Patient Care for Diverse Populations

A new grant from The Commonwealth Fund will be used by The Joint Commission to revise and develop accreditation standards for culturally competent patient-centered care in hospitals across America. Access a free copy online of the latest research report, "One Size Does Not Fit All: Meeting the Needs of Diverse Populations." (60 pages)

This standards development initiative builds upon The Joint Commission’s ongoing Hospitals, Language, and Culture: A Snapshot of the Nation study that examines how hospitals in the United States respond to the diverse cultural and language needs of their patients. The Institute of Medicine’s “Crossing the Quality Chasm” report identified patient-centered and equitable care as important elements of quality. However, The Joint Commission study found that practices used to promote effective communication and cultural competence – critical elements of patient-centered and equitable care - vary widely from hospital to hospital.

Source: Nursing & Allied Health Resources Section of the Medical Library Association

New Periodical: Trusteeship

Issues of Trusteeship, the publication of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB), are now available in the library. Trusteeship reports trends, issues, and practices in higher education to help board members and chief executives better understand their distinctive and complementary roles and to strengthen board performance. Digital Trusteeship is an interactive, electronic version of Trusteeship magazine.

New Online Reference Book

Propaganda and Mass Persuasion: A Historical Encyclopedia, 1500 to the Present has been added to the CredoReference list of online reference books. This is a truly international, authoritative A-Z guide to five centuries of propaganda, in both wartime and peacetime, which covers key moments, techniques, concepts, and some of the most influential propagandists in history.

What were the secrets of both Hitler's and Stalin's success? Why did so many Americans approve of Senator Joseph McCarthy? How did FDR maintain his image with the electorate? The answers to these questions can be found in the realm of propaganda: the art of mass political persuasion. This fascinating survey provides a comprehensive introduction to propaganda, its changing nature, its practitioners, and its impact on the past five centuries of world history.

CredoReference is prominently displayed on the library page.

Educational Leadership

The library has joined the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) and now receives their publication, Educational Leadership. It is published monthly throughout the school year (except for the combined issue in December/January). Our first issue will arrive in September, but we have received a complimentary May issue as a sample of the tips, techniques, and case studies in this publication. The May issue focuses on reshaping high schools. It is available in the library.

Sol LeWitt Retrospectives

An originator of “conceptual art,” Sol LeWitt was born in Hartford and lived mostly in Chester until his death in April last year. LeWitt consistently pushed the limits of art history and contemporary trends, making him one of the most influential artists of the mid-Twentieth Century. LeWitt’s monumental wall drawings—produced for public and private spaces since the 1960s—may be the works for which he is best known. The New York Times described his wall paintings as “ecstatically colored and jazzy.”

Nearly an acre of these wall drawings are now in preparation for a fall showing at MASS MoCa in North Adams, MA. The Williams College Museum of Art also features LeWitt’s art in November. If you happen to take drive to the Berkshires this fall, don’t miss these exhibits. Few art venues have space to display massive wall drawings. A retrospective also takes place at Yale University Art Gallery with two wall drawings on display. This is a major collaboration between these three institutions conceived by the Yale gallery before LeWitt’s death.

This is special opportunity to view the work of an important American artist. See it this fall: don't waituntil 2033. For further information on the exhibitions, read the article from the Yale gallery.

Sol LeWitt A Wall Drawing Retrospective: Two wall drawings currently on view
Yale Art Gallery

Sol LeWitt: A Wall of Drawing Retrospective
MASS MoCa
Opens Nov. 16 and will be on view for 25 years

The ABCDs of Sol LeWitt
Williams College Museum of Art
Nov. 14 through March 8, 2009

Nursing & Health Science: PubMed Update

PubMed Now Indexes Videos of Experiments and Protocols in Life Sciences!
PubMed Central, the National Library of Medicine’s online database, is now indexing videos from The Journal of Visualized Experiments. According to the publication’s official blog, JoVE is “the first video-journal to ever be accepted for publication in PubMed.” The Goodwin Library Staff strongly commends this PubMed decision to support new ways of communicating information,

The online, open-access journal publishes videos of experiments and protocols in the biological and life sciences and offers its video-articles to science bloggers to illustrate their posts. You will see some of them featured on this blog weekly.

Watch the article "Human Embryonic Stem Cells: Starting Culture From Frozen Cells"
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education August 21

Resources for English Teachers

Quality, Value, Flexibility—
NCTE resources delivered to your desktop!

With National Council of Teachers of English Web seminar series, you’ll get high-quality, professional development delivered by some of NCTE’s most experienced presenters in an easy-to-use format that is perfect for individuals or learning communities. I know spending a day away from your classroom isn’t always an option. Whether you’re participating on your own or planning professional development for an early release day, you’ll find these sessions informative, interactive and a great value!

