New report on faculty

InsideHigherEd.com has a summary of a new government report, 2004 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty, which covers basic characteristics, work activities and compensation of instructional faculty and staff.

Calculators and Laptops Due During the TWU Strike

Calculators borrowed for the semester will be due on the last day of finals. Fines will be waived. Fines for three day laptops due during strike days will also be waived. Any questions may be emailed to circulation@baruch.cuny.edu

Library Hours Extended During January Semester

The Newman Library will be open 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m., Monday - Saturday during the January 2006 Winter Session (January 2 - 25). The circulation, periodicals, reserve and laptop loan desk will be open 9:00 a.m. - 5:50 p.m Monday through Friday and 9:00 a.m. - 4:50 p.m. on Saturday. The reference desk will be open 9:00 a.m. - 4:50 p.m. Monday - Saturday. The library will be closed on Sundays.

The 6th floor computing lab and the help desk will be staffed 8:00 a.m. - 8:00 p.m. Monday - Saturday.

New report: Creative New York

Creative New York, a new report on the City's creative sector as an economic asset, is now available on the web page of Center for an Urban Future.

Student offers thanks for FARS help

When I was at the desk this morning a student stopped by and thanked us for the help with the FARS assignment. She got a 100!

Business Plan Archive

This site will be helpful in supplying students with examples of business plans. (Free registration).

http://www.businessplanarchive.org/

This recent partnership between the Library of Congress, the Center for History and New Media, and the University of Maryland Libraries brings together business plans and related planning documents from the early days of the "dot com" boom and subsequent bust.(Scout Report, 12/16/05)

Some access denied because of proprietary info.

New FARS discs for 2005 available

The 2005 FARS (Financial Accounting Research System) discs have arrived (finally--they were backordered.) One copy is available at reserve and two others will be available here at the reference desk. They will be in demand in the second semester.


The information is current as of June 1, 2005. The same information, with updates, is available on the RIA Checkpoint and CCH Business & Finance databases.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Vendor Printer

Vendor printer is not working properly. A call has been put into Brian, and an out of order sign placed on printer.

Mighty Map: new real estate database at SIBL

SIBL has an interesting real estate database that we may want to refer our users to: Mighty Map. Here's SIBL's description of Mighty Map:

Real estate database for NYC buildings data. Provides information on buildings, lots, owners, tax liens, auctions, foreclosure sales, zoning, traffic counts, land use, subway locations, lis pendens, building permits, tax values, comparables, and more. Real estate brokers can check comparables, identify foreclosure sales and property auctions, and find developable property in the five boroughs. Comps (deed transactions) are updated monthly. Provides phone numbers of business and residential owner, including condos.

There's no remote access to this database, so users will have to go to SIBL to use it.

Win2Data is now Realquest.com

The link to Realquest.com hasn't been added to the list of databases yet, but you can still go there directly and login. We will have to log in users with a user name and password that can be found on the passwords page. Harry Gee has let me know that there are parts of this new database that we haven't subscribed to that will be on the search screen. When we get a clearer sense of what parts of the database we have access to, it will get written up on our Reference Handbook wiki and a blog post will go up here to announce it.

Win2Data access is changing

It's unavailable right now...stay tuned for details on the replacement database for it (actually, I think it will be a web-based version with a different name that is coming).

PolicyFile

PolicyFile is back up.

PolicyFile

PolicyFile is currently asking for a username/password, and thus inaccessible. We only have one sim. user, but it seems this has been going on for a while, so perhaps that is not the cause of our problem. I have asked Proquest for help to solve this.

NY Federal Reserve Bank's new research re: NY industries

New from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York:

“Urban Dynamics in New York City” (Economic Policy Review, December 2005)
A special volume collecting the papers and commentaries presented at the Bank’s April 2005 conference. The threefold goal of the conference was to focus on the historical transformations of the engine-of-growth industries in New York and distill the main determinants of the city’s historical dominance as well as the challenges to its continued success; to study the nature and evolution of immigration flows into New York; and to analyze recent trends in a range of socioeconomic outcomes, both for the general population and recent immigrants more specifically.
Read the contents:
http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/epr/2005n2.html

Reference Desk computer isn't working

The reference desk computer on the right side isn't working as it has viruses. Our systems people are working on it. I learned this Thursday night when I went to the desk. Rita

Advertisers and agencies online

Advertisers and agencies online is currently down. It is a problem with LexisNexis. They suggest trying in about an hour or so. If you try it and it's back up before I've posted anything again, please update the blog. Thanks!

CUFTS tool for indexing and full text information

Some of us may remember the handy and free resource called JAKE that allowed you to look up indexing and full text access information for a given periodical. JAKE is now defunct, but you can find similar info (though not as detailed) in Ulrichs.com.

There is now another free tool online-this one courtesy of the librarians at Simon Fraser University--that seems to do the same thing JAKE used to: CUFTS. You can find the journal look up feature for CUFTS at http://cufts.lib.sfu.ca/tools.shtml

One particularly neat trick that CUFTS can peform is a side-by-side comparison of journal access in different databases, which can be done here on the CUFTS site.

For more info on CUFTS, here's the PDF of the slides from a presentation about it given by Simon Fraser librarian Kevin Stranack about it.

NYPL has RSS feeds!

The feeds, which can be found on this page of the NYPL site, are:

• best of the web
• classes
• events for adults
• events for teens
• events for children
• exhibitions at the research libraries
• exhibitions at the branch libraries
• recent additions to databases and indexes online

via Library Stuff.

Finding old posts on this blog

There are a couple of ways to track down an old post or to search for something you think may have been posted.

Browse the "Index of Topics and Subjects" that I've set up using a free web service called del.icio.us. On the right side of every page in this blog, you'll see a link to this index as well as a sampling of some of the more popular topics. Clicking the link for the index itself will open a new page with a long list of subject descriptors (here known as "tags") that are bundled into five subsections: courses, databases, libraries, types of library users, and unbundled tags. If you want to see what's been posted on Business Source Premier, then look for it in the list of tags under "databases". Clicking the tag should show you a list of the blog posts that I've tagged as being on that particular database. At the moment, the "Business_Source_Premier" tag has been applied to six posts on the blog.

Search for your keywords in the search box on the right side of the page. This search tool is powered by a free service called Feedster. Don't bother using the search box in the upper left corner of the blue navigation bar at the top of our blog; that search tool is powered by Blogger and never seems to work very well.

