarly output at Bond University includes a video series on education, accessibility, and assitive technology. The videos are posted on Vimeo, the high-definition video sharing and networking site. The series include videos on topics such as "Issues of Online Learning ina disability Studies Context," "Braille Literacy," and "Over-Reliance on Assisted Technology." Videso feature inerviews with disabled students and scholars.
Access here. http://vimeo.com/8205436
Source: Association of College and Research Library News May 2010

Book of the Day: Gift of Fear

Recommended by Pam Kudra and Oprah

Gift of Fear by Gavin De Becker
Available in the Goodwin Library

The Gift of Fear is a must-read for everyone, particularly women. It teaches people how to stay safe, how to avoid becoming a victim, how to listen to your instincts and react. The author developed the Mosaic (a threat assessment tool) that is used nation wide by the court systems, police departments, and schools. Gavin De Beckers believes that most violent acts are random and have clear warning signs enabling us to stay safer in the community.

The Gift of Fear educates the reader on situations that involve stalkers, men who abuse woman, predators, death threats, disgruntled employees, or mass killers. He offers the readers lessons on survival signals, relying on one's intuition, separating what is real from imagined danger, and predicting dangerous behavior. He also teaches the readers to evaluate whether someone will use violence against them or not.

Baby's Hearing Test

Nowadays, 97 percent of babies born in this country have their hearing screened in the newborn nursery. That means essential follow-up testing and treatment can begin very early indeed. But the key term is “follow-up.”

As many as 46 percent of children who failed the newborn screening test in 2007 did not have documented repeat testing and treatment, said Marcus Gaffney, a health scientist with the Early Hearing Detection and Intervention program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Screening a child doesn’t do a lot of good,” Mr. Gaffney told me, “if you don’t take the appropriate follow-up.”

To learn more, read the full story, “What to Do When a Newborn Can’t Hear”.
Source: New York Times May 20 2010

21st Century Literacies

The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) defines 21st Century literacies.

“Literacy has always been a collection of cultural and communicative practices shared among members of particular groups. As society and technology change, so does literacy. Because technology has increased the intensity and complexity of literate environments, the twenty-first century demands that a literate person possess a wide range of abilities and competencies, many literacies. These literacies—from reading online newspapers to participating in virtual classrooms—are multiple, dynamic, and malleable. As in the past, they are inextricably linked with particular histories, life possibilities and social trajectories of individuals and groups. Twenty-first century readers and writers need to
•Develop proficiency with the tools of technology

•Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally

•Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes

•Manage, analyze and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information

•Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multi-media texts

•Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments.”

Source: NCTE Inbox

Most Challenged Books of 2009

The Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) has released the list of the Top Ten Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2009. New to the list this year are Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series and Jodi Piccoult’s My Sister’s Keeper.

Lauren Myracle’s Internet girl series – ttyl, ttfn, and l8r g8r - tops the list, replacing the children’s book, And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, in the #1 spot. Tango had appeared at the top of the list for the prior three years in a row. Myracle’s series has been challenged for reasons that include nudity, sexually explicit, offensive language, and drugs.

OIF recorded a total of 460 challenges in 2009. For every challenge reported to OIF, however, we estimate that there are 4 or 5 challenges that go unreported. Thanks to the dedication of countless individuals, materials do remain accessible to users in a majority of cases. Banned Books Week will be held September 25 through October 2, 2010.
Source: OIF Blog May 19, 2010

Census Controversy

Should undocumented immigrants be counted?

Now under way, the 2010 census has sparked bitter partisanship. Some conservative Republicans, for example, have criticized the census as an unconstitutional intrusion on privacy; others warn that census participation is important for maintaining GOP power, since the count is used to apportion congressional seats and allocate federal money to cities and states. Liberal Democrats have been more supportive of census procedures, which for the first time will count same-sex couples. To raise response rates, the Census Bureau sent every household the same brief 10-question form and dropped use of the “long form” — a lengthy questionnaire seeking data on housing, transportation, education and income. The long form has been replaced by a separate, ongoing monthly survey that will provide timelier data, but from a smaller sample of households. Researchers generally hail the change but say it will cause some problems, at least initially.
Source: Introduction: CQ Researcher May 14, 2010
Image: Despite controversy over this year's count, U.S. households returned census forms at the same 72 percent rate as in 2000. Census data determine the number of seats in congressional districts and how nearly $5 trillion in federal funds will be distributed to states and localities over the coming decade. (AFP/Getty Images/Paul J. Richards)

Statistical Directory For Social Sciences

The EBSS division of the Association of College and Research Libraries created this directory for those of us who regularly need to find statistics.
General United States Statistics
Education Statistics
Gerontology Statistics
Psychology Statistics
Social Work Statistics
Demographics

New DVDs in the Library

Dimming the Sun: What does this Climate conundrum Mean for the Future of the Earth-56 minutes (NOVA)
Global Warming: The Signs and the Science-60 minutes (PBS)
World in the Balance: The Population Paradox-120 minutes (NOVA)
An Inconvenient Truth: A Global Warning-96 minutes (Paramount)
Black Gold: The Story of Oil-50 minutes (History Channel)
Future of Food-88 minutes (Arts Alliance America)

Sociology Journal Online

Founded January 28th, 2010, the Socjournal is a new media journal of sociology and society intended to offer sociologists a window into the world of new media communications. Recognizing that traditional scholarly publication in traditional scholarly journals is limited, slow, and isolated (i.e. sociological research remains hidden behind an academic wall that is impenetrable to most people), the Socjournal aims to bring sociology to the world by providing blog space, regular columns, and academic reports designed to popularize and disseminate the fascinating world of sociological research.

I particularly like "What is Sociology?" Please read it!

Students: Credo Partners with EasyBib

Exporting citations to EasyBib is now available from Credo!

