Vote for New Wonders of the World

This is the last day to vote! From India’s Taj Mahal to Mexico’s Mayan ruins or New York's Empire State building, suggestions for seven new Wonders of the World have flooded in from more than 60 million people in one of the biggest global polls ever conducted. The leading sites so far included the Taj Mahal, the Coliseum in Rome, the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the mysterious stone statues of Easter Island. The results will be announced in Portugal’s Benfica Stadium of Light tomorrow. Cast your votes here today!
http://www.new7wonders.com/index.php?id=351

The Pyramids of Giza are the only one of Seven Wonders of the ancient world still standing. Quick, what are the other six?

Hartford Circus Fire

Sixty-three years ago today, one of the deadliest fires in the nation's history struck the circus in Hartford. Nearly 9,000 people had crowded into the big top that day. Shortly after the show began, the tent caught fire. It was waterproofed with a mixture of gasoline and wax, causing the tent to be completely consumed in less than 10 minutes. The fire claimed 167 lives — more than one-third of them children.

Maureen Krekian, who was 11 at the time, survived the disaster and recounts the day's harrowing events for National Public Radio's Story Corps. Listen to her telling her daughter's about that day.

New iCONN Databases

iCONN has announced that it will be providing Gale's Biography Resource Center and Biography and Genealogy Master Index beginning August 1, 2007 - for all Public and School ibraries. These resources will replace iCONN's subscription to Wilson's Biography Illustrated Plus.

The iCONN Database Committee evaluated these resources and highly recommended this change. The Gale interface was considered to be superior for its ease of use and the reference content was evaluated as being highly desirable for biographical research needs. For more information about these resources:
Biography Resource Center Click Here
Biography and Genealogy Master Index Click Here

Points of View Reference Center: Global Warming

Global warming is spotlighted this week in the Points of View reference Center. Points of View Reference Center is a full text database designed to provide students and schools with a series of controversial essays that present multiple sides of a current issue. Essays provide questions and materials for further thought and study and are accompanied by thousands of supporting articles from the world’s top political and societal publications. You can reach it from the library home page.

CQ Researcher This Week: Justice Department

The CQ Researcher this week examines the politicalization of the justice department. The Bush administration's firing of nine U.S. attorneys has left Attorney General Alberto Gonzales clinging to his job while accusations of undue partisanship at the Justice Department intensify. Gonzales has admitted misleading Congress in minimizing the White House's involvement in the dismissals — an unprecedented step midway through a president's term. Some of the fired prosecutors say they may have been targeted for their handling of politically charged corruption and vote-fraud cases, but Gonzales and his former top aide deny any political motivations. Another former Gonzales aide, however, has admitted taking political affiliation into account in some Justice Department hiring decisions. Democrats in Congress want top White House aides to testify about the firings. Many Democrats — and a handful of Republicans — have called for Gonzales to resign. But he is vowing to stay, and President Bush says he has confidence in his longtime friend and aide.
Source: CQ Researcher Abstract

New Journal for Health Professionals

The library recently received the inaugural issue of Journal of Best Practices in Health Professions Diversity: Research, Education, and Policy. This new journal is dedicated to the education and professional development of diverse students for careers in health professions. There simply are not enought people of color entering health careers. While they represent over 23 percent of the current population, less than 10 percent are health professionals. This issue has seven articles, including "A splash of color: Increasing diversity among nursing students and faculty" by Dana Carthron. The book, Ethniciy, Race and Health in Multicultural socieites is reviewed and recommended for health professionals engaged in teaching and related work with ethnic populations.

Floating Wind Turbines

While our oceans house not only diverse ecologies and possibly the lost city of Atlantis, they now have something else to brag about: serving as prime real estate for some very renewable energy. Norwegian energy group Norsk Hydro is to place giant floating wind turbines in the North Sea that will provide a reasonable, environmentally-friendly and economically feasible alternative to standard energy generation processes. Will they be in our future, too?

Source: inhabitat.com

Summer Reading List

Do you remember receiving that "summer reading list" on the last day of school before summer vacation? Those long lists of books to read before the next school year began were a burden back then. Most of us don’t feel this way any longer and many look forward to a great “summer read.” National Public Radio (NPR) has put together a collection of summer reading lists and articles, including critics’ lists, the “You Must Read This” series, cookbook suggestions, book excerpts, and interviews with “actors, academics, musicians and many others about what they are reading.” Get your homework from NPR. Then get the books from the Goodwin Library. Don't forget to sign up for our book people wiki to share your reading with all of us.

Don't Show Up for that Job Interview

It’s now possible to meet with recruiters without actually showing up for a job interview. Some employers are experimenting with Second Life, the online virtual community owned by San Francisco-based Linden Lab, to screen prospective hires. That program allows job seekers to create a computer generated image to represent themselves--known as an "avatar"--and communicate with prospective employers as though they were instant messaging. Read the article by Anjali Athavaley, The Wall Street Journal, June 20, 2007, Page D1 (in the library). It is not only different here; it is different out there!

