Virginia Tech

What happened at Virginia Tech? What do we know about such murders? murderers? recovery?

Last Monday I was working on Ask a Librarian when a student IM'ed me asking, "Have you heard about what happened at Virginia Tech?"

Being in librarian mode, I said, "Yes. Did you want more information about it?"

"No," the student said. "I just wanted to make sure you all did." Then we continued to talk about the events at Virginia Tech and what we'd heard. Apparently he was on his computer when he heard and needed to talk to someone about it, so he IM'ed us at Ask a Librarian.

You might want to find out what we've learned about school shootings, those who shoot their fellow students, and how communities can try to recover from these traumatic events. We have several resources:

Encyclopedia of Murder & Violent Crime

School Shooting
Mass Murder

Ramsland, Katherine. (2005) Inside the Minds of Mass Murderers: Why They Kill. p cover. Westport: Greenwood eBooks.

Staub, Ervin. (2003). The psychology of good and evil : why children, adults, and groups help and harm others Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press.
short excerpt
LIBRARY WEST -- -- BF789.E94 S83 2003

Staub also discusses how we can work on making us more giving and altruistic towards others and how to make it through these horrible experiences.

Douglas, Johns and Olshaker, Mark. (1999) The anatomy of motive : the FBI's legendary mindhunter explores the key to understanding and catching violent criminals. New York: Scribner.
LIBRARY WEST -- HV7911.D68 A33 1999 [Regular Loan]

Kelleher, Michael D. (1997).Flash point: the American mass murderer. Westport, Conn.: Praeger.
LIBRARY WEST -- -- HV6529 .K45 1997 [Regular Loan]

Lavergne, Gary M. (1997). A sniper in the Tower: the Charles Whitman murders.
Denton, Tex.: University of North Texas Press.

Webber, Julie A. (2003). Failure to hold : the politics of school violence. Lanham : Rowan & Littlefield.
EDUCATION LIBRARY -- -- LB3013.3 .W43 2003

There are several different databases that would be helpful:

PsycINFO

for psychological information on the shooter, the families left behind, the students who are friends and those who are hurting, grieving, frightened and angry just by living on campus. And the rest of us, feeling the same things because we live in the same world and are affected by knowing that such things can happen.

mass murderers

Another article in the Journal of Primary Prevention discusses (and this is a simplification of the argument) the limited ethical development in the family, restricted social interaction with his peers which doesn't allow further development, and then a school that is competitive, frustrating to a not completely competent person. It is quite interesting.
Thompson, Stephen and Kyle, Ken. (2005).Understanding Mass School Shootings: Links between Personhood and Power in the Competitive School EnvironmentJournal of Primary Prevention. 26,(5). 419-438.

ERIC
Education Full Text

for information on schools and education, including higher education.

Criminal Justice Abstracts

as it sounds, for information on criminology and criminal justice. This includes both forensic psychology, legal research, and sociological research.

Sociological Abstracts

for information about our society, violence, schools, alienation, community, globalization, etc.

If you'd like to know about what other material we have that can help us understand or help you try to help other people, let me know and we can look for information together. Remember to take care.

Communication Problems and School

Finding a Social Space for Folks with Asperger's Syndrome

"Merrie, I'd like to do my paper on kids with Asperger's Syndrome/dyslexia/stuttering and school. Is there anything on that?"

Every time I talk to Communication Science and Disorder classes, at least 3 or 4 students want to study interaction between children and adolescents with asperger's and their classmates. Honestly, it's been relatively easy to find remediation studies to increase kids' social skills or to look at social interactions in a reductionist way. But larger studies that look at how kids interact in school have been hard for me to find.

Then the other night, Nightline showed a program on Asperger's Syndrome, Bullying, and a school in New Jersey. The school teaches students what Asperger's is, gets them involved with each other and teaches them how to be friends with each other. It's "heaven" one of the kids with Asperger's says.

