Take a Hike

This Saturday is Connecticut Trails Day with over 100 events around the state (even some on Sunday) sponsored by Connecticut Forest & Park Association. An 18 page brochure of all events is available online at www.ctwoodlands.org. It's free and it's healthy--enjoy!

Librarian is a Top Career

U.S. News &World Report listed "librarian" as one of the best careers of 2007. Even Parade Magazine called " librarian" one of the hottest jobs for those with a degree. The personal financial advisor, Kiplinger.com, listed "librarian" as one of its seven great careers of 2007. That report wrote this about librarians: "Forget about the image of librarian as mousy bookworms. Today's librarian is a high-tech informtion sleuth...a master of mining cool databases well beyond Google to unearth the desired nuggets." You all knew that, didn't you?

Congratulations Graduates

CONGRATULATIONS

TO ALL GOODWIN GRADUATES

FROM THE LIBRARY STAFF.

KEEP USING LIBRARIES!

Wiki Enters Oxford English Dictionary

Wiki is included in the latest update to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) joining 287 other new words in the online dictionary. OED defines wiki as "a type of Web page designed so that its content can be edited b yanyone who accesses it, using a simplified mark-up language."

Other new words making it into OED include bimbette, blokey, blondie, irritainment, ta-da, tighty-whities, and virtualize. A full list of entries and their definitions can be found at www.oed.com. Remember we will be starting a book club wiki next week. We also will have a 30 day free trial of OED next week.

Why Libraries & Librarians are Extremely Important

Every Thursday for a few weeks I will remind you of why libraries and librarians are extremely important. Here is reason number one.

Not everything is available on the Internet. The amazing amount of useful information on the Internet has some people thinking that everything can be found online for free. Not so! Despite Google's digitizing efforts, contemporary authors and publishers will not allow their work to be freely accessible over the Internet. Copyright law already prohibits making copyrighted books fully accessible through Google, only small selections. It will be a long time before the New York Times bestsellers will be free online. Current copyright protects works for 70 years beyond the death of the author. Even some works in the public domain are off limits. If an out of copyright includes prefaces, introductions, or appendices that are still in copyright, the whole work falls under copyrighted status. And it took a librarian to tell you this.
Source: The idea and some information comes fromWill Sherman in Information Outlook v11 n06

No Bottled Water at This Restaurant

You won't find San Pellegrino or any other fancy imported water at Incanto, an Italian restaurant in San Francisco. In fact, you won't find any bottled water at all. Despite significant profit loss, owner Mark Pastore refuses to pollute the oceans and air by shipping heavy glass water bottles across the ocean. Water bottled in plastic, produced domestically, is also out of the question because of the plastic building up in landfills and the large amount of petroleum needed to make it. But he provides clean, bubbly water with filtering equipment. Other restaurants have also stopped selling bottled water.

Good for them. Bottled water undermines cour confidence in local water systems, allowing those with the resources the illusion of buying themselves out of "dirty" water. Illusion? Despite what water marketers say, bottled water faces less stringent regulation than tap water because it’s regulated as a food product, falling under the jurisdiction of FDA rather than the EPA.
Source: Enviornmental Working Group

CQ Researcher This Week

Are stronger measures needed to protect society?

The shooting rampage at Virginia Tech on April 16 has raised new questions about safety on college campuses and renewed the nation's perennial debate on gun control. Virginia Tech officials face questions about whether the 32 deaths could have been prevented or limited by more effective police action at the time or by more proactive steps earlier to deal with shooter Sueng-Hui Cho's history of mental disturbance. Nationally, the incident has focused attention on how to reduce gun violence, which annually claims around 30,000 lives — 82 each day, far more than twice the Virginia Tech toll. A bill to strengthen the federal background-check system for gun purchasers is gaining support on Capitol Hill, even from the powerful National Rifle Association. But some gun advocates want states to ease weapons laws. They argue that allowing more people to carry weapons will deter gun crimes and enable potential victims to protect themselves.
Source: CQ Researcher May 25, 2007 (Full report available online--password protected)

