Mental-Health Problems and Students

The facts and figures about mental-health problems on our campuses are sobering. When the American College Health Association's National College Health Assessment surveyed college students in the fall of 2006, 78 percent reported having felt very sad at least once within the preceding 12 months, 42 percent felt so depressed it was difficult to function, 9.4 percent had seriously considered attempting suicide, and 1.4 percent had attempted suicide. Fourteen percent of women and 10 percent of men reported feeling hopeless nine or more times.

Similarly, respondents to the 2007 National Survey of Counseling Center Directors reported that almost half of their student clients had severe psychological problems, and close to 8 percent had impairments so serious that they could not remain in college, or could do so only with extensive psychological or psychiatric help. On the 272 campuses surveyed, almost 2,000 students were hospitalized for psychological problems in 2007. Read the article in the Chronicle Review April 18.

Libraries in the News: Hastings Public Library

Built on a brownfield site, Hastings Public Library (Michigan) is targeted to receive a LEED Gold Certificate. Contributing to the library's rating are low VOC (volatile organic compound) furnishings and finishes, linoleum tabletops, condensing gas boilers, an underground air distribution system, vegetative roofs in the turrets, and toilet partitions made of recyled milk jugs.
Source: American Libraries April 2008

The day the Titanic Struck an Iceberg

A luxury liner on 14-15 April, 1912, struck an iceberg near Newfoundland on its maiden voyage and sank with the loss of 1513 lives. Thought to be unsinkable, the Titanic carried enough lifeboats for only half the passengers. As a result of the disaster safety rules for ships at sea were drawn up by the International Convention for Safety of Life at Sea (1913) and the International Ice Patrol was established. The wreck of the Titanic was located and photographed in 1985.
Source: CredoReference

Database Training: Health & Wellness Resource Center

The library is providing online web based training from Gale Publishers on Wednesday, April 16 in the conference room from 10 to ll a.m. The training is open to all members of the Goodwin community. Refreshments will be served.

Health & Wellness Resource Center is a comprehensive resource that provides integrated access to medical, statistical, health, and related information. Including the Gale Encyclopedia of medicine, Health & Wellness Resource Center delivers up-to-date reference material as well as full-text magazines, journals, and pamphlets from a wide variety of authoritative medical sources. Consumers, students, and professionals are provided with descriptions of and links to many pertinent websites selected for their usefulness and appropriateness. Topics covered in Wednesday's webinar include content and purpose of the database, database nivagation, searching techniques, and additional database features.

Library Statistics for March

Not suprising, 46% of the users of the library in March were students in the health sciences, nursing, and respiratory care. Of that group, 51% were in health sciences. Students from early childhood education and business were also well represented. 21% more students used the library in March this year over March of 2007. Circulation of materials increased by 21% in this March over March of 2007.

From January to April 1 this year the library loaned 111 books to other libraries while we borrowed only 49. This could indicate that our library resources are working well for the Goodwin community. It also indicates that we have materials that other libraries want to use.

Online College Fair

Check out a recent New York Times essay on a parent’s experience with CollegeWeekLive.com, a virtual college fair where students and parents chat live with admissions officers from 200 institutions.

One thing Michelle Slatalla, the essay’s author, seemed to miss about going to a real (offline) college fair was the ability to follow the crowd to the “most selective” institutions: “here there was no way to gauge whether more attendees were flocking to Bryn Mawr College or Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa.”

The next CollegeWeekLive fair, which is free, is scheduled for the fall.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education Wire Campus

National Library Week

It's National Library Week, a time to celebrate the contributions of libraries, librarians, and library workers in schools, campuses and communities nationwide--and the perfect time to discover how you can join the circle of knowledge @ your library.
First sponsored in 1958, National Library Week is a national observance sponsored by the American Library Association (ALA) and libraries across the country each April.

THE LIBRARY STAFF INVITES YOU TO VISIT THE LIBRARY DURING NATIONAL LIBRARY WEEK. YOU WON'T BE SORRY!

Library of Congress Online Exhibit

The Library of Congress opened a new interactive Web site on Saturday, as a companion to a high-tech exhibit designed to give visitors a close-up view of some of the institution's treasures. A copy of the Gutenberg Bible, for instance, is in a glass case at the library, but the new Web site will let users flip through the book and zoom in on its pages virtually. An article in Ars Technica points out that the exhibit is the result of a $3-million gift from Microsoft to promote the use of the company's latest multimedia platform, called Silverlight. The exhibit sounds like a theme park ride -- it's called The Library of Congress Experience.
Source: Library of Congress Experience

U.S. Waterpipes are Breaking

"Two hours north of New York City, a mile-long stream and a marsh the size of a football field have mysteriously formed along a country road. They are such a marvel that people come from miles around to drink the crystal-clear water, believing it is bubbling up from a hidden natural spring. The truth is far less romantic: The water is coming from a cracked 70-year-old tunnel hundreds of feet below ground, scientists say. The tunnel is leaking up to 36 million gallons a day as it carries drinking water from a reservoir to the big city. It is a powerful warning sign of a larger problem around the country: The infrastructure that delivers water to the nation's cities is badly aging and in need of repairs.

The Environmental Protection Agency says utilities will need to invest more than $277 billion over the next two decades on repairs and improvements to drinking water systems. Water industry engineers put the figure drastically higher, at about $480 million. Water utilities, largely managed by city governments, have never faced improvements of this magnitude before. And customers will have to bear the majority of the cost through rate increases, according to the American Water Works Association, an industry group."
Source: Colleen Long reported for the Associated Press April 9, 2008.

Portals to the World

A simple and elegant site. Each link opens a country page where more links pages under each topic are given. Brief and sensible annotations are provided. These pages link you to the best web pages available for every and any country.
Library of Congress, Portals to the World.

