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To Read or Not To Read - NEA study reports decline in reading ability

From the Preface of this 2007 study by the National Endowment for the Arts:

Find the full report at http://www.nea.gov/research/ToRead.pdf

[In this study] "...The story the data tell is simple, consistent and alarming. Although there has been measurable progress in recent years in reading ability at the elementary school level, all progress appears to halt as children enter their teenage years. There is a general decline in reading among teenage and adult Americans. Most alarming, both reading ability and the habit of regular reading have greatly declined among college graduates. These negative trends have more than literary importance. As this report makes clear, the declines have demonstrable social, economic, cultural and civic implications.

"How does one summarize this disturbing story? As American, especially younger Americans, read less, they read less well. Because they read less well, they have lower levels of academic achievement. (The shameful fact that nearly one-third of American teenagers drop out of school is deeply connected to declining literacy and reading comprehension.) With lower levels of reading and writing ability, people do less well in the job market. Poor reading skills correlate heavily with lack of employment, lower wages, and fewer opportunities for advancement. Significantly worse reading skills are found among prisoners than in the general adult population. And deficient readers are less likely to become active in civic and cultural life, most notably in volunteerism and voting.

"Strictly understood, the data in this report do not necessarily show cause and effect. The statistics merely indicate correlations..."

Please look at the report and decide for yourself how strong those correlations are. Post a comment with your reaction. What does this mean for curricula at Camden County College? the College's relationship with the high schools in the area? implications for programming at our new Center for Civic Leadership and Responsibility?

Finding articles on management

Ask-the-librarian recently responded to a question about finding articles on management by outling two approaches. Camden County College students will be prompted to enter their library card number to enter the databases mentioned.

1. If you are looking for "management" journals and magazines then do the following:

a)  Go to the library web site [ http://library/camdenc.edu ] click on Browse Periodical List halfway down the right side.

b)  This takes you to another screen. At this screen go to Browse by Subject and click on Business and Economics.

c)  Another screen opens up. Scroll down to the category Management. You will see three subcategories.  Click on a subcategory such as Management Theory. 

d)  This takes you to a list of full text journals, magazines and newspapers for this category. You will see that many are listed in the article database Business Sources Premier, and some are in LexisNexis and ScienceDirect.

e) Click on the database so that you can browse or search within the specific journal or magazine.

2.  If you are looking for articles on a 'management topic' then do the following:

a)  Go the library web site [ http://library.camdencc.edu ] and find the Popular Article Databases in the upper right hand corner.

b)  Open the pull down menu and click on Business Source Premier.

c)  You will be brought to a search screen where you enter the search terms of your topic.

     If you wish to search for a multi-word phrase such as risk management, put quotation marks around the phrase: "risk management". 

d)  In the second search box, add another key word to narrow down the results.  For example, I did a search on "risk management" and "health care".  Notice I used quotation marks for both phrases because I want to make sure the database searched the words as a phrase.

This should get you started in the right direction. Please make a comment to this post to let us know if you found it helpful or not.  :-)

NJ Knowledge Initiative Suspended

When you click on any of eight article databases, or ReferenceUSA, from the Camden County College Libraries website, you now see a screen that says statewide contracts for certain databases have ended due to lack of funding for the New Jersey Knowledge Initiative (NJKI). Fortunately, the CCC library budget will cover Business Source Premier (BSP) and CINAHL for the next 4 months, through June 30, for our community.

On July 1, the State Library hopes to have new statewide contracts in place for the new budget year. We will encourage the NJKI Advisory Committee to include BSP and CINAHL in its negotiations of these contracts. As BSP is one of the more heavily used of our suite of databases, we will make every effort to continue it. However, if its $10,000+ price tag has to come from college funds, it will strain the library budget and jeopardize our continuation of other resources.

If these two, and the other eight resources that have disappeared are important to your work or study, the NJ State Library asks that you contact the Governor's office to tell him what it means to you -

by mail: PO Box 0001, Trenton NJ 08625

by phone: 609-292-6000

by email: from http://www.state.nj.us/governor/govmail/html, select "Commerce" as your topic, then "Small Business" as your subtopic.

Your local legislators should also know ohat NJKI's resources are valuable to you. Find their contact information at http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/members/legsearch.asp

Be positive as you urge the Governor and local legislators to resume their support for this statewide shared service that had 15 million uses over the two years of its existence, while saving $68.5 million over retail prices to each institution separately.

The eight products that have been suspended for CCC users are:

Biomedical Reference Collection

MEDLINE

Nature Journals Online

Nursing and Allied Health Collection

Pre-CINAHL

ReferenceUSA

Regional Business News

Wiley InterScience Journals

Your Journals @ OVID