I tried to find articles about bullying, teasing and harrassing of kids with Asperger's. Though several make mention of it, as if it's well known and first-person narratives include it, I couldn't find studies of bullying per se. It's the terms "bullying" (in British writing) or "victimization" (in American writing) that help find these articles for us. Yay! And especially in PsycInfo! So, here is one search from PsycInfo:

(autism OR asperger*) AND (bullying OR victimization)

Try other searchers in ERIC, Lingustics and Language Behavior Abstracts, PubMed, and Education Full Text. They'll all show you something a bit different.

Books we have on Asperger's -- just search in the catalog using the second box. Change the dropdown menu to "Subject." Type in Asperger Look at all the possible subject heads there are. (You won't be able to link to the library catalog from here, though :(

23		Asperger's syndrome - [LC Authority Record]
2		Asperger's syndrome -- Case studies
1		Asperger's syndrome -- Congresses
1		Asperger's syndrome -- Education -- Great Britain
1		Asperger's syndrome -- Fiction
1		Asperger's syndrome -- Handbooks, manuals, etc
1		Asperger's syndrome -- Juvenile fiction
1		Asperger's syndrome -- Patients -- Care

4		Asperger's syndrome -- Patients -- Education
1		Asperger's syndrome -- Patients -- Education (Higher)
1		Asperger's syndrome -- Patients -- Education (Higher) -- United States
3		Asperger's syndrome -- Patients -- Family relationships
1		Asperger's syndrome -- Patients -- Life skills guides
1		Asperger's syndrome -- Patients -- Vocational guidance
2		Asperger's syndrome -- Popular works
1		Asperger's syndrome -- Social aspects
2		Asperger's syndrome -- Treatment

Life Among the Romanies

Come and join the exhibit opening with music and dancing exhibitions tomorrow (Friday) from 2:00-5:00 p.m. in Smathers Library room 100 and the second floor exhibition gallery!

We will be celebrating Alena Aissing’s exhibit opening of

Life Among the Romanies: The Heroic Past and Present

Presentations:

Amie Kreppel, Founding Director, Center for European Studies at UF and Jean Monnet, Chair

John Ingram, Interim Director of the George A. Smathers Libraries

Dancers:

American Tribal Gypsy - Suzanne Bell

Indian Bollywood Dance Chaya Chaya - The Farhana Dancers, Nicoma and Kate

Gypsy Flamenco - Fiorina Boggiano

Irish GypsiKelts and Drumming - Bhrigha

Romanian Gypsy Dances - Margaret Ross Tolbert and Stefan Craciun

Music:

Gypsy Jazz - Hot Club De Ville

Through Deaf Eyes

Watch the History of Deaf People on PBS March 29th at 9:00pm

Last night people all over the country watched a great film, Through Deaf Eyes, on the history of Deaf people in America. Unfortunately, in Gainesville it was pre-empted by Suze Orman's financial advice during pledge week. WUFL will broadcast it here next week, Friday, March 30 at 9pm. But you can browse through their website now and even read the transcript if you'd like.

The larger documentary includes clips of films by Deaf filmmakers, available on the website. But I wish the transcript had some videos of the interviews in sign, instead of all of them in translation.

I wish they spoke more about life outside of school and the educational institutions. Almost all of the pictures on the PBS website is of students practicing speech, getting audiograms, and hitting drums to listen to sounds. I love just seeing Deaf people together playing canasta or enjoying their bowling. A 1/2 second on the Black schools and segregation in the South.

On the other hand, there were Deaf people living everyday lives, just being. Having friends, brothers, wives, husbands, and co-workers. Lots of the stories spoke to the heart. It was so exciting just to know that Deaf kids can't imagine a Gallaudet University with a hearing president. What a change in less than 20 years. (And it's been that long since the Deaf President Now protest!)

The love of American Sign Language and the community afforded Deaf people is palpable in the film. It's clear what Veditz (the NAD President in 1910) was talking about when he told Deaf people that "Sign Language is the greatest gift that God has given to the Deaf."