Citing a numerical database in APA style

In a search today for a guide to citing a web-based numerical database (like CRSP or Compustat) in APA format, I ran across this great guide from the library at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. As you can see, it gives examples for a number of databases we have here at Baruch. The following citation guides, which usually are pretty comprehensive and ones I tend to rely on, didn't have exactly what I was looking for:

• Online! by Harnack and Kleppinger
• Diana Hacker's guide
• APA's own guide on its website
• Duke University Libraries guide

Oddly, the MLA guide to citing electronic sources that is on the library website at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro isn't nearly as good as the APA one.

Washington Post launches Congressional votes database

From the SLA News division listserv, I have learned that the Washington Post today launched a congressional votes database that covers the102nd-109th congresses (1991-present). Derek Willis, of the Post says that they are working on adding a search engine and other features to it. AdrianHolovaty, who works for washingtonpost.com, and Willis assembled the data and Holovaty built the web framework to display it. All of the data is gathered using Python, the database backend is PostgreSQL and the webframework is Django.
Comments, suggestions, brickbats much appreciated, according to the Post.

Candidate performance on the Uniform CPA exam reports

I have all of these reports in my office for a project, in case anyone else is looking for them.
They are usually in Ref HF 5630.C653.

RealQuest/Win2Data

RealQuest / Win2Data is not connecting at the moment. Saad is aware of the problem and working on it.

More on Old SEC filings

I was helping one of Prof. Cherney's students this morning look for financial statements from the 1980's for Amre Inc. We were able to find balance sheet/income statement numbers in the Moody's Industrial Manuals.

Another source for old statements is the NAARS collection in LexisNexis. Choose "Business - Company Financial." Type in the company name and from the source box choose either NAARS Annual Reports 1972-1984 or 1984-1995. In some cases you will find only the consolidated financial statement, in others, the financial statement with footnotes and auditor's comments.

Prof. Cherny's Principles of Auditing Assignment and filings re: Star Technologies

As previously mentioned in a several posts last month, some auditing students of Prof. Cherny are trying to get financial and other information about some companies that were involved in audit failures. One is Star Technologies. Many of these companies are no longer publicly traded so their filings are not available on Hoovers or Thomson. I found Star's filings on the SEC website in their older Edgar filings. Excerpts from the filings may also be located on Compustat. If the ticker is needed, the lookup on Compustat might work. Otherwise, I went to Factive, searched for news articles on the company, and located the ticker symbol, and then searched on Compustat.

The professor does not expect the students to purchase filings. He explained to me that the students should explain what information they were able to find and how they made use of it. He said in real life you frequently don't have complete information on which to make decisions. (The summaries of the audit failures give some details about the work conditions that the auditors face. Sometimes the companies/officials weren't very open about their information.)

Tip sheet for proximity search operators

I've started a page in the Reference Handbook on "Proximity Searching" that offers the operators for "any word order" searches and "restricted word order" searches in the following:

• CSA (Cambridge Scientific Abstracts)
• CUNY+
• EBSCOhost
• Factiva
• LexisNexis Academic Universe
• ProQuest
• WilsonWeb

The page has a hyperlinked table of contents at the top so you don't have to scroll down the page to get to a particular section. Before I go adding more databases, please leave a comment posted here on this blog to let me know your thoughts about this.

SDC Platinum updates

I've substantially revised the entry in our Reference Handbook wiki on SDC Platinum, but it could use some more work. Anyone who wants to add more details to the entry so that it can be demystified for all of us is encouraged to edit the entry.

New search interface for Business Source Premier

We've now switched over to the new search interface for Business Source Premier. Give a try if you haven't already.

Business Source Premier

BSP is back to normal.

Radio Advertising Bureau

The marketing reports from the Radio Advertising Bureau (RAB) database are a great free resource. Here is a description of it from our "Industry Information" subject guide:

Over 160 product and service sectors are covered in the “Instant Background” reports from RAB, the Radio Advertising Bureau. Service industries like dating services, museums, and overnight couriers, and small business sectors like chiropractors and drycleaners are featured in RAB. The reports present data on who buys, where they buy (company rankings), and their buying habits. It concludes with a forecast of business trends.

A link to the database and instructions for logging in can be found on the reference passwords page. There is no link to the RAB database from the library web site.

Thanks go out to Peggy Teich for letting the rest of us know about this valuable web site.

World Bank's Privitization Database

The description for this free World Bank resource, the Privatization Database, indicates that it:

provides information on more than 9,000 privatization transactions in developing countries from 1988 to 2003. Search transactions by country, region or sector for a particular time period or for the entire period covered in the database.

Thomas Web Site Redesigned

As noted on a post on ResourceShelf, the Thomas site on the Library of Congress site has been redesigned.

Update on the FARS assignment

I have placed 20 more copies of the handout explaining the sources available for the Financial Accounting Standards Board information which is needed for the FARS assignment in the reference desk file drawer with the other FARS information. I will be gone next week.

(Just as a refresher, FARS(Financial Accounting Research System) is the word that Wiley uses to package their student access to the Financial Accounting Standards Board's information. This same information is available in RIA Checkpoint and CCH. The free FASB website, www.fasb.org lacks the current text of the FASB information. The current text is important for the students to access. Access to FARS Online is available through the most recent edition of Kieso's Intermediate Accounting. Not all students have this edition. Last year, the FARS CD was the method Wiley-FASB made available to students.)

I would suggest encouraging students to search the information using the databases RIA Checkpoint or CCH Business & Finance as these are online and may be used off campus. The FARS disks in the drawer are current as of June 2004 as the June 2005 disks are still back-ordered. The students may use these disks but then they also need to check to see if the information is still current and this can be done on RIA or CCH.

Most of the students have completed the assignment but apparently some classes received it later than others. The graduate students of Prof. Nurnberng need to consult the SEC's regulations and how to do this is provided in my handout.

Business Source Premier

For some reason, logging into BSP from the homepage is not working -- you get a screen that says your session has expired. I have contacted EBSCO about this, but as a way around this for now, if you start a new session (the link appears next to session has expired), and follow on, you get to choose BSP and can get connected from that screen.

Handy LCSH Subdivisions

This recent Library Journal article, "Amazing, Magic Searches!" has a nice list of 25 valuable LCSH subdivisions that will spice up your keyword searches in an OPAC.

For a more comprehensive list, see this list of "Free Floating Subject Subdivisions" from the librarians at Princeton University (oddly, the page is on the Columbia University Libraries web site).

via lbr

Question about "Baruch College for Dummies"

A student asked me if we had the book "Baruch College for Dummies." She told me it was on Baruchvoiceout, which I was unfamiliar with, so she showed me. The actual series of Dummies.com books are now part of Wiley, which I doubt knows of this localized version.

