Undergraduate Research Award 2008

Are you entering a project in the Undergraduate Research Symposium?

Consider applying for the
Second Annual Louis J. Blume Library Undergraduate Research Award

First Prize: $200
Second Prize: $100

The Award recognizes student researchers who demonstrate skill and originality in the application of library and other information sources in a research project.

You must enter the Undergraduate Research Symposium (deadline Friday, March 7, 2008) to be eligible for this Award.

Research Award application deadline: Monday, March 17, 2008

Photo of 2007 Louis J. Blume Library Undergraduate Research Award winning project posters.

National Intelligence Report on Iran

The unclassified part of the National Intelligence estimate that has been in the news lately, dealing with Iran's nuclear weapons intentions and capabilities, can be found here. It is a nine-page summary of the reports conclusions. (If you have trouble with this link, try the Office of the Director of National Intelligence's home page. The full title of the report is "National Intelligence Estimate Key Judgments.")

Other important intelligence and assessment reports on Iraq were discussed in previous In Blume posts: see them below.

Celebrate American Indian Heritage Month at the Blume Library!

Join us in celebrating American Indian Heritage Month this November. The Blume Library, in partnership with the St. Mary’s University Native American Student Association, is displaying Native North American artifacts this month. The display includes decorative, ceremonial, and other items from several Native American tribes. I encourage you to visit the library during November to see these fascinating artifacts!



The display also includes books of history, anthropology, and current events relating to the indigenous peoples of North and South America. When you visit the library, think about checking out one of these titles. You can also read online over 500 books on Native North Americans and many books on indigenous peoples of South American and Central America via the library's netLibrary database.

Finally, for a unique experience with Native American culture, check out the upcoming powwow sponsored by the StMU Native American Student Association. The powwow will be held this Saturday, November 17th from 10am-4pm in the Pecan Grove. Check out the St. Mary’s online calendar for more information.

Happy Halloween!

Think about this while you're carving your Halloween jack-o-lantern: the U.S. produced 1 billion (that's with a "b") pounds of pumpkins in 2006. And that's just the total of the major pumpkin-producing states. Which, in case you're curious, are Illinois (#1), California, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The value of all this yummy, scary, orange stuff? $101 million, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service.

And speaking of Halloween, don't forget about Boo Bash, on Tuesday, October 30, 2007 , starting at 5:30 pm. The Blume Library is happy to be one of the trick-or-treating stops for the Boo Bash kids.

Learning about Darfur

This fall, St. Mary's students, faculty, and staff have been exploring the issues surrounding the crisis in Darfur, Sudan.

In September 2007, Caesar Ricci and Victoria Smith from the San Antonio Interfaith Darfur Coalition presented their experiences working in the Darfur refugee camps in Chad. They discussed the causes of the Darfur crisis, talked about the refugees’ ongoing health and social problems, and encourage listeners to take action to stop the genocide. The Blume Library hosted an exhibit of Ricci and Smith’s photographs which they took during their visits to the camps.

Next week, the Fall 2007 President’s Peace Commission program will focus on the crisis in Darfur. The PPC program, “Genocide in Darfur: Responding to Their Cries”, will be held from Monday, Oct. 22nd to Thursday, Oct. 25th in the University Center. Speakers from campus and beyond will continue the dialogue about the situation in Darfur and talk about what we can do to help.

But, what if you want more information about the situation in Darfur? The library’s research collection is the place to look. You can find hundreds of articles on Darfur by searching Academic Search Complete. You can also find online government documents and e-books on Darfur in the library’s online catalog. If you need more information, get in touch with a librarian.

To change a problem you must understand the problem. Use the library's research collections to become knowledgeable about the Darfur crisis. And, of course, take advantage of the upcoming PPC program to discuss your questions and thoughts about Darfur.

(image from the International Emergency and Refugee Health Branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; linked at http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/ierh/images/Darfur_sm.jpg)

Entertaining new government blog

I know, using the words "entertaining" and "government" in the same sentence may make you doubt my sanity. But this new blog from the folks at USA.gov really is fun to read. Plus you can learn about some useful and interesting websites that YOUR tax dollars are already paying for.

For example, September 27's post tells you where to find all kinds of (usually) copyright-free images on government websites. Other recent posts deal with saving energy, saving money, eating right, and preserving classic sound recordings.

Governments always get a lot of bad press, but here they seem to have done something right!

General's and Ambassador's Reports on Iraq

The much-anticipated reports by General David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. Ambassador there, have been released. The news has been full of their testimony before Congressional committees the last few days. You can see the reports for yourself at the House Foreign Affairs Committee's website: Gen. Petraeus' report | Amb. Crocker's statement.

