The Library & The Patriot Act

This is just a reminder. It is the policy of the Goodwin College Library, as well as Connecticut state law, that all records of an individual’s use of the library are confidential. However, library patrons should be aware that Section 215 of the U.S.A. Patriot Act gives federal agents the ability to seek a secret search warrant to obtain access to library records. For more information see USA Patriot Act and Intellectual Freedom.

Experienced Nurse to the Rescue

A 50-year-old woman was admitted to the hospital with complaints of severe weakness and difficulty breathing. She had been quite healthy until the afternoon of the admission, with no history of serious illnesses. The doctors at the university hospital where she became a patient are known for using their brains. They also use their stethoscopes wisely, and observe closely how a patient looks. For this woman, the diagnosis remained obscure for the next hours as her breathing got more labored and she became comatose.

A tube was placed in her windpipe and she was attached to a breathing machine. Then an experienced nurse, with good sense and a good sense of smell, came to the rescue. The nurse noted that the patient had a peculiar odor, resembling garlic, most prominently from her hair. The unusual odor raised the suspicion of insecticide poisoning with organophosphates.
Find out how this saved her life by reading about this bizarre case in "Is There a Barber in the House,"
Source: The New York Times, December 19, 2006

Homeland Security Career Guide

The Homeland Security and Federal Law Enforcement Career Guide provides help students need to

• determine which elements of the emerging job market are right for them
• prepare resumes and application materials
• find a job in the federal government

All the information they need about qualifications, vacancy announcements, and testing procedures are in this book. Plus, the included CD-ROM contains all the information in the book and easy access to online resources, agencies and websites. It's in the reference section of the library and has Ron Lee's seal of approval!

Nationmaster

Have some fun playing around with NationMaster, "a cool site developed by Luke Metcalfe, an Australian and stat-geek who was frustrated at his inability to mine the data within the CIA World Factbook. NationMaster now includes data from the World Bank, various United Nations entities, OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), World Trade Organization, and so on.

Here's how it works. Head over to NationMaster.com, and select a category from the pull-down menu -- anything from Crime to Industry to Sports. Once you have chosen a category, a subject-specific subcategory menu appears, from which you pick a specific topic. For example, subcategories for Health include percentage of infants immunized against measles, number of acute care beds." From there, you're on our own. I see this working for business, homeland security, and health sciences at the very least.
Source: Mary Ellen Bates

Christmas Songs and Christmas Lyrics

You don't remember the second verse of O Come All Ye Faithful? Here's a place to find all the songs and lyrics you need for the season. So, don't hum along-sing!
http://www.alpinewreaths.com/ChristmasSongs/christmassongs.html

Charitable Giving Guide for 2006

There is still time this year to support a charity dear to your heart. Here is a list of charities that support preservation, open access, the first amendment, and other causes dear to librarians' hearts. You can even support the Internet Archive. Boing Boing!
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/12/11/charitable_gu.html
Source: Marylaine Block

Guide to Clinical Preventive Services

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is pleased to present The Guide to Clinical Preventive Services 2006, which will give you the information you need to provide evidence-based clinical preventive services to patients.

Research has clearly demonstrated that providing high quality, evidence-based preventive care is a critical factor in helping people live healthier lives. We also know from research that the best way to ensure that preventive services are delivered appropriately is to make evidence-based information readily available at the point of care.

To that end, The Guide puts the “gold standard” of preventive care at the fingertips of health care staff to provide effective preventive service to patients every day. The 2006 Guide offers recommendations on 53 clinical preventive services made by the Task Force from 2001 to 2005.
Guide to Clinical Preventive Services, 2006: Recommendations of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force
Source: U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF)

What is the Largest cash crop in the U.S.?

Not, it is not corn, soybeans, or wheat. Marijuana is the largest cash crop in the United States, more valuable than corn and wheat combined. Using conservative price estimates domestic marijuana production has a value of $35.8 billion. The domestic marijuana crop consists of 56.4 million marijuana plants cultivated outdoors worth $31.7 billion and 11.7 million plants cultivated indoors worth $4.1 billion. The domestic marijuana crop is larger than Cotton in Alabama, larger than Grapes, Vegetables and Hay combined in California, larger than Peanuts in Georgia, and larger than Tobacco in both South Carolina and North Carolina.
Source: The Bulletin of Cannabis Reform

Act on Fact: Improve Student Success

Act On Fact: Using Data to Improve Student Success

“Research shows that the more actively engaged students are — with college faculty and staff, with other students and with the subject matter they study — the more likely they are to learn, to stick with their studies, and to attain their academic goals. Student engagement, therefore, is a valuable yardstick for assessing the quality of colleges’ educational practices and identifying ways they can produce more successful results — more students across all subgroups learning at higher levels and attaining their academic goals.”
Source: Community College Survey of Student Engagement

U.S. Military Counterinsurgency Manual

U.S. Military Counterinsurgency Manual (December 2006) (PDF; 14.3 MB)Source:

This manual takes a general approach to counterinsurgency operations. The Army and Marine Corps recognize that every insurgency is contextual and presents its own set of challenges. You cannot fight former Saddamists and Islamic extremists the same way you would have fought the Viet Cong, Moros, or Tupamaros; the application of principles and fundamentals to deal with each varies considerably. Nonetheless, all insurgencies, even today’s highly adaptable strains, remain wars amongst the people. They use variations of standard themes and adhere to elements of a recognizable revolutionary campaign plan. This manual therefore addresses the common characteristics of insurgencies. It strives to provide those conducting counterinsurgency campaigns with a solid foundation for understanding and addressing specific insurgencies.
Source: Headquaters, Department of the Army

Greater Hartford Literacy

Approximately 300,000 Greater Hartford adults, or roughly 41% of the adult population, ages 16 and above, are functioning within the lowest two of five literacy levels. This is the same as the state's average, and slightly lower than the national average of 49%. These individuals would have problems filling out a job application or following an ATM screen (National Adult Literacy Survey).

