'Librarians Shushed No More'

That is the headline of the front page Hartford Courant article today. Four librarians of Library Connection in Windsor challenged the FBI after receiving a national security letter last summer ordering them to produce records of patron internet use. They spoke publicly and legally for the first time Tuesday about their legal battle. Amendments to the Patrioat Act now "permit national letter recipients to consult a lawyer and mount a legal challenge." They were the first librarians in the nation to challenge such a demand. Whether others have received national security letters is unknown.
Source: Hartford Courant May 31

"Eager Sellers and Stony Buyers" and "Avatar Marketing"

"Eager Sellers and Stony Buyers" in the June issue of the Harvard Business Review considers the psychology of new product adoption. The full text is available in the library, but here is the abstract.

Companies spend large sums trying to segment, reach, and influence potential customers. They should think about targeting those customers’ online alter egos, as well. "Avatar-Based Marketing", aso in the same issue of HBR, is available here full text. From this site you can access a podcast about marketing to avatars.
Source: Harvard Business Review June 2006

New Books in the Library

Culture Care Guide to Heritage Assessment and Health Traditions by R. Spector
Stem Cell Research: Medical Applications & Ethical Controversy by J. Panno
Programming the Universe by S. Lloyd
In Search of Dark Matter by K. Freeman & G. McNamara
Quantum Zoo: A Tourist's Guide to the Neverending Universe by M.Chown
Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter by K. Ellison

New England Journal of Medicine

The New England Journal of Medicine for May 26 just arrived in the library. Of course, I go directly to book reviews, but one article, "Making Patient Safety the Centerpiece of Medical Liabaility Reform", caught my eye first. From the table of contents, you may make different choices.
Source: NEJM

Gigablast Search Engine

"The search engine Gigablast (http://www.gigablast.com) has been around since 2000, and generally doesn't get a lot of attention. It's a search engine for search-logic geeks -- you can do some very subtle searches that aren't supported in most other search engines.

Let's start at Gigablast's main page, which features a goofy-looking rocket ship. Click the Advanced Search button to take advantage of the usual search engine features -- the ability to combine AND, OR and NOT (you must put the Boolean operators in ALL CAPs); phrase searches, site search ("restrict to this URL"), and link search ("pages that link to this URL"). You can also specify for each search how many results you want per search-results page (10, 20, 30, 40, 50 or 100.
(You can also use a pull-down menu on the search results page to change the number of results per page -- a nice
touch.)"
Source: Mary Ellen Bates Tips

Voting and Democracy

"In a country that spends so much time extolling the glories of democracy, it's amazing how many elected officials go out of their way to discourage voting. States are adopting rules that make it hard, and financially perilous, for nonpartisan groups to register new voters. They have adopted new rules for maintaining voter rolls that are likely to throw off many eligible voters, and they are imposing unnecessarily tough ID requirements.

Florida recently reached a new low when it actually bullied the League of Women Voters into stopping its voter registration efforts in the state. The Legislature did this by adopting a law that seems intended to scare away anyone who wants to run a voter registration drive. Since registration drives are particularly important for bringing poor people, minority groups and less educated voters into the process, the law appears to be designed to keep such people from voting."
Source: New York Times Editorial("Block the Vote') May 30, 2006

Congresspedia

"Congresspedia is a collaboratively written "citizens' encyclopedia on Congress," designed to shine more light on the workings of the U.S. Congress. Congresspedia is part of SourceWatch, a similarly collaborative, wiki-based website documenting the people, organizations and issues shaping the public agenda. Congresspedia is a wiki, meaning that anyone, including you, can edit any article right now by clicking on the edit this page link that appears in every article in Congresspedia. As more and more people contribute to Congresspedia, the articles improve in quality and quantity. If you're new to Congresspedia, a good place to start may be looking up your own members of Congress and reading up on them. "
Source: Congresspedia

Prison Inmates--U.S.For Literature Review Class

Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2005

This information is for literature review students in Topics and Research in Youth Development class.

"Presents data on prison and jail inmates, collected from National Prisoner Statistics counts and the Census of Jail Inmates 2005. This annual report provides the number of inmates and the overall incarceration rate per 100,000 residents for each State and the Federal system. It offers trends since 1995 and percentage changes in prison populations since midyear and yearend 2004. The midyear report presents the number of prison inmates held in private facilities and the number of prisoners under 18 years of age held by State correctional authorities. It includes total numbers for prison and jail inmates by gender, race, and Hispanic origin as well as counts of jail inmates by conviction status and confinement status. The report also provides findings on rated capacity of local jails, percent of capacity occupied, and capacity added."
Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics

Human Rights

Annual Report: The State of the World's Human Rights"This Amnesty International Report documents human rights abuses in 150 countries around the world. It highlights the need for governments, the international community, armed groups and others in positions of power or influence to take responsibility. It also reflects the vitality of human rights activists globally, whether in local initiatives, international summits or mass demonstrations."
Source: Amnesty International

Free-Speech Challenge to National-Security Letters

A federal appeals court has sent back to a lower court a case challenging the government's ability to issue secret orders to businesses and other organizations (such as libraries) demanding that they hand over their clients' electronic records. Academic library groups have been following the case closely since at least one library group has received such an order. National-security letters are issued without a judge's approval, and recipients, at least initially, can tell only their lawyers that they have received them.

In the other ruling, in a case from Connecticut, the appeals court dismissed a library group's challenge to the gag provision of a national-security letter it received. The U.S. Department of Justice, in a court document filed last month, reversed course and said the group, The Library Connection of Windsor, was free to publicly identify itself.
Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education May 25 2006

What Makes an Educated Person?