The Credo Reference Database has partnered with EasyBib.com to simplify the research process. You can research a topic using Credo Reference, and with just one click, you can export to EasyBib to keep track of bibliographic data. EasyBib exporting on Credo is available from:

Entry pages: an icon appears at the top (shown below) and EasyBib is listed in the citation drop-down menu at the bottom of each entry
Saved results: EasyBib has been added as an exporting option

EasyBib provides citation formatting tools to over 16 million users yearly and is geared towards students of all levels. With over 55 different source types, EasyBib is designed to be simple yet comprehensive, making it the most popular bibliography tool amongst students.

Credo Reference can be acessed from the database list on the library page.

New DVDs Just Arrived

Who Killed the Electric Car? (93 minutes)
Fast Food Nation (114 minutes)
Bad Seed: The Truth About Our Food (112 minutes)
Genetically Modified Food: Panacea or Poison? (70 minutes)
Developmentally Appropriate Practice: A Focus on Play (85 minutes) 2 copies
Drinking Water Consumer Information (no time listed)

Feature Film
Day After Tomorrow (121 minutes)

CDs
Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity (12

New Beginning

The philosopher Seneca said that every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end. On 5 May, Nature Reports Climate Change will close. The site will no longer be updated, but the archived content will still be freely available online. In April 2011, Nature journal will launch Nature Climate Change, a full-fledged journal, whose mission will be to publish original research on climate change and its impacts, as well as to place such change in a wider social and political context. As an interdisciplinary publication, Nature Climate Change will be the first Nature-branded title to publish research from social scientists.
Source: Condensed from an editorial by Oliver Heffernan in the May 5 issue of Nature.

WELCOME TO STUDENTS

The library staff welcomes you to the Goodwin campus and especially the Goodwin Library. We have many resources for you and all of us are ready to help you find and use them. Most of what you need to know initially about the library you will find on the library page. Instruction is available for groups and individually.

Access to, and not necessarily ownership of, information needed to support research regardless of format and independent of physical location is the emerging focus of the library's collection. More and more resources in today's college libraries are available electronically or through arrangements with other libraries. If we don't have what you are looking for, we can get it for you.

If you have a question or need help, you can text us. Information on Text-a-Librarian is on the library page.

www.goodwin.edu/

"Avatar" DVD in the library

Director James Cameron hoped the Earth Day release of "Avatar" on DVD would draw attention to the real-life environmental issues that inspired his story. It's no coincidence that the film's DVD was released last Thursday. Cameron has lately tied the publicity surrounding "Avatar", the highest-grossing movie of all time, with the environmental issues. The library has the recently released DVD available for checkout.

Congratulations to the 15th Graduating Nurse Class

Last night was the pinning ceremony for Goodwin's 15h graduating class of nurses. As always, it was a splendid and moving ceremony. The speaker, James J. Biernat, nursing director of psychiatry at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, was excellent and happens to be the uncle of one of the graduates. The student and faculty "Words of Wisdom" were also inspiring. Two student library workers were in this class: LaShonie Douglas, who spoke last night, and Elizabeth Diamond. Congratulations to all of the graduates, Janet Costello, and the nursing faculty.

Students use Credo Reference

The library has this terrific database called Credo Reference. Credo Reference is a general reference source for students and faculty offering more than 475 highly-regarded titles from over 70 publishers. That’s 475 full text reference books online. Credo covers every major subject from the world's best publishers of reference.

We have it, but is it being used? Yes! In March, students had consulted 81 books in the Credo Reference database. So far in April students have used 76 Credo Reference books.

What are some of the searches from March and April?
CIA World Fact book: Compared individual countries or compare statistics across all countries
History Paper: used the chronologies of world history from multiplie sources
Medical Images: used Color Atlas of Human Anatomy
Art images: explored a theme such as “impressionist river” paintings in Bridgeman Art Library with 15,000 art images
See for yourself. Look at the image of River Banks at Saint-Mammes.
(I saw this painting at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia.)

Happy 40th Earth Day

Print smarter: The average U.S. office worker goes through 10,000 sheets of copy paper a year. If you come to the library today, you will see how much paper is wasted by printing mistakes in one day.

* Print on both sides or use the back side of old documents for faxes, scrap paper, or drafts. Avoid color printing and print in draft mode whenever feasible.
* Buy chlorine-free paper with a higher percentage of post-consumer recycled content or consider switching to a lighter stock of paper or alternatives made from bamboo, hemp, organic cotton, or kenaf.
* Recycle toner and ink cartridges and buy remanufactured ones. According to Office Depot, each remanufactured toner cartridge "keeps approximately 2.5 pounds of metal and plastic out of landfills... and conserves about a half-gallon of oil."
* Think before you print: could this be read or stored online instead? When you receive unwanted catalogs, newsletters, magazines, or junk mail, ask to be removed from the mailing list. Then recycle the item.
* Download the new Ecofont – a new typeface that incorporates tiny, inkless circles that minimize ink usage by up to 20 percent. Best of all: it’s free.
Source: Sierra Club Green Life page

100 Places to Remember Before They Disappear

Some of the most beautiful locales on earth could change radically or vanish altogether if climatologists' predictions prove correct. This sampling from a Newsweek special issue reminds us what's at stake--not just for the people, plants, and animals that inhabit these magical, fragile places, but for all of us. What's on the list?
Chicago, Illinois
Western Hudson Bay, Canada
Olumpia, Greece
Kauai, Hawaii

Science Research Free for All

"The push to open up scientific knowledge to all looks set to go into overdrive. Over the past decade, the accessibility offered by the Internet has transformed science publishing. Several efforts have already tried to harness the web's power to make research papers available for free. Now two parallel efforts from the US government could see almost all federally funded research made available in free, publicly accessible repositories. Many journals, including Nature, help authors fulfill institutional mandates by depositing articles in PubMed Central on the authors' behalf."
Source: First paragraph on an article in the journal Nature April 8:
"US Seeks to make science free for all" by Declan Butler
The journal issue is available in the library.

