Text a Librarian

If you have a mobile phone and want to text us a question, it’s easy:
1. Compose a text message to 66746.
2. Start your message with ASKGOOD.
3. Send your message and wait for a reply!
[Example: ASKGOOD what time do u close tonight]

The Text a Librarian service is available when the library is open.You can text us whenever you like, but we will only be able to reply when the library is open. (Hours are listed on the library page).We will respond as soon as possible during those hours. If the service is not available, you will receive an automated response and we will answer your question the next day we are open.

Use Text a Librarian to ask simple, quick questions (up to 160 characters) that can be answered in brief responses (up to 320 characters). If our responses exceed 160 characters, they appear as two messages.

To use the service, you need a mobile phone which is enabled to send and receive text messages. Goodwin Library does not charge for this service, but charges from your cell phone provider may apply. These charges vary among plans and among telephone providers. The library does not take any responsibility for any charges your mobile phone provider may assess you for sending or receiving messages while using this service.

You only need to include ASKGOOD for the first question you send to us. Text a Librarian is private and secure. Our Text a Librarian service by Mosio assigns a random User ID number to each patron. Your phone number is never visible to us at any time. Your phone number is never accessible by us.

Have further questions? Call Goodwin Library at 860-727-6782 or text us!

Program for Science Education

Discovery Education has announced the Discovery Educator Network SCIcon (DENSCIcon) 2010, a free, virtual professional development event demonstrating the many ways educators can integrate digital content and educational technologies into science education.

The event will be held Saturday, Jan. 9 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. EST and will offer a variety of individual sessions on the topic, including teaching global climate change issues, real-world applications for classroom science instruction; paperless instruction; hands-on activities; challenge-based learning; teaching with video from Mythbusters (Discovery Channel's series that subjects all sorts of myth to hands-on testing); and fun, easy and effective science experiments.

DEN SCIcon 2010 is an online conference (with a twist) focused on providing participants with some of the most effective strategies for transforming their science classes through the meaningful and effective integration of digital media content. Join thousands of educators from around the world for an amazing day of professional development sessions, networking and sharing.

Saturday, January 9, 2010
9 AM to 4 PM ET
Drop by for an hour or stay for the whole day!
It’s virtual and it’s FREE!
Register for the online sessions at:
http://links.discoveryeducation.com/denscicon

Source: The Journal

Most Admired Woman

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton continues her reign as the Most Admired Woman in the eyes of Americans, but barely edges out former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin this year, 16% to 15%. Talk show host Oprah Winfrey and first lady Michelle Obama finish third and fourth, with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Queen Elizabeth II, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and poet Maya Angelou — all regulars on the list — joined by newcomers German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Elin Woods in the top 10.
Source: Gallup Poll

Legal Opinions Using Google Scholar

You may now research full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts using Google Scholar. Search for cases or by topics. Your search results will include links to the famous cases and others of importance on the topic but less familiar. Try it.

Source: Quoted from Google Scholar

About Student Learning Styles

"If you've ever sat through a teaching seminar, you've probably heard a lecture about "learning styles." Perhaps you were told that some students are visual learners, some are auditory learners, and others are kinesthetic learners. Or maybe you were given one of the dozens of other learning-style taxonomies that scholars and consultants have developed.

Now four psychologists argue that you were told wrong. There is no strong scientific evidence to support the "matching" idea, they contend in a paper published this week in Psychological Science in the Public Interest. And there is absolutely no reason for professors to adopt it in the classroom." Read the article by David Glenn in the Chronicle. A copy is available in the library and in the faculty room on the second floor.

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education December 17 Illustration by Howard J. Radzyner, MedNet, Corbis

Definition of 21st Century Literacies

National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)has established policies that define and explain how to work with students in this 21st century world.

"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
Document and Site Resources."
Source: NCTE Inbox December 2009

Count Down to the New Year

Every day until 2010 this blog will point you to tips on preparing for your New Year's resolutions--only 21 days away.
Top Ten List in 2009
Lifehacker

Here are useful items on a specific topic you may have forgotten about, or that are just very cool. This is one of the most popular personal development and productivity blogs with tips to help you make the most of technology. Who doesn't want to work faster and keep important and useful information at our fingertips--like the last draft of a NEASC standard?