Another important report on Iraq

The government keeps churning out reports on the situation in Iraq. Of course, next week, we'll have the Big One, delivered by General David Petraeus on the success or failure of the troop surge. But leading up to that major event, we have this report of the Iraqi Security Forces Independent Assessment Commission, delivered by retired General James L. Jones. The Senate Armed Services Committee has made this report, mandated by a law passed in May, available from its website.

For links to more of the recent reports, see the post below.

Several government reports in the news

If you watched the Daily Show from Aug. 23, you saw a very interesting interview with a gentleman who helped write the Army's Counterinsurgency Field Manual. This is a book you can actually buy, or, if you're curious about it, you can view an online version, made available from the Government Printing Office.

Other government publications have been in the news lately. The latest National Intelligence Estimate came out this week, and an unclassified summary entitled "Prospects for Iraq's Stability: Some Security Progress but Political Reconciliation Elusive" is available from the Director of National Intelligence.

This week also saw the release of a report from the CIA's Inspector General—"OIG Report on the CIA Accountability With Respect to the 9/11 Attacks"—that has received much media attention. This link is to the unclassified executive summary of the report.

For more links to Government Information in the News, check this page on the Library website.

Converting documents to another format—inexpensively and easily

Have you ever wanted to share a file with someone, but you’re not sure that the person who will receive your document has the software necessary to view it? Or perhaps you’d like others to see your document, but you don’t want changes made to it. Converting your file to portable document format—or .pdf—is often a good solution for these types of situations. But what if you don’t have software on your computer, like Adobe Acrobat, to convert your files?

There are several free file conversion services that could provide your solution. One service, PDF Online (http://www.pdfonline.com), walks you through a 3-step conversion process where you select your file, name the converted file, and enter your email address, so the converted output file can be emailed back to you.

Another free online file conversion service, Zamzar (http://www.zamzar.com/) offers even more options. Video and audio format conversion is possible with this service. The process is similar to the PDF Online conversion process, except that you also select the output format you would like.

Of course these services don’t provide as many options as software you might purchase can offer, but for quick and simple file conversions, these services provide inexpensive and convenient solutions.

"Family Jewels" now belong to the whole family

The "Family Jewels" papers, over 700 pages of CIA responses to a request for identification of "activities they thought might be inconsistent with the Agency's charter," were released by the Agency June 26. Another collection of historical documents, known as the CAESAR, POLO, and ESAU papers, which deal with the Soviet Union and China, were also released.

You can find the documents several places on the web, including:

--the CIA FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) page: http://www.foia.cia.gov/
--the National Security Archive at George Washington University : http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB222/index.htm
--National Public Radio: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11417938.

In response to the tragic shootings at Virginia Tech University in April, the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Education, and Justice were directed to meet with educators, mental health experts, law enforcement, and state and local officials to discuss the broader issues raised by these events. The officials have summarized their findings in this "Report to the President on Issues Raised by the Virginia Tech Tragedy".

There is also a link to the report on our "Government Information in the News" page on the Library website, where you can look beyond the headlines and find links to other official reports you might see/hear/read mentioned in the news.

Those Urban Legends Email Messages

Do you ever wonder if that email message that has been forwarded to you by a friend or colleague is true? One place to check out the authenticity of a message that has been forwarded from email address to email address is at the Urban Legends Reference Pages at snopes.com. (Snopes is the surname of a family of characters who appear throughout the works of American writer William Faulkner. See the Faulkner Glossary for more information about the Snopes family.) Barbara and David P. Mikkelson have maintained the Urban Legends Reference Pages since 1995. Entries usually summarize the email claim in a sentence, indicate the true or false status, include a significant portion of the email message, discuss the facts pertaining to the message, and provide additional references for further exploration. The Urban Legends Reference Pages can help you critically evaluate information and determine whether or not to incorporate it into your personal knowledge base.

Hurricane season officially begins next week, on June 1 (and ends November 30)—although we've already had a named subtropical storm, Andrea, which formed in early May. You can keep up to date with the status of this year's storms and warnings, find out how to protect yourself and your property from hurricane hazards, and learn about past hurricanes at the National Hurricane Center's website. The Center's parent agency, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, has a hurricane portal page with links to all kinds of related information.

The Weather Channel's Hurricane Central page predicts an above-average season and provides that important list of names for this year's storms, in both the Atlantic and Pacific.

Graduation just around the corner!

With graduation coming up fast, here are some interesting statistics pertaining to college graduates, as reported by the National Center for Education Statistics:

• In 1999-2000 (the most recent period reported) 84% of graduates with bachelor's degrees were employed one year after graduation, but only 52% had jobs closely related to their fields of study.


• Average annual salary of bachelor’s degree recipients employed full time 1 year after graduation, in 1999-2000, was $37,800. By field of study, the highest average annual salary reported was earned by engineering graduates: $51,100.