Need Students for a Class? Advertise on YouTube

Jeremy Littau wanted to generate some buzz about the multimedia reporting course he’ll teach next fall at Lehigh University, so he made a YouTube video about it. Mr. Littau, an assistant professor of journalism and communication, put the video up last week, before registration started. So far the advertisement seems to be working.

A browse through YouTube suggests that relatively few instructors promote their classes there, and that many of those who do are teaching online courses. In some videos, professors talk straight into the camera and give an overview of the course. Others show still and moving pictures of the subject matter. Mr. Littau’s video uses interviews with current students about what they learned and footage that they produced in the course.

Mr. Littau e-mailed the video to journalism majors and posted a link to it on Facebook and Twitter. He still sends copies of the syllabus to students who ask about the class, but he thinks the link to the video may be more helpful. “A syllabus can’t go viral,” he adds.

Watch the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGoIfYx-eAA

Revising No Child Left Behind

REVISING NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND: CQ Researcher April 16, 2010
President Obama is proposing a substantial overhaul of the No Child Left Behind Act, the controversial centerpiece of George W. Bush's educational policy. Both liberal and conservative critics say the eight-year-old law has hurt education by overemphasizing standardized tests and unfairly labeling schools as underperforming without providing help to improve. Obama wants to focus federal enforcement on the lowest-performing schools, which could be required to fire staff, convert to charter schools or close altogether. He also wants to hold teachers more accountable for student performance. State policymakers and many experts are welcoming the proposed changes, but the powerful teachers' unions say firing teachers is unfair and ineffective in raising student achievement. Obama also wants states to adopt national “core standards” developed by the states' governors and education chiefs. Read the whole report online. (password protected)
Source: Introduction from CQ Researcher
Image: Youngsters in Newark, N.J., rally for more public school funding at the We the People parade. (Newark, N.J., Public Schools/Council of the Great City Schools)

New Book in the Library: On Thin Ice

On Thin Ice: The Changing World of the Polar Bear by Richard Ellis
There are only 22,000 polar bears left in the world. As global warming threatens the ice caps’ integrity, the polar bear has also come to symbolize the peril that faces all life on earth. Here,the acclaimed science writer Richard Ellis offers an impassioned statement on behalf of polar bears—and all they stand for.

Week of the Young Child

The faculty and students from the Early Childhood Education department provided the wonderful display in front of the elevator celebrating the Week of the Young Child. Christina Deptulski, assistant librarian, also arranged a library display in honor of the Week of the Young Child as part of our celebration of National Library Week.

House Resolution Supports National Library Week

This week the House of Representatives passed H.RES.1222 , a resolution to support the goals and ideals of National Library Week. Sponsored by U.S. Rep. Vernon Ehlers (MI-3-R), the resolution outlines the many ways libraries of all kinds serve our country. The conclusion of the resolution reads:

Library Week, April 11-17, 2010: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
(1) supports the goals and ideals of National Library Week;
(2) encourages all residents to visit a library to take
advantage of the wonderful library resources available, and
to thank their librarians and library workers for making
information accessible to all who walk through the library's
doors; and
(3) supports librarians' efforts to ensure that all
Americans can continue to access 21st century library
services in school, public, academic, and special libraries.

Click here to read the Congressional Record account of the proceedings, including the full text of the resolution and floor speeches.

Goodwin Appreciates Library Workers

LIBRARY WORKERS
Marilyn Nowlan
Christina Deptulski
Alicia Cornelio
Tracy Shulz
LaShonie Douglas
Shakira Greene
Christina Branford
Kersten Mitchell
Claire O'Hanlon
Amber Poindexter
Arteasia Wise




If diet, budget or schedule prohibits giving food, money, or time, please send a heartfelt thank-you note to library employees who work for you every day. A warm letter of appreciation is free, calorie-free and only takes minutes to compose. You can just add a comment right here.

Odds Are, It's Wrong

This essay, "Odds are, It's Wrong" in the March 27 Science News magazine, says science fails to face the shortcomings of statistics. Problems caused by the misuses of statistics render many scientific results erroneous. This should be required reading for students taking statistics courses--and all the rest of us.

APA Style Spelling

Preferred Spelling for APA Style

For those students still finishing research papers using the APA format, here are some tips on preferred spelling.

The APA Publication Manual recommends Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2005) as the standard spelling reference for APA journals and books for nonpsychological terms; spelling of psychological terms should conform to the APA Dictionary of Psychology (VandenBos, 2007). If the dictionary gives a choice, use the first spelling listed; for example, use aging and canceled rather than ageing and cancelled.

These references are available in the Goodwin Library
Merriam-Webster’s collegiate Dictionary (2005)
Online in Credo Reference database (Access from library page under Research Databases.)

APA Dictionary of Psychology (2007)
On the shelf in the reference section.
Call number: REF BF31.A83 2007

(Adapted from the sixth edition of the APA Publication Manual, © 2010)

National Poetry Month Contest

In honor of National Poetry Month, The Chronicle of Higher Education is holding a very brief poetry contest. Write a poem that is inspired in some way by any element of John Keats's "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer"—by a phrase, a memory his poem prompts, his reference to a new planet, a modern-day parallel you spot, anything. Just keep your poem to no more than 28 lines (twice what Keats needed, after all).

For the April 30 issue they'll choose one poem, or perhaps several, to publish in print and online. Anyone is welcome to contribute, so let your colleagues, students, and poet friends know.

You’ll have to work fast, though, because the deadline for submission is April 20 at dawn. E-mail your poem to lawrence.biemiller@chronicle.com, with “Poetry contest” in the subject line.

