Top Ten Reasons Students Cannot Cite or Rely on Wikipedia
Ever have an instructor tell you that you can't use Wikipedia as a source for your paper? Read this for reasons.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Monday, July 11, 2011
Browsing books for July-American Health
Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America by Robert Whitaker. Call Number: RC443.W437 2010.
Getting What We deserve: Health & Medical Care in America by Alfred Sommer, MD, MHS. Call Number: RA445.S66 2009.
Sacrifice Zones: The Front Lines of Toxic Chemical exposure in the United States by Steve Lerner. Call Number: RA1226.L47 2010.
The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains by Nicholas Carr. Call Number: QP360.C3667 2010.
Four controversial books on health make the reading list for July. In Anatomy of an Epidemic, Whitaker looks at the studies which evaluate the long-term use of psychiatric drugs and finds the benefits of use often misstated and patients suffering, while innovative programs are being developed which may offer far more effective alternatives.
In the slim Getting What We Deserve, Dr. Sommer, a former Dean at Johns Hopkins, uses charts, graphs and innumerable statistics to show what we already should know: we spend more on health care than any other developed country and still aren’t better off than most of them. With sometimes acid humor, Dr. Sommer shows why.
Sacrifice Zones spotlights an all-too-often ignored outcome of poverty: lower income communities are much more likely to be in proximity to—even surrounded by—toxic zones of industrial pollution. As jobs become critical, towns will gamble their health and the future of their children, in order to earn a living. From Alaska to Florida, from dioxin to PCBs from an old military base, the poor are often living in deadly environments.
In The Shallows, author Carr expands on a past Atlantic article: that the Internet is making it harder for humans to think deeply and concentrate fully. Blending recent neuroscience and cultural critiques, he makes a strong case for e-moderation.
Thursday, July 07, 2011
Library Videos for July--the Western Evolution
Considered by some Peckinpah’s finest film, the story involves two aging lawmen sent into the mountains to escort gold from a mining site back to a banker in the town below. Their journey is complicated by love, sex, fistfights, a double-cross, and gunplay. Some of the themes of this movie were no doubt shockingly adult for 1962, while Western justice and honor are on full display and the usually iconic Scott and McCrea become real people.
The Cowboys, Starring John Wayne, Roscoe Lee Brown and Bruce Dern. Directed by Mark Rydell. 1972. Library Call Number: PN1995.9.W4C69 2007. After True Grit, Wayne departed several times from his more stereotypic roles. As aging rancher Wil Anderson, he finds his wranglers have gone to chase a gold strike, just when he needs them to drive his cattle to market. Faced with the loss of his ranch, he desperately hires 11 boys from the schoolhouse to make the drive, but they are tailed by rustlers who mean to steal the herd. This is a rare Wayne movie and the boys-to-men theme works to his advantage. Fine performances all around and tremendous Western scenery, make this an unheralded beauty.
In Dustin Hoffman’s early tour-de force, he stars as 121 year-old Jack Crabb. Interviewed by a reporter in his nursing home, Crabb tells a tale of living with both the Cheyenne and the white man, as the West becomes settled, culminating in becoming the lone white survivor of the Little Big Horn. With Chief Dan George in his first movie role, lending tremendous weight as Old Lodge Skins, the Cheyenne who adopts the boy Jack Crabb, Jeff Corey as Wild Bill Hickock, and Richard Mulligan as the vain and arrogant Custer. Funny and heart-breaking, Penn’s work forced a new view of the stereotypical Western Indian.
The epic story of an unrepentant Rebel border raider on the run in the post-Civil war era, Josey Wales is hunted by the Union from Missouri to Texas, giving the viewer a sweeping look at the canvas of the American West. Carpetbaggers, messianic soldiers, fur-traders, hard-luck saloon inhabitants, and Comancheros inhabit a vast landscape. The movie has two sides: attention to detail, quality camera and cast, and a realistic portrayal of the Western environment; and then a fugitive gunfighter who can’t miss and somehow amasses an unlikely set of tag-alongs. Still, it’s a one-of-a-kind movie, hard to forget.
Tuesday, July 05, 2011
Retired Archivist Discusses Advances During His Career
Kevin Thorie retired as Archivist at UW-Stout after 29 years of service. He discusses the changes in retrieval of information over that time in this article.
Tuesday, June 07, 2011
Browsing Books for June - Thoughts on Education
Saving Alma Mater: a rescue plan for America’s Public Universities by James C. Garland. Library Call Number: LB23452.G37 2009.
In this quartet of books about education, the state of American education is seen from many angles. James C. Garland, former President of Miami University of Ohio, outlines the cost pressures on the American public University in Saving Alma Mater. As the Library Journal review says, Garland “…explains the damaging impact of an unpredictable and uncompetitive system of state appropriations..[he] also shows that faculty values and the character of academic culture get in the way of cost-effective management and the identification of priorities. …Campus attitudes have led to a defensiveness that wastes resources, resists change, and undermines the academic excellence that students and society overall need…While Garland's recommended change in tuition policy may not work throughout the system, his clearly expressed and hardheaded analysis provide a valuable perspective for both the general reader and public officials.” 