Statistical Reference source - NationMaster & NetMedia

I just learned of this statistical website from Buslib-l. It claims to pull together statistics from a variety of sources including UN, WHO, World Bank, etc. generates charts, and has global coverage and looks pretty impressive!
It is at http://www.nationmaster.com/

Since I hadn't known of it, I looked at the reviews it hosted and found a Nielsen/netRatings 10.13.05 report on educational reference web sites (Wikipedia, etc.) which
reported that "educational reference Web sites attracted nearly 46.4 million Web users to reach 31 percent of the active Internet universe in September 2005." It's an interesting read!

http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/pr/pr_051013.pdf

Color printers

Baruch students in need of a color printer will find one in the main computer lab on the 6th floor.

Relevant Reference Handbook entries:

• Color Printer
• Main Computer Lab
  

Factiva

Has been experiencing problems on their end, which they say, should end shortly. I was just able to get in. Please let me know if you continue to experience problems.

Patron use of reference desk computers

As agreed upon at today's IS Division meeting, we will have a new policy regarding the way that we set up patrons on the two rear PCs in the reference desk. I've updated the Reference Handbook page on "Reference Desk Computers" to reflect this new policy:

There are a handful of CD-ROM databases that can only be accessed on the two rear reference desk computers (e.g., SDC Platinum). If patrons need to use one of these databases, please follow these steps in setting the patron up:

1. Take the patron's ID card and place it in the reference desk drawer (just as we do for ready reference items that get borrowed).
2. Set the patron up in a chair on the outside of the reference desk, not the inside.
3. Remind the patron that the PC is to be used only for the specific requested database. Patrons should not use these terminals to search other databases (or do word processing, e-mail, etc.) It is of course OK for the patron to use Word or Excel on these machines as he/she is working in the requested database, as many patrons will need to download and save data into Word documents or Excel spreadsheets.
4. When patron returns to the desk to pick up his/her ID card, return the card and immediately go over to the PC and swing the monitor back around so it is facing inward and place the keyboard and mouse back inside the reference desk.

GaleNet should be ok now

According to report from Thomson Gale.

GaleNet may experience some problems

Received from Gale:

Gale is again experiencing technical difficulties which will effect
applications running on the GaleNet platform. Our engineers are actively
working to get the problem resolved. I will send out additional updates as
more information is available. Please accept our apologies for any
inconvenience this may cause.
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact our Technical Support
department at 800-877-4253 (Option 4).

Evaluating a Firm's Jobs and Pay-report from BLS, National Compensation Survey

http://stats.bls.gov/ncs/ocs/sp/ncbr0004.pdf

I came across a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics's National Compensation Survey which our students may find interesting as they examine career opportunities. Entitled "A Guide to Evaluting Your Firms Jobs and Pay," and using the SOC (Standard Occupational Classification), it looks at a number of different professional jobs and ranks them according to work levels, responsibilities, knowledge, etc.

There are specific guides for Business Administration, one for Professional Accounting and Auditing, one for Info Tech, another for Soc, Psych, etc.; legal and social welfare and health administration.

Diane

Sense-Making the Information Confluence

Brenda Dervin, who has written a lot on sense-making as a model for how people search for information, is part of a team that will be researching how college students find and use electronic information. The researchers have received a major grant from IMLS to study this topic for the next two years. You can read the project proposal as well as papers and presentations related to the project at the project web site: Sense-Making the Information Confluence. For starters, you may want to check out the following:

• a presentation about the project (PowerPoint)
  
• the grant proposal abstract (PDF)
• the grant proposal narrative (PDF)

Periodicals at Queens College

If you didn't see this post on CULIBS-

The Queens College Benjamin Rosenthal Library is undergoing post-flood renovation.
Periodicals stack ranges from call number QD through Z 675P are not accessible from now through mid-January 2006. Please do not send your patrons to Queens expecting to use these journals.

Beginning Dec. 7th - microforms and CD-ROMs will be paged. Items will be paged at 10 a.m., 1 p.m., and 6 p.m.Mondays thru Thursdays and at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.

Consult the "Renovation Updates" blimp on our library homepage for current renovation information

Open access for College and Research Libraries

ACRL just announced that they will be providing open access to back issues of College and Research Libraries. There will be a six month embargo before issues are made available online. More details on the ACRL web site.

ACS adds functionality

American Chemical Society has added the ability to download a citation to citation manager and an RSS feeds to some of their publications.

More information at: http://pubs.acs.org/4librarians/livewire/2005/6.11/

New research re New York City

“The Evolution of Commuting Patterns in the New York City Metro Area,” by Jason Bram and Alisdair McKay (Current Issues in Economics and Finance, October 2005) is among the new research available from the Federal Bank of New York.

“The Evolution of Commuting Patterns in the New York City Metro Area,” by Jason Bram and Alisdair McKay Has the migration of jobs to the suburbs changed the commuting patterns in the New York City metro area? An analysis of current commuting trends suggests that Manhattan remains the region’s undisputed employment center and that workers are actually traveling farther to their jobs. Two factors appear to account for the longer commutes: the dispersion of people and jobs and a greater tolerance for long-distance travel among employers and employees.

Learning Express Database has GMAT, GRE, ESL, MATH etc.

Students in Prof. DeLuca's Management Development and Training classes have been exploring our databases and developing their own trading modules based on them. Today, one student presented a training piece on the Learning Express Database. I was surprised to find that the test collection is more extensive that I had realized.

It includes (free, as the student noted,--not Barrons or Kaplan!) practice tests for various tests we're often asked for including GMAT, GRE, ESL, math, etc. Needless to say, students at the presentation were very interested!

Diane

Circulation Policies at CUNY Libraries

The website of the CUNY Office of Library Services has added a page with the circulation policies of all the CUNY Libraries. It lists who may borrow, the loan period, and the number of renewals allowed.

You might also want to check out the page on "E-Journals & Reference Databases." It now lists resources in broad subject areas: General/Reference, Business & Social Sciences, Education/Library Science, Humanities, Science & Health, E-Books, and others.

Datamonitor Company Reports (including SWOTs) in Investext

I just "discovered" that Investext Plus has a number of Datamonitor company reports. A brief and unscientific comparison with the Datamonitor reports in Business Source Premier turned up
newer reports for the same company as well as some additional companies and SWOTS <> in BSP Datamonitor reports. The SWOTs I found seemed to be lengthier than those in BSP. Curiously, some of the Investext Plus reports were for private companies such as Ace Hardware.
(Louise and I discussed this and concluded that Investext may be adding additional non-analyst types of reports as a result of recent requirements attempting to put up barriers separating analysts from brokers. If anyone has other explanations please let us know!~).
Diane

Air Baruch in the Chronicle of Higher Ed.