• Finland had the highest proportion of college graduates in 2003 of any country: 55.8 bachelor's degree recipients per 100 persons of the typical age of graduation. Australia had 54.8, and the U.S. had 33.4. Of the countries reporting, Mexico had the lowest total at 14.3, but the Czech Republic didn't do much better at 17.3.

Whatever the numbers say, we want to say Congratulations to our Graduates! We're very proud of you and wish you all the best in your future endeavors.

Congratulations to 1st Annual Undergraduate Research Award recipients

On Friday, March 30, 2007, the recipients of the First Annual Louis J. Blume Library Undergraduate Research Award recipients were recognized at the Eighth Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium.


The awards recognize student researchers who demonstrate skill and originality in the application of library and other information sources in a research project.


The First Place Award of $200 was granted to Lucia Sobreviñas for her project, “The Role of High-Tech Industry Clusters in the Face of Globalization: Analyzing Austin and Guadalajara’s Journey Towards Siliconia.”


The Second Place Award of $100 was given to Claudia Lizbeth Valladolid for her project, “College Preparedness of Minorities and St. Mary’s University.”

Congratulations to Lucia and Claudia!

Good news and bad news for access to government information

The mission of the National Archives is to "...serve(s) American democracy by safeguarding and preserving the records of our Government, ensuring that the people can discover, use, and learn from this documentary heritage." And since these records are increasingly available only in electronic form, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) conducts regular harvests to capture this data for preservation. Their latest harvest of House and Senate public web sites happened between November 11 and December 11 of 2006. The more than 4,000,000 pages (42 GB) of information can be browsed or keyword searched at the NARA website.

In the bad news category, one might wonder if future historians might have trouble doing their research. Last month the AP reported that: "More than 1 million pages of historical government documents — a stack taller than the U.S. Capitol — have been removed from public view since the September 2001 terror attacks, according to records obtained by The Associated Press. Some of the papers are more than a century old. In some cases, entire file boxes were removed without significant review because the government's central record-keeping agency, the National Archives and Records Administration, did not have time for a more thorough audit."

Be Poetic in April!

Join us as we celebrate the beauty, music, and truth of poetry during National Poetry Month! Each April, schools, libraries, bookstores, publishers and individuals join the Academy of American Poets to celebrate poets and their poems.

The Academy of American Poetry, online at poets.org, offers several great ways to focus on poetry. For example, you can search poets.org any day of the year to find complete poems and short biographies of American and international poets. However, my favorite feature on poets.org is Poem-A-Day, a service where you sign up to receive a new poem by email each day of April.

The Blume Library offers online access to poetry as well. You can find complete poems when you search either the 20^th Century American Poetry database or 20^th Century English Poetry database. There are also hundreds of books of poetry and poetry criticism in our NetLibrary e-book collection.

For those of you who like to hold a book in your hands…the library also has a large print collection of poetry which can be located by searching the library catalog.

So take a little time to experience poetry this spring. And don’t forget to smell the roses too!

Gale Virtual Reference Library

The Blume Library now provides access to the Gale Virtual Reference Library. Titles currently available include:

New Catholic Encyclopedia
Encyclopedia of Religion

Encyclopedia of Bioethics
Gale Encyclopedia of Science

American Women Writers
Feminism in Literature: A Gale Critical Companion
International Directory of Film and Filmmakers

Encyclopedia of World Biography
Encyclopedia of World Cultures
Worldmark Encyclopedia of the Nations

These fulltext reference works are now accessible 24/7 and via remote access to you wherever you and your computer are located. Articles can be emailed or printed.

All Gale Virtual Library titles can be searched at the same time or you can restrict your search to individual titles. The online format provides expanded search capabilities for difficult-to-find material.

Links to the Gale Virtual Library are available in the Blume Library's Catalog and on the library's website.

Free Access to New York Times Times Select information

The New York Times is now offering free access to the Times Select portal to students and faculty at colleges and universities in the U.S. Along with free access to the current daily paper, you will be able to access the following resources via Times Select (description from the NY Times):

The Archive
Explore The Times archive dating back to 1851. Access 100 articles per month.

Op-Ed & News Columnists
Get exclusive online access to The Times's Op-Ed columnists.

Multimedia
Go beyond the written story with the sights and sounds of video, audio, slide shows and interactive graphics.

Times Preview
Be the first to read selected articles before they are published in Sunday's Times.

News Tracker
Receive personalized e-mail alerts on the topics that you choose.

Talking Points
Learn more about the issues the editorial board has been tracking.

Times File
Save and file any article from NYTimes.com or from around the Web. Access Times File from any computer with an Internet connection.

You can sign up for free Times Select access by going to http://www.nytimes.com/gst/ts_university_email_verify.html.

Women's History Month stats and facts

March 1 begins Women's History Month. But how long has this been so? International Women's Day was first observed in 1909, but it wasn’t until 1981 that Congress established National Women’s History Week during the second week of March. In 1987, Congress expanded the week to a month.

