How Can I Access the Library from Home?

Students who are currently enrolled in a Southwestern College credit course during the fall 2009 semester can receive off campus access to most of the online resources listed on our Articles and Databases webpage.

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.

Library Hours

The library will be closing at 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday November 25 for the Thanksgiving holidays.
We will reopen on Monday November 30 at 8:00 a.m.

Have a happy and safe Thanksgiving.

This Week in CQ Researcher

The Value of a College Education

by Thomas J. Billitteri,

November 20, 2009

Is a four-year degree the only path to a secure future?

President Obama’s $12 billion American Graduation Initiative – announced in July – aims to help millions more Americans earn degrees and certificates from community colleges. The president wants the United States to have, once again, the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. Along with the administration, economists and many students and parents embrace the notion that higher education offers the most promising ticket to financial security and upward mobility.

However, some argue that many young people are ill-prepared or unmotivated to get a four-year degree and should pursue apprenticeships or job-related technical training instead. The debate is casting a spotlight on trends in high-school career and technical education – long known as vocational education – and raising questions about the ability of the nation’s 1,200 community colleges to meet exploding enrollment demand.

• Is a four-year college degree necessary for financial security?
• Are high-school career and technical-education programs adequately preparing students for upward mobility?
• Can community colleges meet rising demand for their programs?

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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Check It Out

The Mind of the Terrorist: The Psychology of Terrorism from the IRA to al-Qaeda
by Jerrold M. Post
Call Number: New Book Shelf
HV6431 .P669 2009

Terrorism 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.

ARTstor: Georgia O’Keeffe Images

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.

To view the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum collection: go to the ARTstor Digital Library, browse by collection, and click "Georgia O'Keeffe Museum" or enter the keyword search: okeeffemuseum

Southwestern College library has a number of books and other materials about Georgia O'Keeffe. Search the Library Catalog to location these items.

To view ARTstor from off campus locations you need to create an ARTstor account at http://www.artstor.org/ from any computer on the Southwestern College campuses.

Palestine! a new book and a related lecture

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (DS119.7 P39 2007)tells how nearly one million Palestinians were expelled from their homes at gunpoint, civilians were massacred, and hundreds of villages were destroyed in the 1948 Israeli War of Independence. What makes this a gripping story is that author Ilan Pappe is a renowmed Israeli historian.In his acknowledgement to his family, he says, "This book is another attempt to tell them, as much as anyone else, why our beloved country is devastated, hopeless, and torn by hatred and bloodshed."

And on Thursday, November 19, at 11 a.m. in Cafeteria East, another Israeli-born activist for the Palestinian cause will be speaking. Miko Peled is the son of General Matti Peled, who fought in the Six-Day War of 1967. Miko is described by SWC Professor Alejandro Orozco as the "Jewish Jason Bourne", having fought with the Israeli defense forces and been a frogman. Go to Peled's lecture and then read Pappe's book. There is hope for Israel and Palestine.

Check It Out

Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver
by Arthur Allen

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.

This Week in CQ Researcher

Women in the Military by Marcia Clemmitt,
November 13, 2009


Should combat roles be fully opened to women?

The number of women serving in the military has reached historic highs in the past decade, with women now representing more than 14 percent of the total force. In 2008, Ann E. Dunwoody, the Army’s top supply officer, became the first female four-star general. This fall the Army tapped Sgt. Maj. Teresa L. King to head its ultra-tough drill-sergeant training program, the first woman to hold the post.

At the same time, controversy swirls around the under-the-table recruitment of Army and Marine women into some ground-combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan — which is contrary to official military policy — as well as the Navy’s plans to add women to submarine crews. Advocates of continuing to bar women from those jobs argue that sexual tensions and mistrust harmful to the military mission inevitably accompany gender-integration of combat teams. Meanwhile, women vets are suffering high levels of post-traumatic stress disorder and homelessness.

• Are efforts to fully integrate women into the armed services harming military readiness?
  
• Should combat roles be fully opened to women?
  
• Is enough being done to reduce sexual violence in the military?

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.

CountryWatch Database

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.

