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The Library is conducting an ILL/DDS online survey to measure the quality of our services and to learn how we can best serve you. Please help us to further improve Interlibrary Loan/Document Delivery Services (ILL/DDS).
The survey is designed for three user groups: undergraduates, graduates, and faculty/staff. Please click on the link below relevant to you to take the survey. Your help will be greatly appreciated!
A Featured Title of the Month from Credo Reference!
The struggle to abolish slavery is one of the grandest quests--and central themes--of modern history. These movements for freedom have taken many forms, from individual escapes, violent rebellions, and official proclamations to mass organizations, decisive social actions, and major wars. Every emancipation movement--whether in Europe, Africa, or the Americas--has profoundly transformed the country and society in which it existed.
This unique A-Z encyclopedia examines every effort to end slavery in the United States and the transatlantic world. It focuses on massive, broad-based movements, as well as specific incidents, events, and developments, and pulls together in one place information previously available only in a wide variety of sources. While it centers on the United States, the set also includes authoritative accounts of emancipation and abolition in Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America.
The Encyclopedia of Emancipation and Abolition features primary source documents, a map of the transatlantic slave trade, illustrations, cross-references, a comprehensive chronology and bibliography, and covers a wide range of individuals and the major themes and ideas that motivated them to confront and abolish slavery.
A few of the interesting entries:
• Palmerston Act (1839): measure enacted by the British Parliament to suppress the international slave trade
• "Forty Acres and a Mule"
• Sojourner Truth (ca. 1797-1883): former slave and inspirational leader of the abolitionist movement
• Abolition in the British West Indies
• Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859): French jurist, statesman, and social theorist as well as a leading abolitionist during the July Monarchy (1830-1848) of King Louis-Philippe
• Quakers (Society of Friends)
• James Ramsay (1733-1789): one of the most influential British abolitionists writing in the 1780s
Credo Reference is featuring history titles for the month of October. Eight new books featuring historical figures and history subject encyclopedias have been added. These titles are also accessible from the library's online catalog, Voyager. Below is the list of the new history books:
• Encyclopedia of Emancipation and Abolition in the Transatlantic World, M.E. Sharpe
• Encyclopedia of World Trade From Ancient Times to the Present, M.E. Sharpe
• First Ladies of the United States, Lynne Rienner
• Great Irish Lives: An Era in Obituaries, Collins
• Great Lives: A Century in Obituaries, Collins
• Great Military Lives: Leadership and Courage - From Waterloo to the Falklands
• Great Victorian Lives: An Era
• The Underground Railroad: An Encyclopedia of People, Places, and Operations, M.E. Sharpe
Other added titles:
• Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World: Locations
• Great Thinkers A-Z Philosophy
• Key Ideas in Linguistics and the Philosophy of Language
• Key Thinkers in Linguistics and the Philosophy of Language
• Philosophy of Science A-Z
Credo Reference is a searchable database containing more than 400 encyclopedias, dictionaries, quotations, biographies, obituaries, and more. The link to this database is listed on the library's Research Tools page.
By Joel Achenbach
From Washington Post
Film & Internet Rumors Fuel Doomsday Babble
The world is coming to an end.
In, like, 4 or 5 billion years. The sun will get old and cranky and eventually immolate the entire planet.
The world, however, is not coming to an end on Dec. 21, 2012, contrary to the viral Internet rumor propounded by pseudo-scientists, hoaxers, Hollywood movie promoters and assorted void-between-the-ears people who wouldn't recognize a scientific fact if it tried to abduct them.
The notion that 2012 heralds the End of Time has something to do with a mysterious Planet X that will supposedly hurtle into, or perhaps merely perturb, Earth. Also, there might be geomagnetic storms, a Pole Reversal, and a newfound unsteadiness in the planet's crustal plates. All of that, or variations thereof, can be studied in depth in scores of books now jostling for eschatological primacy with such titles as "Apocalypse 2012," "The World Cataclysm in 2012" and "How to Survive 2012."
