Evaluating Drug Information: Avoid Wikipedia

Be careful about using Wikipedia for drug information.While Wikipedia provides some basic drug information, students are encouraged to supplement that information with traditionally edited sources. Quality drug information is freely available from US government–provided sites such as the National Library of Medicine's Drug Information Portal,or MedlinePlus: Drugs, Supplements, and Herbal Information. Commercial consumer sites such as WebMD's RxList, Medscape: Pharmacists, and DailyMed are also available.

American Slaves Narrative

From 1936 to 1938, over 2,300 former slaves from across the American South were interviewed by writers and journalists under the aegis of the Works Progress Administration. These former slaves provided first-hand accounts of their experiences on plantations, in cities, and on small farms. Their narratives remain a peerless resource for understanding the lives of America's four million slaves. What makes the WPA narratives so rich is that they capture the very voices of American slavery, revealing the texture of life as it was experienced and remembered. Each narrative taken alone offers a fragmentary, microcosmic representation of slave life. Read together, they offer a sweeping composite view of slavery in North America, allowing us to explore some of the most compelling themes of nineteenth-century slavery, including labor, resistance and flight, family life, relations with masters, and religious belief.

The web site provides an opportunity to read a sample of these narratives, and to see some of the photographs taken at the time of the interviews. The entire collection of narratives can be found in The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography .
READ IT HERE.
Source: University of Virginia Archives
Photograph: Picture taken at the time of the interviews

Literature to Life Web Cast: Zora

Zora Neale Hurston was one of the most important and celebrated figures to emerge from the Harlem Renaissance. Outspoken, spirited and gifted, Ms. Hurston was the most prolific African-American woman writer of the 1930's. Adapted from the theatrical biography of her life by Laurence Holder, this performance brings to life her story. The introduction is not so easy to hear, but the performance is very strong!
Source: Library Congress Web Casts

As Journal Boycott Grows, Elsevier Defends Its Practices

Librarians and scholars are pushing back at the high prices of journals and the supression of research by publishers.

According to Josh Fischman, "A protest against Elsevier, the world's largest scientific journal publisher, is rapidly gaining momentum since it began as an irate blog post at the end of January. By Tuesday evening, about 2,400 scholars had put their names to an online pledge not to publish or do any editorial work for the company's journals, including refereeing papers.

The boycott is growing so quickly—it had about 1,800 signers on Monday—that Elsevier officials on Tuesday broke their official silence to respond to protesters' accusations that they charge too much and support laws that will keep research findings bottled up behind a company paywall."

Read the article in today's edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Source: "As Journal Boycott Grows, Elsevier Defends Its Practices" By Josh Fischman
The Chronicle of Higher EducationFebruary 1, 2012

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Readings for Kim Reese's Class

The library purchased all of the books on Professor Reese's list. We have additional copies through Interlibrary Loan that are available in the library now.
Don't Kill the Birthday Girl
Year of Wonders
Fever 1793
Molo'kai

Extended Library Hours

Beginning this Saturday, February 4, the library will be open every Saturday from 8 am to 4 pm. We have many requests for longer hours during the week, which we are considering. Thanks to all of the students who have put suggestions in the suggestion box. That helps us provide all of you with better service.

DSM-5: The Future of Psychiatric Diagnosis

Publication of the fifth edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) in May 2013 will mark one the most anticipated events in the mental health field. As part of the development process, the preliminary draft revisions to the current diagnostic criteria for psychiatric diagnoses are now available for public review. Use this opportunity not only to learn more about the proposed changes in DSM-5, but also about its history, its impact, and its developers. If you are writing research papers or giving speeches on such topics as autism, for example, you should include information on these revisions.
Source: American Psychiatric Association DSM-5 Development

Librarians oppose Research Works Act

A bill introduced December 16 in the House of Representatives has exacerbated tensions between open access advocates and the scholarly publishing industry over the dissemination of publicly funded scientific and medical research.

The Research Works Act (H.R.3699), co-sponsored by Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), has only just been referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, a zone from which few bills emerge unmodified (if they emerge at all), but the measure’s import has had, nevertheless, the effect of a 3 a.m. tocsin on librarians and other open access champions who wish to raze paywalls that enclose taxpayer-funded, peer-reviewed research.

The American Library Association said today that it “vehemently opposes the bill.”

Essentially, the bill seeks to prohibit federal agencies from conditioning their grants to require that articles reporting on publicly funded research be made accessible to the public online. The proposed bill, if it were to pass, would roll back the National Institute of Health’s Public Access Policy, which was introduced in 2008 and which makes NIH-funded research publicly available within 12 months via PubMed Central (many scholars object even to this 12-month delay before posting on this free online repository).

Free Access to Theses and Dissertations

A new web property called OpenThesis (www.openthesis.org) has been launched. It exposes theses and dissertations, making them highly accessible, useful, and shareable-at absolutely no cost. OpenThesis.org will allow authors to upload their theses/dissertations, and the documents will then be vaulted for posterity and made searchable anywhere in the world. If an author (or an author's family) has only a paper copy of a thesis/dissertation, the site will give guidance on how to get it scanned into computer-readable form for subsequent uploading.