Value of a College Education: CQ Researcher

Introduction to "Value of a College Education"

President Obama's $12 billion American Graduation Initiative — announced in July — aims to help millions more Americans earn degrees and certificates from community colleges. The president wants the United States to have, once again, the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. Along with the administration, economists and many students and parents embrace the notion that higher education offers the most promising ticket to financial security and upward mobility. However, some argue that many young people are ill-prepared or unmotivated to get a four-year degree and should pursue apprenticeships or job-related technical training instead. The debate is casting a spotlight on trends in high-school career and technical education — long known as vocational education — and raising questions about the ability of the nation's 1,200 community colleges to meet exploding enrollment demand.
Read the complete report online in the Goodwin Library.
Source: CQ Researcher

Featured Reference Book of the Month

Dictionary of Race, Ethnicity & Culture

Race, ethnicity and culture are concepts of extreme relevance in society today, and yet continue to be interpreted in various and often contradictory ways. The Dictionary provides the historical background and etymology of a wide range of words related to these concepts, looking at discourses of race, ethnicity and culture from a broadly multicultural perspective.

This new and up-to-date dictionary contains numerous references to both European and American concepts, debates and terms that are relevant today-words such as 'boat people', 'cybernazis', 'ebonics' as well as more established words and terms, such as 'affirmative action', 'caste', 'fortress Europe' and many more.

World AIDS Day

In order to promote more social tolerance and a greater awareness of HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) and AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome), the World Health Organization (WHO) declared December 1 as World Aids Day in 1988. Every year various global agencies, including the American Association for World Health, take the lead in coordinating this day and in educating people about HIV/AIDS, which has claimed nearly 22 million lives in the 20 years since the first AIDS cases were diagnosed.

Source: Holidays, Festivals and Celebrations of the World Dictionary in Credo Reference Database

Teaching Core Skills: Recommended Faculty Reading

The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 20th issue, highlights the teaching experiment of Indiana University professors at Bloomington to teach cores skills in history: assembling evidence and interpreting it. Their work has attracted attention from educators worldwide.

An article by Joan Middendorf and David Pace about the Indiana experiment is on reserve in the library:

"Decoding the Disciplines: A Model for Helping Students Learn Disciplinary Ways of Thinking" from New Directons for Teachers and Learning, no. 98, Summer 2004.

National Book Award Winners

Last Wednesday winners of the National Book Awards:

Fiction Winner
Colum McCann Let the Great World Spin about daring, luck and mortality in the world of 1970s New York. AVAILABLE IN THE LIBRARY
Nonfiction
T. J. Stiles The First Tycoon, a biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt. AVAILABLE IN THE LIBRARY
Young People's Literature
Claudette Colvin Twice Toward Justice,story of a teenager arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery bus months before Rosa Parks.
Poetry
Keith Waldrop Transcendtal Studies: A Trilogy

A special prize, voted on by the public, was given to "The Complete Stories" of Flannery O'Connor as the best of all fiction winners in the awards' history.

Gore Vidal and Dave Eggars received lifetime achievement awards.

National Book Awards Announced Tonight

The winners of the National Book Awards for 2009 will be announced tonight. This seems like good time to give some statistics. In 2009, 193 publishers submitted 1,129 books for the 2009 National Book Awards. The total number by genre:
236 fiction
481 nonfiction
161 poetry
251 young people's literature
I will announce the winners here tomorrow.

2008 winners included:
Fiction--Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country
Nonfiction--Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
Poetry--Mark Doty, Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems
Young People's Lit--Judy Blundell, What I Saw and How I Lied

ECAR Report: Undergraduates and the Mobile Revolution

Among students, desktop computer ownership is down, laptop ownership is way up.
Most students have new computers (79% of freshmen own a laptop one year old or less, two-thirds own a laptop or desktop 2 years old. 18% say their computer is four years old or older).

51% own an internet-capable handheld device, with 12% more planning to purchase one within a year. Among those who own one, 35% say they never access the internet on it. Cost and other ways to access Net were the most cited reasons.

Cell phone ownership is nearly ubiquitous. One-third say that they use their cell phones in class for non-class activities.

SNS’s (Social Networking Sites) and texting are up (nearing saturation), while Instant Messenging is declining. SNS’s were used by 90% of students outside class, and wikis by 42%, but only around a quarter of students used SNS’s or wikis in a course. One-third of students used podcasts personally but only 6% in courses.

Students generally like Course Management Systems! Students don’t think instructors use IT well. The percent that say their instructors effectively use IT or have adequate IT skills– 45%. Only one-third say instructors adequately train them for the IT used in their courses.

Students who say the greatest benefit of IT in education is convenience – 70%. Only 49% agree or strongly agree that IT improves learning. One possible reason for this low number is that only 53% of students agree or strongly agree with the statement “My institution’s IT services are always available when I need them for my coursework.”
Source: Mobile Libraries Blog and [http://purdueetech.wordpress.com/2009/10/23/ecar-study-of-undergrads-and-it/]

New ICONN LOOK

Based on substantial feedback from users, ICONN staff members have made a number of changes to improve the usability of iCONN. You will see a new start page that provides two search boxes:

Use the top box to get articles from magazines and newspapers.
Use the bottom box to find books, DVDs, CDs, etc. in Connecticut libraries.