This is no joke to David Morrison, senior scientist for NASA's Astrobiology Institute. He's counted 200 different books for sale about 2012. As the author of an online feature called Ask an Astrobiologist, he's gotten nearly 1,000 e-mails from people who think something dire is about to befall the planet. One teenager wrote to Morrison that he'd rather commit suicide than see the world destroyed. Many of the letters, Morrison said, presume that the government is covering up the imminent catastrophe. Letters begin, "I know you can't tell me the truth, but . . . "
The full article is available in the library's LexisNexis database.
From NGA News Release
A new report from the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) addresses the alarming rate at which students in the United States drop out of high school.
Achieving Graduation for All: A Governor’s Guide to Dropout Prevention and Recovery identifies the root causes of the high school dropout problem and offers a comprehensive action plan for states to curb dropouts, help youth succeed and strengthen state economies. Currently, one in five students drop out of high school, and dropouts cost the United States more than $300 billion each year in lost wages and increased public sector expenses.
From Science Centric
Researchers at the Kavli Institute for Nanosciences at Delft University of Technology, have succeeded in getting hold of the environment of a quantum particle. This allows them to exercise greater control over a single electron, and brings the team of researchers, led by Vidi winner and FOM workgroup leader Lieven Vandersypen, a step closer still to the super-fast quantum computer. Their results were published in Nature Physics on 16 August.
One of the unique properties of quantum particles is that they can be in different states at the same time. An atom or electron is then in what is termed a 'superposition' of two conditions. For instance, this means that the 'spin' of an electron can be pointing in two different directions at once. A particle like this can therefore be 0 and 1 at the same time, and not just 0 or 1 as in an ordinary computer connection. This permits super-fast calculations. Until now, however, it has not proved possible to keep a particle in one specific state for any real length of time, because the environment - which also consists of quantum particles - is constantly disrupting the state. Researchers have been unable to get to grips with this until now.
The Center for Library & Information Innovation in the iSchool at the University of Maryland College Park, in partnership with the Government Information Online initiative and the University of Illinois Chicago, received a Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services for 20 master’s of library science (MLS) e-government and digital government degree scholarships. This unique program is for students interested in careers in librarianship and other information sciences as specialists in digital government information and e-government services. The program will prepare graduates to take advantage of the evolving range of e-government and digital government information services.
The program is online, and will begin in fall 2010. Applications are currently being accepted. Full scholarships (20 total) are available to highly qualified applicants to the program. Applications are due by February 1, 2010.
The program entails four key components that will educate the next generation of government information and e-government librarians:
• Coursework. The coursework will serve as the intellectual and conceptual basis for the evolving government information environment.
• Practice. Though internships with the GIO program participants, students will develop applied government information skills.
• Professional. By bringing students together annually to attend the Fall Federal Depository Library meeting, students will become integrated into the larger government information community and engage key issues in government information.
• Scholarship. Though inclusion in the review process of Government Information Quarterly, students will publish government resource reviews, contribute to furthering scholarship in government information, and learn the publication process. The project principles will also work with students to publish manuscripts in key areas of government information and e-government.
By Sharon Jayson
USA TODAY
Social networks increase human contacts, and that can have good -- and uncertain -- effects.
The interconnected web of our friends, family, neighbors and acquaintances may dominate our lives more than we know.
They've always been there, making up our social support systems. But now, largely thanks to the burgeoning popularity of online social networks like Facebook, researchers are discovering what a powerful influence our connections -- both online and off -- really have over our lives.
"Those of us who study social networks believe they matter -- that things do spread along social networks," says Claude Fischer, a sociology professor at the University of California-Berkeley.
Because social networks online are much more clearly defined than offline connections, they have been a boon to researchers. And studies are finding that despite dire predictions from naysayers who warned that spending too much time online would be damaging to real-life relationships, the opposite appears to be true.
The full article is available in the library's LexisNexis database.
