KML News Blast

Sex, SUVs, and Statistics

The states with the shortest commuting times are South Dakota and North Dakota. "You may think that the last place to find a portrait of a nation is a book full of numbers," says Robert J. Samuelson in a January 18th article in Newsweek.** He's referring to the Statistical Abstract of the United States, a compendium of all kinds of facts affecting people of the United States, published annually by the U.S. Census Bureau. As a fan of the Statistical Abstract, Samuelson calls it "often the first go-to source" when he's writing a story, and he likes to browse through the print version and scout out interesting tidbits such as these reported in the Newsweek article:

• "The state with the longest average commuting time is New York, at 31.5 minutes; the states with the shortest are North and South Dakota at about 16 minutes, followed closely by Montana and Nebraska at 17.6."
• "From 1980 to 2007, the number of pickup trucks, vans, and SUVs almost quadrupled to 101.5 million, while the number of cars rose only 12 percent to 135.9 million."
• "Among men 15-44, the median number of lifetime sexual partners is 5.4.... Among women, the median number of partners is 3.3, ..."
• "In 2009, women were 16.8 percent of the U.S. House of Representatives. In other national legislatures, women did better. For Canada, the comparable figure was 22.1 percent; for the Netherlands, 41.3 percent. The United States was roughly on par with Uzbekistan's 17.5 percent."

When you're looking for facts about the United States based on numbers, start with the Statistical Abstract. It's available online on the Web and in print in the Library:

• online: The 2010 Statistical Abstract: The National Data Book
• print: Statistical Abstract of the United States -- located on the first floor of the Library in the Reference Collection: REFERENCE HA202 .U5
• For additional sources of statistics see the list of statistics sources that the Library provides

For questions such as, how many people were without health insurance last year? or what's the survival rate for an organ transplant?, answers can be found in the Statistical Abstract. So take a look. Explore it just for fun or use it when you need facts to support (or refute) contentions in a paper or speech. And be aware, as Samuelson reminds us, "The Stat Abstract provides a flood tide of facts. But how we interpret, discuss, and debate them is the stuff of democracy."

You may read Samuelson's article at Newsweek online or read it ad-free in a library database (Academic Search Premier).

** Samuelson, R. J. (2010, January 18). Suicide, sex, and SUVs: this book covers them all -- and more. Newsweek 155, 20.

Library hours until Jan. 19

Library will be open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on January 14 and 15 and will be closed January 16 through January 18 for the Martin Luther King holiday.

The following regular hours begin on TUESDAY, January 19:

Monday-Thursday 8am-10pm

Saturdays CLOSED

Sundays 2pm-10pm

The Library is closed or open shorter hours during holidays. Please see the Hours page for library hours and holiday exceptions.

Outstanding Academic Titles in 2009

The Mundt Library has or provides access to a number of sources recently recognized as outstanding. Significant print and electronic titles are selected for recognition by Choice subject editors from the titles reviewed in the previous year in the journal Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. The most recent annual list was published in the January 2010. Some of the titles recognized by Choice and owned or subscribed-to by the Mundt Library are:

AP Images. A database, provided by AccuWeather, that provides photographs and other graphics of the the AP News Service that may be used in student presentations and papers. Get to the database by finding AP Images in the "Database Quicklinks" drop-down menu in the upper right corner of the Library's home page.

CareerOneStop. A job-hunting website sponsored by the U. S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration. You can find the Internet link for this by searching for "CareerOneStop" in the Library Catalog or go direct to http://www.careeronestop.org/

MLA handbook for writers of research papers (New York : Modern Language Association of America, 2009). This is THE guide for the MLA style of writing and citation. Located in print on the first floor of the library at REFERENCE LB2369 .G53 2009.

Prairies and plains : the reference literature of a region (by Robert Balay, general editor. Chicago : KWS Publishers, 2009). An analysis of the reference sources—encyclopedias, bibliographies, biographies, almanacs, dictionaries—for investigating questions regarding the history and culture of the Prairies and Plains region. Located in print on the first floor of the library at REFERENCE Z1251.W5 P73 2009

The Princeton companion to mathematics (editor, Timothy Gowers. Princeton : Princeton University Press, c2008). "Imagine taking an overview of elementary and advanced mathematics, a history of mathematics and mathematicians, and a mathematical encyclopedia and combining them all into one comprehensive reference book" (quote from review in Mathematics Teacher). "It has something for nearly everyone, from beginning students of mathematics who would like to get some sense of what the subject is all about, all the way to professional mathematicians who would like to get a better idea of what their colleagues are doing (quote from review in American Scientist). Located in print on the first floor of the library at REFERENCE QA11.2 .P745 2008

We'll provide more of the outstanding titles in future blog entries...

Winter Break HOURS

Library will be open Monday - Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and will be closed Dec 24-25, January 1, and on Saturdays and Sundays from December 19, 2008 - January 12, 2009.

