If the price at the pump is not giving you heart failure, Jeremy Leggett's The Empty Tank: oil, gas, hot air, and the coming global financial catastrophe will. Leggett, a geologist who used to work for Big Oil and is now involved with Greenpeace International, issues an urgent warning about both global warming and `the depletion of our energy supplies. He reviews the arguments about the "topping point" or "peak oil" when production starts to decline. In doing so, he asserts the industry and governments have been misleading us. Even when the bad news is accurately delivered, "our society is in a state of collective denial that has no precedent in history, in terms of its scale and implications." (p.3) Like so many others on all sides of the arguments, he calls for a Manhattan Project on energy alternatives. No matter how close the topping point, the situation is one that calls for concern and action. (Vairo Library HD9502.A2L425 2005)
Vairo Library recently acquired a new book titled "Winning The Vote: The Triumph of the American Woman Suffrage Movement" by Robert P. J. Cooney, Jr. This is no ordinary history book... 960 photos and illustrations help illuminate this time period of our nation's history. One can flip through quickly and easily to find out interesting information regarding the women's suffrage movement.
Call #: JK1896.C65 2005
With all the online research possibilities (from the ever popular Google to scholarly databases), it is easy to feel overwhelmed when trying to find sources for your project or paper. Vairo Library has just acquired a book aimed at students called "Student Guide to Research in the Digital Age: How to locate and evaluate information sources" by Leslie F. Stebbins. Call # ZA3075.S74 2006.
The book offers a wealth of information including directions to the actual sources and tips for research and source evaluation. The chapter "Scholarly and Popular Articles" is sure to answer all your questions regarding these sources and how to find them. The book also has a chapter dedicated to primary works (and how to find them online). Besides covering the basics, this book also delves into Legal, Government, Statistical and Biographical research and source information. This book will surely do the trick for your next research paper or project.
"...the new metaphor of students as customers raises the very basic question of whether an education is something that is no longer earned, but something that is bought." (p.26) asserts James G. Hutton, marketing and communications professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Hutton also examines how the emphasis on "customers" is underminng the fundamental purposes of health care, religion, the media, as well as education. This book offers a different , important perspective on the marketing model. (Vairo Library HF5415.1.H88 2005)
Online Collaborative Learning Communities: twenty-one designs to building an online collaborative learning community is a little book chock full of practical advice for teaching with online learning communities, discussion and group projects. The author is an instructor in educational technology who has used online teaching techniques extensively. There is theory here, but nuts and bolts practical advice dominates. There are checklists for online tieams, guidelines on how to review teamwork and provide feeback, guidelines for team governance, and forms for peers to evaluate team members' performance. Those of you working with online discussions and team projects will want to compare these suggestions the practices you have developed from your own experiences.
Vairo Library LB1028.5.T755 2004
Immigration is the current topic featured on the website of Public Agenda, "a nonpartisan opinion research and civic engagement organization helping Americans explore and understand critical issues since 1975."(website) It gives you links to a fact file, public opinion polls, discussion guides, and additional resources on the topics it covers. It is a very useful site for current topics in the news. http://www.publicagenda.org/issues/frontdoor.cfm?issue_type=immigration
With April designated Poetry Month, it is a good time to call attention to the Library of Congress's site on Walt Whitman Notebooks from the 1850s and 1860s. These notebooks were stolen from the Library of Congress in the 1940s but reappeared in 1995. There is information on the site explaining how the notebooks are being preserved, and lots of supporting information about Whitman and how he wrote and edited his poetry. It is all available at:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/whitman/
Delco student Vlad Koyfman recommends:
Even though I am from Brooklyn, NY, I watched Brighton Beach Memoirs for the first time this week and it is a very interesting movie. I recommend people to watch that movie. (Penn State Libraries: PN1997.B744 1990)
Our favorite film critic Dr. Wayne McMullen offers:
Writer/director Jason Reitman's breezy and often-hilarious satire, Thank You For Smoking, skewers the culture of spin we live in. Aaron Eckhart stars as Nick, a slick-tongued lobbyist for Big Tobacco. Nick understands that the process of making a convincing "argument," in a world where truth is in a perpetual state of manipulation, has little to do with facts, reasoning, or rationality. Eckhart is almost too good in this role; he seems to have born to play this character. One of the more disturbing aspects of the film is that his character (Nick), however slimy he may be, is at times almost sympathetic--and even reasonable--with his rationalizations for why he does this kind of work. In summary, Reitman makes his points with well-calculated zingers, without banging the audience on the head with a preachy message. Great fun. (This film is based on Christopher Buckleyís 1994 novel of the same title.)
The Children's Defense Fund has issued a report on the status of children impacted by Katrina. It is a distressing portrait. Of course, the most vulnerable were the children most negatively impacted. Many still are not in school, several are still moving from shelter to shelter, and even the well clothed and fed are in need of mental health services. It is an important report to read not just to understand the current plight, but to help plan for improved handling of children in future disasters.
http://www.childrensdefense.org/katrina_children.aspx
Amid all the conflicting information on immigration reform, it might be helpful to consult this site for some solid information on the many dimensions of this topic:
http://www.kff.org/kaiserpolls/pomr100604pkg.cfm
It is the result of a joint project of the Kaiser Family Foundation, Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and NPR, conducted in late 2004 before some of the more recent hysteria dominated the debate.
The phenomenon of road rage has become prevalent enough over the last decade that a scholarship on aggressive driving is emerging. Road Rage: assessment and treatment of the angry, aggressive driver is written by three psychologists. It reviews the research on road rage, the theories behind it, and the options for treating it. Read this and the next time you're cut off on I-95, you may be less inclined to retaliate. (RC451.4.A98G34 2006)
ATTN: Undergrad students:
Penn State Libraries is offering three scholarships to undergraduate students who want to pursue a career in library or information science (you do not currently have to have an “information science” major). If you are interested please go to the link below for more information. The deadline is the last day of Spring Semester classes.
http://www.libraries.psu.edu/scholarship/