Build Your Vocabulary and Feed the Hungry

International Aid ― A Solution

"Almost all of the deaths from hunger and disease that you see on this site can be stopped. The cost to do this is about $195 billion a year, according to the United Nations. Twenty-two developed countries below have pledged to work towards each giving 0.7% (a little less than 1%) of their national income in international aid, which would raise the $195 billion. Some countries are slow to meet their pledge."

FreeRice
"The website FreeRice (http://www.freerice.com) has two purposes. First, they want to help people improve their English vocabulary. The site gives you a word and four possible synonyms. Get it right, and you advance to a higher level with tougher words. At the same time, advertisers who appear at the bottom of the screen donate 10 grains of rice per correct word to the World Food Programme, which in turn sends it to countries in need around the world. As of now, FreeRice has paid for just under 4 billion grains of rice, hovering at around 200 million grains per day. Not bad considering it launched on October 7 with 830 grains!" LIS News 28 Nov.

Books Make the Best Holiday Presents

To Read or Not To Read: A Question of National Consequence
National Endowment for the Arts, Research Report #47, November 2007

Nearly half of all Americans ages 18 to 24 read no books for pleasure.
The percentage of 18- to 44-year-olds who read a book fell 7 points from 1992 to 2002.

By the time they become college seniors, one in three students read nothing at all for pleasure in a given week.

Teens and young adults spend less time reading than people of other age groups.

15- to 24-year-olds spend only 7–10 minutes per day on voluntary reading—about 60% less time than the average American.

By contrast, 15- to 24-year-olds spend 2 to 2½ hours per day watching TV.

58% of middle and high school students use other media while reading. Students report using media during 35% of their weekly reading time. 20% of their reading time is shared by TV-watching, video/computer gameplaying, instant messaging, e-mailing orWeb surfing.

The number of books in a home is a significant predictor of academic success.

Need Something to Be Thankful For

"DailyGood is a free, daily email service that delivers a little bit of inspiring goodness to 65,374 people without any costs, advertising or agendas. Simply to spread the good."

Start Your Holiday Early.

150 Monty Pythons sketches on YouTube

from Marylaine Block's Neat New Stuff I Found This Week
http://marylaine.com/neatnew.html

Winners of the National Book Awards

Finding Articles-Writing Outreach Today at 3:30

Writing Outreach today at 3:30 (till about 4:20) in the Library Auditorium will demonstrate some of the best databases and some research strategies you may need to write a good research paper. Bring your topic so we can explore specific databases relevant to your topic.

If you missed your EH 102 library session, this is really important for you.
See you there. Jan Sauer

Watch Wikipedia Being Edited

This slightly strange website shows Wikipedia edits from around the world. These are anonymous editors with IP addresses so the location can be noted. I got it from a list called ResearchBuzz. This is what RB says: "I like tools like this because they put a nice element of randomness in my brain -- pages and topics presented with no context or introduction. It's like a mint for my skull."

Try it for a couple of minutes and offer your brain a mint.
Wikipedia Vison http://www.lkozma.net/wpv/index.html

Class assignment: Write an original Wikipedia article

Students might learn an awful lot about writing for a real audience, good researching, objectivity, and the value and limitations of Wikipedia if their instructors would make the assignment this one did.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/11/01/wikipedia.assignment.ap/index.html

Wikipedia actually has an exhaustive list of "stubs"--those topics that need more info.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Stub_types

Oblique Strategies

You know how sometimes when you are trying to write you hit a wall--the famous "writer's block." I don't know how I actually got to this website, but I found these cards which are supposed to get you to think differently, change direction, break through the block by offering truly oblique, and often enigmatic, directions or allusions. Even if they don't seem relevant, the writer is supposed to try them. It is kind of like opening the Bible, or one's own sacred text, and reading a random passage when having to make a decision. It breaks the old, stale train of thought and offers new insight [and verifies that one can read almost anything into a particular text.] However it works, it may be useful to all those trying to write termpapers or articles or books and get stuck in the clichéd.

Download the new editionfrom this webpage. Print them. Cut them into cards. Choose one. Viola, brilliance will emerge from your pen or brush!



"The deck itself had its origins in the discovery by Brian Eno that both he and his friend Peter Schmidt (a British painter whose works grace the cover of "Evening Star" and whose watercolours decorated the back LP cover of Eno's "Before and After Science" and also appeared as full-size prints in a small number of the original reeases) tended to keep a set of basic working principles which guided them through the kinds of moments of pressure - either working through a heavy painting session or watching the clock tick while you're running up a big buck studio bill. Both Schmidt and Eno realized that the pressures of time tended to steer them away from the ways of thinking they found most productive when the pressure was off. The Strategies were, then, a way to remind themselves of those habits of thinking - to jog the mind." from this webpage

Librarian Stereotypes--I Don't Think So!

Halloween in the Library.

HotDocs on Fire Prevention and Safety

Paula Webb has put together a collection of Government Documents on Fire Prevention and Safety. http://www.southalabama.edu/univlib/govdocs/hotdocs.htm

Come to the Second Floor, South side, to see a display of print documents on the same topic including the original Smokey Bear memorabilia.

“I give my pledge as an American to save and faithfully to defend from waste the natural resources of my country – its soil and minerals, its forests, waters and wildlife”

ZipSkinny--Who are Your Neighbors? & Tech Fair

Try this app and get demographic info from the Census on your neighborhood. Compare your area with other zips.
http://zipskinny.com/

Come see us between 10 & 4 in the Ballroom. Ellen Wilson is doing LibX, a cool browser add-on; Kathy Wheeler is talking about tagging with del.icio.us and LibraryThing, your own personal library catalog; I'm postering on the various cool tools available through Google.

