Political Interference in Science

A-Z Guide to Political Interference in Science

The Union of Concerned Scientists produced this guide to the ways in which the work of scientists at federal agencies has been suppressed or distorted for political purposes. Browse alphabetically, by agency, or by topic, or view the timeline. See also Scientists and Engineers for America <http://www.sefora.org/index.php>, an organization devoted to explaining to the public the importance of scientific integrity. It includes a "scientific bill of rights.”
http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/interference/a-to-z-guide-to-political.html.
Source: Marylaine

The Big Read

The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts, designed to restore reading to the center of American culture. The NEA presents The Big Read in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and in cooperation with Arts Midwest.

The Big Read answers a big need. Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, a 2004 report by the National Endowment for the Arts, found that not only is literary reading in America declining rapidly among all groups, but that the rate of decline has accelerated, especially among the young.

The Big Read in the Hartford area is Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, an African American classic. Read it or read it again.

One Word Sets Off Uproar and Talk of Book Banning

You must have heard that The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron is this year's winner of the Newbery Medal.and that one word on the first page of the book is causing some school librarians to say they will pull the book from the shelves. This New York Times article explores the controversy. For advice, rationales and other help with challenges to literary works, films and videos, drama productions, or teaching methods, visit the NCTE Anti-Censorship Center.
The New York Times, February 18, 2007

More Students in Online Classrooms

According to the North American Council for Online Learning, one million students from kindergarten through 12th grade have enrolled in online classes. Nearly half of the states offer online learning for students. However, some educators are urging caution, saying teacher-student interaction in person is crucial in the learning process.
Source: The Boston Globe, February 18, 2007

Faculty Issues and the Law in Higher Education

Thursday, February 15, at 12 noon

Join Chronicle editors every Thursday at noon for the Brown Bag, a new online discussion. Each week you will be joined by an expert from the world of college finance, technology, management, or other fields for a free and freewheeling discussion on higher education's hot topics. Today's discussion is on faculty issues and the law in higher education.

One of the most vexing problems facing college administrators is hiring and managing faculty members and other college personnel. A leading expert on the law and faculty issues, Barbara A. Lee, will talk about negotiating some of the most common problems, such as how colleges can manage successfully through cutbacks and financial strains without disregarding anyone's rights. She will also talk about ever-evolving issues that colleges must watch, such as the increasing use of adjunct professors, threats to tenure, and rising legal risks for colleges prompted by blogging, file sharing, and other new technologies.

Join the discussion
Submit a question

Major Changes in Homeland Security

The Department of Homeland Security will merge three of its existing academic research centers and create four new centers, to study natural disasters, border security, explosives detection, and maritime security, Congressional Quarterly reported last week.
The merger, scheduled for 2010, is part of the department’s effort to eliminate overlap in its Centers of Excellence program, which finances homeland-security research by university consortia. The three centers that will be merged — the Center for Advancing Microbial Risk Assessment, the National Center for Foreign Animal and Zoonotic Disease Defense, and the National Center for Food Protection and Defense — all conduct research on chemical and biological terrorism.
Major Changes Planned for Academic-Research Centers in Homeland Security
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

YouNiversity

Imagine what would happen if academic departments operated more like YouTube or Wikipedia, allowing for the rapid deployment of scattered expertise and the dynamic reconfiguration of fields. MIT instructor Henry Jenkins calls this new form of academic unit a "YouNiversity."

Jenkins ask that we "Consider these developments: At the end of last year, Time named "You" its Person of the Year "for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game." Earlier in the year, Newsweek described such sites as Flickr, MySpace, Craigslist, Digg, and YouTube as "putting the 'We' in the Web." The business "thought leader" Tim O'Reilly has termed these new social-network sites "Web 2.0," suggesting that they represent the next phase in the digital revolution — no longer about the technologies per se but about the communities that have grown up around them. Some are even describing immersive online game worlds such as Second Life as the beginnings of Web 3.0. All of this talk reflects changes that cut across culture and commerce, technology and social organization."

