The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature
Monday, November 2, 2009
Young Auditorium, 7 pm
Evolutional psychologist Steven Pinker is one of the world’s leading cognitive scientists. The Times (London) calls him “academia’s rock star,” with his wild hair and controversial ideas. Currently, Pinker is Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Pinker’s research demonstrates that the human mind is not a blank slate at birth, and that some elements of language are also pre-programmed.
Andersen Library has a number of Pinker’s books (including several books with chapters by him). So take a look at HALCAT to see a list of his books.
Pinker’s book, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, is available at many other UW Libraries and may be requested through Universal Borrowing.
PsycInfo (EBSCOhost) is a great place to search for articles by Pinker.
Just like any other business, the higher education market finds it useful to segment their customers into various groups. Every generation of students has its defining characteristics and corresponding labels. Getting a handle on their core characteristics is good business — whether for faculty in gearing their coursework to their students’ workstyles or for businesses in peddling their products.
This week, The Chronicle of Higher Education looks a little closer into this practice in “The Millennial Muddle: How Stereotyping Students Became an Industry.” But is there really anything new about the millennial generation (people born between 1982 and 2004) — or about trying to label and characterize a generation of students?
If you’re interested in learning more about the millennials, take a look at these books.
Educating the net generation: how to engage students in the 21st century, by Bob Pletka. Main Collection, 3rd Floor, LA227.4 .P58 2007.
Not everyone gets a trophy : how to manage Generation Y, by Bruce Tulgan. Main Collection, 3rd Floor, HF5549.2.U5 T854 2009.
Trophy kids grow up: How the millennial generation is shaking up the workplace, by Ron Alsop. Main Collection, 3rd Floor, HD6270 .A44 2008.
We now have a trial of the online version of Philosopher’s Index (we currently subscribe to the print version). This product is produced by the Philosopher’s Information Center and is a current and comprehensive bibliographic database covering scholarly research in all major fields of philosophy.
The Philosopher’s Index features author-written abstracts covering scholarly research published in journals and books, including contributions to anthologies and book reviews. It contains research published since 1940 including nearly 570 journals from 43 countries with content representing a variety of languages.
Philosopher’s Index will help you as you research philosophical topics such as the nature of good and evil, why there is something rather than nothing, or the existence of God.
Using some shopping savvy, Andersen Library has added a number of new databases despite the shaky global economy and the Library’s flat budget.
EBSCO Databases
Back in the summer, Kyle blogged about the new EBSCO databases available through the Wisconsin Dept. of Public Instruction’s Badgerlink site. Not only do we have those 12 new databases, but we’ve added a few of our own. With the money we saved when Badgerlink picked up the tab for some databases we already paid for, we were able to add 8 additional databases:
eBooks
In addition to article databases, we also added more ebook collections. Last winter, we started a subscription to Literature Criticism Online. Then a deal with the CIC Consortium (Big Ten schools, plus U of Chicago) extended access to the archives of many of the Gale literature criticism series to the other UW campuses. This deal gave us more than $100,000 in literature criticism without cost to UW-W (thanks, UW Madison!). So try out some of these ebook subscriptions:
Publishing Opportunities
For those looking to publish articles in the fields of business and economics, the Cabell’s directories of publishing opportunities in Accounting, Economics & Finance, Management, and Marketing will help you find the best places to publish your work. The College of Business and Economics has picked up the tab for several of these directories.
Since Google pretty much dominates the search engine world, it seems to set the gold standard for web searching. A recent blog entry mentioned the article that compared the scholarliness of Google Scholar content vs. library database content. “How Scholarly Is Google Scholar? A Comparison to Library Databases” (College and Research Libraries, May 2009) concluded that Google Scholar offers a higher percentage of scholarly material than do library databases.
But a Master’s thesis by Hannah M. Noll at Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found a different sort of result. She tested Google Scholar against three library databases: Bibliography of the History of Art, Art Full Text/Art Index Retrospective and Arts & Humanities Citation Index. By using a set of 472 articles, she tested which of the databases retrieved the most number of articles.
I won’t give away the punch line. But you can find out for yourself how well the library databases fared in Noll’s thesis, Where Google Scholar Stands on Art: An Evaluation of Content Coverage in Online Databases.
By the way, the Library subscribes to the Arts & Humanities Citation Index and Art Full Text databases.