And more about colleges and cellphone services, at:

http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i12/12a03201.htm

LACUNY Directory 2005-2006

The latest print edition of the LACUNY Directory, the 38th edition for 2005-2006, is now at the reference desk. Additions and changes will be added monthly to the Members page at the LACUNY Website.

Library Instruction Wiki

Librarians in Oregon have launched a Library Instruction Wiki that includes handouts, presentations, outlines, and much more.

Methodology Limiters in PsychINFO

I just want to post to the blog a question and answer about PsychINFO that was on CULIBS-L this morning.

A psychology faculty member has pointed out that the ability to limit a
search with the "Content/Form" option has disappeared. For example, one
could do a search for a topic and limit it to a literature review by adding
CT 1300 to the search.

It looks like EBSCO has just broken them out into a new bundle of limiters. The to limit to "Literature Review" field is now in a set of limiters called "Methodology." The full list of limiters in this "Methodology" drop down is as follows:

- Clinical Case Study
- Empirical Case Study
- Experimental Replication
- Followup Study
- Longitudinal Study
- Prospective Study
- Retrospective Study
- Field Study
- Literature Review
- Mathematical Modeling
- Meta Analysis
- Nonclinical Case Study
- Qualitative Study
- Quantitative Study
- Treatment Outcome/Clinical Trial

inquisitor ~ instant search

There's an interesting new search engine that is in beta right now. inquisitor ~ instant search offers you search results as you type.

New York Stock Exchange glossary of investment terms

As I mentioned at the IS division meeting on Monday, the New York Stock Exchange web site has a glossary of investment terms. (Click on Glossary and you then navigate it. I like it but there are many others available on the Internet, such as TIAA-CREF. Some of the sites have a great deal of advertising.

The European Library

I was recently reminded of this project ...
"The European Library webservice is a portal which offers access to the combined resources (books, magazines, journals.... - both digital and non-digital) of the 43 national libraries of Europe. It offers free searching and delivers digital objects - some free, some priced."
Please note that it is a beta/pilot version.

http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org

The Gabriel (GAteway and BRIdge to Europe's National Libraries) site used to provide access to these libraries. It has been integrated into the European Library site. The Gabriel site is no longer online.

"Advanced Search allows you to modify which collections to search, if you desire. The "Online books, images, maps, etc..." has amazing materials, but only from four libraries -- for now. (I retrieved images of WWI US posters, full-text scientific materials, and more. I found full-text from the 1600s to current materials.) There is also a section called "Treasures", which has scanned images of special collections from many national libraries.

Strategic Plan Committee Reports

The Committee Reports have been placed in a binder at the Reference Desk, and can be searched in CUNY+ under Baruch College strategic plan, 2006-2011 : committee reports.
Call Number: LD 5171 .N49 B34 2005.

Evening Support from BCTC

In case you have not heard already, this semester the BCTC help desk extended its regular hours to 9:00 p.m. (Mon-Thurs.), 7:00 (Friday) and 6:00 (Sunday). In addition, the lab has added a full-time evening supervisor, Edwin Melendez. If you have a problem that cannot wait until the morning, such as a printing failure, Edwin may be able to help.

The DaVinci Institute - The Future of Libraries

This is a paper that the biblioblogosphere (the world of blogs by librarians) has been talking about lately: The DaVinci Institute - The Future of Libraries.

Workshop Handouts, Exercises and PPTs

At today's IS division meeting we discussed sharing workshop materials. There are two folders, one for "Handouts & Exercises" and another for "Powerpoint Presentations", on the shared drive at Shared\Divisions\IS\Workshops. I have posted my handouts for the Company workshop and the Annual Reports workshop there. Please let us know what you are sharing.

Reference Handbook

As I noted at today's Information Services Division meeting, the Reference Handbook is now live on the web as a wiki. There is a link to it on on the right side of this blog. I will also add a button to it on the toolbar of the browsers on the four staff PCs at the reference desk.

If you want to see what kind of pages are already in the handbook, you might want to take a look at the "All Pages" page, which has an A-Z list of every page in the wiki. As you can see from the link in the previous sentence, you can create links to any page in the handbook.

If you forget the password for the wiki or have any other questions about it, please contact me.

New York Law School Library

The Mendik Library of the New York Law School in downtown Manhattan will move to temporary quarters and store most of their collection at an off-site facility while a new library is being built. Construction is expected to start in December and take up to two years. During certain periods they will be completely closed to outside users. They have asked that before we send Metro Yellow Card users to the library we verify that the library is open and the desired items are available.

America is Aging

I was looking at the latest issue of the Milken Institute Review and their Charticle on "America is Aging Fast" when I noticed that William Frey is now a fellow of the Institute. Frey is a noted demographer and has his own Website, U.S. Demographics: Data, Analysis, Interpretation. His website has a database of area profiles (state or metro area) of population change and migration data. He was also involved in developing CensusScope , a free Web database for charting, mapping and ranking data from the 2000 Census.

Attendance at Sunday Workshops

Our experiment offering Sunday workshops was a success. Ten students (including three walk-ins) attended the Industry workshop and 11 students (including five walk-ins) attended the Company workshop.

Books 24X7

Mike reports that bibliographic records for titles in Books 24x7 have been added to CUNY+ and will link directly to the e-book.

Searching by the keyword "books24x7.com" will bring up the list of titles.

DOI's in OECD Publications

Diane, Mike, Rita and I met with Joachim Doll of OECD on Monday. One of the new initiatives the OECD is working on is to imbed Digital Object Identifiers (DOI's) in their publications. To see how these work, open SourceOECD from our Information Resources page and click on the tab marked "At a Glance" to find an online copy of the OECD Factbook . Choose one of the sections on economic, social or environmental indicators. The chapters on each indicator include definitions, data collection policy, a summary of long-term trends, links to sources, data (exportable to Excel), charts, and a link to the full chapter in PDF format. When you use the PDF version of the Factbook all the tables and charts will have DOI's (OECD calls them StatLinks). Clicking on the StatLink for any chart will open a spreadsheet with the chart and the data behind it.

