This email came from Lucinda Beddow, Alabama Virtual Library Representative for Post Secondary. We, at the University, should be very grateful, because now our money can go farther toward purchasing discipline specific databases with the money that we would have had to spend to get these most basic information sources for our students. js

"By now you probably all know that while there were many cuts made in the 2004-2005 Education Budget, the Alabama Virtual Library line item was increased. The requested amount of $3,565,109 was received. This will enable the AVL Council to maintain existing subscriptions and also allows for growth and restoration of lost resources.

Please make a point to thank your legislators -- an AVL Card, a personal note, an email, or a phone call. We made contact with our legislators in order to promote funding and now we should thank them.

I hope Rheena Elmore at Faulkner State won't mind if I quote her. When I received her reply to the survey I sent out about the most and least important databases to the two year college students, she replied: "First and foremost, I'd like to say that funding the Alabama Virtual Library is the best thing and the least selfish thing the Alabama State Legislature has ever done for the citizens of Alabama. It is appreciated and used by so many people."

The editorial in the most recent issue of Library Journal titled "May Day Blues" talks about 'tough times' for libraries. We in Alabama have so much to be grateful for this May 2004!"

Thurs. May 6th

Today is my faithful Macintosh's 6th birthday--Happy Birthday, Calvin.

Also today, being Thursday, is the day I get my weekly MaryLaine Block's NeatNew ExLibris e-mail filled with fascinating and sometimes frightening information. One of today's articles reminded me why we better be careful if we think that electronic is the only way we want our information. What happens when someone decides to revise history--in the digital world it is dead easy. Read this Library Journal piece about a disappearing article! You might also try Marylaine's precursor article in that journal. js

Uh Oh, it's plagiarism time again. All those papers coming in to professors. So little time. Last week channelABC even had a Frontline special on rampant plagiarism in our high schools and colleges.

Why can't we admit that we don't know how to write a termpaper! Nobody ever learned anything by getting it right the first time. A "term paper" is downright terrifying, especially the first ten times you have to write one, but that's what teachers are for. THAT'S WHY THEY ARE CALLED TEACHERS! They are supposed to help you learn the process of thinking and writing complex ideas, not just judge the results.

If you haven't asked your teacher for help, if you haven't gone to the Writing Center for aid and succor, if you haven't asked a reference librarian for help devising a research strategy--then you haven't learned the most important thing about the real world--not just academia. We all need help, especially when we are just learning how to do something, like think for ourselves! We aren't expected to be perfect in our papers; we are expected to try our best, and eventually get better with the effort. Some athletes take steroids; some students plagiarize. Same thing--body or mind--both are shortchanging themselves and disrespecting everyone else. js

Here's a page on plagiarism for students.
Here's a page for faculty.

Check out the Librarian of Disinformation.
The site is called The Memory Hole: Rescuing Knowledge, Freeing Information. Information on the web is ephemeral. The Memory Hole tries to preserve information of value. It's the site that published the pictures of the coffins returning from Iraq which the editor, Russ Kick, got through the Freedom of Information Act. This is not an unbiased site--but some of the information can't be found easily elsewhere. js

Maybe in a few days it won't be so hectic around here and I can catch up on the new neat things available to you on the Internet and in the library, but for now here's one item that might surprise you.

Search Engine Showdown runs a test every once in a while to see what kind of coverage of the Internet the major web search engines offer. Of seventy-one unique sites, Google got 41;Wisenut 14; AlltheWeb 7 and three others 9 combined. What that says to me is that I can't JUST use Google to get good coverage of the Web. I need to use other search engines which get things that Google misses.

It's tempting to just use one of them and says 'hey, 2 million is enough for me.' But I don't tell students to use just one database--if they try a few others, they will get different things not found on the first one. The same is true of Internet search engines. Maybe AlltheWeb will give me a much better source of information that hasn't been upped to the top by Google's special method of putting the most popular first. Maybe the least popular is the best for one's purpose--popularity doesn't necessarily mean truest or best information.

But learn more by trying it yourself at Thumbshots Ranking.

js

Thurs. 22nd

4/21/04

It's still
National
Library
Week

4/19/04

National
Library
Week

"The ultimate goal is to have a computer that has the kind of semantic knowledge that a reference librarian has." Craig Silverstein, Google's Director of Technology, Newsweek, 3/29/04, 58

Or maybe you could just call your local librarian--and save a billion bucks or two! js

Kept out the DVD one day too long? Pay a media fine today and get a chance to win a Copycard!

from Vickey Baggott

The increasing demands for safe drinking water and requirements to maintain healthy ecosystems are leading policy makers to ask complex social and scientific questions about how to assess and manage our water resources. This document is also available online at: http://water.usgs.gov/pubs/circ/2002/circ1224/

This provides introductory information about remote sensing and shows many of the ways this technology is being used to address coastal management issues. It contains examples of coastal management projects which use remotely sensed data.

