SDC Mergers and Acquisitions Assignment

Professor Jay Dayha's FIN9759 class will be using the SDC M&A database in the next few weeks to work on an assignment about valuing merger deals in various industry sectors and with various deal characteristics. I gave a brief introduction to the class last night but not all the students were able to attend. You will be seeing them at the reference desk soon.

The database training committee will offer a SDC refresher for librarians on Monday October 4th from 1:30 to 2:15 p.m. in Room 135. All are invited. Extra copies of the SDC Platinum Quick Reference Guide will be available at the Reference Desk.

Business Week Cover Story for October 4, 2004

Several speakers at Wednesday's conference on "Accountable Accounting:Principles or Rules?" sponsored by the Zicklin Center for Corporate Integrity mentioned the cover story in this week's Business Week. Titled, "Fuzzy numbers;Despite the reforms, corporate profits can be as distorted and confusing as ever," the article examines how companies use the rules to distort earnings.
Although the issue is available on the newsstands earlier, it appears in Factiva on Fridays. Factiva loads the latest issue of Business Week 3 days before the publication date which is everyMonday.

Student Computers at Reference Desk

Two computers have been set up for student use at the Reference Desk. They are configured like the computers at the Index Tables and are for research. Thank you, Saad and Theresa.

Workshop Schedule for Fall 2004

Flyers with the Library and Subotnick Center Fall Workshop schedule (corrected) are now available at the library bulletin board. An additional 500 copies should be arriving soon. Some will be put at the reference desk and Kathia will have copies if you need them for classes.

Management Forecasts of Earnings

Several professors in the Acccounting Department were looking for a reliable way to find the estimates that companies make about their earnings. This data is sometimes posted on the company Web site or announced in press releases, but a better source is the First Call database that is part of ThomsonOne Analytics (in the Subotnick Center). They call the data "company issued guidelines" and list the data for each fiscal year right after the "Detailed Broker Report" sections.
To find these forecasts in ThomsonONE, select the Company tab and then "Detail/Estimates". Enter the ticker or company name to pull up the report of EPS data. The entire report can be downloaded into Excel.

Wall Street Transcript

Diane and I have been having an e-mail conversation about access to the Wall Street Transcript. Despite the results you see after doing a "Full Text Journals" search, only Investext Plus gives access to the text of the WST. If you do a search by company or industry and add the keyword "Wall Street Transcript", you will pick up the articles in PDF format. There is an embargo of about 7 -8 weeks.
Both PROMT and the Business and Company Resource Center include only the Wall Street Transcript Digest, a format that includes only abstracts of the articles.
We no longer subscribe to the WST in paper; we have issues from Volume 1, 1963 through Volume 137, 1997 on microfilm and bound volumes for 1997 to 2003.

Diagram of a Sheep's Brain

Sandy and I were at the reference desk last week helping a student find a labeled diagram of a sheep's brain. The student thought it would be in the Biology lab manual but after checking reserve came back for another source. Sandy found a wonderful tutorial and dissection guide from the University of Scranton at http://academic.uofs.edu/department/psych/sheep/

Paper for Student Printers

I have asked Nelson and Kerice, our student assistants, to check the printers throughout the day and keep the paper trays filled. This should cut down on the number of times librarians will need to service the printers.