In Every Tongue–Speaking about Gary Tobin

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The Center for Afro-Jewish Studies and the Jewish Studies Program held its 3rd Annual Symposium on Race and Judaism on November 19, 2009. The day’s program was devoted to themes in memory of the late Dr. Gary Tobin who died on July 6, 2009. Gary Tobin was the President of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, and, along with his wife Dianne, the founder of Be’chol Lashon/In Every Tongue, “a think-tank devoted to the study of Jewish diversity and bringing diverse communities of Jewish people together across the globe.”  (View this short film about Be’chol Lashon.)  Gary Tobin was a social scientist, teacher, and community organizer with interests in Jewish demography, philanthropy, antisemitism, and anti-Israelism.

On the morning of the symposium, librarian Fred Rowland sat down with four of the participants to discuss Gary Tobin, the organizations that he created, the issues to which he devoted his life, and the day’s events. They were Lewis Gordon, professor of philosophy and director of the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies; Laura Levitt, professor of religion and women’s studies; Rabbi Capers Funnye of the Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation in Chicago, and Walter Isaac, graduate fellow for the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies.

7 New Cambridge Companions

Seven new titles have recently been added to Cambridge Companions Online:

New ZMATH Interface

New features of the new ZMATH interface include:

  • full inclusion of MathML with fast graphic display
  • enhanced retrieval combining field search, one-line search and command search
  • quicker retrieval trough load balancing and caching
  • real »anywhere«-search without exclusion of stop-words
  • full logical combinations and arbitrary * abbreviations possible
  • initial reference linking for selected journals

Further details including browser requirements are available here.

Credo Reference Update: 1/28/10

Credo Reference recently added the following:

  • Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender: Men and Women in the World’s Cultures, Springer
  • Encyclopedia of Special Education: A Reference for the Education of the Handicapped and Other Exceptional Children and Adults, Wiley
  • Encyclopedia of Women’s Autobiography, ABC-CLIO
  • Encyclopedia of Women’s Health, Springer
  • Gender and Education: An Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO
  • National Gallery Collection
  • Power and Succession in Arab Monarchies, Lynne Rienner Publications
  • The Praeger Handbook of Latino Education in the U.S., ABC-CLIO

Preventive Education Reduces Plagiarism

According to a new research study, exposing students to an educational tutorial about what constitutes plagiarism and how to prevent it is an effective mechanism for reducing student plagiarism. The study divided hundreds of students into two groups. he first group of students received no special instructions or information about plagiarism. Students in other randomly selected courses, however, were required to take a short online tutorial on plagiarism and were required to complete the exercise before they could hand in any papers. The results indicated that the students who were exposed to the online tutorial showed significant improvement in reducing the occurrence of plagiarism, especially among students with low SAT scores who typically are most likely to plagiarize.

These findings suggest that faculty concerned about student plagiarism should consider preventive educational approaches over enforcement approaches (e.g., using detection software to catch plagiarizers). While enforcement approaches may be effective at catching or detecting plagiarizers, they do little to attack the root causes of plagiarism. One of the challenges for students is not realizing they have access to tools that can help them to avoid plagiariasm and that can help them create and gather proper citations. Temple University librarians have expertise with tools such as RefWorks, a personal bibliographic software that is free to all Temple faculty and students, that can help students to better manage the citations they collect for their research project – and assist in integrating those citations into a research paper. Librarians can also show faculty the many research databases that enable students to create citations while doing their research. Consult our list of subject specialists to contact the librarian that serves your department.

ARTstor Update 1/14/10

ARTstor has announced the following:

Now available: Brooklyn Museum Costumes (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
ARTstor is collaborating with The Metropolitan Museum of Art to share approximately 5,800 images of American and European costumes and accessories from the Brooklyn Museum in the Digital Library.

 The Samuel H. Kress collection now complete, including images from the National Gallery of Art
The Samuel H. Kress Collection is now launched in its entirety in the ARTstor Digital Library with approximately 1,700 images of European art, including more than 700 works from the National Gallery of Art.

Now available: Additional images from the Frick Art Reference Library Photoarchives
ARTstor is pleased to announce the addition of approximately 6,000 images to the Digital Library from the Frick Art Reference Library Photoarchives.

Now available: Additional images from The Warburg Institute
Approximately 860 additional images of Renaissance and Baroque book illustrations from The Warburg Institute are now available in the ARTstor Digital Library.

New collection agreement: The Trout Gallery (Dickinson College)
ARTstor is collaborating with The Trout Gallery, the art museum at Dickinson College, to share approximately 6,000 images of works in its permanent collection in the Digital Library.