A new book, Excellence Without Soul, adds to the discussion of what makes an educated American person. Harvard professor and former Dean of Harvard College, Harry Lewis, offers his analysis of how America's great universities are failing students and the nation. He says universities have forgotten that the fundamental purpose of undergraduate education is to turn young people into adults who will take responsibility for society. Reviewing the book today in the Wall Street Journal, Vincent Cannata suggests that at the very least,"parents preparing to shell out a small fortune for their children's education will want to read this book." It is available to the Goodwin community through interlibrary loan.

Nonprofit Good Practice Guide

The Nonprofit Good Practice Guide is a one-stop shop for widely-accepted and innovative nonprofit practices offering Preferred Practices and Pitfalls, Glossaries, Resources, Trends and Web site Profiles within ten topic areas. Npgoodpractice.org offers answers to virtually any question about managing nonprofits and foundations, leading staff to sources that contain an abundance of information. These good practices can be applied quickly and directly to improving an organization's performance.

The Guide can be used as a reference for quick answers, in preparation for staff or board meetings, as a training tool, and in reference for classroom studies.

User's Guides to Evidence-Based Practice

Let me introduce you to a complete set of Users' Guides to Evidence-Based Practice , originally published as a series in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The Center for Health Evidence maintains the full text pre-publication version of this series. The articles are organized in three categories: background, primary studies, and integrative studies.

The calculators, worksheets, and additional educational materials originally with the guides have been re-introduced in a new interactive website. Access to that site is available to Goodwin students in the library only.

Journal of Histotechnology

The library now belongs to the National Society for Histotechnology and thus has a subscription to their official publication, The Journal of Histotechnology. It is published quarterly in March, June, September, and December. The feature article in the March issue is "Bromodeoxyuridine Tracking of Osteoblast Progenitors in Formalin-Fixed, Decalcified Regenerating Bone." The case study in this issue considers the importance of fluorochrome staining for the identifcation of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis. The book reviewer highly recommends the recent publication, Neuropathology edited by R.A. Prayson. The society's web site is www.nsh.org.

LIBRARY INSTRUCTION CLASSES

Library Instruction
May 22-27

May 23
Human Services (Ward) 6 p.m.
Literature Review Instruction
(in the library)

May 24
Marketing & Customer Service (Mozille)
Wethersfield 6:30 p.m.
Business Research and Sources

May 25

Pharmacology (Ambrioso) 1 p.m.
Research: Drug Classification
(in the library)

Marketing & Customer Service (Mozille)
Wethersfield 6:30 p.m.
Business Research and Sources

May 27
Introduction to Psychology (Leone) 9:15
Psychology research and Sources
(in the library)

Book of the Week

The Selfish Gene
By Richard Dawkins

“We are survival machines—robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment . . . One of my hopes is that I may have some success in astonishing others.”—Richard Dawkins

He succeeded! Published 30 years ago, this book has been, and remains, one of the most influential science books of all time. To celebrate this anniversary, Goodwin Library recommends The Selfish Gene as the Book of the Week.

Why read The New England Journal of Medicine?

The Goodwin Library subscribes to The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). This weekly journal is a giant in the world of medical information because of its research and peer-reviewed articles. It is the official publication of the Massachusetts Medical Society and is frequently referred to in news articles. It is essential, of course, for a college that emphasizes health science. Should our students read this? Of course, but why should all of us read it?

Here are some examples. The recent issue that just arrived in the library considers at length the Massachusets Health Care Reform in the Perspective section--important and accessible for the non-professional. Also in that section you will find an succinct article on robotic surgery. Beside the original research articles (with abstracts and conclusion that most of us can understand), there are editorials and book reviews. A recent commentary was titled "The Patient's Right to Safety--Improving the Quality of Care Through Litigation Against Hospitals." The book reviews in this issue include The Neurology of Autism; Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: From Genes to Patients; Attention Deficit Disorder: The Unfocused Mind in Children and Adults; Making Medical Decisions for the Profoundly Mentally Disabled. Other reviews recently of interest are Talking with Doctors; Chronic Politics: Health Care Security From FDR to George W. Bush; and Poor People's Medicine: Medicaide and American Charity Care Since 1965. Of course , we don't have time to read all of these, but we do have time to read the reviews--at least occasionally. Why read The New England Journal of Medicine? Why not?

If you would like to receive an email of the weekly table of contents, that is possible. I can also email you any article you request. We can obtain any of these books through interlibrary loan. Hello out there?

Webopedia: Featured Web Site of the Week

The editors of webopedia.com have put together a technology terminology source to help us keep up. They have researched before including terms from experts, publications, standards oranizations, and other sources. Words can be searched or browsed by category. The "Did You Know" section is a tech topic guide, with entries like "TechTerms That Are Strange But true" (a smurf is not just a little blue creature). The Quick Reference area explains how email works, lists computer certifications, and provides text message abbreviations if you are not there yet. MTFBWU.
Source: Carolyn Sosnowski, an information specialist for the Special Library Organization (SLA).

LIBRARY INSTRUCTION WORKSHOP

Medical Terminology (Dowd)
Periodical Research
10 a.m. May 18

No States Meet Federal Goal

Not a single state will have a ''highly" qualified teacher in every core class this school year as promised by President Bush's education law. Nine states, along with the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, face penalties. The four-year-old No Child Left Behind law says teachers must have a bachelor's degree, a state license, and proven competency in every subject they teach by this year.
Source: Boston Globe May 13