What is a Web seminar?
NCTE Web seminars are interactive, multimedia professional development experiences delivered over the Internet. During a Web seminar, attendees are able to participate in the session by responding to polls, providing feedback on the whiteboard, and asking/answering questions in the chat area. Elluminate Live!TM, the application used for the NCTE Web seminars, ensures that all participants are in sync, regardless of Internet connection speeds.

See Frequently Asked Questions

Book to Read Again and Again: Native Son

Richard Wright's story of his childhood, Black Boy, made him one of America's most popular writers in the 1940s. In addition to Black Boy, which he dedicated to his 3-year-old daughter, he also wrote Native Son, a fictional account of a black youth in the segregated North.

Native Son tells the story of Bigger Thomas, an uneducated black man from Chicago who unintentionally kills a young white woman. Bigger is a study in contrasts: Strong, ignorant and angry, he's also confused, vulnerable and at a loss about how to deal with a racist society. Wright's novel makes Bigger into America's native son — the offspring of a nation's bigotry.

(from the library's "Books to Read Again and Again" shelf)

Workforce Clinging to the Status Quo?

Here is today's management tip from Harvard Business Publishing.

Your major change initiative won't succeed if the people who must lead the charge lack a sense of urgency--the conviction that the status quo is dangerous. How to spot a lack of urgency so you can address it? Red flags include the following:
1) Managers over-rely on consultants to analyze the business and recommend changes.
2)Key people aren't participating in the task force charged with executing the initiative.
3)Task-force members procrastinate in setting up their meetings.
4)Task-force discussions only generate complaints about the company's situation, not active decisions.
5)Task-force members focus more on office politics and finger-pointing than on what's causing the company's problems.

(This Management Tip was adapted from Chapter 2 of A Sense of Urgency, bestselling author John P. Kotter's latest book from Harvard Business Press.)

Terrorism: Locating Sources

Doing research on this topic requires not only knowing the definition of the topic but looking at all of the racest involved and breaking down and analyzing the topic of research to insure looking in all the relevant sources available. Here is a list prepared by Kay Collins, U.S. government information librarian at the University of California.
Source: CRL News June 2008

Global Researcher: Race for the Arctic:

With oil prices soaring, revelations that the Arctic could contain up to 22 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas have given extra impetus to an international race to claim the region's $1 trillion in oil and other riches. Russia kick-started the race last summer when it stunned the world by planting its flag on the North Pole seabed — two miles below the Arctic Ocean. Global warming has dramatically shrunk the ice covering the ocean, raising the prospect of new, shorter transcontinental shipping routes and spurring the United States, Canada, Russia, Denmark and Norway to begin gathering data to prove they own large swaths of offshore Arctic territory. But environmentalists warn that tougher international rules are needed — possibly an Arctic treaty — to prevent energy exploration from exacerbating global warming and damaging the fragile region. The Inuit and other indigenous groups also fear their concerns will be ignored in the dash to extract riches from the region.
Source: Full report available online (password protected)

CQ Researcher: Political Conventions

Political Conventions
Have they outlived their usefulness?

The Democrats and Republicans share a fundamental goal for their upcoming national conventions: to produce scripted television shows that will boost their candidates' prospects in the general election without showcasing any intra-party squabbling. Under that scenario, convention delegates seem to have nothing to do but cheer Barack Obama and John McCain, whose nominations were virtually assured before. . . .

Source: CQ Researcher August 8 available online (password protected)

What the Goodwin Community is Reading This Month

Blindness (Saramago)
Boleyn Inheritance (Gregory)
Cheating at Canasta (trevor)
Eat Pray Love (Gilbert)
Flat Belly Diet (Vaccariello)
Friday Night Knitting Club (Jacobs)
Game Changer (Lafley & Charan)
Gravedigger's Daughter (Oates)
Twenty Years at Hull House (Addams)
Last Lecture (Pausch)
No Country for Old Men (McCarthy)
Secret Life of Bees (Kidd)
You Never Call! You Never Write! (Antler)

Focus on International Education

In a set of policy recommendations for the next administration released this week, NAFSA: Association of International Educators urges presidential leadership for a “revived public diplomacy” that would put international education and exchange front and center in the effort to repair the country’s reputation in the world and advance its global leadership.

The report goes on to set out specific policy recommendations in the areas of attracting international students and scholars; internationalizing U.S. education, especially through study abroad; and bolstering educational exchanges and volunteer-service programs. Among the priorities outlined in the report are: passage and implementation of the Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Foundation Act; security and immigration policies that strike a better balance between control and openness; a proactive approach to attracting the world’s talented students and scholars to the United States; and expanding support for time-tested educational exchanges and the Peace Corps. Read the entire report HERE.

