Student Cellphones

"This fall college students across the country will use their cellphones to send each other text messages. But at 15 institutions, the phones will do a whole lot more. Those 15 colleges have signed up to use Rave Wireless -- a service that aims to turn every student's cellphone into a social and academic jack-of-all-trades. Students can use the service to view their grades, check the availability of study rooms, and see transportation and event schedules, according to USA Today. Rave Wireless, which can be used with any phone carrier, doubles as a campus-safety tool. A student on a late-night wa lk home from the library can set his or her cellphone to contact campus police if he or she doesn't arrive by a certain time. A built-in GPS system then tracks the phone, and the student's medical information and emergency contacts are automatically sent to the police."
Source: Wired Campus

Featured Database: Informe!

Full text Spanish language and bilingual periodicals, Informe provides indexing, images and full-text access to general interest Hispanic magazines. Most articles are in Spanish; however, some are from English language Hispanic magazines. While the interface and instructions are in English, Spanish word searches produce many more results than English word searches. There is no English-Spanish dictionary on this database. This database could be useful for instructors and students in Spanish classes. For more information contact the library staff.
access: www.iconn.org

New Books in the Library

The library staff is now cataloging and shelving 35 new books for the collection. A complete list is available in the library. For the faculty community of learning center in the library we have added

1. Teaching Language in Context is the essential methods text for anyone teaching or learning to teach a foreign language.
2. What the Best College Teachers Do is an inspirational summary of what teachers do to make a difference in students' lives.
3. Teaching as Community Property: Essays on Higher Education is Lee Shulman's vision for improving the quality of teaching in higher education.

Communities of Learning

As stated in the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Principles of Adolescent Literacy Reform, "teachers who belong to a study group, a learning community, or some other collaborative enterprise are most likely to remain in the profession as highly successful instructors" (p. 10).
Read the Principles policy research brief athttp://www.ncte.org/library/files/About_NCTE/Overview/Adol-Lit-Brief.pdf

Melting Pot Overflows

This fall 55 million students are enrolling in schools across the country. This is the largest public school student enrollment ever, and in terms of ethnic diversity, it is the most diverse student population since the immigration boom 100 years ago.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/27/education/27education.html
(free registration required)

Spelling Report on Higher Education

After almost a year of discussion and debate, the federal Commission on the Future of Higher Education has issued its proposals, but the work of divining their effects is just beginning. The commission made proposals on accountability and aid. Many observers say it would be foolish for institutions to ignore the report, which warns of the perils of complacency and calls for sweeping changes in American higher education. Read the extensive article in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
http://chronicle.com/free/v53/i02/02a00101.htm?cch

Make Your Searches Private

As disturbing, funny, and nutty some searches are one thing is pretty clear — people ran them in private. Or thought they did anyway. More disturbing is that the entire web is now reading about them, blogging them, doing news stories on them. So much for privacy.
Luckily, you can go a long way to keeping your secret searches safe. Here’s a few tools that will help:

Lost In The CrowdThis site allows you to search your favorite engines while automatically mixing your searches with a large number of other searches essentially creating “search noise”. The idea is that that your sexy/sneaky/sick searches will be harder to find and appear less prominent if they are found. Nice that it works with any browser and all major engines.
TrackMeNot FireFox ExtentionThis extention does pretty much the same thing as Lost In The Crowd. One bit that TrackMeNot has over Lost In The Crowd is that you can add your own list of keywords for the autogenerated searches to be created from which should add a little more safety.
TorCreates a network of onion proxies allowing all data (not just searches) to flow through what is essentially an anonymous peer to peer network. I’m not the most techy guy in the world so if that description doesn’t do it for you here’s a great overview of how Tor works (scroll down a bit to the pics). Appears to be the most robust solution, but a bit complicated for people like me.
FoxyProxy FireFox ExtentionThis extention can be configured to use a multiple proxies to help keep everything you do online (including your searches) do anonymous. Works with Tor out of the box.
Don’t Leave Traces FireFox/Greasemonkey ExtentionThis new one is similar to FoxyProxy although a little more simplistic since it uses only one proxy and works for searches only. Easy add though if you already use Greasemonkey.
Use a Web-Based ProxyThere are 100s of free proxies out there that you can use to surf the web. Most should give you some level of anonymity and work in any browser, but be careful since you never know who is running the proxy!

