And the Best Executive M.B.A. Programs Are…

Working with Management Research Group and Critical Insights, we asked thousands of students and hundreds of companies to rank executive M.B.A. programs in a host of categories, with a focus on how well they develop management and leadership skills. The result is a ranking of 25 schools world-wide that takes into account the rigor needed to build tomorrow’s corporate leaders and C-suite executives.

Topping the list: Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, which ranked No. 1, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, which came in No. 2. The two schools have among the largest E.M.B.A. programs, with 406 students currently enrolled in Wharton’s two programs and 843 candidates in the seven Kellogg programs, including four international partnerships and a satellite campus in Miami.

What set Kellogg and Wharton apart? The schools got high marks from companies — nearly double those of their nearest competitors — which gave them a clear lead overall. And those stellar grades far outpaced their lower marks from students.

Source: Wall Street Journal

+ Andre Kostelanetz Papers Donated to Library of Congress (Business Wire, via MarketWatch)

+ Concordia Launches Canadian Women Artists’ Database (Concordia University)

+ UK — Hospital to create database of all knife and gun wounds (Evening Standard)

+ LexisNexis Study Finds No Media Bias Against Palin, GOP — So Far (Editor & Publisher)

+ Parkinson’s Disease Information Added to NIHSeniorHealth Web Site (National Institutes of Health)

+ John E. Taylor, National Archives specialist, dies (Associated Press, via newsday.com)

Logging On for a Second (or Third) Opinion

…paging Dr. Google can lead patients to miss a rich lode of online resources that may not yield to a simple search. Sometimes just adding a word makes all the difference. Searching for the name of a certain cancer will bring up the Wikipedia entry and several information sites from major hospitals, drug companies and other providers. Add the word “community” to that search, Ms. Fox said, and “it’s like falling into an alternate universe,” filled with sites that connect patients.

As a result, said Dr. Ted Eytan, medical director for delivery systems operations improvement at the Permanente Federation, “patients aren’t learning from Web sites — they’re learning from each other.” The shift is nothing less than “the democratization of health care,” he went on, adding, “Now you can become a national expert in your bedroom.”

Source: New York Times

A Tale of Two Library Plans

For months, Escambia County commissioners and the Pensacola City Council have avoided talking about the elephant in the room — the library system.

The county has agreed in the past to take over funding of library operations, but that’s stalled for now partly by recent property tax reform measures that led to budget cuts.

In the meantime, the city has $6 million in local option sales tax money it plans to spend by 2011 on a new 25,000-square-foot downtown library, to replace the current one. The city already is looking to hire an architect to design it.

That move forward by the city without a discussion with the county bugs commissioners and has them confused about the city’s intent. That’s because the county has about $18.7 million set aside to build a new 60,000-square-foot central library in the Nine Mile Road area in 2012.

Source: Pensacola News-Journal

Send Your Name Around The Earth On NASA’s Glory Mission

Members of the public can send their names around Earth on NASA’s Glory satellite, the first mission dedicated to understanding the effects of particles in the atmosphere and the sun’s variability on our climate.

The “Send Your Name Around the Earth” Web site enables everyone to take part in the science mission and place their names in orbit for years to come. The Web site, where participants can submit their information, is located at:

http://polls.nasa.gov/utilities/sendtospace/jsp/sendName.jsp

Participants will receive a printable certificate from NASA and have their name recorded on a microchip that will become part of the spacecraft. The deadline for submitting names is Nov. 1, 2008.

The Glory satellite will allow scientists to measure airborne particles more accurately from space than ever before. The particles, known as “aerosols,” are tiny bits of material found in Earth’s atmosphere, like dust and smog.

Source: NASA

‘Doing What Works’ Website Adds New Guidance on Effective Teaching

What is “spacing” learning and how does it benefit teachers and students? Do students learn more when solved problems are alternated with problems to be solved? And how do “higher order” questions enhance student learning and help students articulate their answers?

Visitors to the U.S. Department of Education’s “Doing What Works” Web site can find out the answers to these questions and much more. Just click on http://dww.ed.gov, and enjoy an engaging and interactive experience with Psychology of Learning: How to Organize Your Teaching, the latest addition to the site, which will empower educators and administrators with research-based strategies to help instructors organize their teaching and improve student learning.

Source: U.S. Department of Education

Absentee and Early Voting Laws

Early and absentee voting laws vary widely, and are decided on a state level. The grid lays out the basic pattern of laws across states, with some quick facts at the end. The table below has a more detailed outline of each state’s laws, as well as links to the relevant Codes and Statutes.

Source: Early Voting Information Center

Posted 29 September 2008 on DocuTicker
+ The Hedge Fund Game (Brookings Institution)
+ Trade-Offs Getting Tougher: Problems Paying Medical Bills Increase for U.S. Families, 2003-2007 (Center for Studying Health System Change)
+ Euthanasian and Assisted Suicide: International Experiences (Library of Parliament - Canada)

Organically Produced Foods: Nutritive Content

This bibliography contains 283 citations for articles, conference papers, reports and book chapters published 2000 through July 2008. Cited works focus specifically on the nutrient content of organically produced foods: vitamin and mineral content, phytonutrients (phytochemicals), fatty acids and related chemical constituents. Each cited item relates directly to food produced from organic agricultural and/or handling practices.

