LIVE WEBCAST ON COPYRIGHT TOMORROW

Georgia State, Copyright, and Your Library

Live Webcast
July 25, 2012
2:00 p.m.
90 minutes
After four years, a judge has finally decided upon the merits of the copyright lawsuit between Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Sage Publications and Georgia State University.  Although the outcome legally affects only the northern third of Georgia,  this ruling affect the way we do business in your library.  In this webcast, librarians from the ACRL Copyright Committee will discuss the specific ruling of the Georgia State case, the affect that the case will have on future fair use analyses, the impact on library policies such as course reserves and interlibrary loan, distance learning, and the way we will work with academic publishers from now on.

Join us in Room 142.

VAUGHN MARTIN RECOMMENDS SPIDER-MAN!

Nothing says summer like epic movies to fill your mind with an entertaining respite between semesters. My personal favorite is a remaining of everyone’s friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. The Amazing Spider-Man is a reboot of the trilogy that Tobey Maguire made famous in 2002. Comic book enthusiast will enjoy how the storyline attempts to stay true to the Marvel’s Ultimate Spider-Man theme in the early 21^st century. The choreography of the evolving fighting scenes and web-slinging make Spider-Man ‘s moves look more fluid and believable of a seventeen year old.

Andrew Garfield’s portrayal of teenage outcast Peter Parker and the wise-cracking web-slinger is comical leaving you anxious awaiting his next line. Most die-hard Spider-Man fans will be delighted to see that Spider-Man’s love interest (played by the lovely Emma Stone) has shifted to the iconic Gwen Stacy instead of the more famous Mary Jane. Rhys Ifans plays a very likable villain as the determined and equally deranged Dr. Kurt Connors aka the Lizard.  

Great scenes, outstanding plot,  compelling villains, and witty banter earns my highest praise for everyone’s favorite wall crawling superhero movie.

VAUGHN MARTIN
Library Staff

STUDENT RETENTION AND SUCCESS SEMINAR

Making retention and student success part of your campus culture

Library Scheduled Web Seminar

July 31, 2 p.m.  Location: TBD

ALL WELCOME!

From the announcement of University Business:

“At Carroll University in Wisconsin, retention is at the top of the priority list. Join us at this web seminar to find out how Carroll University's leaders made retention a day-to-day priority and created a campus-wide culture of student success. Find out how the human element is aided with a highly customized retention technology platform by Jenzabar, which helps determine the unique factors that influence retention at Carroll.

The case study from Carroll University will include:

Actual examples of cases where at-risk students were identified and helped.

Changes in retention rates that resulted from the initiative.

How FinishLine, Jenzabar's retention management solution, contributes to the success of the program.”

(The library is using  principles from the Standards for Libraries in Higher Education in establishing  goals for 2012-13. We are concentrating on how the library contributes to student recruitment, retention, time to degree, and academic success. we hope this seminar will be helpful.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"The belief that human beings and human societies should be ruled by the demands of the marketplace is utopian folly. There is nothing in human history or human nature that supports the idea that sacrificing everything before the free market leads to a social good. And yet we have permitted this utopian belief system to determine how we structure our economy, labor, education, culture, and our relations with foreign nations, as well as how we treat the ecosystem on which we depend."
Chris Hedges
Days of Destruction Days of Revolt

This book is available in the Hoffman Family Library.

A few entries ago, we included Project Gutenberg's self-publishing program. It is becoming clear that self-publishing is transforming the book industry, On Thursday last week,  Pearson announced that it had acquired self-publishing vendor Author Solutions Inc.for $116,000,000. The purchase of Author Solutions—which has 1,600 employees, has published 150,000 authors, nearly 200,000 titles and reported just under $100 million in revenues last year—and its integration into Penguin operations marks a new era for the self-publishing category going forward.

 Formed in 2007, ASI is now the world’s leading provider of professional self-publishing services. It has enabled 150,000 authors to publish, market and distribute more than 190,000 books in print and electronic formats and benefits from several powerful growth trends including user-generated content, eBooks and digital publishing and marketing technologies.

Do you have the great American novel manuscript stashed away somewhere? Your time has come.

STEM Master Techer Corps

Last week the Obama Administration took a step in the right direction and announced a plan to create a national Science, Math, Technology, and Engineering (STEM) Master Teacher Corps. With $100 million m in start-up funding from the federal Teacher Inentive Fund, the program will begin in 50 locations across the country, each with 50 STEM educators. Pending Congressional approval of additional funding, the Administration believes the program can expand over the next four years to include 10,000 STEM teachers. STEM master teachers would make a multi-year commitment to the STEM master teacher corps and would receive an annual stipend.

First Women's Rights Conference Anniversary

 HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, WOMEN VOTERS!

On July 19-20, 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott spearheaded the first women's rights convention in American History.  Over 300 women and men came to Seneca Falls, New York to protest the mistreatment of women in social, economic, political, and religious life.  This marked the first public call for women's right to vote.

At the end of the conference 68 women and 32 men of the 300 attendees signed the Declaration of Sentiments.  This document was drafted by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who used the Declaration Independence as her guide and listed eighteen "injuries and usurpations... on the part of man toward woman" (same number of charges the colonists leveled against the King of England) 

Those who attended the conference were vilified and mocked by the press who described the conference as "the most shocking and unnatural event ever recorded in the history of womanity." Yet, thanks to the countless numbers who have worked to preserve the history of the women's rights movement, Seneca Falls, NY is now the site of the  Women's Rights National Historical Park 

To honor democracy and the amazing legacy of the women's rights movement, be sure to register and vote!

Have a child and Change Your Brain

In today's encore excerpt - a new and growing body of research is revealing that there are marked and generally positive physiological changes that occur in a mother's brain as a result of giving birth to a child. Experiments and observations on human mothers and laboratory rats provide the evidence:

"Research suggests that motherhood enhances certain types of cognition, improves resistance to stress and sharpens some kinds of memory. On the face of it, the fact that the nervous system manages to transform a new mother from a self-centered organism into an other-focused caregiver is actually quite impressive. All it takes is for new neurons to sprout, certain brain structures to blossom in size and waves of powerful hormones to batter the pregnant woman's physiology. The result is a different and in some ways better brain -- or at least one capable of juggling the challenges of everyday life while maintaining a laserlike focus on the baby.

Who knew?

Excerpt from the following source:

Author: Craig Howard Kinsley and Elizabeth Meyer  
Title: "Maternal Mentality"
Publisher: Scientific American Mind
Date: July/August 2011
Pages: 25-29

Repository for Self-Published Works

Project Gutenberg has opened a new venue supplementing their traditional collection of public domain classics. That collection of usually all the works, even minor ones, of major authors and the major works of minor authors now runs more than 40,000.  But what about contemporary works, particularly by people who have not found or perhaps do not want to go with traditional publishers? Now Project Gutenberg has opened a separate collection and discovery area for such works referred to as a Self-Publishing Portal. Anyone can access and search the site to view and/or download documents. Contact us for more information. Go for it!