Here is a copy of "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer."

Support Connecticut Libraries

Libraries across Connecticut need your support this week!

This week is National Library Week, a perfect time for you to send a quick e-mail to you state legislators and governor to let them know how important libraries are to you!

Libraries are busier than ever helping families survive during these tough economic times, yet public, school, and academic libraries are facing closures and elimination of librarians and library workers—the people who help those with a job application, teach 21st century skills, and nurture the love of reading in kids that will serve them the rest of their lives.

State governments provide much needed funding for libraries to provide public access to the Internet for everyone, databases for individuals and small businesses, homework help, and much more. Without this funding, libraries are in peril, and residents in Connecticut are denied critical resources when they need them most.

Please send an e-mail to your governor and your representatives today, and pass this message on to your friends and colleagues. Thank you for advocating for libraries and library staff in Connecticut.

What does Your Library do for You?

The library staff would like to remind you during National Library Week that your library allows you to:

1) borrow books, DVDs, CDs and other library materials from participating mambers of the ICONN interlibrary loan consortium and have them delivered right here.

2) search online databases from your home, office or school.

3) download ebook from your home, office or school.

4) Check your library account online from your home, office or school.

5) access the Internet at any library location.

6) renew library materials on the phone or online.

7) access unique collections including rare and historic books and photographs.

8) call, email, or text one of our friendly librarians for answers to your questions.

What do you like about the Goodwin Library? Post your comments.

Environmental Science News: Storms of My Grandchildren

The library just purchased Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity on CD, the latest book by climate scientist, James Hansen. After years focused on science, he said he started speaking out more about risks of global warming in 2004, reckoning his grandchildren would not forgive him if he stayed silent. Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, testified to the U.S. Congress as long ago as 1988 about the risks of global warming from human activities led by the burning of fossil fuels.

Last week, Hansen won the $100,000 Sophie Prize for decades of work trying to alert politicians to what he called an unsolved emergency of global warming. The award was set up in 1997 by Norwegian Jostein Gaarder, the author of the 1991 best-selling novel and teenagers' guide to philosophy "Sophie's World." "Hansen has played a key role for the development of our understanding of human-induced climate change," the prize citation said.

This is National Library Week: Free Access

National Library Week will be observed this week April 11-17, 2010 with the theme, "Communities thrive @ your library®."

National Library Week is a national observance sponsored by the American Library Association (ALA) and libraries across the country each April. It is a time to celebrate the contributions of our nation's libraries and librarians and to promote library use and support. All types of libraries - school, public, academic and special - participate.

Lots of announcements will be in the blog this week. To start the week off, ProQuest is celebrating National Library Week with us by providing free access this week to some of their most popular online resources at http://www.proquest.com/go/celebrate.

-- CultureGramsTM explore the world's cultures with local experts that document the history, customs, government, and daily life in multimedia reports on over 200 countries.

-- eLibrary(R) this easy to use resource brings together content about in-demand subjects from millions of multimedia-rich, global resources.

-- ProQuest(R) African American Heritage brings together records critical to African American family history research and connects users to a community of research experts.

-- ProQuest Historical NewspapersTM - Black Newspapers experience history firsthand via continuous runs of the following full-image titles: The Baltimore Afro-American, Chicago Defender, Los Angeles Sentinel, and New York Amsterdam News.

This is a good time to stock up on some resources for teachers to use in preparing for next semester courses or for students looking for research material.

State Medical Boards’ Serious Disciplinary Actions

Using an analysis of data just released by the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) on all disciplinary actions taken against doctors in 2009, Public Citizen has calculated the rate of serious disciplinary actions (revocations, surrenders, suspensions and probation/restrictions) taken by state medical boards in 2009.

Connecticut was one of the ten worst states with the lowest three-year rate of serious disciplinary actions for 2007-2009. Here is the list of 10 worst states starting with the worst:

Minnesota (1.07 actions per 1000 physicians)
South Carolina (1.09)
Wisconsin (1.59)
New Hampshire (1.65)
Connecticut (1.80)
Massachusetts (1.93)
Mississippi (2.17)
Florida (2.25)
Maryland (2.30)
Vermont (2.34)

Read the full report.

Public Citizen April 5, 2010

Clinical Report on Asthma

"Asthma is a common respiratory condition, affecting hundreds of millions of people around the world. Beta-agonists have been used for over a century to reduce wheezing in asthma, by relieving smooth muscle contraction in the airways. However, two epidemics of increased asthma deaths have been linked to the use of short-acting beta-agonists (isoprenaline forte in the 1960s and fenoterol in the 1980s).

The two currently available inhaled long-acting beta2-agonists used in asthma are regular salmeterol and formoterol, and concerns remain about their safety. Two large surveillance studies (SMART and SNS) reported an increased risk of death from asthma with regular use of salmeterol in adults with asthma in comparison to placebo and regular salbutamol, respectively. Both showed a roughly three-fold increase in deaths from asthma, which was statistically significant in SMART but not in SNS."