Global Terrorism Database

The world’s largest unclassified database of terrorism attacks is now available online for general use by researchers, policy-makers, media and the general public — an important tool that the researchers say may aid in the development of more effective responses to terrorism.…The database, five years in the making, includes 80,000 terror incidents from 1970 through 2004. START plans to update the database through 2007 within the next 12 months. The Internet site is designed to be as user friendly as possible. Each attack is coded on more than 100 variables to aid in the identification and explanation of trends in domestic and international terrorism. The
Global Terrorism Database is a resource for homeland security students.
Source: National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism

Quantitative Molecular Microscopy

Quantitative Molecular Microscopy
Article By Jeffrey Perkel

"Technique overcomes difficulties with traditional histopathology
Traditional histopathology analysis has several basic problems. Yale University pathologists Bob Camp and David Rimm developed a series of algorithms called AQUA (Automated Quantitative Analysis) to overcome these shortcomings, providing compartment-specific staining-intensity data over the range of 0 to 255, which has been shown to be directly proportional to absolute protein concentrations. "
Full Text

Source: The Scientist

High Court Backs Parents

"The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that parents have their own broad, enforceable rights under federal special education law, and thus they may represent themselves in federal court without the assistance of a lawyer.

The decision in Winkelman v. Parma City School District (Case No. 05-983) was unanimous on the idea that parents have some rights to represent themselves without a lawyer under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. But it split 7-2 on the idea that parents have substantive and procedural rights that encompass their child’s right to a free, appropriate public education under the law."
Source: Education Week online May 21, 2007

Keep up with Nursing Journal Articles

Nursing students can benefit from the experiences of other nurses -- it's how we all learn. Don't miss "Field Expediency: an ability to improvise is a valuable nursing skill, on and off the battlefield" in the May issues of AJN (American Journal of Nursing) in the library now.

The report on developing cultural competence to eliminate health disparities in ethnic minorities and other vulnerable populations is in the library now in the Journal of Transcultural Nursing. The report is the result of work by the Expert Panel on Cultural Competence of the American Academy of Nursing.


Read in-depth collections of articles on line focusing on key clinical topics.
Chronic Kidney Disease An American Journal of Nursing (AJN) article series
Essentials of a Magnetic Work Environment Nursing2004's four-part series
Nursing Care of Older Adults: A New Look at the OldAmerican Journal of Nursing series
Palliative Nursing SeriesThe American Journal of Nursing's (AJN's) award-winning 16-part series
Women's Health OnlineProduced with support from Ethicon Women's Health & Urology, a division of Ethicon, Inc.

World Health Statistics

Tje World Health Organization (WHO) recently released key world health statistics from its 193 Member States. This edition also highlights trends in 10 of the most closely watched global health statistics. It is the authoritative annual reference for a set of 50 health indicators in countries around the world.
Download Report or Highlights
Source: WHO




















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LexisNexis Academic Database Update

LexisNexis Academic is releasing a new interface in mid-2007. Among its many improvements, it will feature Easy Search, General Search, and Power search and will make use of results clustering by subject category, publication name, industry, company, geography, and language. Tutorials and training in the new interface via the web are available.

LexisNexis Academic database delivers fast access to thousands of credible sources from more than 5,800 publications spanning news, legal, financial, medical, and general reference information. Students and faculty monitor current events, work with primary or secondary legal sources, locate detailed financial information, and read about medical advances reported in medical journals. This database is available to the Goodwin community on and off campus.

UCONN Dairy Plant Making Cheese

The UCONN Dairy Plant added cheese to its repertoire in December 2006. Because there are small dairy farmers in New England that are interested in making cheese, it seemed natural for the agriculture department to provide training. Cheddar, colby, and juustoleipa, a specialty Finnish cheese, are available so far.

