Summer Reading List

Do you remember receiving that "summer reading list" on the last day of school before summer vacation? Those long lists of books to read before the next school year began were a burden back then. Most of us don’t feel this way any longer and many look forward to a great “summer read.” National Public Radio (NPR) has put together a collection of summer reading lists and articles, including critics’ lists, the “You Must Read This” series, cookbook suggestions, book excerpts, and interviews with “actors, academics, musicians and many others about what they are reading.” Get your homework from NPR. Then get the books from the Goodwin Library. Don't forget to sign up for our book people wiki to share your reading with all of us.

Don't Show Up for that Job Interview

It’s now possible to meet with recruiters without actually showing up for a job interview. Some employers are experimenting with Second Life, the online virtual community owned by San Francisco-based Linden Lab, to screen prospective hires. That program allows job seekers to create a computer generated image to represent themselves--known as an "avatar"--and communicate with prospective employers as though they were instant messaging. Read the article by Anjali Athavaley, The Wall Street Journal, June 20, 2007, Page D1 (in the library). It is not only different here; it is different out there!

Librarians in the Movies

How does pop culture view librarians? I know most of you have heard of the movies Desk Set, The Music Man, and Party Girl. Here is a movie that is more recent than that-- "The Hollywood Librarian: A Look at Librarians Through Film". Written and directed by Ann Seidl, a librarian from Denver, it shows "the realities of 21st century librarianship, including stereotyping, censorship and intellectual freedom, and the total impact of librarians in our culture and society." The trailer for the film is now available on YouTube, and the premiere of the movie has opened already in some regions of the country. In future blogs, I will mention some other movie images of librarians from a talk at the 2007 American Library Association conference.
Source: "How Does Pop Culture View Librarians" 2007 ALA Conference

Court Decision on School Integration

Despite striking down two voluntary school-integration plans in 5 to 4 ruling on Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court left intact its precedents dealing with affirmative action in higher education. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education article today, the decision is expected to have no impact on higher-education desegregation plans.

The two cases joined in the court's decision were Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education, involving public schools in Louisville, Ky., and its suburbs, and Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1. The cases differed from past disputes over race-based student-assignment policies brought before the Supreme Court in that neither of the two districts named in the complaints was under a court order to desegregate its schools. Because the integration policies were adopted voluntarily, they were subject to a higher level of judicial scrutiny than court-ordered efforts.

Here is the court decision.

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education and Cornell University Law School

This special issue of Health Services Research includes a set of case studies for countries that represent a spectrum of different situations in relation to nursing shortages and migration. Despite severe data deficiencies in most source countries, what emerged from this exercise was a continuum of situations that debunk the simple duality of source and destination countries. There is a spectrum of types of nurse shortages and policy reactions to the phenomenon of nurse shortages and migration. Several key variables define the diversity of situations, including nurse vacancy and unemployment rates, causes of the shortages, the level of education of the nurses who leave the country, nursing education capacity and, of course, the political will to retain and produce more nurses, and the policy reactions to migration itself.
Source Health Services Research

Part-Time Faculty

This study from Cornell University uses a cross-section national sample of four-year colleges and universities in the United States to examine the variation of part-time faculty employment. Results of this study suggest that higher educational institutions actively design and adopt contingent work arrangements to save on labor costs and to manage their resource dependence with constituencies. Furthermore, institutions that have small student enrollment and large proportion of part-time students are found to rely more heavily on part-time faculty employment. Private institutions, on average, have higher levels of part-time faculty than their public counterparts. Finally, institutions that rely more on tuition and fees revenue tend to employ more part-time faculty. Such a relationship is significantly moderated by institutional quality, suggesting that different institutions may adopt different strategies to attract students and secure their tuition revenues.
Source: Cornell Higher Education Resource Center

Join the Goodwin Book People Wiki

Joining the Goodwin Book People Wiki is easy!
Register by email. Send a note to mnowlan@goodwin.edu with Book People in the subject line. Don’t forget to tell us your name and contact information.
You can also join by calling 528.4111 x6782. Or, register in person at the library. Read whatever books you like and whenever you like. Listening to audio books also counts. When we have some registrations, there will be more information about the Goodwin Book People Wiki. Please join!

Digital Directions

Next Scheduled Chat: Thursday, June 28, 2 p.m. to 3 p.m., Eastern Time
Topic: Digital Directions: The Road Ahead in Educational Technology

Please join Education Week for this live chat to talk about the release of Education Week's new report, Digital Directions, and what's ahead in the world of educational technology for the 2007-08 school year and beyond.
Source: EdWeek Online

Web Cams and Online Testing

High school and college instructors have a new tool to help prevent cheating by students taking tests online: a special Web cam that captures a 360-degree image around the student as well as a microphone to detect sound.
Source: Boston Herald, June 19, 2007

Doing the Search Mash

"Recently, Google rolled a new user interface test bed, SearchMash, and it is worth checking out. You won't see the Google brand anywhere on the front page or the search results, but rest assured that, under the hood, the Google engine is purring.
You have almost all the search functionality of the regular Google web search; phrase searching works, as do the usual Boolean operators, and format and field limiters, although there is no advanced search page on SearchMash. And don't look for any sponsored links; there is no advertising on this beta search site. But what sets it apart is the search results page. For starters, SearchMash sorts the results into web pages, images, blogs, videos, and Wikipedia entries, all on one screen."
Source: Bates Information Services www.BatesInfo.com/tip.html.