(We have ordered the DVD. PBS says it will be shipping in May.)

Undergrads and Narcissism

Are undergrads more narcissistic now than 20 years ago?

A new book out, Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled--and More Miserable Than Ever Before, laments the author (Jean M. Twenge, Phd.)'s findings that undergraduates today are more narcissistic than the previous generation. At least based on her results on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. Jean Twenge attributes this to the "self-esteem" movement that encouraged parents to praise their children for being themselves and for doing everything they do.

Interesting. But it's also been suggested that adolescence (emerging adulthood) lasts longer than before, through college and until about age 21 - 23 in developed countries. The symptoms of narcissism are similar to characteristics of young folks figuring out who they are and what they want to do with their lives.

Or are there problems with personality inventories?

Or is it just what always happens. Older folks saying "These kids today...too self-involved. They don't care about anyone but themselves!" That's what older folks said about my generation when I was in college. That's what some older people said about the Vietnam War protestors. "I wish they really were pacifists. But it's not war they're against -- they just don't want to die."

Or is this new generation of undergrads different? What do you think?

The Gator Homeless Coalition

Good evening,

My name is David Reznik and I am one of the founding members of the Gator Homeless Coalition, a group of student volunteers seeking to change the nature of the University of Florida’s relationship with its surrounding community, particularly Gainesville's most victimized citizens: the homeless. UF has proven to be not only the largest, but also most influential institution in the city of Gainesville, and yet it has gentrified the city to suit the needs of privileged UF administration, faculty, and students.

Though the city may benefit from UF’s affluence, Gainesville’s permanent residents, specifically its homeless, suffer as well. There is now an affordable housing crisis and a shortage of shelter beds for the city with the highest poverty rate of any with a public university. The disproportionate number of students in Gainesville has also caused the scarcity of employment opportunities for local residents. It was these factors and more that sparked our mission to create the first student-run homeless shelter in Gainesville during the fall of 2006. We hope to bridge the campus-community divide in a more socially responsible fashion by having UF positively affect the city within which it exists.

While fostering leadership among students through hands-on experience in various disciplines, we seek to not just redefine the inhumane realities of Gainesville’s homeless. Our goal is to ultimately spark political action and social consciousness in making this university town a truly interdependent community.

PLEASE VOTE YES ON OUR REFERENDUM FOR A STUDENT-RUN HOMELESS SHELTER ON FEB. 27th and 28th DURING THE UF STUDENT GOVERNMENT ELECTIONS!!!

If you would like more information about us, please check out our website at www.ufhomeless.org or email us at ufhomeless@gmail.com

Criminalization of Mental Illness

The Imprisoning of Deinstitutionalized Mentally Ill People

Last Sunday night, CBS's 60 Minutes reported on the death of Timothy Souders, a young man with Bipolar Disorder, who was in prison for shoplifting. The major contention of the producers is that since the deinstitutionalization of people with chronic, severe mental illnesses many are being shunted into the prison system. They are not able or willing to deal with them, not sensitive to their needs. Not aware of their illnesses.

For instance, people who are diagnosed as suicidal and may cut themselves (e.g. cut out pieces of their organs), the prison staff may call "manipulative with extreme behaviors."

Here is a search from PsycINFO about the prison system and deinstitutionalization.
(Remember you'll have to be logged into the library either by its proxy system or the VPN to access these articles.)

Frontline has a program (you can watch online) called The New Asylums, along with a website with more indepth interviews and research material.

I understand this response and the feeling that we might want to reopen or find havens for chronically ill people, but I also worked at a state mental hospital during graduate school. Horrible events occurred there.

If we do decide to find homes for people who are severely ill, we need to think hard about how to make them good places for the patients/residents living there and the staff working there. The working conditions at the state mental hospital took control and dignity away from the staff. Of course the residents suffered. There was a reason the State Hospitals were closed in the first place. It wasn't only because the drugs seemed to be miraculous. It was also because the hospitals appeared to be hellish.