Technology Fair Tomorrow

Come to the Student Center Ballroom tomorrow between 10 and 4 for the (1st Annual?) Technology Fair. Kathy Wheeler, Ellen Wilson and I will be demonstrating some Web 2.0 kinds of technology--all of it free. Kathy is going to do tagging--del.icio.us and LibraryThing. Ellen was going to entitle hers "Pimping my Firefox," but settled for "Supercharge your Browser." I'm going to reprise my role as The Google Lady, briefing whoever dares to stop, or I can grab, about the uses of several of the Google Search and Productivity Tools like Docs & Spreadsheets, Calendar, Presentations, Finance and anything else I can fit on my posterboard this afternoon. Come visit us!
See: http://southmed.usouthal.edu/library/techfair/showcase.htm

Dumbledore is Outed

Ah, More for the censors!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7053982.stm

Starting Your Christmas Shopping?

I know I'm really digging here. I haven't found much that intrigues me lately--probably more me than the outside world in that endless middle of the semester with none of the excitement of the new and none of the anticipation of the finish.

Marylaine Block came up with this site today. For those of you with kids or little brothers and sisters, this is a good site for recommendations for presents for ages 0 to 12.

Dr. Toy's 100 Best Products of 2007

"Stevanne Auerbach, an author and expert on educational and skill building
toys offers parents a useful guide to some of the year's best products.
For each item, she gives a brief evaluation, the intended age level,
image, price, and the manufacturer's website."
http://www.drtoy.com/awards/2007_3_list.php

A Word of Warning to Students--and Faculty

Plagiarism, Education, and Information Security

Julie J.C.H. Ryan
George Washington University
Sept./Oct. 2007

"From 1997 to 2002, I caught an average of 18 percent of the students in my graduate-level information security classes plagiarizing large portions of papers (some copied in full) and turning them in as class assignments. This doesn’t include students who plagiarized small portions of papers or who were guilty of plagiarism by paraphrasing. Since 2002, the percentage has declined and the style of plagiarism has changed. At first blush, it appears to be an encouraging trend, but students’ attitudes and opinions haven’t changed much at all. On the contrary, very few students actually appreciate the need for academic integrity, specifically in writing, whereas the pervasive attitude appears to be that the checks performed on papers is simply a game—indeed, it’s one that many feel they can play successfully."

Full Text of the article

See also:
For Faculty
For Students

HotDocs from Paula Webb

This is the debut HotDocs posting for our new Gov. Docs librarian. Check it out. I really like Paula's use of del.icio.us to create a linkable bibliography. Del.icio.us is probably the web application that I use the most to keep track of my favorite websites.
http://www.southalabama.edu/univlib/govdocs/hotdocs.htm

Ghosting the Research--A Warning

It is truly hard to be a librarian these days. Skepticism about information can so easily turn into cynicism. I've read about this problem before--pharmaceutical company shills writing articles and getting researchers to front them. But here is another article proving that this is not just an aberration, but a common practice. Can I really tell students to use our medical databases, because they carry more reliable information than the public web? Not sure anymore.

These abbreviations will help you understand the article:
CHC, Complete Healthcare Communications;
CMD, Current Medical Directions;
CRO, contract research organization;
MECC, medical education and communication company
http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0040286&ct=1

Writing OutReach--Finding Books

Tomorrow, Thurs. Sept27th
Writing Outreach
3:30-4:30
Library Auditorium
Finding Books for Your Research

This is the first session of two on Finding Information Sources. This one concentrates on finding books. I know, everyone want to get full text online and books seem to mean that you have to actually come into the library (what a hassle!), find the call number(a mystery code), find the actual book in the stacks(confusing as heck) and then, heaven forbid, check it out at the Circ desk(student id needed).

Let me assure you that using books is worth all the effort you have to put into acquiring them. AAAANNNNNNDDDDD, there are some excellent books online. You just have to know where to look. Most books fall under copyright restrictions so most of the books online are at least 75 years old. Though not all. The library subscribes to some online books and there are some great websites that offer copyleft books.

Come to the session and let me show you a few tricks of the trade (Yes, librarians are full of tricks. What a wonderful profession.). JS

PS. If you need a tickie to prove to your instructor that you actually attended, come up after the session and I will give you one.

Localizing Google Scholar

I'm encountering more students and faculty who have discovered Google Scholar. Google Scholar is Google's attempt at creating a database of relevant information about scholarly books and articles. Those books and articles that have free full-text on the web can be linked to directly. The problem arises when the article is from a publisher who holds the copyright and only wants to allow subscribers ($$$ paid)to have access to these articles. If you are a faculty, staff or student at South Alabama you MAY have access to these articles IF the library subscribes to the journal. But you have to make your association clear to Google.
On the homepage of Google Scholar to the right of the search box click on the words "Scholar Preferences." In about the middle of the page that comes up enter "University of South Alabama" next to the words Library Links.

Click on the words "Find Library." A line with our schools name will show up below this box. Check the box in front of our name. Now Google Scholar will let you know which of the journals we subscribe to by indicating "USA eText" next to the citations returned. Click on "USA eText." On the next screen pick a USA Library subscription database through which you can access the article.

Google has not, or will not, let us know which publishers are included in this "database." Your best bet for a thorough search on your topic is to use the library databases. Sure, supplement with Google Scholar, but be aware that much more may be available through the library's subscriptions to databases and online journals. Limiting yourself to only one tool is never a good idea. Talk to your librarians about where you might go to find the best info on your chosen topic.