Featured Journal: Nature

Nature is a weekly international journal publishing the finest peer-reviewed research in all fields of science and technology on the basis of its originality, importance, interdisciplinary interest, timeliness, accessibility, elegance and surprising conclusions. Nature also provides rapid, authoritative, insightful and arresting news and interpretation of topical and coming trends affecting science, scientists and the wider public.

The library subscribes to Nature. Check out the current issue's table of contents!

College Student Mindset

"A rite of autumn is under way with the arrival of first-year students at thousands of colleges and universities for registration. Most 18-year-old students entering the class of 2010 this fall were born in 1988. They grew up with a mouse in one hand and a computer screen as part of their worldview. They learned to surf the internet as they learned to read. While they were still in their cribs, the 20th century started to close as the Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet bloc disintegrated, and frequent traditional wars in Latin America gave way to the uncontrolled terrors of the Middle East.

Each August since 1998, as faculty prepare for the academic year, Beloit College in Wisconsin has released the Beloit College Mindset List. A creation of Beloit’s Keefer Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride and Public Affairs Director Ron Nief, it looks at the cultural touchstones that have shaped the lives of today’s first-year students. " Read the rest of the article-
http://www.beloit.edu/~pubaff/mindset/

Patterns of Global Terrorism Reports

Patterns of Global Terrorism Reports
As a public service, Berkshire Publishing is posting here large sections from its Patterns of Global Terrorism 1985-2005: U.S. Department of State Reports with Supplementary Documents and Statistics for free pdf download. Also provided in html format will be a document of particular current relevance from each section of the volumes.
Of special note is the Chronology of Significant Terrorist Incidents from 1964-2005.134 pages; PDF.

Children and Environmental Health

Several New Papers on Children and Environmental Health Issues (PDFs)
+ Trials and Tribulations of Protecting Children from Environmental Hazards
+ An Exploration of Ethical Issues in Research in Children’s Health and the Environment
+ The Politics of Risk: A Human Rights Paradigm for Children’s Environmental Health Research
+ Privacy and Ethics in Pediatric Environmental Health Research Part I: Genetic and Prenatal Testing
+ Privacy and Ethics in Pediatric Environmental Health Research Part II: Protecting Families and Communities
Source: Environmental Health Perspectives

Archive for Homeland Security

New Online From the Federal Research Division/Library of Congress
U.S. Army Field Manuals, War Department/Department of the Army Pamphlets

The full text of selected U.S. Army Field Manuals (FMs), War Department Pamphlets (WD PAMs), and Department of the Army Pamphlets (DA PAMs), which particularly address some of the current research needs and interests of The Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center & School Library will be added regularly to this site.
Source: Docuticker

The Almanac of Higher Education

The Chronicle's 2006-7 "Almanac of Higher Education" is now online. It includes national and state-by-state data on colleges and universities and their students, faculty and staff members, and finances.
http://chronicle.com/free/almanac/2006/

STATE-BY-STATE ROUNDUPS
Profiles and data for higher education in the 50 states and
the District of Columbia.
http://chronicle.com/free/almanac/2006/states/states.htm

ACROSS THE NATION
National data on college enrollment trends, faculty salaries,
test scores, degrees awarded, tuition and fees, spending on
research and development, student aid, and more.
http://chronicle.com/free/almanac/2006/nation/nation_index.htm

50 Popular Science Blogs

Weblogs written by scientists are relatively rare, but some of them are proving popular. Out of 46.7 million blogs indexed by the Technorati blog search engine, five scientists' sites make it into the top 3,500. This list gives you a chance to get acquainted with these five sites (Pharyngula, Panda's Thumb, RealClimate, Cosmic Variance, Scientific Activist) and many more.
50 Popular Science Blogs
Source: Nature Journal

U.S. Government Manual 2006-2007

As the official handbook of the Federal Government, the United States Government Manual provides comprehensive information on the agencies of the legislative, judicial, and executive branches. It also includes information on quasi-official agencies, international organizations in which the United States participates, and boards, commissions, and committees. The Manual begins with reprints of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. The new edition of the Manual is available annually in late summer. You may search or browse.
Source: U.S. Printing Office

