Academics stay with Obama

The Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has bashed President Obama for spending too much time in the faculty lounge during his time at Harvard University. If Mr. Romney—who holds two graduate degrees from Harvard himself—is right, that time may have been well spent, as the president continues to reap the bulk of campaign-contribution dollars from the academic community.

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

Cheating Goes High Tech Online

Excerpt from article:

"Easy A's may be even easier to score these days, with the growing popularity of online courses. Tech-savvy students are finding ways to cheat that let them ace online courses with minimal effort, in ways that are difficult to detect.
Take Bob Smith, a student at a public university in the United States. This past semester, he spent just 25 to 30 minutes each week on an online science course, the time it took him to take the weekly test. He never read the online materials for the course and never cracked open a textbook. He learned almost nothing. He got an A".

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education June 3, 2012

Alcohol Abuse: CQ Researcher Report

 Alcohol Abuse: Can Underage Drinking be Curbed?

Americans are abusing alcohol less than in the past with one exception: college students, who drink more and binge drink more often than nonstudents of similar age. And alcohol continues to extract a high toll from those who abuse it at any age, killing 80,000 Americans a year and draining more than $220 billion from the economy. Although high school students drink and binge less, bingeing accounts for 90 percent of the alcohol consumed by teens who drink. Health experts also worry about the effects of new products, especially flavored alcoholic drinks, which seem to encourage young women and girls to drink and drink more. To combat alcohol abuse, many educational institutions, community organizations and government agencies are stepping up efforts to promote abstinence among the young and responsible drinking by adults who do imbibe.Full report is online through the Hoffman Library (user name and password required).

Source: CQ Researcher June 8, 2012

New Book Club Meets in August

The new book club will be meeting in August to discuss why are women reading 50 Shades of Grey and the other books in that trilogy plus other books that the Goodwin Community have read this summer. Watch for the date! It should be an interesting discussion, to say the least. Newsweek in April featured an article about the Grey books called "The Fantasy Life of Working Women: Why Surrender is a Feminist Dream." You can read it before the book club. There are plenty of others.
 

70,000 More Books in the Library

Ebook Academic Collection

The library this week has added 70,000 new books to our collection—just like that! The library now has EBSCO’s Ebook Academic collection, a new database somewhat comparable to the collection we have from ebrary. Both subscription packages with unlimited simultaneous users and downloads contains a large selection of multidisciplinary eBook titles representing a broad range of academic subject matter—from Business and Science, to Engineering and Humanities. Nearly 70,000 titles are included in this package, and additional titles will be added to the package each month at no additional cost. The library staff will offer instruction classes on how to use this exciting new resource.

You can view EBSCO e-books on your mobile devices now! Popular devices that are compatible with e-books on EBSCOhost include: Barnes & Noble Nooks. Sony Readers, Apple iPads, and many smart phones. Please contact the library for a complete list. Instructions for downloading will be on the library page this week.

We will be comparing this product with ebrary’s,  so please share your comments in the comments below or email me directly. In particular, we would like comments on ease of downloading, search capabilities, on-screen display, marking, saving and emailing capabilities, and any other feature you may consider important

You may access the Ebook Academic Subscription Collection on or off campus from the library page in the research database section--www.goodwin.edu/library.

This is very special Applause, please!

Plagiarism Research from Turnitin

Classroom instructors who deal with plagiarism regularly are acutely aware that plagiarism takes many forms; not all plagiarized material can be defined as a simple act of cut and paste. Turnitin recently compiled data from nearly 900 secondary and higher education instructors about the types of plagiarism they most frequently encounter and the problematic nature of each type.

The resulting white paper, "The Plagiarism Spectrum: Instructor Insights into the 10 Types of Plagiarism," classifies the most common types of plagiarism and includes a severity scale based on student intent. This study moves plagiarism beyond the black-and-white definition of “literary theft” to one that captures the nuances of how plagiarism can take form in student writing. The paper includes recommendations for educators on how to address plagiarism through academic integrity policies, honor codes and classroom intervention. The paper,  webcast, and video are available at Turnitin's web page or contact the library for the report.

