The library has acquired an interesting book titled When In Rome or Rio or Riyadh: Cultural Q&A's for Successful Business Behavior Around the World, by Gwyneth Olofsson (call# G156.5.B86O46 2004). If you plan on doing international travel as part of your job, or if you are preparing a class assignment on cultural differences, this book will be very useful. Topics covered include business cards, gift giving, meals/food, body language, attitudes towards time, and much, much more!
A comprehensive study on the state of earth's environment is being released today. You can see the full report and those of the subgroups at http://www.millenniumassessment.org. The study was conducted by 1300 experts from over 90 countries. The headlines on the site read: "A landmark study released today reveals that approximately 60 percent of the ecosystem services that support life on Earth – such as fresh water, capture fisheries, air and water regulation, and the regulation of regional climate, natural hazards and pests – are being degraded or used unsustainably. Scientists warn that the harmful consequences of this degradation could grow significantly worse in the next 50 years."
The Rand Corporation Labor and Population group prepared this research report for the U.S. Department of Labor. Authors Karoly and Panis examined demographic trends, changing technologies, and economic globalization to report how the U.S. workforce and workplace will be impacted. The report is loaded with details and data about work, benefits, costs, etc. Of particular interest is the impact on worker skills and educational requirements. Knowledge workers capable of designing, developing and marketing new technologies will be in high demand. In greater demand will be service workers providing health and other personal services. However, the latter group will use technologies with intuitive interfaces, and employ continuous on the job training techniques to keep up with changing jobs. This book offers much to ponder for all sectors in society. (Vairo Library HD8072.5.K22 2004)
Dr. Nancy Wyatt calls this terrific George Mason University site to our attention:
It’s not true that people with high IQs voted for Kerry and those with low IQs voted for Bush. That’s an Internet hoax. Oil prices adjusted for inflation were highest in 1981, not today. Researchers have claimed that the vinyl in nail polish can cause cancer. George Mason University reports that “the unfortunate laboratory rats had to absorb the human equivalent of 4 ? bottles of nail polish every day for 70 years to become ill.” I thought it might be interesting to use this site when lecturing on research for CAS100. Maybe other instructors would like to have this George Mason University website as a resource: http://www.stats.org/
If the tragic story dominating the news is provoking your thinking about end of life issues, you may want to look at the web site of the Family Caregiver Alliance. It has lots of helpful information on end-of-life decision-making, feeding tubes, legal issues, advance directives, and letting go. It also has tips on caring for indviduals incapacitated by various illness, advice for long distance care-givers, and directories of support resources for care-givers. This site is packed with useful information none of us want, but all of us need.
http://www.caregiver.org/.
The April 2005 issue of MIT's Technology Review has an interessting article that provides a glimpse of technology projects in seven countries. Included are: China, Germany, the Netherlands, South Africa, Chile, Brazil, and the United States. Projects include biodiesel fuel, solar energy, SARS, biomining, traffic control, , speech technology, water purification, and homeland security. You can try to match up the projects with the country. The article has some wonderful data on technology usage worldwide. If you doubt the vibrancy of the global economy, you will want to read this article. It is available in paper in the Vairo Library now, and will be available online thru the ProQuest database.
Guernica: The Biography of a Twentieth-Century Icon, by Gijs van Hensbergen, is a wonderful history book using one of the world's great paintings as its focal point. If you want to study war, Spain, modern art, Picasso and many other figures of the 20th century, reading Guerincawould be a great start. It gives students a wonderful example of how the thorough examination of a specific object or idea can reveal wide ranging insights.
(Vairo Library ND553.P5A653385 2004)
Students and faculty in need of information on the death penalty will want to look at the Death Penalty Information Center site http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/. The site includes legal information state by state, historical information, public opinion polls, and an execution database that lists all executions in the U.S. since 1976.
If you have not yet discovered the New York Public Library's collection of digital images, you must vist http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/index.cfm. "NYPL Digital Gallery provides access to over 275,000 images digitized from primary sources and printed rarities in the collections of The New York Public Library, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs, illustrated books, printed ephemera, and more." The images are from all disciplines, including:
arts and literature, cities and buildings, culture and society, history and geography, industry and technology, science and nature, printing and graphics. It is a wonderful treasure trove with good searching apparatus.
Do you need an unique topic for that next paper or speech? Where do you go for ideas on something interesting to research? The Vairo Library homepage has a section dedicated to topic ideas! This website has just been updated with new entries in each category. Check it out for many original, interesting paper and speech ideas!
http://www.de.psu.edu/library/assignments/interestingtopics/list.html
Vairo Library has just acquired a very interesting reference source: "The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Women's Issues Worldwide" (call#: REF HQ1467.G74 2003). This is a 6 volume series - each volume focuses on one area of the world (Asia, Europe, etc). Within each text you can read about women from a specific country.
"Particularly useful for cross-national comparisons of data and issues that would normally be difficult to compare" (Library Journal Review).
Have you heard about the changes to the SAT that are being implemented for high school test takers this spring? What do these changes mean for college admissions? (The new perfect score will be 2400, not 1600). U.S. News and World Report has an article that gives a very good summary of the changes and tells how and why these changes came about. It also discusses how college admissions will use this new test. You can find the article titled "It's bigger - is it better?" on page 68 of our March 14, 2005 copy, here in the library.
The Census Bureau has compiled a website with lots of statistics about women in the United States at http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2003/cb03ff03.html It includes data on motherhood, the military, sports, earnings, education, marriage, etc. It is part of their new "facts to features" series that compiles data for all sorts of occasions.
The Vairo Library has just acquired Milk: Its Remarkable Contributin to Human Health and Well-Being, by Stuart Patton, a professor emeritus of Penn State. This book has everything you always wanted to know, and everything your mother ever told you about milk. And, I'll never tell the milk secret behind the Hershey-type chocolate flavor that is revealed in this book (p.235)! (Vairo Library QP144.M54P386 2004)
Here's a book to refute or bolster you opinion about cell phones! Rich Ling, a PhD in sociology, is a research scientist with Norway's largest telecommunicatons company. In Mobile Connection: the cell phone's impact on society , he reports on the research that has been conducted in dozens of countries. He looks at the social consequences of mobile communications examining age, gender, security and privacy issues. He considers the impact of technology both on the individual and institutions. Does a quick text message on Mother's Day offer opportunites for closeness or distance? Who besides Hallmark cares? (Vairo Library HE9713.L563 2004)