Source: This is from the reprint of a Cochrane review, prepared and maintained by The Cochrane Collaboration and published in The Cochrane Library
2010, Issue 1

Second Life Destination: Easter Spring Town

Maybe I have been working too hard, but this destination in Second Life looks appealing right now. Easter Spring Town is full of fun, interactive entertainment. Besides shopping, there is an easter egg hunt, a group bunny hop dance, a jelly bean dance, free easter egg costumes, a pool of easter coloring to jump in, free hoppy balls & much more.
Source: Special Lib rary Association blog

CQ Researcher This Week

Breast cancer is the second most common cancer among women in the United States, after skin cancer, and the second-leading cause of cancer death, after lung cancer. Yet breast cancer mortality rates have been declining, most probably the result of early detection and better treatment. Advances in hormone therapy and discoveries of antibody treatments have markedly improved the outcome for breast cancer patients, along with the development of genetic tests on tumor tissue to determine which patients will best benefit from chemotherapy. While progress is being made, some debates seem never to fade. There continue to be disagreements about the age at which women should begin mammography screening, how to treat the increasing number of “zero stage” breast cancers that screening detects and the extent to which environmental pollutants cause breast cancer. In addition, disparities in treatment and racial outcomes continue to be documented.
Source: CQ Researcher introduction to report available online
Image: Singer/actress Olivia Newton-John, a breast cancer survivor who was diagnosed at age 43, is a critic of a scientific panel's recent recommendation against routine mammography screening for women in their 40s. An advocate of early detection, she poses with the pink ribbon symbol of breast cancer awareness. (AP Photo/Ronald Zak)

Best Free Reference for Students

Title: FastWeb: Scholarships, Financial Aid, and Colleges
URL: http://www.fastweb.monster.com/

Students fill out a detailed questionnaire about academic achievement, future plans, interests, and awards and then receive information on scholarships and internships for which they are eligible. The beauty of this site rests in its organizational features. Students can set up e-mail reminders about application due dates, mark favorites or delete entries from their lists, e-mail descriptions to friends, and add personal notes about a scholarship. The site also contains advice on test preparation, navigating the admissions process, and transitioning to college. FastWeb boasts that their database searches “1.3 million scholarships worth over $3 billion,” making this a valuable resource for busy students.

Free/Fee-based: Free registration required

American History in Video FREE during April

Please note that American History in Video is freely available through April 30.No username or password required—enjoy! Go there now.

American History in Video provides the largest and richest online collection of video available for the study of American history—2,000 hours and more than 5,000 titles on completion. The collection's wealth of video and multiplicity of perspectives allow students and scholars to see, experience, and study American history in ways never before possible. A Critical Video Edition, American History in Video's suite of tools—searches and browses powered by Semantic Indexing and searchable transcripts synchronized to video—give the ability to drill down in seconds to find the footage of interest from thousands of hours of video. This collection is an exclusive collaboration with A&E Television Networks and features some of their most important documentaries and series from The History Channel®, A&E Network®, and Biography®.

Historical coverage in the collection ranges from the early history of Native Americans, to the lost colony of Roanoke, to the 1988 Vicennes Affair in the Persian Gulf. Biographical coverage ranges from eighteenth century figures such as Benedict Arnold and Daniel Boone to modern day figures such as Thurgood Marshall and Helen Thomas.

Pritzker Architecture Prize

The Pritzker Architecture Prize usually goes to just one architect. But this year, two Japanese partners are being honored — a woman, Kazuyo Sejima, and a man, Ryue Nishizawa — who lead the firm SANAA.

The Pritzker jury praised their buildings for being "deceptively simple" — and, perhaps in a jab at contemporary architecture, the jurors wrote: "SANAA's architecture stands in direct contrast with the bombastic."

Simplicity greets visitors to the Glass Pavilion for the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio. Set among trees, its layers of ultraclear glass walls fluidly curve between thin white ceiling and floor. The building almost disappears into a pool of reflections and transparencies.

Source: National Public Radio
Image: Courtesy of SANAAGlass: Pavilion for the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio.

First Three Weeks of College are Crucial

What happens in the first three weeks of classes is crucial to whether students will persist and graduate, says a report on a survey of 50,000 students. Even though most community-college students say they are motivated, many haven't developed the habits that could lead them to actually achieve their academic goals.

That was a key finding of a new national survey of community- and technical-college students that was released Monday. A report on the survey, "Benchmarking and Benchmarks: Effective Practice With Entering Students," provides six benchmarks for colleges that are trying to improve students' habits during the critical first three weeks of class.

The Survey of Entering Student Engagement, or Sense, which is administered by the Center for Community College Student Engagement, was given to more than 50,000 new students at 120 community colleges during the fourth and fifth weeks of classes in fall 2009 to assess early impressions of institutional practices and student behaviors. The survey began in 2007 with a pilot test involving 22 colleges.

While 90 percent of community-college students said they agreed or strongly agreed that they had the motivation to do what it took to succeed in college and 85 percent believed they were academically prepared, about 33 percent said they had already turned in an assignment late and 24 percent of students said they neglected to turn in an assignment at all. A quarter of the students surveyed also reported that they skipped class one or more times within the first three weeks of class.

CQ Researcher: Tea Party Movement

Will angry conservatives reshape the Republican Party
Introduction to CQ Researcher weekly report by Peter Katel

"The Tea Party movement seemed to come out of nowhere. Suddenly, citizens angry over the multi-billion-dollar economic stimulus and the Obama administration's health-care plan were leading rallies, confronting lawmakers and holding forth on radio and TV. Closely tied to the Republican Party — though also critical of the GOP — the movement proved essential to the surprise victory of Republican Sen. Scott Brown in Massachusetts. Tea partiers say Brown's election proves the movement runs strong outside of “red states.” But some political experts voice skepticism, arguing that the Tea Party's fiscal hawkishness won't appeal to most Democrats and many independents. Meanwhile, some dissension has appeared among tea partiers, with many preferring to sidestep social issues, such as immigration, and others emphasizing them. Still, the movement exerts strong appeal for citizens fearful of growing government debt and distrustful of the administration." Read the entire report. Call or text a librarian for the user name and password.
Source: CQ Researcher March 19
Image: Tea kettle held high, a Tea Party activist dressed like a Revolutionary War soldier rallies tax protesters in Atlanta on April 15, 2009. It was among several protests held in cities around the nation. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)

Academic Search Premier

The Goodwin College Library now has the Academic Search Premier database
Academic Search™ Premier contains indexing and abstracts for over 8,450 journals, with full text for more than 4,600 of those titles. PDF backfiles to 1975 or further are available for well over one hundred journals, and searchable cited references are provided for more than 1,000 titles.