The Census Bureau presents the following interesting stats about women and their status in the U.S.—

• As of November 1, 2006, there are 152 million females in the U.S., as opposed to 148 million males


• The median earnings of full-time women workers over the age of 16 in 2005 was
  $32,168 (77% of the earnings of male workers)


• As of 2005, 85.4% of women 25 or older had completed high school (as opposed to 84.9% of men)


• There were nearly 6.5 women-owned businesses in 2002, up 20% from 1997. These businesses generated $939 billion in 2002.


• As of September 30, 2005, there were 203,000 women serving in the military on active duty. 35,000 women were officers, and 168,000 were enlisted personnel.

And don't forget to check out the Library's Women's History Month display of favorite fictional female characters!

Become an investment guru by using Morningstar at the Blume Library

If you have an interest in investing and investment topics, you should take a look at the Blume Library’s most recent database acquisition: Morningstar.

Morningstar offers detailed information on over 20,000 stocks and mutual funds. Morningstar is famous for the quality of its mutual fund analysis. For mutual funds, you can read analysis on the fund’s performance, examine the fund’s performance over time, find out the fund’s current top five holdings, and get fund purchasing information. For stocks, the database includes detailed information such as analyst reports, ratings, prices, company financial statements, annual financial filings, and dividend and return information.

Morningstar also includes more sophisticated features. You can use the Screeners feature to build customized lists of stocks and/or mutual funds based on a variety of performance, ratings, cost, and management data. The database also offers a neat feature called the Portfolio X-Ray. With the X-Ray, you can enter investments from your own portfolio (or investments you are interested in) and get an idea of the portfolio’s strengths and weaknesses.

Morningstar is available online from the Blume Library website. Students, staff, and faculty may access the database both on-campus and off-campus.

Invest wisely…by using library resources like Morningstar.

Undergraduate Research Award

Are you entering a project in the Undergraduate Research Symposium?

Consider applying for the
First Annual Louis J. Blume Library Undergraduate Research Award

First Prize: $200
Second Prize: $100

Recognizes student researchers who demonstrate skill and originality in the application of library and other information sources in a research project

Symposium application deadline: Friday, March 2, 2007
Research Award application deadline: Friday, March 9, 2007

Candy and Flowers for Valentine's?

Planning on sending some of these traditional Valentine's Day presents to that special someone next week? Join the crowd. The Census Bureau and the Department of Agriculture offer these interesting facts about the production and sale of these treats from their datafiles:

• U.S. firms producing chocolate and cocoa products shipped $13.9 billion worth in 2004, and in 2005 the per capita consumption of candy by Americans was 25.7 pounds. There were 3,267 confectionery and nut stores in business in the U.S. in 2004.
• The wholesale value of domestically-produced cut flowers in 2005 was $397 million, with $39 million coming from the sale of roses. In 2004, there were 21, 667 florists nationwide. Surely one is conveniently located for you!

For information on other commodities, as well as all kinds of other statistics, visit the Census Bureau and the National Agricultural Statistics Service.

This Far by Faith

Spiritual and religious roots have been a major motivation in the civil rights movement and the struggle for social justice. In honor of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday, the 20th anniversary of the Martin Luther King, Jr. March in San Antonio, and in honor of February's Black History Month, the current library book display focuses on African-American religious experiences. The title, This Far by Faith, is borrowed from the title of the Public Broadcast System's series and companion book by Juan Williams and Quinton Hosford Dixie. Visit our library display to see other books related to this topic.

Clouds of Words

How does the State of the Union address you heard last night compare to those of years past? What words are most often used in these kinds of speeches? Do the most frequently used words--and concepts--change over time?

If you find these to be intriguing questions, you'll want to take a look at this Presidential Speeches Tag Cloud, which graphically, and attractively, shows the most frequently used words in Presidential speeches from George Washington to George W. Bush. The most-used words in the State of the Union address of 1790 were "blessings," "expedient," and "requisite." Whereas last night "Iraq" and "terrorists" were the top words.

Looking at two famous inaugural addresses, Kennedy's "economic," and "strength" the most, whereas Lincoln's first inaugural used "constitution" most frequently.

If you're interested in how the "cloud" was constructed, there are notes on the website. And you can even download the open source software and make clouds of your own speeches.

Welcome Back!

Welcome back for the Spring 2007 semester at St. Mary's University!

The library is now back to regular semester hours. That means you have plenty of time in which you can visit the library for research and research assistance.

Don't wait...start thinking about those research projects now. Remember, the library offers access to extensive online resources including research databases, e-books, online government publications, and research assistance by email through the library's Ask a Question service. For more help, stop by the Reference Desk to discuss your project with a librarian.

Good luck!