Come find me during my weekly office hours on Mondays from noon to 4pm in the Honors Center lounge, NAC 4/150. If possible, please email me if you plan to avail yourselves of my office hours to ensure availability.

I am also able to meet on Wednesdays ahead of Connie Rosenblum’s class at the Macaulay building. Again, please email me.

If neither of those times work for you, please contact me so we can schedule an appointment. I’m also available remotely via SIP/VOIP, Jabber/XMPP, Google Hangouts (google.com/+JohnDB), or Skype.

Come find me during my weekly office hours on Thursdays, 10am–3pm in the Honors Center lounge, NAC 4/150.

If you would like to meet with me at another time, please contact me so we can schedule an appointment.

Come find me during my weekly office hours on Mondays, 12–5pm in the Honors Center lounge, NAC 4/150. I will not hold office hours on February 18 (President’s Day), March 25, and April 1 (Spring recess).

I will not be holding office hours on Monday 5/13, since I’ll be traveling for a conference. I will be on campus on Wednesday 5/15 instead, and you can meet with me then (1–5pm).

If you would like to meet with me at another time, please contact me so we can schedule an appointment.

Update: Due to a scheduling conflict, the talk has been moved to October 25 at 12:15pm. 

I will be giving a talk on my research in progress in the Social Science Faculty Brown Bag Seminar on October 18 from 12:15–2pm. The title of my talk is Missionaries—in Europe? Mapping the Church-Planting Movement from Williamsburg to Wilhelmsburg. All are welcome!

Here’s the abstract:

The emergence of Europe as a missions field is certainly one of the most surprising and intriguing developments in contemporary Christianity. From its inception, the modern missionary movement was based on a geographical dichotomy between “Christendom” and “heathendom,” where the former was understood to encompass Europe and perhaps parts of North America, and the latter referred to the rest of the world waiting to be conquered for the Christian faith. This distinction has become blurred as Christianity’s center of gravity has shifted and the European religious landscape has become increasingly provincialized. Now Protestant missionary organizations from all parts of the world are active in almost every European metropolis. Recently, their emphasis has been on “church planting,” the establishment of new churches outside the existing church landscape. The focus of these activities is on urban areas, where transatlantic networks hope to benefit from a unique set of cultural and demographic opportunities. Drawing on interviews with church planters in several German cities and participant-observation in numerous newly-founded churches throughout Europe, my presentation seeks to map and to interpret this phenomenon and its impact on the religious landscape of the European metropolis. I will also address the question to what extent this phenomenon is at odds with the common perception of Europe as secular.

Further details are available here.

I will be offering office hours on Tuesdays, 9:30am–2:30pm. Find me at the desk in the Honors Center lounge, NAC 4/150.

Note that, due to holidays, there are no office hours on September 18 and 25.

If you would like to meet with me at another time, please contact me and we can work something out. I can also offer virtual office hours via Google Hangout. My Google+ profile is here.

Come find me during my weekly office hours on Thursdays, 10:30am–3:30pm in the Honors Center lounge, NAC 4/150. I will not hold office hours on April 12 (spring recess).

Update:  I am holding office hours on Tuesday, April 3, instead of Thursday, April 5, and on Tuesday, April 24, instead of Thursday, April 20.

If you would like to meet with me at another time, please contact me and we can work something out.

For your final paper in Seminar 3, you will need to survey scholarly work relevant to your group’s topic. The first step is to find relevant works to include in your literature review. According to a recent overview by Revere et al. (2007), “public health literature is poorly indexed in bibliographic databases and dispersed across a wide variety of journals and other sources across many disciplines.” That means you will need to dig in a variety of different sources to make sure there aren’t any gaping holes in your survey of the literature.

Here are some resources recommended by Revere et al. (and a few additional ones) for researching public health literature.

Bibliographic databases

• BiosisPreviews
• CINAHL
• Current Contents (through Web of Knowledge)
• Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts
• Library Literature and Information Science
• National Library of Medicine’s MEDLINE (through PubMed)
• PAIS International
• Web of Science (through Web of Knowledge)

Leading journals (search here)

• American Journal of Public Health
• Annual Review of Public Health
• Journal of Public Health Management & Practice
• Public Health Reports
• Journal of the American Medical Association
• New England Journal of Medicine
• British Medical Journal
• American Journal of Epidemiology

Web resources

• CDC website
• NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
• Librarian’s Internet Index
• New York Academy of Medicine’s Grey Literature (NYAM GreyLit) library
• Scout Report
• GPO Federal Digital System
• NLM Gateway
• Google Scholar (but never rely on this exclusively—it is not compiled by experts, but by blind algorithms!)
• Zanran

Compilations of research

• Annotated bibliography for syndromic surveillance (CDC)
• Evidence-based Practice for Public Health Project
• Public Health Information Needs and Information-Seeking Behavior Bibliography
• Current Bibliographies in Medicine
• Partners in Information Access for the Public Health Workforce website
• Visit medical association websites (e.g., the American Heart Association) and see what medial research they link to and which journals they publish.

Remember that if you have difficulty gaining access to any of the databases or journals listed above through the CCNY library, you may be able to get a hold of them at another CUNY library, at branches of the New York, Brooklyn or Queens Borough Public Libraries, or through inter-library loan.

I wish you the best of success as you work to earn a well-deserved A in Seminar 3! Come see me during my office hours if you have difficulty using any of these resources.

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Reference

Revere, Debra et al. (2007), Understanding the information needs of public health practitioners: A literature review to inform design of an interactive digital knowledge management system. Journal of Biomedical Informatics 40 (4): 410–421, DOI: 10.1016/j.jbi.2006.12.008.

This semester, you will find me in the Honors Center (NAC 4/150) during my office hours each Thursday 9–2. Exceptions are September 29 (Rosh Hashana) and November 24 (Thanksgiving).