Climate Science Blog for Environmental Students

For students in environmental science classes, this is a collaborative blog from several climate scientists and geophysicists. Recent posts include the text of the G8 Summit declaration, and recommended one-stop sources. The site is searchable, browsable, and also includes a glossary. An RSS feed and/or e-mail notification is available.
http://realclimate.org/
Source: Mary Laine, Librarian

Assessment of Student Learning

The U.S. Department of Education has announced that it will set aside $2.5-million in the budget for the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, or Fipse, for a focused competition on student-learning assessment.

The money, which will finance at least one grant, will help in developing methods to “measure, assess, and report student achievement and institutional performance at the postsecondary level,” according to a notice that appeared yesterday in the Federal Register.
Source: Federal Register June 20, 2007

Plagiarism: Who is the Victim?

A graduate student at Capella University, an online for-profit institution, says her professor stole her work. The professor says it’s the other way around. The Pioneer Press, a Minnesota newspaper, has a lengthy article about the dispute, which is headed to court. This isn’t the first time that a student has accused a professor of plagiarism, as a special report in The Chronicle of Higher Education described in 2004.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

Dragon Boat Festival Today

Today, June 19, is Dragon Boat Festival day. A few years ago, Goodwin College competed in the dragon boat races in Hartford.

Chu’ü Yüan (343–289 B.C.) was a Chinese poet and statesman of the Ch’u kingdom who drowned himself in the Mi Lo River to protest the political corruption and injustice. The colorful dragon boat races that take place on lakes and rivers throughout China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan on this day are a reenactment of the search for his body, which was never found. Although the shape of the boats has changed over time, most are narrow shells about 30-feet long with a dragon’s head at the prow. This is also a traditional time for performing customs intended to drive away evil spirits and illness.
Source: Xreferplus Database

Xreferplus New Titles

A number of new titles have been added to Xreferplus in the past month, including the American Heritage Medical Dictionary. New treatments, new tests, and new insights into health and disease have resulted in an unprecedented explosion in medical terminology. The American Heritage Medical Dictionary provides students and health care professionals with a comprehensive reference that reflects the most recent developments in medicine and health care delivery. More than 45,000 clear, concise definitions are included, covering diseases and conditions, treatments, and microorganisms. Hundreds of entries for commonly prescribed and over-the-counter medications are also featured. Biographical entries describe the contributions of leading scientists and physicians from ancient times to the present. We will feature a new entry in Xreferplus each day this week. Xreferplus is accessible from the library page.

Free Library Database Trial

Free Goodwin College Library Database Trials
New Trial through August, 2007: A to Z Reader:

This is very cool! Easily locate and link to all the library's e-resources with EBSCO A to Z.
Search for journals by keyword or browse an alphabetical list by title or subject. Go ahead--try it. Some of the psychology classes are required to use the British journal, The Lancet, for research. See if our students have access to that journal.
click here.

New Books in the Library

The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon --At once a gripping whodunit, a love story, an homage to 1940s noir, and an exploration of the mysteries of exile and redemption, this is a novel only Michael Chabon could have written. He won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for fiction with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.

The Ministry of Special Cases by Nathan Englander--This first novel is a timeless story of fathers and sons told with exuberant wit and invention, a cosmic sense of the absurd, and a genius for balancing joyfulness and despair. Through the devastation of a single family, Englander captures the grief of a nation.

Gilgamesh, a new English version by Stephen Mitchell--Gilgamesh is considered one of the masterpieces of world literature. Mitchell's version allows us to enter this ancient masterpiece as if for the first time, to see how startlingly beautiful, intelligent, and alive it still is.

Copyright Law for Librarians and Educators: Creative Strategies and Practical Solutions by Kenneth D. Crews--Copyright in the world of digital information is changing at a fevered pace. It's essential to stay abreast of copyright law and fair use without information overload.

No Child Law Left Behind

Nearly two-thirds of American adults want Congress to re-write or outright abolish the landmark No Child Left Behind Act that mandates nationwide testing of elementary students to determine if public schools are performing adequately.Opposition is especially high among people most familiar with the law, according to a survey of 1,010 adults conducted by Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University.
Read the article here: http://newspolls.org/story.php?story_id=63

Source: Scripps Howard News Service

Teaching English Language Learners

As the numbers of English language learners increase in the nation, the numbers of English language learners increase in our classrooms. The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) recognizes bilingual and bicultural education as basic components of the English language arts field. Teachers of English can become familiar with bilingual education aims and methods and draw upon English as a Second Language literature for help in meeting the needs of those students through the suggestions in the "NCTE Position Paper on Educating English Language Learners."
Source: NCTE

FBI Warns New England Colleges

The FBI is cautioning colleges in New England to look out for potential terrorist or espionage threats, The Boston Globe reported this morning.As part of an outreach effort, federal agents are offering colleges tips on how to be alert to threats to their research — for example, foreign spies who could be posing as international students. The agents have already met with several college administrators in Massachusetts to discuss protecting research, and they plan to travel to other New England colleges in the coming months.

The agents say the visits are not designed to infiltrate academe. “The academic community is designed to be open, and we just have to make the community aware,” Warren T. Bamford, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston office, told the Globe. “There are people who would be willing to establish relationships to take secrets.” —Lyndsey Lewis
Source: Boston Globe