Does your program  require that you use APA Style for the research papers you write?

Did you go out and buy the brand new 6th Edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association?

Yes? Well, I have some bad news for you.

It seems that the first printing of the 6th edition is riddled with errors. What’s worse is that many of the errors are in the very examples you count on to make sure that your own writing is error-free.

How do you know if your copy of the 6th edition Manual is from the first printing? Two ways:

1. If you have the paperback and you bought it before November 2009 (in case you are reading this in the future), then you have one from the first printing.
2. If you have the hardcover or spiral bound book, just look at the fourth (unnumbered) page of the book. It’s the same page as the copyright and cataloging-in-publication data. At the bottom of the page it will say “First Printing” or “Second Printing”.

So, what can you do to be sure you are looking at the correct examples?  At the moment, all we can do is look at the two PDFs (here and here) of corrections that the APA has posted on their website.

At the moment, the APA has kindly decided that posting the errata in those PDFs is a better option than replacing the defective books with with the corrected second printing.  Don’t agree?   You could always contact APA Style to let them know how you think they should fix this problem.

Update: If you want to exchange your copy for a corrected “second printing” version they should be available after November 2 through the APA Service Center – 800 374-2721.

You can find an interesing story about this on the Inside Higher Ed blog.

Ever hear a news story on the radio about a new bill introduced in Congress and wonder what the bill actually proposes? Well, I do.   Let me show you a quick way to find out just what that bill says.

The easiest way is to use Thomas (thomas.loc.gov), the legislative information gateway of the Library of Congress.

You can search for legislation from the current Congress (there’s a new one every two years) right from the middle of the home page.

Right below the search box are drop-down menus that you could use to see what legislation  a particular Senator or Representative has been involved with.  You can also search for terms across multiple Congresses.

OK, let’s track down the bill I heard about on the radio, it was about college textbooks.  I didn’t catch the sponsor’s name so let’s just search for the keyword “textbooks”.

This search brings us results from two bills.  One is H.R.1464 and the other is S.1714.  Now I heard them say this was a Senate bill, so we’ll  click on the link for S.1714.

From this link we see that this bill was introduced by Sen. Richard Durban (IL) on 9/24/2009 and is titled, “A bill to authorize grants for the creation, update, or adaption of open textbooks, and for other purposes. “   Hmm, sounds interesting, huh? We can also see what Senate committee the bill is before and there is a link to the full text of the bill.

You can also follow links to see what action has been taken on the bill, including Sen. Durban’s introductory remarks for the bill, from the Congressional Record.  When available, there will also be links to the Congressional Budget Offices’ (CBO) cost estimates for the bill.

Pretty cool stuff.  And that House bill looks interesting too.  We could go back and look at that too.

Looking for something older than this Congress?  No problem.  Thomas searches back to the 101st Congress (January 3, 1989 to January 3, 1991).  And Drexel has a subscription to Lexis Nexis Congressional (including Congressional publications called the Serial Set) that searches content all the way back to the first Congress in 1789.

Oh, and if the title of this post didn’t start you humming, maybe this will help:

Welcome back everyone!

This Fall I’m trying something new.  I am offering online office hours with Adobe Connect.

Twice a week (starting September 24th), on Mondays and Thursdays from 3pm to 4pm, I will be online in a virtual meetingspace ready to help you with your research needs.  Here is the link: http://drexelmeeting.na4.acrobat.com/r55763449/

screenshot of Adobe Connect meetingspace

With this tool, you will be able to watch me demonstrate a database, explain how to collect citations with RefWorks or Zotero, or chat about your research topic, all in realtime.  Adobe Connect is AV chat ready to facilitate a real discussion and several people can be in the meetingspace at once, so a whole group can join in the conversation.

This will be a trial to see if there is interest in this kind of service.  If there is, I may be able to expand the hours I am available.

And don’t worry, I’ll still be just as available as I always have been. You can reach me in person or electronically over IM, email, or phone.

The Wilson Center is, right at this moment, running a live webcast of its panel discussion of KGB officer turned journalist Alexander Vassiliev’s newly released notebooks.   Drawn from the KGB archives, these notebooks offer an unprecedented look into Soviet espionage activities in the US from 1930-1950.  Some topics discussed will be Alger Hiss, and I.F. Stone.

The webcast is available here. The agenda is available here (PDF).

English language translations of the notebooks (now held by the Library of Congress) and available as PDFs here.

Primary day in Philadelphia is Tuesday, May 19th.  Do you know who is running? What ballot issues are up for the vote?  If not, Philly good government organization the Committee of Seventy has a web pages devoted to introducing the candidates and ballot issues.  You can find it here.