By American Academy of Pediatrics
Exposure to violence in media, including television, movies, music, and video games, represents a significant risk to the health of children and adolescents. Extensive research evidence indicates that media violence can contribute to aggressive behavior, desensitization to violence, nightmares, and fear of being harmed. Pediatricians should assess their patients' level of media exposure and intervene on media-related health risks. Pediatricians and other child health care providers can advocate for a safer media environment for children by encouraging media literacy, more thoughtful and proactive use of media by children and their parents, more responsible portrayal of violence by media producers, and more useful and effective media ratings. Office counseling has been shown to be effective.
Vice President Biden today unveiled Recovery Through Retrofit, a report that builds on the foundation laid in the Recovery Act to expand green job opportunities and boost energy savings by making homes more energy efficient. Joining the Vice President today were Nancy Sutley, Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality; Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy; Hilda Solis, Secretary of Labor; Shaun Donovan, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; and Karen Mills, Administrator of the Small Business Administration.
At a Middle Class Task Force meeting earlier this year, the Vice President asked the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to develop a proposal for Federal action to lay the groundwork for a self-sustaining home energy efficiency retrofit industry. In response, CEQ facilitated a broad interagency process with the Office of the Vice President, eleven Departments and Agencies and six White House Offices to develop recommendations for how to use existing authority and funding to accomplish this goal. These recommendations are described in detail in the Recovery Through Retrofit Report.
From August Choice Reviews
[Visited May'09] Sponsored by the journal Nature (CH, Apr'09, 46-4191), the Nature Online Video Streaming Archive is a treasure trove of well-made, informative, and educational videos that feature summaries of research as detailed by the scientists who conducted the work. At the time of this review, only 27 productions (based on articles featured in Nature) were available. Videos cover such topics as the biodiversity of deep-sea organisms, ancient tsunamis and their relevance to the 2004 event, and the DNA of Neanderthals and what it reveals about human ancestry. All videos are free and can be played at low or high resolution, depending on one's Internet connection. They do, however, require the Macromedia Flash plug-in. Videos can also be viewed on Nature's YouTube channel.
As one would expect from Nature, all productions are of excellent quality. They include interviews with research scientists, fabulous photography, and explanatory graphics that detail various scientific processes. Each presentation provides links to more information about the research, including access to the original work as published in the journal (subscription required or articles can be purchased). In addition to offering an interesting way to learn about ongoing research, the videos can provide an excellent way to introduce students to the work of field biologists. This reviewer can easily envision the videos being incorporated into class as part of a discussion on careers in science--a great way to bring the scientist into the high school or undergraduate classroom. The site's only disadvantage is the lack of a search engine. This is not a problem as there are only about two dozen titles to browse, but it could be problematic with the addition of more titles to the archives. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates and general users. -- P. J. West, American University Library
From Science Centric
In the quest for smaller, faster computer chips, researchers are increasingly turning to quantum mechanics - the exotic physics of the small.
The problem: the manufacturing techniques required to make quantum devices have been equally exotic.
That is, until now.
Researchers at Ohio State University have discovered a way to make quantum devices using technology common to the chip-making industry today.
This work might one day enable faster, low-power computer chips. It could also lead to high-resolution cameras for security and public safety, and cameras that provide clear vision through bad weather.
Paul Berger, professor of electrical and computer engineering and professor of physics at Ohio State University, and his colleagues report their findings in an upcoming issue of IEEE Electron Device Letters.
The team fabricated a device called a tunnelling diode using the most common chip-making technique, called chemical vapour deposition.
Highlights from the News Release:
During the National Book Festival, on Saturday, Sept. 26, the Library of Congress will launch a new multimedia website offering resources from throughout the Library designed to encourage the reading of books and to interest users in learning about the authors and illustrators who create them.
The Center for the Book in the Library of Congress is offering this site, at www.Read.gov, as part of its mission to promote books, reading, literacy and libraries.
Read.gov will offer "audience" pages designed specifically for Kids, Teens, Adults and Educators and Parents. These pages will contain resources such as webcasts in which authors discuss their latest works, digitized classic books with extraordinary illustrations such as Dickens’ "A Christmas Carol" and Poe’s "The Raven," and educational resources for parents and teachers. There will also be a Books & Beyond Book Club, based on the author presentations of the Books & Beyond series sponsored by the Center for the Book. The Book Club will be hosted on Facebook.