Van Gogh draughtsman exhibit book

I have placed my copy of the Van Gogh draughtsman The Masterpieces exhibit book at the reference desk in case you want to look at it. It could also be used by students who have an assignment to write about something that they have viewed at a museum. The exhibit of his drawings recently opened at the Metropolitan Museum; I saw the exhibit when I was visiting my Dutch friends. I found the exhibit so interesting that I bought the book and I plan to go again now that it is just a subway ride away. Many of the drawings are rarely exhibited because of their fragile condition. I hope that here they have a video presentation in which the pages of his original small sketch book are shown.

More on Wars

To follow-up on the question about the number of wars in the world, I stumbled on to this database at the Center for International Development and Conflict Management. Based on a book A Story of Crisis, the International Crisis Behavior Online database provides summaries of over 440 world crises from the period 1918 to 2002. The database also includes a detailed history of each conflict.

Accessing FASB-FARS literature for accounting students #2

• One of the reasons that the accounting students have the "FARS" assignment is that the new, online CPA exam has several questions in which students need to demonstrate the ability to search official accounting literature and, hopefully, find the correct answer to the questions. (In the exam, I am told that there is a "correct answer"; however, as we know "standards" can be interpreted in different ways. Last year I found that many students did not recognize the difference between the word "may" (which is permissive) and "should"or "shall" (meaning required.) Of course, the CPA exam is just the start of their careers and these generally accepted accounting standards will be used throughout their careers, and are revised as conditions change.

For the assignments, the students will most likely need to search the following:

• the Original Pronouncements, as amended, arranged by date issued or by subject.
• the Current Text, which has general standards applicable to all companies, and industry standards applicable to specific industries, which incorporates the applicable sections of pronoucements as amended. In the current text, the original source of the information is cited, to the paragraph, such as (FAS 132R).
• EITF Abstracts are the work of the Emerging Issues Task Force.
• Topical Index--searches all other parts of the database. If a student doesn't know the issue or statement needed, the topical index is the place I would start. Keyword searching is how to start.

The Implementation Guides may be needed and the Derivative Instruments and Hedging Activities probably are not going to be needed.

If one searches the Original Pronouncements, the Original Pronouncements as amended will need to be searched.

Here is how the students may access the FARS literature, which is the same as the FASB literature:

• New this year --Students with the latest edition (summer 2005) of the Intermediate Accounting book by Kieso will have a password in the book to access supplemental material including online access to FARS by Wiley. I have done a two part Powerpoint presentation on how to search this version and I will a print out of it at the reference desk. Not all students have this version. The copies on reserve do not have password access. In addition to the Powerpoint explanation, there is a 22 page guide which I have printed out and placed in the folder in the reference desk.

Other means of accessing this literature. (I have listed them in what I think is the easiest to use and best to use.)

• RIA Checkpoint--available in Information Resources. The default needs to be changed from Federal Tax to WG&L Financial Reporting. The easiest way to access the FASB literature is to go to the Table of Contents, then drill down in the WG&L Financial Resources Library, to the FRM Source Materials, then to FASB. This will result in a list including the Original Pronouncements, EITF, Topical Index, the same materials as FARS by Wiley. (If you search from the initial opening screen of the database, it just says FASB and you don't know what you are searching. So, going through the Table of Contents is a good way to start, especially for newcomers.) Search by keyword.
• Advantages of this database: Remote access and many internal hyperlinks, which reduce the number of searches that a student may need to make. Results may be e-mailed, printed or saved.
• CCH Business & Finance. Click on Securities tab. Scroll down to SEC Accountants' Module and then click on Financial Accounting Standards Board. This will bring up a list of documents, just like in RIA, and FARS by Wiley. Search by keyword or by citation, if known. Results may be e-mailed (new feature), printed or saved. Advantage of this database: remote access and ability to e-mail. Disadvantage: Lacks the internal hyperlinks of RIA, so students will need to do new searches to get to referenced documents.
• FARS discs--available at Reference desk and Reserve. Unfortunately, the 2005 disc is back ordered from Wiley. (We aren't the only ones.) The 2005 disc is current as of June 2005. The 2004 discs, which we have, are current as of June 2004. So, if students use these discs, they need to check the FASB web site, www.fasb.org, or use RIA or CCH to see if there is any more current information. There is a print out how to search the FARS disc from last year in the reference desk drawer.
• FASB website, www.fasb.org. Advantages: It's free. It's where the information is updated most rapidly as it is FASB official site. You can set up an e-mail alert for any announcements, etc.
• Disadvantages: can't search through the documents easily if you don't know what document you need. Another disadvantage: the current text is not available so if there have been revisions of any sort one would need to consult the individual documents and incorporate the changes. My advice: use this for checking to see if you are dealing with the most current information and search using any of the other options.

Please let me know if you have any questions. Thanks, Rita

FARS assignments and upcoming workshops #1

The accounting faculty is again assigning students assignments requiring them to search official accounting literature, which for this assignment is limited to the pronouncements and standards and other notices/announcements from the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). I will detail access to this literature in a separate blog entry.

Short workshops on searching FARS (the Financial Accounting Research System) will be offered:

Monday, Oct. 24, 5 pm. Room 135, first floor of the library
Tuesday, Oct. 25, 1 p.m. Room 135, first floor of the library
Wednesday, Oct. 26, 4:30 p.m. Room 135, first floor of the library
Saturday, Oct. 29, 1 p.m., Room 135, first floor of the library.
Monday, Oct. 31, 4 p.m., Room 135, first floor in the library
Thursday, Nov. 3, 1 p.m. Room 130, first floor in the library
Friday, Nov. 4, 5:30 p.m. Room 135, first floor in the library

Saturday, Nov. 5, there is a regularly scheduled Accounting Resources workshop at 12 noon in Room 135 in the library. I will incorporate FARS in this workshop. The workshop goes from 12 to 1:15 p.m. (Students should sign up for the Nov. 5 workshop by going to Instruction on the Newman Library homepage.)

For all other workshops, students can just show up. They should last about 20 minutes, based on my experience last year.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

How Many Wars?

Yesterday an e-mail question came in asking for statistics on the number of "active war situations" in the world today. The best numbers I could find were in the SIPRI Yearbook, available on the Web at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Prof. Cherny's Principles of Auditing assignment

Prof. Cherny's Principles of Auditing students are working on group projects that deal with one of 12 audit failures described in detail in their textbook. Among the things he is suggesting, but he stressed to me, and his students today, is for them to compare, if available, the financial statements of the firms that had audit failures for several years prior to the year in which the audit failure occurred, as well, if available, financial statements of firms in the same business. He realizes that these financial statements may not be readily available for some of the firms. If they are not, he told me that he expects the students to explain information that was available that they looked at. (He said a lot of times in real life you have to make decisions on less than perfect information.)