Some books to look at:

Deinstitutionalization : promise and problems
San Francisco : Jossey-Bass, c2001.
EDUCATION LIBRARY -- -- RA790.A1 N43 no.90

The role of the state hospital in the twenty-first century /
San Francisco : Jossey Bass, 1999.
EDUCATION LIBRARY -- -- RA790.A1 N43 no.84

Baum, Alice S.
A nation in denial : the truth about homelessness /
Boulder, Colo. : Westview Press, 1993.
LIBRARY WEST -- -- HV 4505 .B378 1993

Deaf People and Eugenics

International History of Deaf People during World War II

Last April I visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC where they had an exhibit on Eugenics before and during the Holocaust called Deadly Medicine . Here they described the contribution of doctors to Hitler's vision of the perfect race of people, including the sterilization of disabled people and development of methods of killing mentally ill and developmentally delayed people in mass numbers.

My awareness of Deaf people during the Holocaust developed when I met a Deaf woman from Germany. Her parents and sister were also Deaf. Her mother and sister had been sterilized as part of the cleansing of the German people. She, however, was only 9 or 10 years old at the time -- too young for the operation. When she grew up, she married a German Deaf man, emmigrated to America, gave birth to a Deaf daughter who also gave birth to a Deaf child. I've always thought that was a great story of how another person defeated Hitler.

But this is not an unusual story. Many Deaf children and adults were sterilized, some underwent forced abortions. Apparently, there was a myth that schools for the Deaf in Germany sheltered many children from these forced sterilizations, but relatively recent research has found that schools, rather than protect their children, often colluded with government officials. Biesold, Horst (1999) Crying hands : eugenics and deaf people in Nazi Germany Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press. (And of course, Alexander Graham Bell was a strong force in eugenics here in the US, while he worked with deaf children.)

A recent book by Carol Padden and Tom Humphries, Inside Deaf Culture (HV2545 .P35 2005 at both Library West and the Education Library), discusses genetic testing and research with Deaf people. What does it mean when we can decide which disorders and diseases can be eliminated? What does it mean when groups of people should be eliminated, especially when they view themselves as a cultural group? What are weaknesses? What are differences?

But the website on Deaf people during WWII at the Rochester Institute of the Deaf not only includes videotapes of Deaf people from the US, Israel, and Germany describing their experiences during the Holocaust. Nope. It also includes rememberances of Deaf Japanese-Americans in Internment Camps in the US, and Japanese Deaf people in Nagasaki during the bombings. And artwork by Deaf artist and Holocaust survivor David Bloch. It is excellent!

Databases, Indexes, Print and Online

Recently 2 graduate students asked me if online databases would find print journals articles as well as electronic ones. And, they wanted to know, would they find articles that weren't in their own database. "Would Sociological Abstracts find journals that weren't full-text in Sociological Abstracts?" That was pretty ironic, since Sociological Abstracts actually contains no full-text journals.

"Huh?" you say. "I found an article that was online from SA just yesterday." Yeah. Sort of.

This explanation might bore you to tears (which is why we rarely tell anyone). On the other hand, it might clear up everything in the world for you.

Here's my beautiful diagram:
The first two boxes under the main database box show that some databases only index journals and articles, but don't have full text themselves. In our fields, these are the databases used most often, like LLBA, Sociological Abstracts, and PsycINFO.

You look through these databases for articles of interest. If you find one, our software, called SFX uses DOIs (digital object indicators -- links directly to articles) to find the ARTICLES we have access to through other databases. Sometimes articles don't have DOIs or our SFX database isn't up to date. Then you can follow the link to our catalog where wel list whether we have print copies of the journal or whether we subscribe to the e-journal for any period. (It doesn't tell you if we have the particular ARTICLE there.) If we have subscribe to some period of time (through any database), it will link to our database of e-journals and then to the database where the journal is. You need to look for the article there.