Academic Search Premier contains unmatched full-text coverage in biology, chemistry, engineering, physics, psychology, religion & theology, etc.
Academic Search Premier is considered the world's largest scholarly, multidiscipline full text database designed specifically for academic institutions. It offers critical information from many sources found in no other database

Quote for the Day

"So, impolitic as it might be, I'd like to believe that I teach because I want students to think of true education not as a frivolous mental gymnastics but as a compulsion to bring their intellect to bear on more than their textbooks. Maybe that way I can finally understand my place in the classroom--for both my students' and my own sake."

Darryl Campbell,a Ph.D. sttudent in history at the University of Notre Dame, wrote the above as part of "Wisdom as Secret Learning Objective" in the March 19 issue of the Chronicle Review. A copy of the Chronicle is in the library.

Is That Really True?

Do you ever wonder when you listen to the news if the people being interviewed are actually giving you correct information? One of the places to check on that is Stats now affiliated with George Mason University in Virginia.

The non-profit, non-partisan Statistical Assessment Service - STATS - has become a much-valued resource on the use and abuse of science and statistics in the media. They correct scientific misinformation in the media and in public policy resulting from bad science, politics, or a simple lack of information or knowledge. This is a great resource for all of us.
Source: http://www.stats.org/

Weight Watchers, Take Note

Seven Foods That Will Prevent You from Overeating

David A. Kessler, the author of The End of Overeating, confirms what most of us know. We have become addicted to foods that are high in sugar, fat, and salt. But when we stop eating those foods, we perhaps do not know the right foods to choose as replacements. He has seven suggestions:
bananas, eggs, almonds, avocados, peanut butter, and oatmeal.
Source: Body and Soul

Health Care Reform

Without significant reform to the current health care system, the number of uninsured Americans could grow by 10 million people in just five years, and spending on government health care programs for the poor could more than double by 2020, according to a new report released today by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF).

The report projects that by 2015, there could be as many as 59.7 million people uninsured—and further estimates that the number could swell to 67.6 million by 2020. An estimated 49.4 million individuals were without health coverage in 2010.

Analysts at the Urban Institute used their Health Insurance Policy Simulation Model to assess the changes in coverage patterns and health care costs that will occur nationally from 2010 to 2020 in the event that major reforms are not enacted.Read the Complete report.
Source: Posted in Business and economics, Consumer issues, Government and politics, Health and health care

Warm, Warmer, Warmest

Last month’s combined global land and ocean surface temperature made it the sixth warmest February ever recorded. Additionally, the December 2009 – February 2010 period was the fifth warmest on record averaged for any similar three-month Northern Hemisphere winter-Southern Hemisphere summer season, according to scientists at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.

Based on records going back to 1880, the monthly NCDC analysis is part of the suite of climate services NOAA provides to businesses, communities and governments so they may make informed decisions to safeguard their social and economic well-being.
Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

When will Connecticut's Misery End?

"There is no jobs recovery in sight. Assuming national growth trails off from the unsustainable 5.7% of the fourth quarter, Connecticut continues to lose jobs through 2011. The rate of loss simply slows from the predicted rate in the previous CCEA Outlook.

The state’s economy has undergone a critical structural change as the degree of outsourcing—whether to other states or abroad—has grown quickly for more than a decade. The result is that even strong growth in total output may not translate into rapid improvement in employment. The effect shows in a pattern of progressively slowed jobs recovery. Before 1990, Connecticut’s economy recovered jobs lost in recessions in ten months or less; recovery took 23 months and then 39 months in the last two recessions."

Connecticut Economic Analyis
Read the full report.

New Books in the Library Today

New Books in the Library
Swamp Man by Donald Goines
Return to Sender by Julia Alvarez
Bauhaus Group: Masters of Modernism by Nicholas Fox Weber
Essentials of Nursing Research: Appraising Evidence for Nursing Practice by Polit & Beck
Evidence-Based Geriatric Nursing Protocols for Best Practice by Capezuit et al.
Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream by Tanya Lee Stone
Best European Fiction 2010 edited by Aleksandar Hemon
Clashing Views on Environmental Issues by Thomas Easton (Taking Sides Series)

Children's Books
When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead (Newberry Medal Award 2010)
An Eye for Color: The story of Josef Albers by Wing and Breckenreid
Bad News for Outlaws: Remarkable Life of Bass Reeves by Vaunda Nelson
The Lion and the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney (Caldecott Medal Winner 2010)
Big Wolf & Little Wolf: The Little Leaf that Wouldn't Fall by Brun-Cosme & Tallec
Red Sings from Treetops: A Year in Colors by Sidman illustred by Zagarenski (Caldecott Honor Book 2010)
Benny and Penny in the Big No-No by Geoffrey Hayes
Faraway Island by Annika Thor (Batchfelder Award 2010)

Batchfelder Award-outstanding children's book published in a foreign language and translated into English.
Newberry Award- the most distinguished American Children's book published the year 2009
Caldecott Medal Winner-recognizes the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children.

MORE COMING!

Can Good Teaching be Learned?

All the teachers at the high school in Central Falls, RI, have been fired because it is one of the worst performing schools in the state. What do you think of that decision? Can teachers be taught to teach better?

"Can Good Teaching be Learned" by Elizabeth Green is the lead article in Sunday's New York Times Magazine. Since everyone here is involved with teaching or being taught, this article is definitely worth your time.

New York Times March 7, 2010

International Women's Day March 8

On International Women's Day, women around the world join together in celebration of the intelligence, strength, courage and beauty of women. Since 1908 this has been a day to celebrate the achievements of women around the world without regard to their national, ethnic, linguistic, cultural, economic or political differences.

Celebrate!