Country Reviews

A comprehensive online report for each country dynamically updated as major events occur

Access over 100 pages of detailed profiling of each county’s historical, political, economic, social, demographic, business and environmental issues

Features sections on foreign relations, political climate, economic conditions and cultural etiquette

Each country report is downloadable into Abode PDF format



Country Wire

A country-specific, real-time news feed to keep current with breaking news in each country

Access real-time, full-text news articles for each country

Real-time news from internationally recognized news services, or search through the vast, online, historical archive of over 180,000 news articles to find specific topics



CountryWatch Data

A storehouse of ten years of raw data for over 250 different variables for all 192 countries

Contains macroeconomic, economic, health, demographic, cultural, sociological and environmental statistics

Allows you to select multiple countries, regions and variables for cross comparison

Features functions for easy download into CSV format and GIS software to create charts and diagrams



Map Gallery

An online gallery of maps, integrating CountryWatch Data to provide an illustration of global trends

Contains over 170 thematic maps covering cultural, economic, macroeconomic, environment and indicators

Wide coverage includes standard of living, education, energy sector, manufacturing, crops, sector employment, inflation, trade balance, debt, greenhouse gas maps.

You can access CountyWatch from the library's Articles and Databases webpage. Currently enrolled students can also access this database from Off Campus locations.

Internet Resource: Newsy a video news site

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.


Newsy produces it's OWN original video content summarizing the material from each source into a single report. For those who don’t want to view each source video one at a time, here’s a way to learn what each one is reporting in just a minute or two.


You can keyword search Newsy or browse by one of seven categories:

+ World
+ Economy
+ U.S.
+ Politics
+ Tech/Sci
+ Environment
+ Culture


Also a Newsy iPhone app launched a couple of weeks ago.

November e-book of the Month

Invisible China: A Journey Through Ethnic Borderlands
by Colin Legerton and Jacob Rawson
Chicago Review Press, 2009

Authors Colin Legerton and Jacob Rawson, two Americans fluent in Mandarin Chinese, Korean, and Uyghur, throw away the guidebook and journey over 14,000 miles by bus and train to the farthest reaches of China to meet the minority peoples who dwell there, talking to farmers in their fields, monks in their monasteries, fishermen on their skiffs, and herders on the steppe. As they uncover surprising facts about China’s hidden minorities and their complex position in Chinese society, they discover the social ramifications of inconsistent government policies--and some deep human truths as well.

Invisible China will be provided with free, unlimited access November 1-30, 2009.

If you have already established a NetLibrary account through Southwestern College Library, visit http://www.netlibrary.com/and log in to read "Invisible China" or any of our other 20,000 electronic book titles from your home, work or any other off campus location.

If you do not have a NetLibrary account, you can create your own account from any computer on the Southwestern College campuses. Visit our NetLibrary information page .

And the College Book is . . .

The College Book for Spring 2010 is The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. It earned 40 of the ninety votes cast, with Generation Me a close second at 35. The third finalist, with 15 votes, was The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

Copies of the winning book will be placed on seven-day Reserve in the Library later this month. For Spring semester there will be discussion questions and activities across the curriculum.

In a random drawing of all who voted, the following people each won a copy of The Last Lecture: (to protect their confidentiality, only the last letter of the surname has been given)
Jannelle P
Veronica R
Jose S
Patricia T

This Week in CQ Researcher

Human Rights Issues by Kenneth Jost
October 30, 2009



Are they a low priority under President Obama?

Human rights advocates are voicing disappointment with what they have seen so far of President Obama’s approach to human rights issues in forming U.S. foreign policy. They applaud Obama for working to restore U.S. influence on human rights by changing President George W. Bush’s policies on interrogating and detaining terrorism suspects.

But they also see evidence that the Obama administration is reluctant to challenge authoritarian governments for clamping down on political dissidents or rigging elections. As one example, these critics complain that Obama should not have tried to curry favor with the Chinese government by postponing a meeting with the Dalai Lama until after the president visits China in November.

Administration officials insist Obama is devoted to human rights and democratization and cite among other moves the decision to join the United Nations Human Rights Council. Conservative critics, however, say the council is a flawed institution and the United States should have stayed out.

• Is the Obama administration deemphasizing human rights in U.S. foreign policy?
  
• Is the Obama administration reducing U.S. support for democratization in other countries?
  
• Was President Obama right to have the United States join the United Nations Human Rights Council?

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.