All items cited in this bibliography were published in English; however, important work pertaining to this topic is being conducted internationally and reported on in many languages. This bibliography updates but does not duplicate AFSIC’s 2000 Special Reference Brief 2000-03, Organically Produced Foods: Nutritive Content (216 citations, 1945-2000) available online at http://www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/pubs/srb0003.shtml.

Source: Alternative Farming Systems Information Center, National Agricultural Library (USDA)

See also: Organically Produced Foods: Food Safety Issues

The Feminization of Librarianship

Since the proliferation of American public libraries began in the late nineteenth century, library work has been associated with women. As in other female dominated fields the salaries and benefits are less than those fields that associated with traditionally male skills and personality traits. When women initially entered the field in high numbers their economic options for professional and intellectual expression were limited and thus the role of the librarian was adopted as a female identity that fit conveniently into prevailing societal norms of a women as service-oriented nurturers.

The discussion about women in librarianship has often failed to address the root causes of divisions in gender that are wrongly assumed to be inherent. Librarians must address the roots of why femininity is debased in the workplace and also seek to illuminate the vast contributions women have made in the field.

Source: LibGig

+ Cone Finds That Americans Expect Companies to Have a Presence in Social Media (Cone)

+ More ‘Open Teaching’ Courses, and What They Could Mean for Colleges (Wired Campus/CHE)

+ Canadian Legal Information Institute Adds 25 Labour Databases (Library Boy)

+ India’s first e-law library inaugurated (The Hindu News)

+ Public Library Hosts Role-Playing Game Convention (Wired News)

+ National Archives Makes Available Additional Rosenberg Grand Jury Transcript (The National Archives)

Networked Workers: Most workers use the internet or email at their jobs, but they say these technologies are a mixed blessing for them

The majority of employed adults (62%) use the internet or email at their job, and many have cell phones and Blackberries that keep them connected even when they are not at work.

Working Americans express mixed views about the impact of technology on their work lives. On the one hand, they cite the benefits of increased connectivity and flexibility that the internet and all of their various gadgets afford them at work. On the other hand, many workers say these tools have added stress and new demands to their lives.

One of the major impacts of the internet and cell phones is that they have enabled more people to do work at least occasionally from home. Some 45% of employed Americans report doing at least some work from home and 18% of working Americans say they do job-related tasks at home almost daily.

+ Full Report (PDF; 336 KB)

Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project

Problem: Boys Don’t Like to Read. Solution: Books That Are Really Gross

Publishers are hawking more gory and gross books to appeal to an elusive market: boys — many of whom would rather go to the dentist than crack open “Little House on the Prairie.” Booksellers are also catering to teachers and parents desperate to make young males more literate.

“There has been a real revolution” in books that “have more kid appeal,” especially when it comes to boys, says Ellie Berger, who oversees Scholastic’s trade division. “It’s a shift away from the drier books we all grew up with.”

Last year, U.S. publishers released 261 new works of juvenile fiction aimed at boys, more than twice the number put out in 2003, according to Bowker’s Books in Print database. There were 20 nonfiction entries for boys, compared with just four in 2003.

Source: Wall Street Journal

How Do We Measure Use of Scientific Journals? A Note on Research Methodologies

Scientific journals represent a significant and growing part of the libraries and many researchers have attempted to measure their use by various methodological approaches till date. In this paper, the author reviews the methodologies employed by researchers working on scientific journals usage. It aims to present an overall picture of the research methods used in the area, in a way that will be of value to anyone seeking to study scientific journals. The author reviews four main research methodologies which are being used for profiling scientific journals usage including questionnaire, interview, citation analysis and transaction log analysis.

+ Full Paper (PDF; 78 KB)

Source: Scientometrics (via E-LIS)

Resource of the Week: Lists & Rankings
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

Everyone seems to love lists and rankings. There is perennial interest in biggest, richest, highest rated, most popular, etc., etc. Of course, some of these compilations are highly subjective, e.g. The Top 18 New Money Management Sites. But many of these do have reference or research value, such as U.S. Census Bureau lists, e.g., Fastest Growing Large Cities in the United States.

Here on ResourceShelf, we’ve kept track of Lists & Rankings for as long as we’ve been in existence. (seven-plus years, if you’re counting). This has its own category here, if you haven’t already noticed. Half a dozen recent postings:
+ The 50 Richest Members of Congress
+ Largest US Bankruptcies
+ America’s Top Wired Colleges, 2008 Edition
+ 2008-2009 U.S. Television Market Rankings (PDF)
+ America’s Hardest Drinking Cities
+ UK Top Consumer Brands

Special issues of magazines often contain valuable list/ranking information that would otherwise be difficult to find — i.e., for specific industries, professions, etc. Gary’s original List of Lists, now maintained by Special Issues, is a good place to start looking. We also like the James J. Hill Reference Library’s Special Issues Database. Once you find what you need, you can search for it online or in your local library, or order it from Hill’s document delivery service. (We featured Hill Library’s BizToolKit as a Resource of the Week last August.)