The 2009 Pulitzer Prizes in journalism, letters, drama and music were announced on April 20 at Columbia University. The Library provides access to many of these newspapers through its databases. Any of the Prize winning books that are not available in our Library are available to UWW students, faculty and staff from other UW libraries via Universal Borrowing.
JOURNALISM:
LETTERS, DRAMA and MUSIC:
February is Black History Month and the Library has many resources to support research on African-American culture and life. Here are a few specialized sources for your research.
African American Biographical Database
- The African American Biographical Database contains biographical sketches of African-Americans from 1790-1950 taken from rare biographical dictionaries and other reference works
- The database is available to all Wisconsin residents via Badgerlink
Ethnic News Watch
- Ethnic News Watch is a bilingual (English/Spanish) database of magazine, newspaper and journal articles from the ethnic and minority press in the United States
- Presents perspectives different from those found in the much of the mainstream media
- Search by ethnic group, subject, document type (interview, editorial, etc.), geographic location and more
Black Drama 1850-present
- Black Drama contains the text of 1200 plays by 215 playwrights
- Search for plays by title, author, character (including occupation and race), scenes, literary period and theater
- Locate unique and hard-to-find plays from the African-American theater.
African American Music Reference
- African American Music Reference provides access to text reference, biographies, chronologies, sheet music, images, lyrics, liner notes, and discographies which chronicle the diverse history and culture of the African American experience through music.
Reference Universe can help you find articles in specialized encyclopedias, biographical sources, handbooks and other reference-type books. And don’t forget the University Library Catalog and the many other research databases available via the library’s Articles in Journals, Magazines and Newspapers page that can help you with your research.
As the Library relocates and expands its more popular collections, the name of the McNaughton Collection has been changed to Browsing Books. The collection is still located near the cafe. To make the books easier to browse, the fiction, non-fiction, graphic novels and audio books are separated on the shelves. DVDs and VHS tapes will soon be moved to the main floor as well. So stay tuned for more changes on the main floor of the Library!
It’s nearly Halloween and that means the Library is once again fielding questions about the infamous book that either kills its readers or drives them crazy. Obviously there are some good storytellers out there who like to send shivers up the spines of unsuspecting college students. Sometimes the story is told about one book, sometimes it expands to three books. Although such a book (or books) is unlikely to exist anywhere (and certainly not in the UWW Library), you might be interested in checking out the Library’s Online Catalog to find a few of the books that highlight strange goings on in Wisconsin. Here are some examples of local Wisconsin ghost tales and folklore. So enjoy — and beware!
- Haunted Wisconsin, by Michael Norman and Beth Scott
- Weird Wisconsin : your travel guide to Wisconsin’s local legends and best kept secrets, by Linda S. Godfrey)
- The Wisconsin road guide to haunted locations, by Chad Lewis & Terry Fisk
The spring 2008 cyclone that ripped through the Irawaddy Delta region, once again brought the Southeast Asian nation of Myanmar to the forefront of world news for the worst of reasons. As if the country’s political and economic woes were not enough, Mother Nature dished out a disaster of her own. As the world rushed to the aid of the cyclone victims, the military regime that holds the country in its iron grip, just as swiftly blocked the flow of aid to those victims.
Until 1989, Myanmar was known as Burma, the name given it during British rule from 1885-1948. The country obtained independence after World War II and elected new leaders despite an economy tattered by years of fighting. But within a short time, a military coup ousted the government. While there have been internal changes in leadership, the military is still in firm control of the government and swiftly squashes any form of political dissent.
To understand Myanmar’s history, it’s helpful to read George Orwell’s, Burmese Days, a depressing, but illuminating novel set during British rule in Burma in the early 20th Century. Orwell had spent five years in Burma as a military policeman before writing the novel. Emma Larkin (pseudonym) visited Myanmar in 2003 and wrote a fascinating account of her attempts to understand the country through the lens of George Orwell’s writings. In Finding George Orwell in Burma, Larkin travels around the country, meeting casually with citizens as she gauges the literary and political undercurrents of an the country.
You may also want to read Perfect Hostage: A Life of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s Prisoner of Conscience. Aung San Suu Kyi is a political activist who was essentially elected as Prime Minister of Myanmar in 1990 but was prevented from taking office by the military.
