This Week In CQ Researcher

Offshore Drilling
by Thomas J. Billitteri, June 25, 2010


Is tougher federal oversight needed?

The blowout two months ago at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico has turned into one of the worst environmental catastrophes in U.S. history. Well owner BP failed in repeated attempts to stop the undersea gusher spilling millions of gallons, and experts say it may be months before it is brought under control. The blowout has exposed corner-cutting by BP and massive regulatory failures at the Minerals Management Service, the federal agency charged with overseeing the 4,000 offshore drilling facilities in the Gulf.

The spill also has laid bare ideological differences over national energy policy and heightened debate over how to balance environmental protection with the economy’s dependence on oil. Pressed by President Obama, BP promised to set aside $20 billion to pay damage claims. Still, the White House has been at a loss to stem political fallout from the disaster, which ultimately may help define the Obama presidency, much as Hurricane Katrina helped define the legacy of George W. Bush.

• Will the spill cause irreparable environmental damage?
  
• Are offshore drilling regulations too weak?
  
• Should offshore drilling continue?

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.

Holiday Monday July 5

Southwestern College library will be closed on Monday July 5 for Independence Day. The library will reopen on Tuesday July 6 at 8:00 am.

Have a very happy and safe Fourth of July weekend.

Current Periodicals On Display

The library provides a display of over 50 current periodical titles in our Current Periodicals display area near the entrance of the library.

You'll find the most recent issues of various magazines like, Business Week, Fitness, Parents, Road and Track, Rolling Stone, Scientific American, Vogue and many other titles.

To view our complete list of periodicals, use our online Periodicals Holding List

Drop by and browse the information in over 50 magazines next time your in the library.

Library hours during the summer session are Monday through Thursday 8:00 am to 7:00 pm, and closed Friday through Sunday.

Check It Out

Selling Online 2.0: Migrating from eBay to Amazon, craigslist, and Your Own E-Commerce Website
by Michael Miller
New Book Shelf HF5548.32 .M538 2009

This detailed guide offers sellers alternatives to eBay auctions, and, more importantly, strategies to assess which online retail web sites are the best for selling which products and services. Although the book does not address doing business using social networking web sites, such as Facebook, the analytical techniques presented here will assist business professionals with making decisions about using all such Web 2.0 applications. Miller also discusses multichannel selling and preparing business plans. With more sales transactions taking place online than ever before, this book is a useful resource for anyone considering selling online.
reviewed by Caroline Geck

Check out Selling Online 2.0 by Michael Miller, available now in the library on the New Book Shelf HF5548.32 .M538 2009.

Check It Out

More Than Title IX: How Equity in Education has Shaped the Nation
by Katherine Hanson
New Book Shelf LC1752 .H39 2009

Title IX was signed into law in 1972, ensuring that no federally-funded educational program could exclude anyone based on gender. Originally drafted to guarantee women access to school athletics, Title IX has had a far-reaching effect on all aspects society, starting a legacy of true equal-rights legislation for women that opened doors and minds. Title IX's impact on both genders, and on society as a whole, is an important focus of this volume, which merges straightforward history with firsthand accounts from those who took on the monumental task of changing politics and people in the 1960s and 1970s.
( Review from Publisher Weekly)

Check out More Than Title IX: How Equity in Education has Shaped the Nation by Katherine Hanson, available now in the library on the New Book Shelf - LC1752 .H39 2009 and in a digital electronic book format. To access our electronic books from off campus locations, you MUST first create a NetLibrary account from an on-campus computer.

This Week in CQ Researcher

Water Shortages
by Jennifer Weeks, June 18, 2010

Is the United States facing a crisis?

Clean water is a critical resource not only for drinking but also for agriculture, energy production and high-tech manufacturing. But severe drought — once seen as an issue only for the arid West — has become a fact of life in many parts of the United States. Meanwhile, many cities depend on water mains and sewer pipes more than 100 years old. Environmental laws have sharply cut water pollution and improved drinking-water quality since the 1970s. But experts say the nation needs to spend more than $250 billion in the next several years to modernize water treatment systems, and current investments are falling short. The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed new ways to regulate water pollutants, and economists say charging more for water would promote conservation. But whether Americans will pay more for a resource that many view as a basic human right remains to be seen.

• Is the United States facing a water crisis?
  
• Can we afford stronger water-protection measures?
  
• Does hydraulic fracturing pollute water?

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.