HOURS December 19, 2008 - January 12, 2009:

Saturdays & Sundays CLOSED

Monday-Friday 8am-5pm

Holidays   Dec 24-25 & Jan 1 CLOSED

Midnight hours start Dec 1

The Library's midnight hours start on Tuesday, December 1st, with the Library open until MIDNIGHT on the evenings it would normally close at 10 p.m. The Fall 2009 end-of-semester extended hours are in effect from Tuesday, December 1st through Wednesday, December 16th. Midnight days/dates are:

Tuesday-Thursday | December 1 - December 3 | 8a.m.-midnight

Sunday | December 6 | 2p.m.-midnight

Monday-Thursday | December 7 - December 10 | 8a.m.-midnight

Sunday | December 13 | 2p.m.-midnight

Monday-Wednesday | December 14- December 16 | 8a.m.-midnight

Household products safety

The Household Products Database provides health effects and safe handling information about common household products -- for consumers. What about that shampoo you're using? or the ink for your printer? the flea/tick control for your dog? This free database, provided by the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, can be searched or browsed by product, manufacturer, ingredient, or health effect. For each product, the database lists/describes any acute health effects, chronic health effects, and carcinogenicity (potential to cause cancer); provides handling/disposal information; and gives a list of ingredients with each ingredient linked to additional chemical and related information.

The information in the database comes from Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) that companies are required to compile so that employees know the hazards to which they are regularly exposed, so that employers can assure safe handling and storage, and so that emergency personnel can control and respond to hazardous situations.

However, consumers are not always exposed to the same risk as employees. Some products, especially personal care products like shampoo and deodorant, ARE used daily by consumers. However, the consumer who is painting a room once a year is not affected by risk in the same way as someone who paints every day at work or who works in a factory that makes paint. While this needs to be kept in mind while using the database, the Household Products Database is a great way to be informed about safety and handling of the products we take for granted and often handle carelessly.

Google Scholar goofiness

Google Scholar is not a research database but people use it because it appears to provide the ease of "one-box" searching while producing scholarly results. Unfortunately, it lacks the most basic quality control found in research databases, so do be aware of its limitations when you use it.

To see it's goofiness revealed, go to the advanced search screen in Google Scholar, enter search term(s), and then set date limits of 2011-2025. Of course, there shouldn't be any items for those dates yet, but you will get results. Browsing your results will reveal several problems:

1. Google searchbots look for numbers that look like years, but the searchbots will select numbers that have nothing to do with the date the item was published. These date mistakes are obvious when using the ridiculous publication dates as search limits, but the ridiculous results demonstrate that date range limiting in Google Scholar is hazardous.

2. Author names are frequently incorrect, because the searchbots can't truly recognize names and Google doesn't provide quality control to find and correct the errors. For example, do a search for bullying and limit to 2011-2025. Scan down the results and see Google's attempt to identify the authors names -- K. Theme, GI Procedures, D Learning, P Steer, etc. Among the first 10 results, only one correctly identifies an author.

3. Only one of the results in the search on bullying is scholarly.

Most of the time, you won't be aware of these problematic results, because Google Scholar will display at the top of its results list the items from known scholarly publishers such as Science Direct, etc., where the quality and consistency of publisher data makes it possible for Google to mine the data more accurately. Given that most people scan the early screens and never reach item 15,000 or item 30,000, they will see more accurate authorship and mostly scholarly items.

Library research databases structure the information about articles. That makes it possible to refine searching accurately by date, author, title, source, etc. in order to produce more focused search results than are possible in Google or Google Scholar.

National Information Literacy Awareness Month

October 2009 is National Information Literacy Awareness Month, according to a proclamation statement issued on October 1, 2009 by President Obama. The President specifically calls people "to recognize the important role information plays in our daily lives, and appreciate the need for a greater understanding of its impact."

Excerpts from the proclamation:

Though we may know how to find the information we need, we must also know how to evaluate it. Over the past decade, we have seen a crisis of authenticity emerge. We now live in a world where anyone can publish an opinion or perspective, whether true or not, and have that opinion amplified within the information marketplace.

An informed and educated citizenry is essential to the functioning of our modern democratic society, and I encourage educational and community institutions across the country to help Americans find and evaluate the information they seek, in all its forms.

Read the complete proclamation: The White House -- Proclamation

"College Football" book signing

Meet the author of College Football and American Culture in the Cold War Era at a book signing and short program by its author -- DSU's own history professor Kurt Kemper. The event will be held at the Mundt Library on Tuesday, October 6th from 4:00-5:30. Dr. Kemper will present a short program at 4:30. The bookstore will be present with copies of the book available for sale. Refreshments will be provided.

South Dakota newspapers online

Use the Newsbank database to read South Dakota newspapers from Pierre, Mitchell, Aberdeen, and Rapid City and to read AP news stories from the Sioux Falls area. A link to Newsbank may be found in the "Database Quicklinks" drop down menu in the upper right corner of the Library's home page. Click on "South Dakota News Package" to search on all the newspapers at one time. Or click on the individual newspapers to search one at a time. Newsbank also includes a database of historical Aberdeen newspaper articles from the 1880's to the 1920's (for example, since L. Frank Baum, the author of The Wizard of Oz, once lived in Aberdeen, search the historical papers for "oz").