New Books in the Goodwin Library

Roy Adaptation Model by Sister Callista Roy
Essential Study Skills for Science Students by Daniel Chiras
Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah
Vegetable Gardener's Bible by Edward Smith
First Responder Handbook by Andrea Walter et al.
Complete Illustrated History of World War II by Donald Sommerville
Understanding by Design by Wiggins and McTighe
Teaching Kids with Learning Difficulties in the Regular Classroom by S. Winebrenner
Furniture of the New Haven Colony The Seventeenth Century Style by P.Kane
Winning Strategies for Classroom Management by C. Cummings
Introduction to Criminal Justice by L. siegel et al.
Oxford Picture Dictionary by N. Shapiro and J. Adelson-Goldstein
Complete Works of Mark Twain 24 volumes
Teaching the Digital Generation: No MoreCookie-Cutter High Schools by Kelly et al.
Library Instruction Cookbook edited by R. Sittle and D. cook
West of the World by D. Sherman and J. Salisbury

Horizon Project Report

The annual Horizon Report
describes the continuing work of the New Media Consortium’s Horizon Project,a qualitative research project established in 2002 that identifies and describes emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative inquiry on college and university campuses ithin the next five years. The 2010 Horizon Report is the seventh in the series and is produced as part of an ongoing collaboration between the New Media Consortium (NMC) and the EDUCAUSE.

Source: Henriette Pranger, Director of Educational Assessment, and the executive summary of the report.

Glossary of Genetic Terms

The Talking Glossary of Genetic Terms was created by the National Human Genome Research Institute to assist in the understanding of the terms and concepts. The glossary offers definitions and spoken pronunciations of the terms,and specialist in the field provide clarifying commentary. Colorful illustrations, images, and three-dimensional animations are included to enhance comprehension.
Source: National Human Genome Research Institute

Memory Boosting Tool for Students

World's Database of Medical Mnemonics is a free, nonprofit online searchable database of medical mnemonics--memory-boosting tools to assist students in mastering the detailed medical information that they need to know. Users can search the database by filters and keywords, browse mnemonics by category and charts, add a mnemonic to the database, customizethe database, and download the database to a personal digital assistant.

Source: Medical Library Association News February issue

Round Monopoly Board? No More Paper Money?

In 75 long years, the game of Monopoly has seen a lot of tweaks, but nothing like the 2010 edition unveiled at Toy Fair. The game board is now round, and the famous paper dollar bills have been replaced by a credit card. Players now collect $2 million when passing "GO" instead of $200, and the die and decks of cards have been replaced with an electronic card scanner. Will it be dust, or magic? A Toy Fair preview is here.
Source: Children's Technology Review

Writing Women Back into History

About Women’s History Month
Before the 1970’s, the topic of women’s history was largely missing from general public consciousness. To address this situation, the Education Task Force of the Sonoma County (California) Commission on the Status of Women initiated a “Women’s History Week” celebration in 1978 and chose the week of March 8 to coincide with International Women’s Day.

The celebration was met with positive response, and schools began to host their own Women’s History Week programs. The next year, leaders from the California group shared their project at a Women’s History Institute at Sarah Lawrence College. Other participants not only became determined to begin their own local Women’s History Week projects but also agreed to support an effort to have Congress declare a national Women’s History Week.

In 1981, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Rep. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) cosponsored the first Joint Congressional Resolution proclaiming a “Women’s History Week.”

In 1987, the National Women’s History Project petitioned Congress to expand the celebration to the entire month of March. Since then, the National Women’s History Month Resolution has been approved every year with bipartisan support in both the House and Senate.

The overarching theme is “Writing Women Back into History.” In celebration of their 30th anniversary, the National Women’s History Project will be highlighting themes and honorees from previous years. Each of these past themes recognizes a different aspect of women’s achievements, from ecology to art, and from sports to politics.
Source: Library of Congress

Women's History Month Message from CT Senator

Senator Dodd Commemorates Women's History Month.

“March 1 marks the start of Women’s History Month, and during this month we reflect on the pivotal role women have played in the shaping of our country. In my home state of Connecticut, women have made countless contributions not only to our state’s rich history, but to the history and spirit of our entire nation.

“Harriet Beecher Stowe, a Hartford native and the author of the landmark novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was called by President Abraham Lincoln ‘the little lady who started the Civil War’. Elizabeth Hart Jarvis Colt was one of America’s first woman CEOs and a distinguished philanthropist.

“Marian Anderson of Danbury was the first African-American woman to perform with the Metropolitan Opera and was invited by Eleanor Roosevelt to perform at the Lincoln Memorial after the Daughters of the American Revolution barred her from performing at Washington’s Constitution Hall. And Ella Grasso, a native of Windsor Locks, was the first female governor of Connecticut and the first female governor in the country elected in her own right."

Featured Title of the Month in Credo Reference

Now in the Credo Reference Database, The Encyclopedia of Public Choice offers a detailed and comprehensive account of the subject that deals with the intersection of economics and political science. Its fruitful exchange among ethics, moral and political philosophy, and law, as well as economics and political science, examines the image of man as a purposive and rational actor. Its balanced coverage, which reflects the various public choice methodologies and approaches, is thoughtful, comprehensive, lively, and original.The encyclopedia includes different types of entries, including: essays and concepts. Read a few of the interesting articles:
Environmental Politics
Public Schools

Source: Credo Reference can be accessed from the library page.

Health, United States, 2009

The use of medical technology in the United States increased dramatically between 1996 and 2006, according to “Health, United States, 2009,” the federal government’s 33rd annual report to the President and Congress on the health of all Americans.

The report was prepared by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics from data gathered by state and federal health agencies and through ongoing national surveys.