For example, one case involves Bernard Cornfeld, also known as Bernie Cornfeld, and Investor Overseas Services (IOS), a Panama Corporation with its principal office in Geneva, Switzerland, and Fund of Funds, Ltd., a Canadian open-ended investment company (mutual fund). Ok so far? The audit failure occurred about 1969, prior to electronic filings of documents. I contacted the SEC, which uses Thomson Financial for obtaining old filings pre Edgar (basically pre-1994 for U.S. firms.). Thomson Financial hasn't gotten back to me, but if the filings are available, it is at a cost of 23 or 26 cents a page. (I will work with Prof. Cherny to see if he wants these in the future for assigments.) IOS and Funds of Funds went into bankruptcy; much money was lost; everyone sued everyone; and litigation ended in the mid 1980s. (See Westlaw and Lexis-Nexis; the case against the auditors is cited in the literature that the students have.) Cornfeld was apparently quite a character; he went to prison for several years. There are books about this fraud which we have here in the library. (I didn't check to see if any financial statements were reproduced.)

Update 10/19 on the IOS/Funds of Fund/Bernie Cornfeld case: The SEC called back and said that since this fund wasn't registered in the U.S., they wouldn't have any financial filings. I relayed this information to Prof. Cherny. Encourage students to select another case if they want to compare financial filings. Checking Thomson Research or the SEC site for Edgar documents or Hoovers would be a good place to start/

Another more recent, from the mid 1990s, audit failure is for Livent, a Canadian-based firm, publicly-traded, that produced/produces live theatre shows, both in Canada and the U.S. (It has continues to operate under bankruptcy protection. There are many stories about both of these frauds in the popular press (WSJ, NYT, Financial Times, etc, accounting journals, etc. The Canadian SEDAR.com, which is like the SEC's Edgar, does have earlier filings for Livent, as does Thomson Research. Disney appears to be the only other publicly traded firm that produces live theatre shows, as a student and I searched by NAICS and SIC codes.)

So, where else to direct the students? CCH Business & Finance probably has some helpful information at its Securities tab. There is a selected Federal Securities Cases Archive 1941-1993 and SEC Releases and other Materials that can be searched. (The SEC Releases and other materials will give you the SEC case number and what happened --for example, in short, Cornfeld reached a settlement with the SEC.)

The new Audit Analytics database, for which one user can be on at a time, might provide some help as there is audit data back to 2000 and one can search by broad industry classifications--such as entertainment and one may also see the audit firm's opinion letters.

When I spoke with Prof. Cherny told, he told me that part of the assignment is also written and oral communication. (He worked in the profession for a number of years before returning to get his PHD.) Definitely, the case studies pose what were real life problems, and the students need to explain, to the best of their abilities, what they would conclude, based on what is available to them. I helped a student on Saturday with information on the Livent case, and she told me that, based on what the case presented, "the young auditor was in way over her head," as she didn't understand the business of financing theatre productions. The auditor unfortunately went along with what was going on....and ended up with a prison sentence.

Prof. Cherny is also looking for suggestions such as what weaknesses were apparent--for example, a lot of cash being handled only by one person, relatives-friends dealing with each other, but of course, perhaps there was nothing easily apparent, because of the nature of fraud.

Perhaps if any of these students come to the reference desk you could refer them to me. I don't know what the other 10 cases are that the students are working on. I think it is a semester project.

I think this assignment has information competency in it--for students and librarians.

New bankruptcy act in effect today

CCH has a summary of the new bankruptcy law at http://www.cch.com/bankruptcy/. (It will link to a pdf file that offers an 8 page summary.)

ACRL Launches an Official Blog

ACRL now has an official blog: ACRLog. You can view the list of contributors on this page on the new blog. Among the contributors is Steven Bell, who is the Director of the Gutman Library at Philadelphia University and who is also the person behind The Kept-Up Academic Librarian blog.

Corporate Social Audits

Look for the business press to focus on corporate accountability through social audits when Baruch's International Center for Corporate Accountability Inc. (ICCA) releases its audit of the multinational, Freeport Mcmoran Copper & Gold, this week. The 133 page report will be posted at www.icca-corporate accountability.org.

Although Freeport had social and human-rights policies in place and set up a Partnership Fund for Community Development, it asked for the human rights audit in 2003. The report is the first of its kind. Business Week in an article, "Freeport’s Hard Look at Itself” (October 24, 2005), says the audit may set a standard for multinationals. Prof. Prakash Sethi is pictured in the article with the Freeport staff.

Library Open 24-hours during Mid-terms

The Newman Library will be open 24 hours for mid-term examinations. The
dates were chosen by Undergraduate Student Government in consultation with
the Vice President for Student Development and Enrollment Management. The
library will open at 7:00 a.m. on October 19 and remain open continuously
until 11:59 p.m. on October 27. The same rules that we apply during
extended hours for final exams will also apply in this case. After midnight
access to the library will be restricted to Baruch College students.

Library Instruction Wiki

As noted on this recent posting on the Librarians with Class blog, there's a new library instruction wiki up that may grow to be a valuable clearinghouse of ideas for information competency.

English 2150 assignment help

Peggy and I assisted a student in Prof. Burger's English 2150 class with an assignment to write about a modern-day poem based on a fairy tale. We found that Anne Sexton wrote "Cinderella"in a book of poetry Transformations, which is not available here at Baruch, but her Complete Poems is available at PS3537.E915 A17 1981. We printed several bibliographies of poems and fairy tales that we found. They are at the reference desk.

Computer Security at the Reference Desk

Starting today all librarians staffing the reference desk must login at the start of their shift using their personal username and ID. When you leave the desk, remember to sign out.

Industry Codes

Recently a student looking for world trade data asked which international industry codes to use. The key international system is ISIC from the United Nations which students can view from the UN Classifications Registry site.

If students need to translate SIC codes or NAICS codes to ISIC, there is a Website, Jon Haveman's Industry Concordances , that links to translations of codes for various industry coding systems including ISIC, SIC, NAICS, NACE, HS, TSUSA, and SITC.

For more about the various industry and product coding systems used for trade data, Columbia University has a guide to Codes Used for Reporting Trade Data.

Articles on Technical Analysis

An MBA class has an assignment to compile a bibliography on technical analysis using peer-reviewed journals. Neither ABI/Inform nor Business Source Premier use "technical analysis" as a subject term although articles with author supplied keywords will often use the term. One workaround is to combine "technical analysis" with the subject terms "investment*" or "finance" or with one of the various technical analysis methods like candlestick charting. Harry also suggested Scopus as a relevant database and it brought up titles not found in ABI or BSP.