Check It Out

Chasing Molecules: Poisonous Products, Human Health, and the Promise of Green Chemistry
by Elizabeth Grossman
New Book Shelf RA1226 .G76 2009

Outing the truth about commonly used hazardous chemicals that are leaching out of everything from plastic bottles to children’s toys and infiltrating the biosphere and our bodies to deleterious effect. The Susan Grossman tracks the migration of synthetic, petroleum-based molecules emitted by pesticides, cosmetics, food containers, and vinyl, to name just a few sources. She accompanies scientists to China, the Great Lakes, and the Arctic,where these chemicals (82,000 and counting) are found in alarming quantities. These are dramatic expeditions, but even more revealing are Grossman’s quests through mountains of daunting lab studies and reports, which reveal that we are continually ingesting chemicals that disrupt endocrine hormone functions and other biological and genetic mechanisms and that cause cancer and other diseases.

Grossman profiles the worst offenders,including bisphenol A (BPA) and phthalates,but she also portrays the good guys who are coming to the rescue, John Warner and Paul Anastas, founders of the burgeoning green chemistry movement. Green chemistry aims to replace hazardous synthetic chemicals with chemicals that are “benign by design.”
reviewed by —Donna Seaman, Booklist, September 15, 2009.

Check out Chasing Molecules: Poisonous Products, Human Health, and the Promise of Green Chemistry by Elizabeth Grossman, available now on the New Book Shelf RA1226 .G76 2009

ARTstor: Works by Judy Chicago

ARTstor is collaborating with Judy Chicago to share approximately 400 images of works by the artist in the Digital Library. Judy Chicago (b. 1939) is an artist, author, feminist, and educator whose career spans four decades. Her art has been frequently exhibited in the United States and internationally, and her ten published books are distributed worldwide.

Chicago's most well-known work, The Dinner Party (1974-1979), is an icon of feminist art and was executed with the participation of hundreds of volunteers. This monumental multimedia project is comprised of a triangular table with 39 individual place settings for notable women arranged chronologically along the three wings. Collectively, the place settings trace a symbolic history of women in western civilization from prehistory through the 20th century.

Demonstrating an openly female point of view through collaborative art, Chicago helped to initiate a worldwide feminist art movement. In the early 1970s, Chicago pioneered feminist art education through unique programs for women at California State University, Fresno and later (with the American painter Miriam Schapiro) at the California Institute of the Arts.

To view the Judy Chicago collection go to the ARTstor Digital Library, and search the keywords: judy chicago

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

Southwestern College library also has books and materials written by and about Judy Chicago. For library hours and other information pleave visit our website http://www.swccd.edu/~library/.

Check It Out

What we think we know about 9/11 and what really happened are two different things, according to the new book "The Ground Truth: The Untold Story of America Under Attack on 9/11 " by the former senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission John Farmer. As someone who helped write the best-selling 9/11 Commission Report , Farmer now asserts that not only was the official version put forth by the government inaccurate but also that it conveyed a false sense of security. Using recently declassified and released sources, Farmer blends legal and political expertise to paint a startling revised picture of 9/11.
( Review from Leslie Lewis, Library Journal 8/1/2009)


Check out The Ground Truth: The Untold Story of America Under Attack on 9/11 by John Farmer, available now in the library on the New Book Shelf HV6432.7 F37 2009.

Credo Reference

Credo Reference is an online reference service made up of full-text books from the world's best publishers. Whether you're working on a research paper, trying to win trivia or just curious, Credo Reference has something for you.

As easy to use as your favorite search site and fully citable in any research paper, Credo is the perfect place to get your research started.

Whether you are just starting your project, looking to add some interesting images to your final draft or building a bibliography, Credo Reference has something for you.

Credo Reference offers:

•Tools to quickly map your paper topic
•Citable sources for your bibliography
•Answers to your research questions
•Thousands and thousands of images, charts, graphs, diagrams and more

To access Credo Reference visit are Article and Databases website. Select the Off Campus Access link for information on how to access this resource from off campus locations.

This Week in CQ Researcher

Health-Care Reform
by Marcia Clemmitt, June 11, 2010

Is the landmark new plan a good idea?

The health-care reform legislation signed into law by President Obama on March 23 marked the biggest attempt to expand access to health care since Medicare and Medicaid were launched in the 1960s. The massive legislation will help 32 million Americans get health insurance coverage and bans insurers from denying coverage to those with preexisting illnesses. It also expands Medicaid to all poor people – except illegal immigrants – and gives subsidies to low- and low-middle-income people to buy insurance.