Read.gov is supported by an advertising campaign directed by the Library’s Public Affairs Office in cooperation with the Ad Council. The Ad Council is a private, nonprofit organization with a rich history of marshaling volunteer talent from the advertising and media industries to deliver critical messages to the American public. To learn more about the Ad Council and its campaigns, visit www.adcouncil.org.
The Center for the Book (www.loc.gov/cfbook) was established by Congress in 1977 "to use the resources and prestige of the Library of Congress to promote books, reading, literacy and libraries." With its many educational programs that reach readers of all ages, through its support of the National Book Festival and through its dynamic state centers in the 50 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Center for the Book has developed a nationwide network of organizational partners dedicated to promoting the wonders and benefits of reading.
By Katherine Bagley
From Scientist
Researchers have identified a role for rare, right-handed versions of amino acids. This so-called D-form of nature's building blocks allows bacterial cell walls to adapt to changes in the environment, says a study in Science this week--marking one of the few times the D-aminos have been linked to biological function.
"If you go back in literature dating 20-40 years ago, it was widely believed that we existed in a strictly 'left-handed' protein world," said Steven R. Blanke, a microbiologist at the University of Illinois who was not involved in the study. The current work and a few other recent studies, he said, show that "some biological systems could have possibly evolved to utilize the D-forms of some amino acids more than previously thought."
Nineteen of the 20 amino acids found in nature come in two forms, mirror images in structural composition, but until recently it seemed life on Earth used only one of them. L-amino acids were viewed as the building blocks of life, leaving researchers perplexed as to the function of their D-amino siblings. Over the past 20 years, though, studies have gradually begun to identify important roles for D-amino acids as, for example, key components of antibiotics, immunosuppressive drugs, and antitumor agents, and as neurotransmitters in the brain.
Read full article.
By Adrian Cho
ScienceNOW Daily News
It would be tough to stick it to your refrigerator, but an ultra-cold gas magnetizes itself just as do metals such as iron or nickel, a team of atomic physicists reports. That cool trick shows that the messy physics within solids can be modeled with pristine gases, the researchers say. But others are skeptical that the team has actually seen what they claim.
Condensed matter physicists can tell you essentially all there is to know about how common metals carry electricity and heat. Why some of them are magnetic is a trickier question. Physicists know the basics: The electrons that flow through iron, nickel, and other magnetic materials act like little bar magnets. Below a certain temperature the electrons align so that they all point in the same direction, at least within relatively large "domains" in the crystalline material. The question is why do the electrons align themselves?
Read full article.
Since October 1998, the American Geological Institute has organized this national and international event to help the public gain a better understanding and appreciation for the Earth Sciences and to encourage stewardship of the Earth. This year's Earth Science Week will be held from October 11-17 and will celebrate the theme "Understanding Climate."
On October 1, 2009, President Obama signed a proclamation identifying October as National Information Literacy Awareness month.
Every day, we are inundated with vast amounts of information. A 24-hour news cycle and thousands of global television and radio networks, coupled with an immense array of online resources, have challenged our long-held perceptions of information management. Rather than merely possessing data, we must also learn the skills necessary to acquire, collate, and evaluate information for any situation. This new type of literacy also requires competency with communication technologies, including computers and mobile devices that can help in our day-to-day decisionmaking. National Information Literacy Awareness Month highlights the need for all Americans to be adept in the skills necessary to effectively navigate the Information Age.
[snip]
Our Nation's educators and institutions of learning must be aware of -- and adjust to -- these new realities. In addition to the basic skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic, it is equally important that our students are given the tools required to take advantage of the information available to them. The ability to seek, find, and decipher information can be applied to countless life decisions, whether financial, medical, educational, or technical.
The following titles have been added to the library's online catalog, Webster. You can use them on your computer now!