This year’s edition features a special section on medical technology, and finds that the rate of magnetic resonance imaging, known as MRI, and computed and positron emission tomography or CT/PET scans, ordered or provided, tripled between 1996 and 2007. Read the press release.
Source: Center for Disease Control and Prevention Press release February 17

Lowering Student Loan Default Rates

Colleges across the nation are struggling to confront a growing problem in higher education: student debt. As more students borrow more money than ever before, and recent graduates enter the worst job market in a generation, students are increasingly unable to pay back their loans.
…
Just over 10 years ago, a small group of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in Texas confronted a similar crisis, one in which student loan defaults threatened the existence of the institutions. The steps they took to solve that problem have suddenly become relevant to a much broader set of colleges and universities today. Read the Full Report.
Source: Education Sector Report March 2010

How We're Doing in the World

Judged by most standards, America and the world are better off today than they were a year ago when President Obama entered office. While few Americans will forget the fear of global economic meltdown that accompanied the 44th president’s inauguration and the drastic stimulus and triage measures that had to be taken to arrest the economic freefall, public optimism, as measured by a variety of opinion poll measures, has recovered.

But many workers, especially those in the once-thriving Sun Belt, are still suffering severe unemployment. In some ways, we’ve faced a marked decline since 2006, when world GDP growth was at nearly 4 percent and world trade growth was more than 20 percentage points higher than in 2009. In this third “How We’re Doing” Index, a team of Brookings experts take a four-year look at key local, domestic and global indicators to gauge the shifting position of the United States and the larger international system.
Go here for Analysis and Charts.

Source: Brookings Institute

CQ Researcher: Modernizing the Grid

The U.S. electric power grid — the nationwide system of interconnected regional power systems — is a century old and under strain. Long-term power demand has grown steadily since the 1980s, but investments in transmission have lagged behind. Three major blackouts in the past decade have raised concerns about providing electricity reliably. Federal agencies are working with utilities, manufacturers and information technology companies to develop a modernized grid that uses computers to monitor the system. Advocates say this “smart grid” will be able to generate more electricity from renewable fuels and save money for businesses and families. The Obama administration calls the smart grid an urgent priority and is spending billions to help design it. But some experts worry that a digital grid could be vulnerable to cyberattacks or that it will violate consumers' privacy. Others say that promoting energy conservation or building new power plants near population centers would be more effective than building new high-voltage transmission lines. Read the entire report online (Text the librarian for user name and password.)
Source: CQ Researcher February 19
Image: Work crews restore power on high-voltage transmission lines outside New Orleans knocked down by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The Obama administration wants to upgrade the nation's century-old power grid, but critics say energy conservation and new power plants closer to population centers are better solutions. (Bloomberg via Getty Images/Rae Morris

iTunes passes the billion songs downloaded mark

Do you remember when you had to go to a music store or order music online? iTunes just passed a billion songs downloaded. To mark the occasion,iTunes published a list of the top songs downloaded since they opened--seven years ago in 2003. The list contains the all-time top songs--“top” as in sales. 20 songs are listed. (I hope this won't make you feel old.)

Here are the Top Five:

1. I Gotta Feeling by the Black Eyed Peas
2. Poker Face by Lady GaGa
3. Boom Boom Pow by the Black Eyed Peas
4. I’m Yours by Jason Mraz
5. Viva La Vida by Coldplay

Of course you want to see the entire list. Go for it.
Source: Apple

Web Pages Going Away Fast

The average life of a web page these days is apparently somewhere between 44 and 77 days. A lot of the web simply disappears into the ether, but the British Library Web Archive and other archives are doing a valuable job of preserving some traces of our digital lives in a time capsule.
Source: BBC about the British Library Web Archive

New Revolution

"Penguin Boss Unfazed by the March of ebooks"
From the Article:

"When it first appeared in the 1930s, the paperback was regarded with suspicion and alarm in the book industry. Deploying a brand new technology, it brought cheap literature to the masses, transforming reading habits. The revolution shook the gentlemanly world of publishing to its core.

Three quarters of a century later the British company behind this disruptive force, Penguin, finds itself at the centre of another epoch-defining upheaval. The relentless march of the electronic book – epitomised by Amazon’s Kindle reader and the forthcoming Apple iPad – threatens to hollow out the publishing world in the same way as the internet has altered forever the dynamics of the music industry.

Penguin boss John Makinson likens the rise of the ebook to the moment when Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 15th century."

Access the entire article.

Source: Article in MailOnline February 25

Gotta Keep Reading

It's a gloomy day out there. I hope listening to this will brighten it for you.
Gotta Keep Reading - Ocoee Middle School

New Book: Checklist Manifesto

Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
This book, now available in the library, is highly recommended by Paula Dowd, Program Director and Associate Professor of Health Sciences.

"We live in a world of great and increasing complexity, where even the most expert professionals struggle to master the tasks they face. Longer training, ever more advanced technologies—neither seems to prevent grievous errors. But in a hopeful turn, acclaimed surgeon and writer Atul Gawande finds a remedy in the humblest and simplest of techniques: the checklist. First introduced decades ago by the U.S. Air Force, checklists have enabled pilots to fly aircraft of mind-boggling sophistication. Now innovative checklists are being adopted in hospitals around the world, helping doctors and nurses respond to everything from flu epidemics to avalanches. Even in the immensely complex world of surgery, a simple ninety-second variant has cut the rate of fatalities by more than a third."

Atul Gawande is the author of Better and Complications. He is also a MacArthur Fellow, a general surgeon at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, a staff writer for The New Yorker, and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health.
Source: Quotation from product information

New Feature for Credo Reference Database

Credo Reference has announced Topic Pages, a new approach to presenting and organizing information resources. They developed topic pages to provide context and vocabulary around a subject and act as a starting point for research - all on one page. Every Topic Page assembles topical material from many resources from within and outside of the library. You choose which resources will be displayed on your own customized version of Credo Topic Pages. Watch the video introduction.

Source: Credo Reference Database