Full web access at public PCs

At the end of this summer, new Dell PCs were installed on the 2nd floor. Some were placed in the cubicles where there used to be Macs that only had CUNY+ access (those terminals have been moved around a bit) and others were placed in the cubicles across from the reference desk where there were already three PCs with full web access.

At the moment, all the new PCs that have been set up do not have full web access (there is no address window in the browser), so users can't get beyond the library web site, the Baruch web site, and things like eSIMS and Blackboard. Saad's staff will change the browsers in these PCs sometime soon.

ProQuest corrects our Historical Newspapers subscription

Our free ride has ended. ProQuest just realized that they had accidentally given us access to more titles in ProQuest Historical Newspapers than we had paid for (the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal). We no longer have access to:

• Atlanta Constitution (1868-1925)
• Boston Globe (1872-1901)
• Chicago Tribune (1860-1969)

Spinoff and merger examples--American Express, Ameriprise; Procter & Gamble and Gillette

If you need an example of a spinoff, American Express and Ameriprise are a current example. The spinoff was completed last Friday, and Ameriprise, formerly American Express Financial Advisers, started trading on NYSE today with the ticker AMP. Ameriprise representatives rang the opening bell at NYSE today.

The closing bell was rung by officials of Procter & Gamble, which acquired the Gillette Company today. American Express's and the Procter & Gamble and the Gillette Company's homepages are a source of all the filings that are needed for spinoffs and mergers.

MS Office Tip: Use Word Wraps and Line Breaks in Excel

One of my favorite blogs, Lifehacker, posted this handy tip for adding paragraph breaks to a long cell in Microsoft Excel.

Bloomberg information

Last Thursday I attended an open house at Bloomberg's headquarters. I attended some short information sessions on independent research and corporate governance. I received some reports and search guides that Bloomberg has prepared on these topics and subjects. If you want to see them, please let me know.

Economic Census 2002 Information

I attended a workshop on the 2002 Economic Census sponsored by the Census Bureau last Friday. I have extra copies of the handouts if you want to see them. The Powerpoint presentation is available.

Among the most important things that I learned:
The Economic Census reports are the only census reports that include both businesses with employers and businesses without paid employees. The American FactFinder, a quick link on the Census's web site, and the other reports, do not include businesses without paid employees. Businesses without paid employees number in the millions--ma and pa businesses owned by the couple, taxi drivers who rent their cabs, many used car dealers, and perhaps consultants who own their own business, etc.

The Census Bureau also had good questions for examples of limitations of the data. For example, if one is trying to determine the number of casinos, one must also search for casinos in hotels. (I didn't know that New Jersey requires a casino to be in a hotel.) Connecticut is an example of a state in which the number of receipts from casinos is suppressed to avoid identifying single businesses--Connecticut has two casinos and if you knew the receipts of one casino, you can figure the amount of the other.

Librarians' Index to the Internet revamped

As of September 30, the Librarians' Index to the Internet has been completely redesigned and renamed. It is now known as the Librarians' Internet Index.

• Old version of lii.org
• New version of lii.org
  

NYCdata at the Weissman Center

Prof. Eugene J. Sherman and the Weissman Center for International Business, have compiled a database of statistics, NYCdata, about "New York City, the capital of the modern world". The compendium covers 16 topics including population and geography, income and wages, fiscal data, international trade, housing, education, culture and business activity and headquarters. You can connect to the site at http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/nycdata/

Mental Measurements Yearbook

Access has been restored.

Social Explorer

Presented at the last ERAC meeting, Susan showed us a new resource, free for now, called Social Explorer.

Social Explorer is based at Queens College of the City University of New York. They provide demographic data in data maps to track visually the changes that have occurred in the United States, from 1790 to the present, from the country level ot the county level.

Point to: http://www.socialexplorer.com

Mental Measurements Yearbook

At this time there are problems accessing Mental Measurements Yearbook. I'm working on getting this fixed up and will let you know when access is restored.

Mike

Exalead: An Interesting Search Engine

After reading an interesting column by Mary Ellen Bates in EContent about Google falling behind in offering advanced tools for searching and results filtering, I tried out one of the alternative search engines she recommended: Exalead. This engine offers in one place a lot of nifty features not all found in one web search tool:

• word stemming
• phonetic search (will search for words that sound like the ones you type)
  
• proximity searching (within 16 words)
  
• clustering of results
• thumbnail images of pages in search results
• suggestions of related terms
• clickable filters for document/file types (e.g., you can winnow search results list to only PDFs, or only DOCs, or only PPTs, etc.

Here's a sample search for "death with dignity." As you can see, the list of related terms on the left side of the search results page is fairly comprehensive. The "related terms" feature alone may make this useful when trying help students brainstorm about other keywords to consider.

There's no pretending Exalead has as large an index as Google. The range of features, though, offered on Exalead's search results page (as well as on its advanced search page) make it an attractive alternative (especially considering that right now, as far as I know, it is the only engine that allows for proximity searching

Euromonitor GMID

Our access to Euromonitor has been reactivated.

TRIAL -- IMF International Financial Statistics

We have a trial to the IMF International Financial Statistics:
The IFS database contains approximately 32,000 time series covering more than 200 countries and areas and includes all series appearing on the IFS Country Pages; exchange rate series for all Fund member countries, plus Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles; major Fund accounts series; and most other world, area, and country series from the IFS World Tables.

You will need a password to get in.

Guest Logins

Now that we've got a tool we can use for creating guest logins for non-Baruch library patrons (see Arthur's post on the blog for details), I've added a button on the browser toolbar for both of the PCs at the front of the reference desk. The button is labeled "Guest Logins." Clicking it will take you to the page that allows us to set up temporary logins for both the wireless network and for the public PCs that require login.

New database: Audit Analytics

Requested by the accounting dept., we now have access to Audit Analytics, a database which provides detailed audit information on over 1,500 accounting firms and 20,000 publicly registered companies. Users can create reports by auditor, fees, location, industry and more.

We have one concurrent user.

However each user must have their own individual password. To receive a password, please email Tom Hardy at thardy@ivesinc.com. On the main page, you will be asked to log-in using your email address and the password (on the left side of the screen).