Other databases only contain full text journals -- most of these are publisher's databases or Open Access databases. In the Social Sciences you generally don't use these to look for articles. They are basically archives of journal articles. Generally, you use SFX or serial solutions to provide links between the indexing databases and the archiving databases.

But there are other databases. Like Academic Search Premier or Gale's OneFile. These have journals from lots of different publishers. The database indexes all kinds of articles, scholarly and popular, from all different fields -- science, social science and humanities. Some is full text, some are just citations.

So you can look up citations to full text or print in almost any index and find full text and print articles there. Link to them. Link to the library catalog. Pretty much just play around for as long as you'd like. I hope this made some sense and was a bit interesting to you...

African American Newspapers

The Historical Context of African American Newspapers: The 19th Century and The Chicago Defender

When Woodrow Wilson was mentioned in the Chicago Defender, it stated "President Woodrow Wilson (white) yesterday announced..." because that was how the African Americans of the time were cited in white-owned papers.

Last weekend I was watching TV (okay, so I watch a lot of TV while knitting and spinning) and I saw a fantastic program on PBS called The Black Press: Soldiers without Swords (Video #4678). Like much of what passes for entertainment on television today, it was fascinating. It delved into the blossoming of Black-owned newspapers all over the country after the Civil War when African Americans, especially in the South, were first allowed to read and write and used their literacy to keep abreast of what was happening in their world and also to actively change it.

When certain cities, again especially in the South, outlawed the distribution of the newspapers, Pullman Porters distributed them between towns by tossing bundles of them off trains. They said each purchased paper of the Chicago Defender was read by 4-5 people, since they were passed among friends.

More information, the entire transcript of the program, additional transcripts and videos of journalists, historians, and everyday folks talking about the importance of Black-owned newspapers are available free on PBS's website: The Black Press.

The UF libraries have electronic access to a database of African American Newspapers from the 19th century. We also have access to the Chicago Defender through the Black Studies Center.

In addition, if you search in our catalog under the subject "african american newspapers," you'll find 6 newspapers. However, if you look at that result list, you'll see that in many entries "african american newspapers" is followed by the name of a state in the U.S. Thus, we have a newspaper or newspapers from that state in microfilm. We probably have newspapers from at least 20-25 states. Often more than one from each state. (The following is just one page of the results list.)

Browse List: Subject

No. of Recs	Brief Recs	Entry
3		African American newspapers -- Georgia
4		African American newspapers -- History
2		African American newspapers -- History -- 19th century
2		African American newspapers -- History -- 20th century
2		African American newspapers -- Indexes
1		African American newspapers -- Indiana
2		African American newspapers -- Michigan
3		African American newspapers -- Mississippi -- Bibliography -- Union lists
3		African American newspapers -- Mississippi -- Directories
1		African American newspapers -- Mississippi -- History

So we have maybe a hundred newspapers to wander through. And books on the history of those newspapers as well.

Go ahead and start with the online papers, but look at the papers from your own neighborhood. See if you can find your family and friends in there! You never know when you'll find a cousin, your grandmother, or the man you most admired in your life in a newspaper article!

Videos on the Internet

Which inspiring sociologist, psychologist, or linguist have you met in your backyard?

Max Weber Visits North Carolina -- Undergraduate Classes' Passion and Investigations

Today I was wandering around the Internet, looking for videos about these fields I love. I stumbled upon one made by the North Carolina Sociological Society about Professor Larry Keeter at Appalachian State University in North Carolina. (Before my stint here, I worked at a college near App State and lived a few miles down the road, so I do love Appalachia.)

Apparently early in Keeter's teaching career, students asked whether Max Weber had ever visited the United States and where. Quite a bit of research by him and the student led to the exciting information that Max Weber and his wife Marianne had visited relatives in North Carolina Appalachia. The students interviewed folks who were still alive and the rest became history.

This is a marvelous video of how inspiring study and history can become. Of course, it helps that some kind of miracle happens. Like that someone amazing, the figure from your field happened to land next door. Especially when you live in a neighborhood that is dismissed and denigrated by most of the other neighborhoods.