Ebrary Apps

Yesterday, less than six months after launching a dedicated iOS app, ebrary announced a new Android app that will be freely available on Google Play this summer. With the increasing popularity of smart phones, tablets, and other devices, students and faculty will have a more optimized way to discover and use e-books, online and offline, on any Android device in addition to the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. ebrary’s Android and iOS apps work with e-books acquired under all of ebrary’s acquisition models including the 75,000 titles available through Academic Complete, which we have.

Statistical Abstract of US is alive

 ProQuest has rescued one of researchers’ most valued reference tools when it took on publication of the Statistical Abstract of the United States beginning with the 2013 edition. This ensures continuation of this premier guide to an extraordinary array of statistics, which has been published since 1878. 

The U.S. Census Bureau, responsible for publishing the work, announced in March 2011 that it would cease production of the Statistical Abstract after the 2012 edition. Why?

Graduates Return Library Items Before Graduation

Graduates!

Be sure to return any items checked out of the library to ensure you are cleared for graduation. Do this before June 7 to be on the safe side.

Publishers Reject Libraries

Did you know that these publishers refuse to sell or license eBooks to libraries?
Brilliance Audio
Hachette Book Group
Macmillan Publishing
Penguin Group
Simon & Schuster

Does this seem right to you? If you would like to know why this is happening, access HERE.

EDITIONS TO CREDO GENERAL REFERENCE

Credo's General Reference collection continues to grow each month and now has over 590 titles. The following well-regarded titles were recently added.

•American Human Development Project: The Measure of America 2010-2011: Mapping Risks and Resilience

•Comprehensive Handbook of Psychopathology

•Encyclopedia of Capital Punishment in the United States

•Encyclopedia of Chinese-American Relations

•Encyclopedia of Philosophers on Religion

•If the Paintings Could Talk, National Gallery

•Key Concepts in Health Psychology

•Key Concepts in Marketing

•Key Concepts in Radio Studies

•Making of Modern Economics: The Lives and Ideas of Great Thinkers

•Reformist Voices of Islam: Mediating Islam and Modernity

•Scientific Exploration and Expeditions: From the Age of Discovery to the Twenty-First Century

•Springer International Handbooks of Education: International Handbook of Educational Evaluation

•Springer International Handbooks of Education: International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement

COLLEGES AND "FAIR USE" DOCTRINE

A federal judge on Friday outlined many ways colleges can continue to cite the doctrine of "fair use" to permit their making electronic copies of books and other materials for use in teaching and scholarship. In a landmark ruling over many issues not previously litigated to this degree in the digital era, the judge rejected many of the claims in a suit by three prominent publishers against Georgia State University. In 94 of the 99 instances cited by the publishers as copyright violations, the judge ruled that Georgia State and its professors were covered by fair use. And the judge also rejected the publishers' ideas about how to regulate e-reserves -- ideas that many academic librarians said would be unworkable.

At the same time, however, the judge imposed a strict limit of 10 percent on the volume of a book that may be covered by fair use (a proportion that would cover much, but by no means all, of what was in e-reserves at Georgia State, and probably at many other colleges). And the judge ruled that publishers may have more claims against college and university e-reserves if the publishers offer convenient, reasonably priced systems for getting permission (at a price) to use book excerpts online. The lack of such systems today favored Georgia State, but librarians who were anxiously going through the decision were speculating that some publishers might be prompted now to create such systems, and to charge as much as the courts would permit.