Opponents, including every Republican member of Congress, say the coverage expansion is simply too expensive, at a price tag of about $1 trillion over 10 years. They also say new fees and taxes to help pay for the coverage place too big a burden on currently insured people. Meanwhile, a group of state attorneys general is challenging the constitutionality of the law’s requirement that everyone buy health insurance.

• Is the new health-care reform law a good idea?
  
• Will people with insurance lose out under the new law?
  
• Will health care reform make care more affordable?

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.

Got A Question? Need An Answer?

Try our Online Reference Chat Service

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http://www.swccd.edu/~library/ask.htm

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The making of African America : the four great migrations
by Ira Berlin.
New Book Shelf E185 .B473 2010

Ira Berlin offers a fresh reading of American history through the prism of the great migrations that made and remade African and African American life. The first was the forcible deportation of Africans to North America in the 17th and 18th centuries, followed by their forced transfer into the American interior during the 19th century. Then came the migration of the mid-20th century as African-Americans fled the South for the urban North, and the arrival of continental Africans and people of African descent from the Caribbean during the latter part of the 20th century.

Berlin analyzes the movements, the dynamics of changes in customs and mores, as well as the sense of place developed by African Americans as they adjusted to each migration, voluntary and involuntary. He explores the changes in culture, music, politics, social institutions, and economics that defined each movement and redefined African Americans. Berlin also explores the latest migration, tensions, and feelings of kinship between native-born African Americans and newcomers, and the ultimate impact on perceptions of what it means to be black in America.
( Review from Vanessa Bush, Booklist 1/1/2010)

Check out The making of African America : the four great migrations by Ira Berlin., available now in the library on the New Book Shelf E185 .B473 2010.

Check It Out

March of the Microbes: Sighting the Unseen
by John L. Ingraham
New Book Shelf QR56 .I54 2010

Though most people are only familiar with microbes that cause disease (germs, etc.), those "felonious" microbes actually constitute a tiny percent of all microbes, and just a single chapter in this fascinating survey of single-celled organisms and their role in shaping life on Earth, from University of California Professor Emeritus of Microbiology Ingraham. Among other processes, Ingraham explains how vaccines have been developed, frequently with the aid of other microbes; the carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur cycles which make life possible; and how microbes give us cheese, wine, and other foodstuffs.

Ingraham also discusses recently-discovered microbes inhabiting extreme environments (hot, cold, salty, etc.) that promise to tell us much about the evolution of life on Earth and what life on other planets might look like. Ingraham's entertaining, breezy style makes even difficult topics accessible, and every chapter contains intriguing anecdotes about microbes in history (did the CIA try to poison Castro's cigars with botulinum toxin?).
(Review from Publisher's Weekly)

Check out March of the Microbes : sighting the unseen, available now in the library on the New Book Shelf QR56 .I54 2010.

ARTstor: Fowler Museum

The Fowler Museum's collections include more than 150,000 art and ethnographic objects and approximately 600,000 archaeological objects from ancient, traditional, and contemporary cultures around the world. The collection in ARTstor will have a particular focus on the arts of Africa, reflecting the museum's status as a repository of one of the largest and finest collections of African art in the United States. The museum also has significant holdings of African diaspora arts from Brazil, Haiti, and Suriname.

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

This Week in CQ Researcher

Jobs Outlook
by Peter Katel, June 4, 2010

Is a college education important?

The economy has finally started to grow again, but more than 8 million jobs that disappeared after the economic crisis began in late 2007 haven’t returned, and the unemployment rate is nearly 10 percent. To be sure, 290,000 jobs have been added, but the jobless rate remains high. People who do have jobs are working harder, increasing productivity. In another major change on the job front, advances in technology are intensifying the allure – to employers – of offshore jobs.

What’s the best strategy for getting a job in today’s tough job market? Experts may argue over how many jobs are at risk, but no one disputes that a college degree gives by far the best salaries and the best odds for finding a job – and the ability to switch careers if necessary. Demand is also rising at the low end of the market, but mid-level jobs that fall in between the two extremes may be most at risk.

• Is the job market most dynamic only at the high and low ends of the scale?
  
• Does offshoring present a major threat to U.S. jobs?
  
• Are “green” jobs an important source of new employment?
  

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.