His article about dramatic changes in higher education is in the latest Chronicle of Higher education-very interesting.

Demonstration Today of Xreferplus

The free trial to the Online Reference Library, Xreferplus, is now set-up for Goodwin College. For trial access, go to http://www.xreferplus.com/ . This trial will be available until March 15th, 2007. The reference library will be demonstrated in the conference room at 11:30 today.

The Xreferplus trial guide - an introduction to Xreferplus with links to sample Xreferplus images, dynamic tables, voice pronunciations, our interactive atlas, and concept maps can also be accessed at www.xrefer.com/trialguide

Xreferplus is the world's largest online reference service featuring over 200 full-text reference titles with over 2 million entries from 50 highly-respected publishers integrated in a robust search engine with many unique interactive features.

Xrefer has also recently launched a new Specialist Reference (SR) service with subject-specific expertise and added many new unique interactive features such as dynamic table functionality for world state, and county statistics, an interactive world atlas, and our concept map. Xrefer also features over 66,000 images, over 180,000 audio pronunciations, and a citation formatter in APA, MLA, and Chicago formats.
Source: James Slattery, Account Executive for Xrefer

Journal of Nursing Education

February issue of the Journal of Nursing Education is here with major articles focusing on content and competency for the 21st century:
Curriculum Revisited
Statistics Used in Current Nursing Research
Emancipatory Teaching-Learning Philosophy and Practice Education in Acute Care
Rescuing Nursing Education from Content Saturation: The Case for a concept-Based Curriculum
Cultural Competence Revisited: Nursing Students with Disabiities
Patient Safety: Where is Nursing Education
A Survey of Physical Assessment Techniques: Lessons for Nusing Education

New Directions for Youth Development

The winter issue of New Directions for Youth Development has arrived! The whole issue is devoted to rethinking programs for youth in middle years. The everyday life of a nine to fifteen year old is in the middle. This in-between-ness challenges our ideas about the purpose and design of youth programs and the roles and responsibilities of young people in these activities. This issue explores young people's journey into community during their nonschool hours.

Table of Visualization Methods

Visual-literacy.org is an "online introductory tutorial about how data, abstract thoughts, and concepts can be graphically represented to more easily gain useful insights. One of their knowledge map examples is this excellent Periodic Table of Visualization Methods. Rolling your mouse over each form of visualization brings up an example of the technique. It looks like it would very useful if you think a visualization is in order but you're not sure which specific kind to try." Very cool!
Link to Periodic Table
Link to PDF paper "Towards a Periodic Table of Visualization Methods for Management"
Source: boingboing and Mike Love

Science Times on Tuesdays

This is just a reminder that every Tuesday The New York Times publishes a science section. This week it included articles about the nuisance of orbiting junk, climate change, how we see red, the brain region linked to smoking, the debate on the wolf's comeback, the danger of teenagers with cars, and the ecosystem of the skin, treatment of sleep apnea, --and more. The New York Times is available to you from the library page.

Baghdad Day to Day: Librarian's Journal

When the Saddam regime was toppled in 2003, the Iraq National Library and Archive in Baghdad was set alight and looted. Much damage was done, in particular to the library’s archive collections. For several months, the diary entries ofDr. Saad Eskander, the director of Iraq's National Library and Archives, have apeared on the Web site of the British Library and they detail the daily hurdles of keeping Iraq's central library open, preserving the surviving archives and books and just staying alive. An article about Eskander and the library appears in the Arts section of the New York Times today available on the library page. You can read the diary entries at http://www.bl.uk/iraqdiary.html.

New England Watershed: Best New Publication

Place is an important part of how we construct our identities and now we have a new regional magazine. Utne magazine nominatedd New England Watershed as the best new publication of 2006. You will find the Winter 2006-2007 issue in the library.

According to Utne editors, "New England Watershed casts an exceptionally wide lens on a variety of questions pertaining to regional identity. Each issue of the magazine focuses on one them--food and farming, mental health, interstate 91, and examines it through a variety of cultural and historical perspectives." Don't miss out!