This pamphlet explains what the ozone is, how it affects people and our environment, and what affect human activities are having on it. Also available online at: http://www.epa.gov/oar/oaqps/gooduphigh/ozone.pdf

Pultizer Prizes came out last week. Check'em out. http://www.pulitzer.org/2004/2004.html

Matt Davies, editorial cartoonist, from White Plains, N.Y.: his portfolio for the Pulitzer http://www.thejournalnews.com/davies/

Thurs. the 8th

Gabriel: Gateway to Europe's National Libraries

Here's the link that will get you to the catalogs as well as other news and exhibition webpages for 43 of the major libraries of Europe.

How about a summer themed-tour: The Great Libraries of Europe. Guess not; I'll have to settle for a virtual tour! js

Illustration Left: One of the "Treasures of Europe's National Libraries" linked through Gabriel.

The big news on lots of blogs yesterday was about a study that came out from a Harvard and a Chapel Hill researcher saying that there is no statistical evidence that illegal filesharing, the downloading of music from another's computer over the 'net, causes any loss of revenue to the music industry. Needless to say, the record industry is having a hissy fit. Unfortunately not a single blog or newspaper story gave me the information I needed to find the actual report--like the title or the URL, duh.

Hey, you guys, you can't cite an incendiary report like this without telling me where I can read it myself! Every student at USA knows s/he has to cite sources. js

I was finally able to track down the .pdf version on the UNC server:The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis

http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_March2004.pdf

April 2nd

Check out this page from the American Academy of Ophthalmology on choosing the right kind of sunglasses to protect your vision.

Selecting the Right Sunglasses

This more general page talks about all kinds of eye issues: sports eye protectors, contact lenses, how to pick the right frame for your face, etc.

MedlinePlus: Eyewear
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/eyewear.html

April Fool's

Lot's of foolishness here:

http://dmoz.org/Recreation/Humor/Parodies/

Bedford St. Martins: Research and Documentation Online by Diana Hacker[love the name!] http://www.dianahacker.com/resdoc/

I've also done a couple of pages that might help with the same process. js

Citing databases using MLA style
Citing databases using APA Style Guide

The TV political ads have started bombarding us. How can we sort the truth from the spin? FactCheck.org seems to contribute an objective voice to the battle, tracking down the numbers, finding the actual quotes and putting them in context, and providing hyperlinks to the primary documents when it can. And it does it even-handedly across parties and issues. Sign up for an email version when new info becomes available. js

FactCheck.org Mission Statement
"We are a nonpartisan, nonprofit, "consumer advocate" for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases. Our goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding.

"The Annenberg Political Fact Check is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. The APPC was established by publisher and philanthropist Walter Annenberg in 1994 to create a community of scholars within the University of Pennsylvania that would address public policy issues at the local, state, and federal levels.

"The APPC accepts NO funding from business corporations, labor unions, political parties, lobbying organizations or individuals. It is funded primarily by an endowment from the Annenberg Foundation."

March 22 '04

($)

From the Librarians Index to the Internet:
Tax Time 2004 http://lii.org/taxes/

Federal Tax Forms: http://www.irs.ustreas.gov/formspubs/index.html

Alabama Tax Forms: http://www.ador.state.al.us/incometax/ITindex2.html

From Gary Price's ResourceShelf this report about a directory of reports from the University of Maryland Libraries. js

The Virtual Technical Reports Center
" Wow! A massive browsable directory compiled by Technical Reports Librarian Gloria Lyles Chawla. The Virtual Technical Reports Center, 'contains links to technical reports, preprints, reprints, dissertations, theses, and research reports of all kinds. Some metasites are listed by subject categories, as well as by institution.' All of the institutions listed make either the full text or "searchable extended abstracts" of the reports available on the web. The page is updated monthly and suggestions are welcome."

http://www.lib.umd.edu/ENGIN/TechReports/Virtual-TechReports.html

Some Irish Quotes gathered by our own Dennis Guion:

May the road rise to meet you. May the wind always be at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face, the rains fall soft upon your fields and, until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of his hand. Irish Blessing

An Irishman is the only man in the world who will step over the bodies of a dozen naked women to get to a bottle of stout. Unknown

God invented whiskey to keep the Irish from ruling the world. Ed McMahon

Ninety percent I'll spend on good times, women and Irish Whiskey. The other ten percent I'll probably waste. Tug McGraw

If it was raining soup, the Irish would go out with forks. Brendan Behan

St. Patrick...one of the few saints whose feast day presents the opportunity to get determinedly whacked and make a fool of oneself all under the guise of acting Irish. Charles M. Madigan

The Irish ignore anything they can't drink or punch. Proverb

The Irish forgive their great men when they are safely buried. Traditional Irish Curse

The Irish are a fair people: They never speak well of one another. Samuel Johnson

