… and this blog faces the final curtain (to paraphrase a well known song). Exactly two years ago to the day, I started this blog as an experiment. My goal was to find a better way to notify the students and faculty in Health, Physical Education, and Recreation about important sources of information. In some senses, it’s been a success and I’ve learned a lot. In other ways, however, I don’t feel that it’s worked out the way I had hoped. That’s why this is the last post for HPER Librarian.
That doesn’t mean that I’m giving up on my quest to make people aware of all the great HPER related stuff that’s out there. I’m just changing the way I’m going about it. Babson Library recently launched its LibGuides service - think of a traditional pathfinder all Web 2.0ed up - and a key part in almost all of the guides will be links to web resources. In the coming weeks, I’m going to merge my guides with a Delicious account that I’ve set up for HPER and that’s how I’ll be doing current awareness from now on. This will allow me to point to more sites and make that information available in many different ways. You’ll be able to find the link to Delicious in the appropriate LibGuide so keep checking them for the URL.
Finally, you can also keep up with some of the other things I’ve been doing at my new “tumblelog” located at http://atwood.tumblr.com/. The name keeps changing, because I haven’t found one that really speaks to me yet, but the URL will always be the same.
Thanks to everyone who has been reading and supporting HPER Librarian. See you “out there” soon.
Gary Atwood
George Mitchell dropped the hammer on MLB Thursday, when he released the official report on the use of steroids in Major League Baseball. Obviously, it’s the #1 sports story of the month, maybe of the entire year. Let’s just hope that it’s the beginning of the end of this sad chapter in professional sports.
… so let’s back off the serious stuff for a moment and head on over to How Stuff Works to see How Olympic Torches Work. You can read all kinds of stuff like the history of the torch, the history of the relay, how torches are designed and constructed, and a whole lot more. Read this and you’ll be the life of your next holiday party!
Law firm Thelen, Reid, Brown, Raysman & Steiner have launched Three & Out. According to their web site, Three & Out will “highlight three sports law-related items in an informative, entertaining and, occasionally, provocative manner….” The idea is to give a complete, but easily digested synopsis of a sport topic and then have you, the reader, comment on it.
The first issue covers fantasy sports, sports sponsorship in NASCAR, and a trademark dispute between Dick Butkus and the organization responsible for managing the football award bearing his name. Three very different subjects, but certainly a good start. What’s your take on them?
The Centers for Disease Control announced in October that schools in the USA have made noticeable improvements in the areas of nutrition and physical activity. According to the School Health Policies and Programs Study, 74.5% of schools had “adopted a policy stating that districts or schools will follow national or state health education standards” in areas such as nutrition. A similar percentage (70.5%) have policies requiring schools to follow similar standards for physical education.
Of course, there is still room for improvement and the study did not look at specific items such as the actual impact that these policies had on students, but the initial results of the study are positive. Keep an eye out for more detailed reports based on this data and for the next major study to be released in 2012.
Need something to do during those pesky travel days between World Series games? Chew on these reports for a while and impress your friends with all your new found knowledge.
The NCAA recently released Six-Year Trends in Graduation Success Rates at NCAA Division I Institutions, which - as you might have guessed - reports on how many college athletes have graduated over the last 6 years. Overall, the numbers are up and that’s good. As you might expect, there is more to it then that, though, and the report goes into fine detail about what the numbers mean.
The timing of this report is interesting, because the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics also just released a report which finds that “professors say they don’t know about and are disconnected from issues facing college sports.” Over 30% say that they don’t know about athletic programs policies and practices and another 30% say that they “no opinion about concerns raised by national faculty athletics reform groups.”
I’ll leave it up to the reader to draw their own conclusions, but the connection between the two is interesting.
According to recent reports, the American cruise industry “generated $35.7 billion in gross U.S. economic output” in 2006. Just as impressive, it “supported 348,000 American jobs paying $14.7 billion in wages.”
These reports, from the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), provide an in-depth look at just how important the cruise industry is in the American economy and its impact on all 50 states. Massachusetts, for instance, pulled in $387 million from the cruise industry in 2006.
The reports can be found in the research section of the CLIA website, which also contains links to additional information on the cruise industry.
It’s football season again. While most of us are studying player stats, the folks over at Forbes magazine are counting football numbers of a different sort. According to their recent report, The Business of Football, the NFL is the richest sports league on the planet and the average team is worth $957 million.
Forbes reports that “nearly 3 out of 4 Americans watched a NFL game on television last year” and that, plus all the other revenue streams, helped the NFL take in about $204 million in revenue.
Any guesses on who the richest team is? It’s the Dallas Cowboys, who come in at about $1.5 billion thanks to a new stadium they are putting up.
According to this article, one in four Americans eats fast food every day. While it may not cost much in terms of dollars and cents, eating that much fast food will cost you some of your health. This article, Healthy Fast Food, from HelpGuide.org talks about what things to look for and what to avoid the next time you eat out. It even has some general guidelines for eating out that apply to all restaurants - not just fast food places.
So, the next time you go through the drive through, think a little bit about what you’re ordering and save a few calories as well as a few pennies.
« Previous Entries