Training Section Leadership: First Look at Bibliography Information

A Note from Glenn:
Hello ACR Training Section Colleagues. Below I have pasted in two "Choice Card" selections. As I explained in our conference call, I get sheets of these things from our librarian and he askes us to indicate our preferences in terms of their quality and their appropriateness of various books for our college's population. The Choice Cards provide a cool way to get some idea about the content and the quality of books out there. I present this information here just as a possible model we might use. I am not suggesting that we use actual Choice Cards.

We could possibly use a similar format for our "Bibliography Section" on the ACR Training Section web pages. Notice the "Summing Up" lines at the bottom of each entry. We could do something similar but also perhaps insert a little section called: "Reviewer-Trainer's Perspective" (or something similar) in which the reviewers would include comments about how they use the book or how they WOULD use the book.

I have made up a tentative form to be used by our members for submitting their "mini-reviews" or "annotated bibliography" pieces. I will call them "mini-reviews" for now, but after we discuss this we can decide on the best name for these pieces. Please click here to see example of form for submitting mini-reviews.

Two examples of "Choice Card" Selections (provided by my college librarian)

# 1
Morris, Douglas E. It's a sprawl world after all. New Society, 2005. 245p bibl index ISBN 0865715467 pbk, $17.95
In Morris's world, a multitude of social ills—violence, obesity, incivility, the absence of community, loneliness, high taxes, serial killers, and selfcenteredness—have roots in the low-density development that surrounds America's central cities. Whether working its evil directly or mobilizing its accomplices—the national obsessions with the automobile and television—suburban sprawl is the culprit. If people would just volunteer, be nice to others, socialize in the evenings, walk more, and join book clubs, this could bep, changed. Government, though, must help by changing zoning laws, raising gasoline taxes, supporting public transit, and managing growth through a federal department of comprehensive urban planning. In the meantime, people should seek what few real communities still exist or buy into New Urbanist developments. Often alarmist in tone, Morris, an entrepreneur and columnist, exaggerates the consequences of sprawl and distorts the history of urban development in the US and Europe. He laments the loss of a gold-en age of small towns and family life. This romanticism leaves him with only indignation and a long list of questionable proposals as antidotes. Summing Up: Optional. General readers.—R. A. Beauregard, New School University

# 2
Zeigler, Sara L. Moving beyond G.I. Jane: women and the U.S. military, by Sara L. Zeigler and Gregory G. Gunderson. University Press of America, 2005. 194p bibl index afp ISBN 0761830936 pbk, $30.00
The debate over women in combat has been raging recently, making this a timely volume. Zeigler (women's studies, Eastern Kentucky Univ.) and Gunderson (government, Eastern Kentucky Univ.) present the reasons that military personnel and civilian critics have used to deny women access to combat roles and then systematically discard those reasons. The problem, they feel, is not that women cannot perform the necessary tasks, but that people in and outside the military do not want to threaten traditional definitions of gender propriety. However, some women are physically and emotionally strong enough to fight, and gender prejudice is not sufficient reason to pre-vent them from doing so. Zeigler and Gunderson argue that the fundamental issue is not just one of fairness to women. It is, rather, one of military effectiveness. Modern operations include peacekeeping missions and work with refugees, tasks that demand skills women often possess. The authors do not underestimate the challenges of integrating women fully into the military, and they include specific, detailed policy recommendations. This work is a valuable addition to the literature on women's military service and should be of interest to an interdisciplinary audience of scholars. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All academic levels/libraries.—R. A. Standish, University of Maryland University College