The dairy plant began operation in 1953. Until about 1990, it supplied all the campus dining halls with milk, ice cream, yogurt, cottage cheese, and sour cream. Since then, the plant has been making only ice cream and selling it at the Dairy Bar next to the George White Building. In the dog days of summer, when you go to the dairy bar for that yummy ice cream, now you can pick up some cheese as well.
Source: Journal of College of Agriculture and Natural Resources Spring 2007

Great American History Fact-Finder

Our new reference database, XReferPlus, includes the full text of the Great American History Fact-Finder. From the Mayflower to the space shuttle, from the Boston Massacre to the Los Angeles riots, The Great American History Fact-Finder brings the kaleidoscope of U.S. history into focus. More than two thousand brief, fact-laden entries on people, places, issues and events - arranged in a convenient A-to-Z sequence - cover the spectrum of American society, culture and history. Topics include politics, the military, business, entertainment, the arts, sports and the media. Look for it on the library page and find the answers to:
• Who ran on the campaign slogan "Don't swap horses in midstream?"
• What were the key issues and consequences of the Dred Scott decision?
• Where were the "lost" states of Franklin and Deseret?

Summer Reading Wiki

Summer is the perfect time to catch up on your reading. So sign up for the Goodwin Book Lovers Summer Reading Wiki.

Sign up now or at the enrollment party in early June. A free suggested reading list will help you plan your summer reading. The date of the enrollment party will be announced next week.

On-campus/Online Parity

"How can a college assure parity between a distance program and its face-to-face counterpart? Is it possible to guarantee identical outcomes with two such different means of delivery? In some programs, educators may settle for a rough equivalence. But what about when parity of outcome is absolutely essential, as in health science programs, where the presence or absence of certain competencies can be life and death matters?"

The current Distance Education Report, quoted above, outlines Creighton University's nine steps toward providing parity for its online pharmacy degree. The Report, available in the library, also includes articles on retention and multimedia assessment for millennials.
Source: Distance Education Report May 1, 2007

MedlinePlus Adds Features

A number of new features have been introduced on the Health Topics pages of MedlinePlus. Highlights include a photograph or illustration on each page; a brief, easy to read summary of each disease or condition, composed by experienced medical writers and reviewed by the National Libray of Medicine staff; a list of synonyms right under the health topic name; a new category, Start Here, links users to overviews and important information; and a centrally located table of contents divides the MedlinePlus categories into six boxes to show users everything on a page at a glance.
http://medlineplus.gov
Source: Medical Library Association News May 2007

CQ Researcher:Fair Trade Labeling

Is it helping small farmers in developing countries?

Today's CQ Researcher addresses fair trade labeling. The number of products sold with fair trade labels is growing rapidly in Europe and the United States. Big chains like Wal-Mart, Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks and McDonald's have begun offering coffee and other items. Fair trade brands hope to raise their profile by targeting consumers who care about the environment, health and fair-labor standards. Fair trade supporters say small farmers in the developing world benefit by receiving a guaranteed fair price, while the environment gets a break from intensive industrial farming. But critics say consumers pay too much and that fair trade's guarantee of a good return — no matter what the market price — sends the wrong economic signal to farmers. When the price of a global commodity like coffee tumbles in response to oversupply, overcompensated fair trade farmers will remain in an uneconomic sector long after they should have switched to some other crop or livelihood, free-market economists argue. The complete report is available online from the Goodwin library page.

Source: CQ Researcher May 18, 2007

New Resource: Academic worklife

Today, college and university faculty members face many challenges, including an increasingly diverse workforce and new models for career flexibility. The National Clearinghouse on Academic Worklife (NCAW) provides resources to help faculty and administrators understand more about all aspects of modern academic work and related career issues, including benefits, climate and satisfaction, work/life balance, and policy development.
Get information here: National Clearinghouse for Academic Worklife,
Source: University of Michigan Center for the Education of Women