History
Philosophy
• Political Philosophy A-Z, Edinburgh University Press
Political Science
• Key Concepts in Political Communication, Sage
• Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Political Thought
Social Sciences
• Dictionary of Policing, Willan Publishing
• Dictionary of Prisons and Punishment, Willan Publishing
• Dictionary of Probation and Offender Management, Willan Publishing
• Dictionary of Youth Justice, Willan Publishing
• Encyclopedia of Intelligence & Counterintelligence, M.E. Sharpe
• A Glossary of Political Theory, Edinburgh University Press
• A Glossary of UK Government and Politics, Edinburgh University Press
• Key Concepts in Journalism Studies, Sage
Provided by Hara Cohen
From the Commack Public Library
It’s not too late for an autumn road trip to marvel at the brilliant colors of the season in New York or even the New England States. But before you go, check out some of the websites that issue reports on the foliage colors, suggest places to stay and things to do.
The Foliage Network, http://www.foliagenetwork.com, provides accurate information for various locations across the United States. During the autumn months, the Network collects data from over 567 “foliage spotters” twice a week. The data is “collected, plotted and analyzed” by the Network and their report is sent to newspapers, television stations and websites; they boast of using actual reports rather than annual averages. You can click on the region you are interested in to view the latest foliage information. There is a link for Places to Stay, but I found this information spotty at best.
If you don’t want to travel too far, New York State foliage season is underway from the Adirondacks to the Catskills. The homepage of the Foliage Report, http://fallgetaways.iloveny.com/foliage_report.html, displays a map of the state with color changes, from no change to near peak, peak, and past peak. Click on the Leaf Guide for an illustrated guide to the different leaves “setting New York State’s landscapes ablaze with color.” For the most beautiful vistas throughout the state, click on Scenic Views. Over 200 Lodging deals at B&Bs, hotels, motels and country inns are listed by region (many of them offer coupons or free nights). You’ll also find Attractions, Food & Wine, Shopping and Transportation suggestions by clicking on the tabs at the top of the page. You can even download a copy of the “Autumn Guide” brochure (PDF) from the website.
Before you head to Vermont, take a look at Guide to Foliage Time in Vermont, http://www.foliage-vermont.com. They have a neat gadget — Foliage Vermont’s Foliage Meter — that you can play to see the progression of colors across the state through September and October. I especially liked their suggested Driving Tours, which include a map and detailed directions for different routes. You can search by town or zip code to see a nice list of inns available for lodging with links to their websites.
For information on the rest of New England — Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island — go to Visit New England, http://www.visitnewengland.com. There’s a plethora of information on this site about visiting these states anytime, but click on an individual state, and then choose Foliage from the dropdown menu under “Where to Visit” for specific maps, driving tours, foliage reports, etc.
Protect yourself and your family by getting a flu shot, especially if you are at increased risk for complications from the flu, or live with or care for high-risk individuals.
Looking for a Flu Clinic? http://flu.masspro.org/clinic/ is a flu locator web site that lists public flu clinics in Massachusetts. Currently, the clinics listed are providing season flu immunizations and some clinics are offering pneumococcal (“pneumonia”) immunizations. The site also has links to the most current information on both seasonal and H1N1 vaccines from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and the CDC. When it becomes available, the site will list public clinics that provide H1N1 swine flu immunizations.
The Library has a trial of the Political Science Complete database from EBSCO from October 5 to Nov. 5. Political Science Complete contains full text for over 400 journals, and cover-to-cover indexing and abstracts for more than 800 journals, (including top-ranked scholarly journals), many of which are unique to the product. PSC has a worldwide focus, reflecting the globalization of contemporary political discourse. The database also features more than 180 full-text reference books and monographs, and over 27,000 full-text conference papers. This database is a possible replacement for our subscription to Worldwide Political Science Abstracts from CSA. Click here to try it out!
Please send your comments to Kendra St. Aubin at kstaubin@bridgew.edu.
The Library has a trial of the Philosopher’s Index database from EBSCO from Oct. 5 to Nov. 5. The Philosopher's Index, produced by the Philosophers Information Center, is a current and comprehensive bibliographic database covering scholarly research in all major fields of philosophy. In January the Library will cancel the print edition of Philosopher’s Index and replace it with this database. This trial gives us an opportunity to become familiar with the resource before our subscription begins. Click here to try it out!