Death Comes to Pemberley

For those of you who have read Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and wonder what happened to Elizabeth and Darcy, P.D. James has written a murder mystery about just that subject--Death Comes to Pemberley: A Novel. James is a famous British writer of mysteries. The book is now available in the library.

New Subscription: Lapham's Quarterly

The library now subscribes to Lapham's Quarterly published four times annually. The current issue focuses on Family. In the introductory essay, Lewis Lapham tell us that "families grow as do the flowers and the weeds, of their own accord and as they will. Sometimes they lay waste to empires; sometimes they achieve the dignity of a dress label, but always they furnish a society with its living tissue and its intimations of immortaily, impart to the individual a sense of self if not a criminal record or a noble name."

Each issue of Lapham’s Quarterly adopts and explores a single theme. A typical issue features an introductory Preamble from Editor Lewis H. Lapham; approximately 100 “Voices in Time” — that is, appropriately themed selections drawn from the annals and archives of the past — and newly commissioned commentary and criticism from today’s preeminent scholars and writers. Myriad photographs, paintings, charts, graphs, and maps round out each issue.The current issue, Winter 2012, is dynamite! Last year's issues, which will be available, focused on Lines of work (Spring), Food (Summer), The Future (Fall), and Celebrity (Winter).

JSTOR Tests Free, Read-Only Access to Some Articles

Now you may have some access to JSTOR articles!
"It’s about to get a little easier—emphasis on “a little”—for users without subscriptions to tap JSTOR’s enormous digital archive of journal articles. In the coming weeks, JSTOR will make available the beta version of a new program, Register & Read, which will give researchers read-only access to some journal articles, no payment required. All users have to do is to sign up for a free “MyJSTOR” account, which will create a virtual shelf on which to store the desired articles.

But there are limits. Users won’t be able to download the articles; they will be able to access only three at a time, and there will be a minimum viewing time frame of 14 days per article, which means that a user can’t consume lots of content in a short period. For more information, contact the librarian.

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education January 16

LIBRARY HOURS 2012

LIBRARY HOURS FOR SPRING SEMESTER:

Monday-Friday 7am-9pm
Saturday 9am-2:30pm
Sunday 11am-4pm

The library will have extended hours on the week before final exams. That will be posted.

Internet Resources: Childhood Obesity

A Google search on the topic of "childhood obesity" turns up millions of hits--one of the problesm with Google searches. Here are some websites that provide relevant information on recognizing and addressing childhood obesity.

American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP); Prevention and Treatment of Childhood Overweight and Obesity:
www.aap.org/obesity

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): Adolescent and School Health: Childhood Obesity Facts
www.cdc.gov/HealthyYouth/obesity/facts.htm

Let's Move: America's Move to Raise a Healthier Generation of Kids
www.letsmove.gov

Mayo Clinic: Childhood Obesity
www.mayoclinic.com/health/childhood-obesity/DS00698

MedlinePlus: Obesity in Children
www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/obesityinchildren.html

National Initiative for Children's Healthcare Quality (NICHQ): Childhood Obesity
www.nichq.org/childhood_obesity/

Free Music Download

Every two weeks, Alexander Street and Smithsonian Folkways Recordings offer a free music download from the popular online collection Smithsonian Global Sound® for Libraries. This download is freely available. This week it is "Sao Chegados Os Trez Reis (The Three Kings Have Arrived)" by Various Artists from the album "Christmas Songs of Portugal"(FW0684)

When this album was recorded in the 1950s, Estrella Church in Lisbon celebrated Christmas with a choir, a bagpiper and an elephant. Hear some of the sacred favorites of the season, generally sung unaccompanied. (On this recording, elephant not included.)

Download the MP3.

Source: Alexander Street Press;
Illustration: Christmas Songs of Portugal FW06845

Murakami Fans: What is he Doing Next?

Haruki Murakami's latest novel, Haruki,1Q84, has been on many Best Books of 2011 lists. What is he doing next? I am a fan and am thrilled to hear that he is writing a new book, Absolutely on Music: The Conversation with Seiji Ozawa. According to the Library Journal, it will be out in Japan next October and later in the United States.

1Q84 is in the Goodwin Library. We also have other works by Murakami:
The Elephant Vanishes (1993)
Dance Dance Dance (1994)
Norwegian Wood (2000)
Kafka on the Shore (2005)
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: Twenty Four Stories (2005)
After Dark (2007)

Best Dataases of 2011

Best Overall: Credo Reference
Best Original Content Runner-Up CQ Researcher/CQ Global Researcher
Most Ambitious in Scope and Content: Gale's Virtual Reference Library

THE HOFFMAN LIBRARY HAS THESE!

EXTENDED LIBRARY HOURS

EXTENDED LIBRARY HOURS BEFORE FINALS!
DEC. 5-9 (7 am TO 11 pm)
DEC. 10 (9 am TO 5 pm)
DEC. 11 10 am TO 6 pm)

Tip of the Day

True perfectionists get a bad rap for being time-wasting sticklers who demoralize those around them. But it isn't all bad. In fact, being a stickler has some valuable attributes. The key is to separate healthy perfectionist behaviors, such as striving for high but achievable standards or devoting time to things you care about, from the damaging ones, such as feeling that every mistake is catastrophic. Focus on the positives of being a perfectionist while keeping an eye out for the harmful tendencies.
Source: Harvard Business Review