Lower Cost for College Textbooks

“In response to growing student concern about the high price of college textbooks, the major publishers have developed lower-cost versions of a few of their textbooks. In addition, alternative and online publishers have emerged on the market, offering free or lower-cost versions of some textbooks to students and professors. In order to provide a snapshot of the lowercost textbook market, we examined the lowercost options offered by the major publishers in their online catalogues and identified several alternative publishers offering textbooks for a lower price or for free.”
Textbooks For the 21st Century: A Guide To Free And Low Cost Textbooks
Source: Student Public Interest Research Groups

U.S. Census FactFinder Database

Changes and New Data Made to U.S. Census FactFinder Database

+ 2004 ZIP Code Business Patterns
+ 2005 American Community Survey - Wave 1 - Social and Demographic Estimates released on AFF
+ Changes to the Fact Sheet, People and Housing pages
+ 2004 Nonemployer Statistics released
+ 2002 Economic Surveys made more visible in American FactFinder
+ Download Center - more data available from the Economic Census and Annual Surveys

What's Inside a JPEG File?

As common as these files are in everyone’s life, very few of us actually know what goes on inside a JPEG file and still fewer understand the many pitfalls associated with using this choice when storing their digital photographs. This essay describes the inner working of this file format that we so commonly use, highlighting its many merits and it many flaws. Like any tool that is available to us, there are correct ways to use the JPEG file format and there are times when it is a poor choice.
What is inside a JPEG file?
Source: The Society for Imaging Science and Technology

Booker Prize For Fiction 2006

The long list for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2006, one of the most prestigious book awards, was announced this week. Now in its thirty-eighth year, the prize aims to reward the best novel of the year written by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. The winner receives £50,000 and both the winner and the short listed authors are guaranteed a worldwide readership plus a dramatic increase in book sales.

The short list will be published by September 14. The winner will be announced on October 15. The choices for the long list, short list, and the winner create great excitement in the book world. The bookmakers in England have Mitchell’s Black Swan Green as the 5-1 favorite so far. I hear that Messud’s The Emperor’s Children is excellent. Many of the authors have been on the list before or have won.

Here is the long list:
Carey, Peter Theft: A Love Story
Desai, Kiran The Inheritance of Loss
Edric, Robert Gathering the Water
Gordimer, Nadine Get a Life
Grenville, Kate The Secret River
Hyland, M.J. Carry Me Down
Jacobson, Howard Kalooki Nights
Lasdun, James Seven Lies
Lawson, Mary The Other Side of the Bridge
McGregor, Jon So Many Ways to Begin
Matar, Hisham In the Country of Men
Messud, Claire The Emperor’s Children
Mitchell, David Black Swan Green
Murr, Naeem The Perfect Man
O’Hagan, Andrew Be Near Me
Robertson, James The Testament of Gideon Mack
St Aubyn, Edward Mother’s Milk
Unsworth, Barry The Ruby in her Navel
Waters, Sarah The Night Watch

If you are interested in reading any of these, contact the library.
Source: Booker Prize Online

College Campuses & Security

Some college campuses – especially small ones – might believe they are immune from terrorist activity. But that sense of security is false, says Paul M. Cell, chief of the Montclair State Police Department. “Each institution has its own unique appeal to the various terrorist causes,” says Cell, who is certified in terrorism response and prevention training for law enforcement. In addition to the more publicized dangers campuses face – the bombing of a large research university’s nuclear facilities, for example – incidents that are smaller in scope but still threatening to the campus community can also occur – such as targeting an individual staff or faculty member because of controversial research, or running a Web site that supports a terrorist organization.

Another common misconception is that a general emergency plan will be adequate in responding to such incidents, Cell says. “The most commonly overlooked security concern at many colleges and universities is the belief that just having an emergency plan is enough,” he says. “All too often, emergency plans are not exercised, updated, or properly disseminated to the community.” On August 23, Cell will detail how to conduct thorough campus risk, threat, and vulnerability assessments for all types of institutions during a live, 90-minute audio conference on “Level Red: A Community Approach to Mitigating Campus Terrorism.” The focus will be on a multidisciplinary, multijurisdictional approach to campus preparedness.
For more information, click here.