Please send your comments to Kendra St. Aubin at kstaubin@bridgew.edu.
By Nicholas Wade
From The New York Times
The first words ever spoken, so fable holds, were a palindrome and an introduction: ''Madam, I'm Adam.''
A few years ago palindromes -- phrases that read the same backward as forward -- turned out to be an essential protective feature of Adam's Y, the male-determining chromosome that all living men have inherited from a single individual who lived some 60,000 years ago. Each man carries a Y from his father and an X chromosome from his mother. Women have two X chromosomes, one from each parent.
The new twist in the story is the discovery that the palindrome system has a simple weakness, one that explains a wide range of sex anomalies from feminization to sex reversal similar to Turner's syndrome, the condition of women who carry only one X chromosome.
The palindromes were discovered in 2003 when the Y chromosome's sequence of bases, represented by the familiar letters G, C, T and A, was first worked out by David C. Page of the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Mass., and colleagues at the DNA sequencing center at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
The full article is available in the library's LexisNexis database.
By David A. Fahrenthold
From Washington Post
To heck with carbon dioxide. A new study performed by the London School of Economics suggests that, to fight climate change, governments should focus on another pollutant: us.
As in babies. New people.
Every new life, the report says, is a guarantee of new greenhouse gases, spewed out over decades of driving and electricity use. Seen in that light, we might be our own worst emissions.
The activist group that sponsored the report says birth control could be one of the world's best tools for fighting climate change. By preventing the creation of new polluters, the group says, contraceptives are a far cheaper solution than windmills and solar plants.
It is an unorthodox -- and, for now, unpopular -- way to approach the problem, which can seem so vast and close that it is driving many thinkers toward gizmos and oddball ideas.
"There is no possibility of drastically reducing total carbon emissions, while at the same time paying no attention whatever to the drastic increase in the number of carbon emitters," said Roger Martin, chairman of the Optimum Population Trust, a British nonprofit that sponsored the report and whose goal is to rein in population growth in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. "For reasons of an irrational taboo on the subject, [family planning] has never made it onto the agenda, and this is extremely damaging to the planet."
The full article is available in the Library's LexisNexis database.
By Jason Miller
FederalNewsRadio
The U.S. Geological Survey is crowdsourcing natural disasters.
When an earthquake or flood occurs in the United States or even around the world, the agency is asking the public for feedback and mining the data from social media sites.
"[Thursday] morning's earthquake in Death Valley, Calif., was a magnitude five and within 3-or-4 minutes we had pushed information to our Web site," says Mike Blanpied, the associate coordinator of the USGS's earthquake hazards program. "Almost immediately we received responses from people who felt the earthquake. Anyone who feels it can fill out a short form and send the information back and we put it up on a map."
USGS launched the Did You Feel it? Web site in 2007 to gather information from around the world. On Thursday alone, people from around the world reported feeling 31 earthquakes from California to Washington State to Tonga to Indonesia.
"This has turned out to be a very positive and popular feature," Blanpied says. "For this Death Valley earthquake, more than 200 people responded from 88 different zip codes. We have a map up that shows in colors where people reported."
Edited by Toni Morrison
HarperCollins Publishers, 2009
In recognition of Banned Books Week, OCLC NetLibrary and HarperCollins Publishers are pleased to announce that Burn This Book will be available as the October eBook of the Month.
Published in conjunction with the PEN American Center, Burn This Book explores the meaning of censorship, and the power of literature to inform the way we see the world, and ourselves. Contributors including Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, Orhan Pamuk, David Grossman, Nadine Gordimer and other literary heavyweights, discuss the importance of writing from various views, both political and social. They illustrate the need for freedom of speech and human rights, and they emphasize the target writers become in a tyranny.
The October eBook of the Month is provided through the generous support of HarperCollins Publishers. This ebook will be available with free, unlimited access October 1-31, 2009. You can go the Library's NetLibrary web site to read this book online. (If the link doesn't work, please use the refresh button to reload the page.)
