Housing the Homeless Is the solution more shelters or affordable housing?
The face of homelessness is changing in the United States. In the past, the homeless typically were single men and women who lived on the street or in shelters; many were mentally ill or drug addicts, or both. But today’s homeless may well be a suburban couple with children who lost their home to foreclosure and are staying with relatives or living at a shelter.
As the recession continues to ravage the middle class and the working poor, job losses and medical emergencies add to the number of homeless Americans. Advocates for the homeless also cite a shortage of affordable housing. A 2008 federal government survey showed a one-year 9 percent increase in families relying on homeless shelters. In recent months, local governments and school districts have been reporting homelessness cases more than doubling this year. But funding shortages may force agencies that help the homeless to curtail services.
Are you looking for a quiet place to study for your final exams?
The Wall Street Journal Guide to Starting Your Financial Life gets you off on the right financial foot, from tackling everyday choices like cell-phone plans and pet ownership to big decisions such as smart investment strategies and buying a car or a house. You’ll learn:
This valuable resource puts you in the driver’s seat, so you will be in control of your money and on your way to achieving lifelong financial independence across any economic terrain.
Check out The Wall Street Journal Guide to Starting Your Financial Life, available on the library's New Book Shelf.
ARTstor has collaborated with Christopher D. Roy to share approximately 3,500 images of African art and culture, now available in the Digital Library. The collection features images of West African art and culture, including ceremonial objects as well as documentation of their social context, use, and manufacture, such as performances employing masks, or techniques used in producing pottery, iron, leather, and weaving.
Happy Holidays
Closed: Saturday December 19 - Tuesday January 12
Students can request our list of off campus passwords to access the online resources by using our Password Request Form. Currently enrolled students will receive the list of passwords within minutes by email.
The library will be closing at 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday November 25 for the Thanksgiving holidays.
The Value of a College Education
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The Mind of the Terrorist: The Psychology of Terrorism from the IRA to al-QaedaTerrorism is a form of psychological warfare, requiring a psychologically sophisticated response based on an understanding of how terrorists think. Jerry Post provides us a road map-not only of the mind of the terrorist-but also how we can use that understanding to dissuade, deter, and destroy terrorist groups.
He reveals the powerful motivations that drive these ordinary people to such extraordinary evil by exploring the different types of terrorists, from national-separatists like the Irish Republican Army to social revolutionary terrorists like the Shining Path, as well as religious extremists like al-Qaeda and Aum Shinrikyo. In The Mind of the Terrorist, Post uses his expertise to explain how the terrorist mind works and how this information can help us to combat terrorism more effectively
Check out The Mind of the Terrorist: The Psychology of Terrorism from the IRA to al-Qaeda today, available on the library's New Book Shelf.
Approximately 830 images from the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum are now available in ARTstor. This first release of images to the collection includes paintings, drawings, and sculpture dating from 1901 to 1984. The complete collection in ARTstor will include all of the museum's works by O'Keeffe, representing the entire range of O’Keeffe's oeuvre, from her early experiments with abstraction to mature works.
Call Number: New Book Shelf
RA638 .A45 2008
Vaccines are one of the most important and controversial achievements in public health. Washington-based journalist Arthur Allen explores in depth this dark horse of medicine from the first instances of doctors saving patients from smallpox by infecting them with it to the current controversy over vaccinating preteen girls against the sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer. One thing becomes very clear: fear of vaccination is not a recent problem.
In Vaccine, Arthur Allen tells us that by the early 1960s, rubella was a leading cause of some types of birth defects and miscarriages in America, as well as the motivation for thousands of therapeutic abortions aimed at avoiding giving birth to babies damaged by the virus. By the decade's close, however, pediatricians were able to vaccinate youngsters against polio, rubella, diphtheria, measles and tetanus with shots and droplets. The vaccine inventors were hailed as heroes and international celebrities.
But within a generation, such diseases were all but forgotten in wealthy nations, and parents began weighing the risks of the diseases against the possible side effects of the vaccines. Today, we have come full circle, with many of the vaccine pioneers now vilified and their products blamed for everything from AIDS to autism.
Check out Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver today, available on the library's New Book Shelf.
Women in the Military by Marcia Clemmitt, 
CountryWatch Premium provides socio-demographic, cultural, historical, economic, political, environmental and investment information, along with news, analysis, maps, data and statistics on all of the world’s 192 countries and many non-sovereign nations. CountryWatch Premium is made up of four distinct features, the Country Reviews, Country Wire, CountryWatch Data, and Map Gallery, each complementing the other to provide maximum depth and coverage.
Newsy is a multiperspective online video news site that monitors, synthesizes and presents the world’s news coverage.It take stories in the news and then bring together multiple video (and sometimes text-based) news reports from a number of sources and place them all on a single location. It’s not only a great way to see how a news story is reported but viewing the same story from different news organizations can potentially turn up facts from one source that the other source does not report on.