The video also discusses interesting historical info about how the folks viewed Weber right before WWI. Unfortunately, we don't have Keeter's article about the students investigation and oral history. Order it through InterLibrary Loan or let me know and I'll do it for you.

Keeter, Larry (spring-summer, 1981) Max Weber's Visit to North Carolina. The Journal of the History of Sociology, 3(2). 108-114.

Stanley Milgram's Experiments

Milgram's Experiment "Replicated" on ABC's Primetime

Each semester students find out about the Milgram Experiments, sometimes from a psychology class, sometimes from their English/composition classes. As most everyone is, they are shocked, dismayed, horrified, to find out about the "banality of evil." To learn that under the guidance of an authority figure, everyday, normal people will administer electric shocks to innocents.

Primetime has a short video on its website that you can watch. However, in the video, they fail to state that the main difference they found between the participants who finished the experiment, giving the entire set of shocks, and those who refused, was...those who refused took personal responsiblity for their actions. The others were "doing their job" or "just following orders." (However, I'd like to see a real write up.)

But what really interested me was that at the time the Milgram Experiments were done in the 1960's, Milgram and the psychology world in general were aghast at the psychological pain that the experimental subjects endured. The APA held Milgram's application to the APA because of ethical concerns from his work. Human subjects restrictions were developed and tightened because of this work. Milgram and his colleagues were very careful to sit with subjects after the experiment and calm them after they found out the could act in such ways.

However, in the Primetime story, the reporter sat with the subjects and pointedly asked them how they could administer the shocks without considering the feelings or health of the "learner." As one of the other librarians said to me, he was torturing the torturer. Do we think that people have become so inured to torture, that we have to remind them when they engage in it? There wasn't an increase in the number of people finishing the experiment.

(Actually, in the study for Primetime, they shortened the experiment, so they didn't actually administer as "dangerous" a shock level. And 20% of Milgram's subjects stopped between the end of the Primetime experiment and his. So even though Primetime said that the results were similar, if another 20% stopped, then we'd get about 50.4% finishing, rather than 63%.)

The library has several resources about these experiments -- and also about the Zimbardo Prison Experiment. The program interviewed Philip Zimbardo and several of the "inmates" and "guards" who took part in the experiment, which Zimbardo calls one of the most unethical experiments ever run. (I assume he means in the United States. Not quite as bad as some in Nazi Germany, which were what these experiments were intended to study.)

Our resources include videos and DVDs, among them Quiet Rage: a DVD of the Stanford Prison Experiment. Zimbardo has an excellent website about the experiment as well. The Discovering Psychology series of videotapes includes a !9th tape which describes and excerpts the Milgram Experiment and the Prison Experiment.

The man who shocked the world : the life and legacy of Stanley Milgram by Thomas Blass was published in 2004. Thomas Blass is a psychologist who clearly greatly admires Milgram. (HM1031.M55 B57 2004)

American dreams and Nazi nightmares : early Holocaust consciousness and liberal America, 1957-1965, a book by Kirsten Fermaglich, describes how Jewish Americans, among them Stanley Milgram, took lessons from the Holocaust and applied them to the political situation in America after World War II. (LIBRARY WEST, Judaica Library 1st Floor - Northwest Corner D804.7.M67 F47 2006)

Understanding genocide: the social psychology of the Holocaust edited by Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber is accessible online through netLibrary (logon remotely through VPN), We also have the book in print in the Judaica Library (the Northwest Corner of the 1st Floor in Library West). (D804.3 .S597 2002)

Classic experiments in psychology by Douglas Mook discusses the Milgram and the Unresponsive Bystander Experiments. (BF198.7 .M66 2004)

Experiments with people : revelations from social psychology edited by Robert P. Abelson, Kurt P. Frey, Aiden P. Gregg. includes Milgram's own discussion of his studies. (BF198.7 .M66 2004)