Big Man on Campus: A University President Speaks out on American Education by Stephen Joel Trachtenberg. Library Call Number: LA228.T68 2008.
In Big Man on Campus, the former President of George Washington University and the University of Hartford provides a lively insight into the job of running a University and reminds readers that "Finding sufficient resources might be the greatest responsibility, but presidents also focus on student well-being, curriculum, athletics, security, facilities, and the concerns of university neighbors." The author reminds us that American education is still the place where students and professors from all over the world seek “personal and professional opportunities.”
Armstrong’s The Truth about Teaching takes the reader into the trenches of K-12 education and offers witty, inspiring and wry advice to present and aspiring educators alike. The publisher says,"This beautifully designed book is a celebration of the joys and challenges of the teaching life. Author and veteran educator Coleen Armstrong is a wise, witty, and caring mentor. Her words of encouragement will resonate with new teachers, with students in teacher education schools, and with veteran teachers who wish to remember that they are not alone in an often lonely profession."
The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University by Louis Menand. Library Call Number: LB2322.2 .M45 2010.
Louis Menand’s The Marketplace of Ideas, on the other hand, speaks to the disconnect inside institutions that have functioned for many years with an established structural and philosophical process and are now in an age with radically different students and faculty, along with a society where technology is radically changing the way information is produced and disseminated. Trying to separate what should be kept with what might be usefully discarded, Menand offers a glimpse of education’s future.
Monday, June 06, 2011
June Videos --The Caper Film
The Score, starring Robert DeNiro, Edward Norton and Marlon Brando. Directed by Frank Oz. 2001. (Library Call Number: PN1995.9.C66S36 2001.)
Four films on the theme of robbery are featured for June. In The Score, DeNiro plays master thief Nick Wells, who’s ready to retire until his partner (Marlon Brando in his last film appearance) pleads with him to make one last, big score: a priceless European scepter, locked away in a safe. There are only two problems: the vault is in the high-security Quebec Customs House and Nick has to work with an arrogant—and undependable—newcomer.
A Fish Called Wanda, starring Kevin Kline, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Palin and John Cleese. Directed by Charles Crichton. 1999. (Library Call Number: PN1995.9.C55F56 2006.)
In the hilarious A Fish Called Wanda, Kevin Kline and Jamie Lee Curtis are crazy Otto and sexy, devious Wanda, part of a gang of diamond thieves. They double-cross their partners, Ken and George, but George has already hidden the diamonds and won’t divulge where they are. What follows is laugh out loud mayhem of the Monty Python kind, not surprising with two of the former Pythons on screen.
The Bank Job, starring Jason Statham and David Suchet. Directed by Roger Donaldson. 2008. (Library Call Number: PN1995.9.S87B36 2008.) In The Bank Job, Terry Leather (Jason Statham) is offered up entry to safe-deposit boxes in a small Baker Street bank. He and his low-level crew steal millions in cash and jewelry, unaware that the boxes also contain the property of a vicious gangster and state secrets that the government will go to any lengths to protect. David Suchet, known for playing Hercule Poirot on PBS' Mystery, gives a remarkably different performance as vicious gangster Lew Vogel.
The Heist starring Pierce Brosnan and Tom Skerritt. Directed by Stuart Orme. 1989. (Library Call Number: PN1995.9.J8H45 1989.)
And in The Heist, Pierce Brosnan, in one of his best efforts on screen, is Neil Skinner, fresh out of jail after being framed for robbery by his best friend—who also used the occasion to steal Skinner’s girlfriend. Out for revenge, the ex-con plots to steal the daily take of the racetrack where his friend runs security--and avoid the police detective still hounding him--in a game of double- and triple-cross.
Monday, May 09, 2011
Library Video of the Week, May 9, 2011.
One of the many virtually unknown gems released in recent years, this film—set in 1937 China and based on a true story--revolves around George Hogg (Meyers), an ambitious British journalist, who sneaks into Nanjing as the Japanese are desolating it. Captured and tortured by the Japanese, he is saved from certain death by a Chinese rebel (Chow Yun Fat) and flees with him into the interior of China, ambitiously seeking to find another story that will bring him fame.
Instead, his friend talks him into taking control of a leaderless orphanage and 60 feral young boys. With the help of a traveling, war-weary Australian nurse (Mitchell), Hogg reluctantly tends the boys until the Japanese near the valley. Pressured by the Chinese army to turn the boys over to them as soldiers, Hogg instead packs them up and flees, taking his wards 500 miles over the Silk Road and the Liu Pan Shan Mountains into the Gobi Desert and safety, with the help of his friend, the nurse and a former aristocrat turned opium smuggler. The movie chronicles a dark period of world history and—in Schindler-like fashion—finds some light.
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