An Englishmen thinks seated; a Frenchmen standing; an American pacing, an Irishman, afterwards. Austin O'Malley

Put an Irishman on the spit and you can always get another Irishman to turn him. George Bernard Shaw

When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?" Quentin Crisp

I don't think there's any point in being Irish ,if you don't know the world is going to break your heart eventually. Daniel Patrick Moynihan

May the curse of Mary Malone and her nine blind illegitimate children chase you so far over the hills of Damnation that the Lord himself can't find you with a telescope. Traditional Irish Curse

No time today! Just got to look briefly at this website. I'd like to spend hours on it. Can't listen to it in the Univ. Lib--no sound cards, sorry. Try at home or in the computer labs. (JS, a USA the information junkie)

BBC Audio Interviews
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/audiointerviews/
Interviews drawn from the long history of the BBC include major cultural, political and scientific figures of the 20th and 21st century, including Virginia Woolf, Noel Coward, Aaron Copland, Freeman Dyson, Agatha Christie, Mohandas Gandhi, Werner Heisenberg, Margaret Thatcher, Desmond Tutu, Charles Schulz, George Bernard Shaw, etc.

From Ex Libris: an E-Zine for Librarians and Other Information Junkies. http://marylaine.com/exlibris/
Copyright, Marylaine Block, 1999-2004.

Celebrate March 8th--International Women's Day

I just read a newspaper article explaining the rapid demise of encyclopedias due to the rise of the Internet. I thought I'd try a search just to see how many encyclopedias the libraries own. Doing a fill-in-the form search for encyclop? in the title field, I came up with 1663 items. Are these really ALL now out-dated? Can you really get the same information from the web as you get from the Encyclopedia of Garbage or the Encyclopedia of Stress? Probably not. But even if you could you'd have to wade through wads of garbage webpages and you'd be so stressed by the time and the process that you might actually give up and go to the reference shelves and find good info and save time and your sanity as well. js

March 5

Friday's the day that Scout Report arrives in my mailbox and it always has some cool websites to report on. Click here to subscribe yourself. Today there are three that most interested me:

JURIST's Paper Chase
Are you a legal junkie? Do court cases intrigue you? U. of Pitt has a news site which links to info on the day's most interesting cases.
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/

National Geographic: Crittercam
I just watched a harbor seal regurgitating its dinner. Mini-cams attached to a variety of real animals provide animal "reality TV."
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/channel/crittercam/

Tessellations.org
Because I like M.C. Escher.
http://www.tessellations.org/

Thurs. the 4th

Vickey Baggott, our Government Documents Librarian, has submitted another issue of "HOT DOCS." Check 'em out on the 2nd Floor, South side.

HOT DOCS at USA

"To Your Health" is the focus of these new government publications which includes one for promoting National Poison Prevention Week this month. Government Documents are located on the 2nd floor, South of the University Library. Come check us out!

Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness. The President’s Council on Bioethics, 2003. PR 43.8:B 52/T 34

New techniques and technologies can help prevent diseases from occurring in human embryos — they can also alter eye-color and IQs; they can diminish the effects of aging and also alter lifespans; they can help in treating mental illness and also permanently alter personalities by erasing memories of anti-social behaviors. "Just because you can do a thing doesn’t mean you should do it." These aren’t issues to be faced in the misty future. They are possibilities that have to be addressed today because the decisions will determine our future.

Improving the Chain of Recovery for Acute Stroke in Your Community: a National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke Symposium: Task Force Reports. Dept. of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, 2003. HE 20.3502:ST 8/10

Grandparents aren’t the only people affected by strokes these days. High school and college athletes have also experienced this potentially deadly medical condition. Rapid and accurate medical response can make the difference between tragedy and triumph. The Symposium reports presented here can help you become pro-active in making sure your community is ready when/if this unpredictable condition should occur.

Keeping Your Kids Drug-Free: a How-To Guide for Parents and Caregivers. National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, Office of National Drug Control Policy, [2003] PREX 26.8:K 54/2003

If you care about the next generation, such as your own children, younger siblings, or even your own friends, this publication offers suggestions for sharing with them the importance of living, and staying, drug-free.

National Poison Prevention Week, March 21-27, 2004. U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, 2004. Y 3.C76/3:12-2/2004

Questions and answers that can be used to prevent tragedy and educate the public about what to, and not to, do when poison is involved.

Pocket Guide: Minority Health Resources. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Office of Public Health and Science, Office of Minority Health, 2003. HE 20.8:M 66/2003

Telephone numbers, "snail mail", e-mail, and web addresses for agencies and organizations that can assist in helping members of minority groups to locate the help they need.

What You Need to Know About Breast Cancer. Dept. of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, 2003. HE 20.3152: B 74/6/2003

Did you know that men can also develop breast cancer? From present day detection and diagnosis, through current treatment and care, to the promise of on-going research, the information can be found in this easy-to-read publication.