New Book: What's Toxic, What's Not

What's Toxic, What's Not by Gary Ginsberg and Brian Toal (published Dec., 2006)

The authors are toxicologists for the Connecticut Department of Public Health. This is a comprehensible bible of hazardous substances that impact every individual in the United States. While explaining the major toxins of lead, radon, mold, and asbestos, they also delve into pesticides and chemicals in consumer products, food, water, air, and soil. Chapters describe each toxin, address the myths and realities surrounding it, and discuss how people come into contact with the substance and how to avoid it. Charts illustrate the toxicity, exposure, and risk index for each contaminant. Suggestions for testing one’s own environment through local health department, water service, and so forth are concrete and achievable. Important points are boxed for emphasis. Tips are provided for diverse subjects such as how to microwave foods in plastic safely and how to make a homemade “green bubble” bath. This is a fascinating but frightening account that is well worth considering for class bibliographies.
Source: Library Journal December 2006

What They are Reading on College Campuses

• Iraq Study Group Report
• Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
• For One More Day by Mitch Alborn
• America (The Book) by writers of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart
• Next by Michael Crichton
• Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwrds
• The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
• Bad President by Rosen, Friedman, Prichett, and Battles
• Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner
• The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town by JohnGreisham

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

Annual Report on Nation's Health

The American College of Physicians, or ACP, has released its annual overview, which highlights problems in the U.S. health care system and calls for sweeping payment reforms designed to shift the nation’s focus back to patient-centered primary care and prevention. ACP’s report, “State of the Nation’s Health Care” contains a laundry list of red flags, including 47 million Americans without health insurance; astronomical per capita spending for health care; underuse of preventive care; overuse of invasive procedures; and a lack of patient-centered, coordinated care. And the situation is only getting worse, according to the ACP.
Source: American College of Physicians (via American Academy of Family Physicians)
+ Full Report

New Database: Academic OneFile

Academic OneFile is a comprehensive, subscription-based database of more than 8,000 journals covering everything from STM to the humanities. It was created in response to the academic community’s need for a sophisticated, up-to-date, easy-to-use database for serious research. All of the things you’ve come to love about InfoTrac® remain the same. The powerful search engine, Thomson Gale PowerSearch,™ continues to simplify navigation with a “breadcrumb trail” that shows the path a search has taken. An exciting, innovative added value is the inclusion of hundreds of podcasts and transcripts from NPR, CNN, and the CBC, as well as full-text New York Times content to 1995.
Find it at www.iconn.org!

LegalTrac is here

Iconn.org now provides us with the LegalTrac database. Drawing on a wide variety of the most highly regarded legal publications, LegalTrac provides indexing for approximately 1,300 titles: major law reviews, legal newspapers, law specialty publications, bar association journals and international legal journals. Each title included in LegalTrac is selected by a spe­cial advisory committee of the American Association of Law Libraries. LegalTrac also contains law-related articles from more than 1,000 additional business and gen­eral interest titles. It is easily accessible at www.iconn.org.

Spelling's Summit on Higher Education

The “summit” that Education Secretary Margaret Spellings promised (or threatened?) to hold as part of her plan to carry out the recommendations of her Commission on the Future of Higher Education will take place in Washington March 21-22, the Education Department said in invitations sent out just before Christmas. The summit was designed to “focus on galvanizing action and distributing leadership and accountability across all sectors.” Its work will emphasize five key priorities: “aligning K-12 and higher education expectations; increasing need-based aid; using accreditation to support and emphasize student learning outcomes; serving adults and other non-traditional students; expanding affordability through increased transparency of costs.”

The report, "A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U.S. Higher Education", was commissioned by Secretary of Education Margaret Spelling and completed last year. the work of the panel, which engaged in a year of study and debate, challenges college leaders, policy makers and the public to help improve an American higher education system that Spelling describes as slipping.
Source: U.S. Department of Education