Population of adults performing at the lowest literacy level:
Hartford 41%
New Britain 26%
Bloomfield 25%
East Hartford 18%
Wethersfield 18%
Windsor 18%

Throughout the Greater Hartford region, nearly half (48%) of tenth grade students performed below the state goal on the Connecticut Academic Performance Test in reading. For example, in Hartford 91% were below state goal, in Bloomfield 70%, in New Britain 73%, and in Windsor 64%. Likewise, just under half (46%) of the state's fourth graders did not meet proficiency goals in language arts (CT Department of Education 2003/2004).
Source: Greater Hartford Literacy Council

Useful Sites

Here are some free sites to find useful and interesting information:

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics <http://www.bls.gov/bls/other.htm> lists international statistical agencies on the Web.

Kidon Media-Link <http://www.kidon.com/media-link/index.php> offers links to all forms of media worldwide: newspapers, magazines, television, radio and news agencies. You can search by country or by language.

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) <http://www.gemconsortium.org/> measures entrepreneurial activity in a global context. Handy if you need to understand the relationship between entrepreneurial activity and national economic growth.

Asknumbers.com <http://www.asknumbers.com/> is an online conversion site. Convert weights, distance, currency, computer storage, temperature, cooking, clothing and much more.

International Students in the U.S.

in 2005-2006, the number of international students enrolled in U.S. higher education institutions remained steady at 564,766, within a fraction of a percent of the previous year's totals, according to Open Doors 2006,the annual report on international academic mobility published by the Institute of International Education. India remains the largest country of origin, with 76,503 students, followed by China with 62,582. The overall international student numbers have stabilized, following a two-year decline.
Source: Institute of International Education

Bibliography Tools in Word 2007

Good news for students! The upcoming version of Microsoft Office will include citation and bibliography tools built into the program. These features will help you create citations and bibliographies via a fill-in template. Sources can be easily shared with others via e-mail or shared lists. While not yet as sophisticated as other bibliographic management software such as EndNote or RefWorks, it will perform many of the same functions.
Source: Jennifer Michelstein, Microsoft Office blog

Could You Become an American Citizen?

On November 30, 2006, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Emilio Gonzalez announced the release of 144 questions and answers for the pilot test of a new naturalization exam. USCIS will administer the pilot exam to about 5,000 volunteer citizenship applicants in 10 cities beginning in early 2007. The questions and answers are here. How many could you have answered?

Recommended Reading

Mary Henderson, academic office manager, highly recommends this book with a long title, Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America--and What We Can Do About it. Enough has been added to the Goodwin Library collection.

"Inspired by Bill Cosby's now famous speech at the NAACP gala celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Brown decision integrating schools, Williams makes the case that while there is still racism, it is way past time for black Americans to open their eyes to the "culture of failure" that exists within their community. He raises the banner of proud black traditional values--self-help, strong families, and belief in God--that sustained black people through generations of oppression and flowered in the exhilarating promis of the modern civil rights movement. Williams asks what happened to keeping our eyes on the prize by proving the case for equality with black excellence and achievement. Certain to be widley discussed and vehemently debated, Enough is a bold, perceptive, solution-based look at African American life, culture, and politics today." (comments from the book cover) Juan Williams is a senior correspondent for NPR and has written other books, including Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary and Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965.

Tracking the Invisible Faculty

The sweeping shift toward non-tenure track academic labor has been one of the most worried-over and undocumented trends in American higher education. For instance, 50% ofYale's faculty are outside the tenure system. Drawing on data collected by the Department of Education, the AAUP has compiled the numbers of tenured, tenure-track, part-time, and full-time non-tenure track faculty members employed at 2,617 American colleges and universities. Read the report.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

How to Build a Student for the 21st Century

The world has changed, bu the American classroom, for the most part, hasn't. Now educators are starting to look at what must be done to make sure our kids make the grade in the new global economy.

How can U.S. schools prepare the next generation to compete in the more challening global economy of the 21st century? It will take more than No Child Left Behind, according to Time magazine's cover article this week. This is required reading!

How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century gives you access to only the beginning of the article. We have the issue in the library and the article is also available online in the InfoTrac OneFile. Anywhere on campus where you have an Internet connection you can go to InfoTrac OneFile from www.iconn.org by clicking on [Link to Individual Resources].

Google Remembers Munch's Birthday

If you visited Google today, you saw a miniature version of Edward Munch's painting, The Scream, because Munch was born on December 12, 1863. He was a Norwegian painter and printmaker whose intense, evocative treatment of psychological and emotional themes was a major influence on the development of German expressionism in the early 20th century. His painting The Cry or The Scream (1893) is regarded as an icon of existential anguish.

Career Preparation tops for College Freshmen

Students entering their first year of college consider career preparation the most crucial factor in determining the value of their postsecondary education, according to a new report from Eduventures, an education consulting firm. Of 6,200 traditional-age college freshmen surveyed, 72 percent said "professional preparation" was very important to them.

Students in the survey said they viewed programs and services that would assist them in career-development efforts as the most likely indicators of a college's commitment to professional preparation. The three most significant factors that convey that commitment to students are the opportunities a college provides for internships, the quality of its career office, and job-placement records of its graduates.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education