The New Media Consortium's "Horizon Report" for higher education cites games and gamification with a time-to-adoption of two to three years. The use of digital games is almost ubiquitous in social media and is swiftly gaining popularity in other industries as well. Many in higher education have embraced gamification due to its…

A hundred years after Marie Curie received her Nobel Prize in Chemistry, this arm of science is pointing the way to a more sustainable future. Growing movements like green chemistry, which strives to create alternative and new chemical reactions that produce no harmful waste products, and molecular engineering hold great potential for industry,…

The lyrics from the Ervin Drake song made famous by Frank Sinatra, "It Was a Very Good Year," kept coming to mind in 2010, despite the economy. While the quantity of works produced declined, and publishers suffered along with everyone else, there was no diminution in quality. With reduced budgets for collections, librarians were forced to make…

The Notable Children's Videos, Recordings, and Great Interactive Software for Kids lists are compiled annually by committees of the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA). This article presents the lists for 2009 that were released in January during the ALA Midwinter Meeting in…

Soccer, or football as it is called in the rest of the world, is the most popular and fastest-growing global sport, with an estimated 240 million people regularly playing what Brazilian star Pele called "the beautiful game." Millions, worldwide, watch it on television. In 2006, the average viewership for each match of the month-long World Cup was…

In 1790, Congress passed the first act governing naturalization, which provided that any free, white, male or female adult alien who had resided within the limits and jurisdiction of the United States for a period of two years was eligible for citizenship. From this humble beginning the current system of granting naturalized citizenship developed,…

The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), announced its 2009 annual lists of Fabulous Films for Young Adults and Amazing Audiobooks for Young Adults ages 12 to 18. This article presents the titles that were released in January 2009 during the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Denver,…

Books on the topic of pregnancy abound; in fact, publishers are more attentive to the subject than ever. According to R.R. Bowker's "Books in Print," 226 nonfiction pregnancy titles were published in 2006, a 30 percent increase over the decade before. Add to this glut all the magazines, DVDs, web sites, and TV programs available on the topic, and…

In 2001, the Libraries Serving Disadvantaged Persons (LSDP) Section of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), published the "International Resource Book for Libraries Serving Disadvantaged Persons." This publication is a seventy year retrospective which chronicles the history of the Section from 1931 to 2001.…

If we read to discover new worlds, we also read to find ourselves. For gays and lesbians, this act of discovery can be problematic: literature has so often excluded them. In the last decades, as gays and lesbians have grown increasingly vocal in the effort to secure their rightful place in society, a broad range of fiction has emerged that…

Just over 50 years ago, Arthur Frommer demonstrated the affordability and accessibility of European travel for everyone with the publication of his groundbreaking "Europe on $5 a Day." Today, the market is saturated with a plethora of travel resources (print, web, and video) that cater to those who do not want to break the bank in order to satisfy…

Once the pristine pastime of blue bloods tracing their pedigrees back to the "Mayflower," genealogy--from hobby to serious endeavor--has broadened and deepened into a democratic avocation. It was Alex Haley's "Roots," published 30 years ago, with the hugely popular TV miniseries coming a year later, that likely started the boom. Television still…

Many a bar fight has broken out over punk rock's birth. Fans tend to split into two camps: those who credit the Ramones' first appearance at CBGB in New York City circa 1974 and those who point to the early galvanizing Sex Pistols shows in London around 1975-76. It is probably more accurate to say the New York and London scenes are two sides of…

The dynamic and rapidly expanding field of neuroscience traditionally has involved the study of the nervous system from a biological/medical standpoint. In recent years, however, the science has become multidisciplinary, attracting researchers from computer science, psychology, sociology, philosophy, and even the humanities. For public and college…

Reviews the experience of the Council on Library Resources (CLR) in funding programs that attempt to more closely integrate academic libraries with undergraduate education: CLR Fellowsnip Program, CLR-NEH College Library Program, and CLR Library Service Enhancement Program. Appended are bibliographies of articles about CLR programs and lists of…