One glitch is that the Magazines/Journals tab in the Find Books search box does not produce any search results, and the search results screen is confusing. To produce any search results, you need to select "Statewide Magazine Catalog" on the search results page and redo the search.

Another glitch is that the “Request Tracking” link may not appear on the Find Books search box.

Lastly, the "Search Individual Resources" link on the new start page "may" require the user to login again before being taken to the classic menu page. The latter problem seems to exist only when using iCONN outside the library. These problems have been reported and should be corrected later today.

Credo Reference: Top Ten Entries Viewed in September

Theses were the top ten entries in the Credo Reference database viewed by members of the Goodwin community in the month of September:

Nutrition—New Harvard Guide to Women’s Health
Rabies Virus—Academic Press Dictionary of Science and Technology
Metabolism—Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary
Black Pepper-Mosby’s Handbook of Herbs & Natural Supplements
Why Study Youth Culture—Contemporary Youth Culture: An International Encyclopedia
Metabolism—Encyclopedia of Insects
Man with his Head in his Hands--Bridgeman Art Library Archive
Sorrow, 1882—Bridgeman Art Library ArchiveFishing in the Spring, Pont de Clichy, 1887--Bridgeman Art Library Archive
Wheatfields Under Thunderclouds, 1890—Bridgeman Art Library Archive

And the winning reference book for the month is Bridgeman Art Library Archive.
Source: Credo Reference Administrator's Statistics

Credo Reference Highlight of the Week

Encyclopedia of Emancipation and Abolition in the Transatlantic World from M.E. Sharpe

The struggle to abolish slavery is one of the grandest quests--and central themes--of modern history. These movements for freedom have taken many forms, from individual escapes, violent rebellions, and official proclamations to mass organizations, decisive social actions, and major wars. Every emancipation has profoundly transformed the country and society in which it existed.

This unique A-Z encyclopedia in the Credo Reference database examines every effort to end slavery in the United States and the transatlantic world. It focuses on massive, broad-based movements, as well as specific incidents, events, and developments, and pulls together in one place information previously available only in a wide variety of sources. It centers on the United States.

The Encyclopedia of Emancipation and Abolition features primary source documents, a map of the transatlantic slave trade, illustrations, cross-references, a comprehensive chronology and bibliography, and covers a wide range of individuals and the major themes and ideas that motivated them to confront and abolish slavery.

Read a few of the interesting entries:
"Forty Acres and a Mule"

Sojourner Truth (ca. 1797-1883): former slave and inspirational leader of the abolitionist movement

Credo Reference is a database of more than 400 full-text reference books that can be accessed from the Goodwin Library page under "Find Articles".

Source: Credo Reference

Conforts of Home: Flannery O'Connor Repository

Comforts of Home was constructed as a Web portal leading to reasonably reliable information about O'Connor and her work. In selecting the information and links, it set up criteria for content and accessibility to cull out spurious information and sites that are permanently "under construction".

The site hosts articles on O'Connor--her works, her life, her influences--whether critical analysis, or personal reviews. This is not designed to be a storehouse of board review and advanced scholarship, so you will find opinion pieces with a definite slant. Keep this in mind if you plan to use material from Comforts in your own research.

Internet Public Library also has resources on Flannery O'Connor.

Panihari: Water Women of India: New DVD

Arriving today in the Goodwin Library is the DVD "Panihar: Water Women of India." The filmmakers document life in the desert communities of Rajasthan. Their journey leads them to the Panihari (women who fetch water). The film centers around one of these women, Paru, a shoemaker's wife, as she struggles against nature and society to attain self-relaince for her family and herself. Vibran imagery, music, and folklore combine to paint a vivid picture of life as a Panihari.

Source: Recommendation from Bruce Morton; information from the DVD;
Image from Arts & Culture jhalawar.nic.in/arts.htm

How Good is Windows 7 for Colleges?

With the new Microsoft operating system, Windows 7, hitting the shelves today, there has been a lot of hoopla surrounding the product. But will it help colleges? Microsoft representatives demonstrated the new operating system at The Chronicle of Higher Education offices to bolster a claim that the new Windows — unlike a previous effort, the much-reviled Vista -- will be a major boon for higher education.

To find out if the product lives up to the hype, The Chronicle spoke with a number of college CIO's and IT project managers who have already tested and, to various degrees, deployed Windows 7. Their conclusion: Microsoft has taken a solid step forward, creating something that could save institutions some money and improve security, and is decidedly not Vista.

Source: Quoted from "How Good Is Windows 7 for Colleges?" by Ben Terris in Wired Campus