Libraries in the News

Located underground beneath the campus's Sterling Memorial main library, Bass Library at Yale University houses 150,000 high-use items. The renovated facility includes individual study rooms, two electronic classrooms, a cafe, and a new entrance pavilion in Collegiate Gothic Style. This is in New haven--go see it!
Size: 59,800 sq. ft.
Cost of renovation: $47.5 million

Global Reach:: Europe

Vincent Van Gogh's down-at-heel boots were the first thing to appear on the test website of the European Digital Library last month. Btanded Europeana, the website will break new ground by bringing together millions of digitized resources from Europe's archives, museums, libraries, and audiovisual collections through a single portal. The full site is scheduled to launch in November.
Source: European Digital Library Network

Today, April 8: Flower Festival

Today is the Buddha’s birthday observed in Buddhist temples throughout Japan, where it is known as Kambutsu-e. The highlight of the celebration is a ritual known as kambutsue (“ceremony of ‘baptizing’ the Buddha”), in which a tiny bronze statue of the Buddha, standing in an open lotus flower, is anointed with sweet tea. People use a small bamboo ladle to pour the tea, made of hydrangea leaves, over the head of the statue. The custom is supposed to date from the seventh century, when perfume was used, as well as tea. Festivities often include a procession of children carrying flowers.
Source: Holidays, Festivals, and Celebrations of the World Dictionary

New Additions to Credo Reference

Keywords and Concepts in Evolutionary Developmental Biology, Harvard University Press in Science

Handbook of United States Economic and Financial Indicators, Greenwood in Business

Notable American Women: 1607-1950, A Biographical Dictionary, Harvard University Press in Biography

Notable American Women: The Modern Period, A Biographical Dictionary, Harvard University Press in Biography

Credo Reference is a leading provider of reference services for libraries and information centers. This service provides you with over 270 full-text titles consisting of an aggregate of 3.1 million entries all interconnected by over 100,000,000 links.

New Latin America: Global Researcher

Latin America is struggling to re-define its soul. The region's once ubiquitous military dictators in dark glasses have been replaced by a new generation of democratically elected leaders. Under their tutelage Latin America is enjoying steady growth and trying to bridge the notoriously deep chasm between the rich and the poor. Wealth and global trade have brought a new sense of cohesion and an unprecedented regional identity, while newly empowered women and indigenous and mixed-race populations are transforming the political landscape. Amid these positive signs, experts ask whether the future belongs to the more moderate, market-oriented democracies — such as those in Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Argentina — or to the more radical, left-wing populism inspired by Venezuela's bombastic socialist leader Hugo Chávez. Meanwhile, with the United States preoccupied in Iraq and elsewhere, the European Union, the Gulf States and China are increasing their economic presence in the region as U.S. influence declines. Read the report online from the Goodwin Library (password protected).

Preventing Memory Loss: CQ Researcher

As the nation's baby boomers age, they are increasingly worried that their memories will deteriorate — and with good reason. An estimated 10 million boomers will develop Alzheimer's disease or another memory-destroying neurodegenerative condition in the coming years. Policy makers and health officials worry that the resulting bulge in the number of sufferers will burden the nation's already strained health-care system. In the wake of these concerns, a vibrant brain-fitness industry is offering a variety of ways to help people keep their brains healthy, including the use of cognition-enhancing drugs and exercise. But many experts say much of what the public is being told is of limited value, at best. Intensified brain research begun years ago at the National Institutes of Health is just now beginning to produce data that scientists hope will advance efforts to prevent memory loss, but they worry that flat federal funding since 2003 may compromise the drive for solutions. Read the entire report available online from the Goodwin Library.
Source: CQ Researcher April 4, 2008

Oxford Reference Online Trial

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Shrug Off Remediation with Learning Communities

"Opening Doors" by Scrivener, Bloom, LeBlanc, Paxson, Rouse and Sommo

Currently one of the most significant challenges facing education is how to meet the needs of students who lack basic reading, writing and math skills. This problem is ever present in the need for remediation as 29% of incoming college freshmen enroll in at least one development/remedial class. To help these students, schools have turned to "learning communities" wherein students take remedial classess linked with other college-level courses. A new study of a one-semester learning community for freshmen offers the first experimental evidence that learnintg communities help students make a successful transition to college and move more quickly through developmental English requirements. The program places freshmen in groups of up to 25that take three classes together during their first semester. Also included is enhanced counseling and tutoring. Read the article.

Challenges of Low Literacy

How can we better communicate the challenges of low literacy in the 21st Century? Share your thoughts on this issue. The National Center for Family Literacy is launching a blog, Literacy Now, to provide an opportunity for anyone engaged or interested in the cause of literacy to share information, news, and insights. You can access the blog anytime at http://www.famlit.org/blog.
Source: National Center for Family Literacy

USPTO Rejects Blackboard Patent Claims

Blackboard's e-learning patent looks to be going down. The United States Patent and Trademark Office last week sent out a "non-final" determination on the reexamination of Blackboard's patent in which all of the claims on the patent were rejected. Blackboard still has a period of two months to respond to the determination.

We spoke with representatives from the two parties that filed for the reexamination of the patent: Desire2Learn and the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC). Their comments follow. Blackboard itself chose to release a statement (approximately 3:30 p.m. PDT) rather than speak directly with us today, although we might have additional comments next week.

While Desire2Learn and the SFLC celebrated the decision, Blackboard said that its patent still stands, that the company does not intend to back down, and that the decision has no effect on Blackboard's patent infringement suit victory over Desire2Learn.
Source: Campus Technology online March 28, 2008