Source: Inside Higher Education Mary 14, 2012

Don't Pick Up: Kids Need to Break Away From Their Parents

 The cover story of the latest issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education features an article by Terry Castle, English professor at Stanford University, about the case for children breaking away from their parents. The following paragraph is a quote from her article:

"The sentimental pathology of the American middle-class family--not to mention the mind-warping digitization of everyday life--usually militates against such ruthless candor. But what the Life of the Orphan teaches-has taught me at least--is that it is indeed the self-conscious abrogation of one's inheritance, the "making strange" of received ideas, the cultivation of a willingness to defy, debunk, or just plain old disappoint one's parents, that is the absolute precondition, now more than ever, for intellectual freedom."

The article begins on page B6. It is available in the library.


Source: The Chronicle Review Section B of The Chronicle of Higher Education
 May 11, 2012

New Books

Cracking the New Job Market by R. William Holland just came in. The book includes a forward by Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed.

We also received Mastering APA Style Instructors Resource guide by American Psychological Association. The guide includes eight multiple-choice assessment surveys, correction keys, and answer sheets, along with instructions on how to incorporate this material into a curriculum.

More on the way!

Access vital issues from 1923 to the present!

CQ Researcher Plus Archive

Within hours we shall have access to the complete archive of Editorial Research Reports—the venerable precursor to CQ Researcher—dating back to 1923. CQ Researcher Plus Archive expands the utility of the CQ Researcher making it a rich resource for historical research by offering the Goodwin community:

• ·         3,000 additional in-depth reports, expanding coverage from 1923 to the present
• ·         Powerful search and browse functions, including a linkable cumulative index
• ·         User profile features that save searches and documents for later use
• ·         Robust advanced-search functionality that allows users to search the full text of all reports and limit their search by date range or topic categories
• ·         New search features including the “Issue Tracker,”which lets users trace vital issues over time
• ·         CiteNow!™, a unique CQEL feature that enables users to automatically generate citations in APA, Bluebook, Chicago, or MLA styles
•  

CQ Researcher Plus Archive allows access to reports of the past that pertain to our nation’s welfare today. Coverage includes reports on historical events such as passage of the Social Security Act of 1935, as well as reports that give background on issues of current debate such as abortion, health insurance, and responses to global terrorism. CQ Researcher Plus Archive offers a special way to understand American policy at home and abroad with over eighty years of reports at your fingertips.We also subscribe to CQ Global Researcher that comes out once a month. CQ Researcher reports are weekly.

LEGAL TRAC NEW FEATURES

LegalTrac, a database collection of major legal publications, has new features:

• On-demand language translation includes three newly added languages: Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
• Technology delivers audio versions of articles and downloadable MP3 files.
• Easy-to-use citation tools facilitate research results.
• Sear Assist provides web-search functionality and recommendations similar to Yahoo and Google.

Access LegalTrac from the Goodwin Library page
www.goodwin.edu/library

Cracking the New Job Market: The 7 Rules for Getting Hired in Any Economy

Safe jobs and lifelong careers are things of the past. People today may change jobs as often as nine times during a career and even change careers three or four times. It is not about you. The rules for finding professional work have changed and this book by R. William Holland delivers new job-hunting strategies. It is a must-read for all job seekers whatever their age. Be the first to reserve this book. It will be here next week.

Distracted Drivers CQ Researcher May 4 Report

Should driver texting and cellphone use be banned? "Drivers have long tried to manage any number of distractions ranging from eating a snack and reading a map to dealing with unruly children in the backseat and putting on makeup. But with the increasing popularity of cellphones and texting, distracted driving has emerged as a central concern of safety experts. Studies indicate that distractions are involved in more than 5,000 traffic fatalities every year. Most states have enacted laws to restrict texting or talking on handheld cellphones, and policymakers face calls for a near-total ban even on hands-free communications devices — including those that are built into the dashboards of new cars and heavily marketed by automakers. But even if more restrictive laws were passed, many motorists would find it hard to set aside the devices they have come to rely upon to make business and personal calls and also to check websites or update their Facebook pages." Full report is available from the library page (password required). Source: CQ Researcher May 4, 2012