Invisible China: A Journey Through Ethnic Borderlands
Human Rights Issues by Kenneth Jost
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Charles W. Bryant writes for HowStuffWorks about the Top 10 Things You Should Not Share on Social Networks. Even if you think you’ve got social networking figured out, you will want to read through the author’s discussion and warnings for each item on the list.
Once Upon a Quinceanera: Coming of Age in the USA
Rescuing Children by Rob Kiener,Is the global community doing enough?
The numbers are grim: Every day more than 25,000 children under age 5 – the equivalent of 125 jetliners full of youngsters – die from hunger, poverty or easily preventable illnesses, such as diarrhea and malaria. Millions of others are abandoned, trafficked into prostitution, forced into armed conflict or used as child laborers – mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe.
While governments and nongovernmental organizations struggle to help, aid cutbacks due to the world economic crisis could trigger 200,000-400,000 additional child deaths each year. Meanwhile, experts and policy makers disagree over how best to combat AIDS among children, and whether more foreign aid would do more harm than good. Others question whether the United States should ratify the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. The United States is the only nation besides Somalia that hasn’t adopted the treaty.
To read this article and others visit our Articles and Databases webpage and click on CQ Researcher. Select the Off Campus Access link for information on how to access this resource from off campus locations.
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ARTstor is partnering with Occidental College to share approximately 2,500 images of California architecture from the archives of Robert Winter in the Digital Library. A noted architectural historian, Winter photographed buildings and sites throughout California for over 40 years.
In recognition of Banned Books Week, OCLC NetLibrary and HarperCollins Publishers are pleased to announce that Burn This Book will be available as the October eBook of the Month.
As public concern about Pandemic H1N1 and the upcoming flu season continues to grow, the medical and nursing editors from EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) are offering the latest evidence-based flu-related information available for free.
Gays in the Military by Peter Katel,
ARTstor is collaborating with Northwestern University Academic and Research Technologies to share 20 images, including 7 Quick Time Virtual Reality (QTVR) panoramas, documenting Buddhist sculpture at Shuilu'an Temple in Lantian, Shaanxi Province, China. The temple structure dates from the Tang Dynasty (c. 1000 CE) and the site is famous for its Ming Dynasty (c. 1500 CE) painted sculpture.Real People - Real Help - Real Fast
Shades of Difference: A History of Ethnicity in America by Richard Rees
State Budget Crisis by Alan Greenblatt, September 11, 2009Are permanent changes in spending needed?
State budgets always fall out of balance during recessions, but in the current downturn states are facing the worst budget crunch since the Great Depression. Over the past two years, states have had to close budget gaps exceeding $300 billion. Many have raised taxes, but they’ve mainly dealt with the challenge by cutting spending. State workers are facing layoffs and unpaid furloughs. Social services, including health insurance for children, are being cut dramatically.
Even areas such as K-12 education and public safety are taking hits. The federal stimulus package included fiscal relief for states, but that money will soon run out. And states expect to face continuing problems. Their revenues will grow more slowly than they’ve come to expect over the past 30 years, leading some observers to wonder whether states have to make fundamental changes in the scope and scale of the services they provide.
ARTstor has collaborated with the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin to distribute 458 images of modern European and American architecture, with a special focus on museum architecture. Architects represented include: Alvar Aalto, Frank Gehry, Louis Kahn,José Rafael Moneo,and Alvaro Siza. The images were digitized from slides housed in the School of Architecture's Visual Resources Collection and created by faculty member Wilfried Wang.
Garage to Gigs: A Musician's Guide
Need access to newspapers around the world? The Access World News online database features an intuitive, map-based interface that provides extensive newspaper coverage at any level—local, state, regional, national and international. When news breaks in small towns or large cities across the U.S. and around the globe, Access World News enables researchers to gain valuable local perspectives by zeroing in on the sources closest to the events. 
Health-Care Reform by Marcia Clemmitt,
Is universal coverage too expensive?
For the first time in 15 years, health-care reform has moved to the top of Washington’s agenda. A new Democratic president and Democratic majorities in the House and Senate have declared two major goals: increase coverage to near-universal levels and stop the huge, annual cost increases that are gradually putting health care out of reach for small businesses and low-income families.
Most proposals would subsidize insurance for low-income Americans and create new, government-regulated insurance markets for those without employer-provided coverage. One controversial scheme would create a publicly run insurance plan and require individuals to buy coverage. Congressional Republicans and some Democrats argue, however, that the plan would be too expensive and would allow government to meddle too much in health care. And at angry town hall meetings in August, some even charged, incorrectly, that the arrangement would establish “death panels” that would deny treatment to elderly and disabled patients.
The issues surrounding the Public Health Care Option debate are explored this week in the Facts On File Issues & Controversies database. You can learn about key events in the history of public health care as well as the views from both supporters and critics of the public health care option.
Maths from Scratch for Biologists
Dream in Color: How the Sanchez Sisters are Making History in Congress Getting Started
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