Librarians in the Movies

How does pop culture view librarians? I know most of you have heard of the movies Desk Set, The Music Man, and Party Girl. Here is a movie that is more recent than that-- "The Hollywood Librarian: A Look at Librarians Through Film". Written and directed by Ann Seidl, a librarian from Denver, it shows "the realities of 21st century librarianship, including stereotyping, censorship and intellectual freedom, and the total impact of librarians in our culture and society." The trailer for the film is now available on YouTube, and the premiere of the movie has opened already in some regions of the country. In future blogs, I will mention some other movie images of librarians from a talk at the 2007 American Library Association conference.
Source: "How Does Pop Culture View Librarians" 2007 ALA Conference

Court Decision on School Integration

Despite striking down two voluntary school-integration plans in 5 to 4 ruling on Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court left intact its precedents dealing with affirmative action in higher education. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education article today, the decision is expected to have no impact on higher-education desegregation plans.

The two cases joined in the court's decision were Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education, involving public schools in Louisville, Ky., and its suburbs, and Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1. The cases differed from past disputes over race-based student-assignment policies brought before the Supreme Court in that neither of the two districts named in the complaints was under a court order to desegregate its schools. Because the integration policies were adopted voluntarily, they were subject to a higher level of judicial scrutiny than court-ordered efforts.

Here is the court decision.

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education and Cornell University Law School

This special issue of Health Services Research includes a set of case studies for countries that represent a spectrum of different situations in relation to nursing shortages and migration. Despite severe data deficiencies in most source countries, what emerged from this exercise was a continuum of situations that debunk the simple duality of source and destination countries. There is a spectrum of types of nurse shortages and policy reactions to the phenomenon of nurse shortages and migration. Several key variables define the diversity of situations, including nurse vacancy and unemployment rates, causes of the shortages, the level of education of the nurses who leave the country, nursing education capacity and, of course, the political will to retain and produce more nurses, and the policy reactions to migration itself.
Source Health Services Research

Part-Time Faculty

This study from Cornell University uses a cross-section national sample of four-year colleges and universities in the United States to examine the variation of part-time faculty employment. Results of this study suggest that higher educational institutions actively design and adopt contingent work arrangements to save on labor costs and to manage their resource dependence with constituencies. Furthermore, institutions that have small student enrollment and large proportion of part-time students are found to rely more heavily on part-time faculty employment. Private institutions, on average, have higher levels of part-time faculty than their public counterparts. Finally, institutions that rely more on tuition and fees revenue tend to employ more part-time faculty. Such a relationship is significantly moderated by institutional quality, suggesting that different institutions may adopt different strategies to attract students and secure their tuition revenues.
Source: Cornell Higher Education Resource Center

Join the Goodwin Book People Wiki

Joining the Goodwin Book People Wiki is easy!
Register by email. Send a note to mnowlan@goodwin.edu with Book People in the subject line. Don’t forget to tell us your name and contact information.
You can also join by calling 528.4111 x6782. Or, register in person at the library. Read whatever books you like and whenever you like. Listening to audio books also counts. When we have some registrations, there will be more information about the Goodwin Book People Wiki. Please join!

Digital Directions

Next Scheduled Chat: Thursday, June 28, 2 p.m. to 3 p.m., Eastern Time
Topic: Digital Directions: The Road Ahead in Educational Technology

Please join Education Week for this live chat to talk about the release of Education Week's new report, Digital Directions, and what's ahead in the world of educational technology for the 2007-08 school year and beyond.
Source: EdWeek Online

Web Cams and Online Testing

High school and college instructors have a new tool to help prevent cheating by students taking tests online: a special Web cam that captures a 360-degree image around the student as well as a microphone to detect sound.
Source: Boston Herald, June 19, 2007

Doing the Search Mash

"Recently, Google rolled a new user interface test bed, SearchMash, and it is worth checking out. You won't see the Google brand anywhere on the front page or the search results, but rest assured that, under the hood, the Google engine is purring.
You have almost all the search functionality of the regular Google web search; phrase searching works, as do the usual Boolean operators, and format and field limiters, although there is no advanced search page on SearchMash. And don't look for any sponsored links; there is no advertising on this beta search site. But what sets it apart is the search results page. For starters, SearchMash sorts the results into web pages, images, blogs, videos, and Wikipedia entries, all on one screen."
Source: Bates Information Services www.BatesInfo.com/tip.html.

Climate Science Blog for Environmental Students

For students in environmental science classes, this is a collaborative blog from several climate scientists and geophysicists. Recent posts include the text of the G8 Summit declaration, and recommended one-stop sources. The site is searchable, browsable, and also includes a glossary. An RSS feed and/or e-mail notification is available.
http://realclimate.org/
Source: Mary Laine, Librarian

Assessment of Student Learning

The U.S. Department of Education has announced that it will set aside $2.5-million in the budget for the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, or Fipse, for a focused competition on student-learning assessment.

The money, which will finance at least one grant, will help in developing methods to “measure, assess, and report student achievement and institutional performance at the postsecondary level,” according to a notice that appeared yesterday in the Federal Register.
Source: Federal Register June 20, 2007

Plagiarism: Who is the Victim?

A graduate student at Capella University, an online for-profit institution, says her professor stole her work. The professor says it’s the other way around. The Pioneer Press, a Minnesota newspaper, has a lengthy article about the dispute, which is headed to court. This isn’t the first time that a student has accused a professor of plagiarism, as a special report in The Chronicle of Higher Education described in 2004.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education