Online Journal of Nursing Informatics

The Online Journal of Nursing Informatics (OJNI) is a professional, refereed, electronic journal for healthcare professionals who are interested in nursing informatics. Topical areas covered deal with the theoretical and practical aspects of nursing informatics as it relates to the art of nursing.

OJNI is published every 4 months and is launched at the end of February, June, and October. OJNI publishes peer-reviewed, original, high quality scientific papers, review articles, practice-based articles, and databases related to nursing informatics. And it's free!

Have You Read?

Now that we are more than half way through 2008, have you read any of the 10 best books of 2007 (New York Times list)? Here is the list:
FICTION
Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas*
Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson*
Savage Detectives by Robert Balafio
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris*
Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson*

NONFICTION
Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Little Heathens: Hart Times & High Spirts on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish*
The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court by J. Toobin*
Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History by Linda Colley*
The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Rosa*

*Available in the Goodwin Library. The other two are available through interlibrary loan.

An Academic in America: On Stupidity

A cartload of recent books suggests that it's time to reverse the customer-service mentality plaguing academe. Here is an excerpt from English teacher Thomas Benton's article in the Chronicle of Higher Education yesterday. Read the entire article here.

"'No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public,' said H.L. Mencken in the era of Babbitt and the Scopes "monkey" trial. Several generations later, one might speculate that no publisher has ever lost money with a book accusing Americans — particularly young ones — of being stupid.

As an English professor, I can attest to the power of that element in American culture, as can just about anyone in any academic field without direct, practical applications. When a stranger asks me what I do, I usually just say, "I'm a teacher." The unfortunate follow-up remarks — usually about political bias in the classroom and sham apologies for their poor grammar meant to imply that I am a snob — usually make me wish I had said, "I sell hydraulic couplers," an answer more likely to produce hums of respectful incomprehension.

Now, in the post-9/11 era, American anti-intellectualism has grown more powerful, pervasive, and dangerous than at any time in our history, and we have a duty — particularly as educators — to foster intelligence as a moral obligation. Or at least that is the urgent selling point of a cartload of books published in the past several months."

(Thomas H. Benton is the pen name of William Pannapacker, an associate professor of English at Hope College, in Holland, Mich. He welcomes mail directed to his attention at careers@chronicle.com.)

Is Information on the Internet Reliable?

Wikipedia banned Stephen Colbert, host of Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report," from editing articles on the popular online site after he made joke edits. So how reliable is the Internet really?

That is the subject of this week's CQ Researcher available online in the library. The Internet has been a huge boon for information-seekers. In addition to sites maintained by newspapers and other traditional news sources, there are untraditional sources ranging from videos, personal Web pages and blogs to postings by interest groups of all kinds — from government agencies to hate groups. But experts caution that determining the credibility of online data can be tricky, and that critical-reading skills are not being taught in most schools. In the new online age, readers no longer have the luxury of depending on a reference librarian's expertise in finding reliable sources. Anyone can post an article, book or opinion online with no second pair of eyes checking it for accuracy, as in traditional publishing and journalism. Now many readers are turning to user-created sources like Wikipedia, or powerful search engines like Google, which tally how many people previously have accessed online documents and sources — a process that is open to manipulation comic and otherwise.

Source: CQ Researcher
Image Source: Getty Images for Meet the Press/Alex Wong

Fitness Pill: A Dream Come True

Scientists are moving closer to developing a pill which could deliver some of the benefits of exercise - even for those who do not move a muscle. The journal Cell reports US researchers now have two possible pills which appear able to build muscle, increase stamina and even burn fat. In tests, mice were able to run 44% further - suggesting humans may be able to do the same without prior training.

Source: BBC World News August 1

Around the World in 80+ Books

"It's just a book, just ink on paper. But be careful when you open it. There's a universe inside. A good travel book has wings and the ability to transport us, word by word, tale by tale. It introduces us to the people and places that make travel—and, one could argue, life itself—worthwhile. Good travel stories are, in a word, magic. Not only do they show us the world, they help us define our place within it."
(National Geographic)

National Geographic has asked dozens of travelers (writers, photographers, explorers, editors, and others) to name the books that have most enriched their sense of place. The editors of National Geographic added their own to complete the ultimate library of travel books—not guidebooks, but novels and narrative nonfiction and classic photography books--organized by geographic region. If the price of gas is keeping your travel plans low or non-existent, live vicariously by reading one or more. Bon voyage!(If we don't have it, we can usually get it for you through Interlibrary Loan.)

Around the World in 80+ Books
National Geographic July/August 2008