Thanks to Saad, there is a page explaining this after users try to connect to the database from the information resources page.
You can get to that page from: http://newman.baruch.cuny.edu/info_resources/audit.htm

Income, Poverty, Health Insurance in US, 2004 Census

Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2004 (pdf)

http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/p60-229.pdf

August 2005 demographic profile of the real median household income of US residents, along with material on the nation's official poverty rate and those persons without health insurance coverage. Notes that the nation's official poverty rate rose from 12.5 percent in 2003 to 12.7 percent in 2004. Also notes that the number of persons without health insurance coverage increased by approximately 800,000 to 45.8 million. Details such crucial research questions as how the Bureau measures income and poverty. Scout Report 9.9.05

New databases:

3 new databases:

• IEEE/CSLPe :
  New database, for computer scientists and other interested...
  Access to 22 periodicals published by IEEE and more than 1,500 conference publications in full-text, searchable formats.
  http://remote.baruch.cuny.edu:2048/login?url=http://www.computer.org/publications/dlib/

Coming to us with Sociological Abstracts, we also have access to:

• Physical Education Index:
  These abstracts feature a wide variety of content, ranging from physical education curricula, to sports medicine, to dance. Other coverage includes sport law, kinesiology, motor learning, recreation, standardized fitness tests, sports equipment, business and marketing, coaching and training, and sport sociology/psychology.
  Physical Education Index

• Applied Social Science Index and Abstracts (ASSIA):
  ASSIA indexes and abstracts cover health, social services, psychology, sociology, economy, politics, race relations and education. It is updated monthly.
  ASSIA: Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts

Printing from Baruch laptops

Students who have borrowed one of the library's laptops can now use them to send print jobs to the student printers. Students connected to the wireless network using their own laptops, however, cannot send print jobs to the student printers.

Graphing calculators all loaned out

All the graphing calculators have been loaned out for the fall semester. There is one available for 2-hour loan (from the reserve window).

Blackboard Problem-- and temporary solution

New students are having problems creating their Blackboard accounts. (They enter their information but CUNY Portal/Blackboard does not confirm the account; or they get blank pages when trying to enter Blackborad).

The Help Desk said that they can get around this ONLY by getting to Blackboard the following way:
1. From the Baruch homepage, choose "Blackboard" from the drop down menu under the "Computing" tab
2. Click on the link that says "Login directly to Blackboard (for registered users only)" --- even though they are not registered yet.
3. Under the sign-in boxes on the Login page, you will see "If you do not have a valid active CUNY Portal username and password, please go here". Click on "here", which is a link.
4. This leads to the "Validate CUNY Affiliation" page. They will need to type in their last name, SSN, and DOB.

They should get into Blackboard after these 4 steps. The Help Desk thinks this problem will be around for another week or two.

Guest Accounts for Internet Access

The college is testing its new guest password generator for network access accounts. The accounts are valid until 11:59 p.m. on the day following their creation. Any full-time member of the library staff may log into the application through the link below. Please feel free to provide an account to anyone who needs to use the Internet. The fact that someone has been admitted into the library demonstrates eligibility. We will announce the availability of guest accounts in the library, on our web site, etc. after we have tested the application and based on our experience, decided how to systematically dispense the accounts as a service. Please keep in mind that this is a test version of the application, so you may encounter bugs that you should report through the comments/suggestions form on the library's web site.

https://bdam.baruch.local

Color Laser Printer in BCTC Lab

A color laser printer is available for use by Baruch College students in the BCTC lab on the 6th floor. Each print deducts eighty cents from the student's Pharos printing allocation.

Graphing Calculators Available for Loan

Graphing calculators will be available for loan on a first come, first served, basis at the third floor service counter starting Monday, August 29th. Calculators will be available for loan at these times:

Monday, August 29th at 10:30 am & 7:30 pm
Tuesday, August 30th at 10:30 am & 7:30 pm
Wednesday, August 31st at 10:30 am & 7:30 pm

Students must update their library record for Fall 2005 at the circulation desk before borrowing.

Please Promote Library Workshops

Small flyers (the size of the library map) are available at the reference desk. There are two versions; one for all open workshops and another targeted to business students. If you would like copies to distribute in classes, please see Nelson or Kerice in the reference office.

Paper Registration form for the Fall 2005 Library Workshops

During the Zicklin Graduate Student orientation (this past Saturday), I handed out paper registration forms for the library workshops. I encouraged students to sign up for the workshops online, but you may see a few students turn in the paper registration form at the reference desk. Please place the paper registration form in a folder that I will leave at the reference desk. The folder will be labelled, "Library Workshops Fall 2005 Registration Form", and placed in the filing cabinet where the forms for the statistics/etc. are kept. I will check the folder every day, and take care of signing up the students.

Why did I do this? This year's orientation had much larger tour groups, with a shorter time allotted for a library tour (only 10 minutes). I knew the students wouldn't have enough time to sign up for workshops using the library terminals during the tour, so I gave them a paper registration form. I was hoping they would fill them out either on-the-spot or later in the day, and then give them to me during the end of day cocktail reception. No one turned in the form on Saturday, as they were whisked around on tours, and didn't have the time to check their calendars. At least they left the library with a paper schedule of the workshops. I included instructions on how to register online, as well. Most students I talked to during the cocktail reception indicated that they will sign up using the online form. Let me know if you have any questions.

Availability of the Disney decision

Earlier today I received a request for a copy of the Disney decision from Aug. 9. The requestor said that the Financial Times said the decision was 180+ pages. The version from the Court of Chancery of Delaware is that long. I found a link to the decision, in a pdf file, at http://www.faegre.com/articles/article_1648.aspx (which is the newsletter of a law firm for which I once worked as a legal assistant.) However, the decision is also available in Westlaw and Lexis-Nexis. On Westlaw it runs 86 pages. The official case name: In Re The Walt Disney Company Derivative Litigation.

The court found that the director defendants did not breach their fiduciary duties. The introduction to the decision has a summary of fiduciary duties, which you might want to read. The judge states that these duties do not change, unlike ideals of corporate governance.

Much of the decision is taken up with the details of the hiring and firing of Michael Ovitz and the end of the friendship between Ovitz and Michael Eisner.

An appeal of the court's decision has been announced.

Mistake found in citation that you may want to know about

An accountancy professor called the desk today to say he was having trouble locating the following article, "The Simultaneous Relation between Auditor Switching and Audit Opinion: An Empirical Analysis," by Jagan Krishnan, and others, from Summer 1996. He was searching ABI Inform and the citation said it was published in The Accounting Review, but only an abstract was available. When he tried "Find a copy" the link to JSTOR was not successful. He thought something might be wrong with the volume number cited for The Accounting Review.

It turns out that the article was published in Accounting and Business Research, Summer 96, Vol. 26, Issue 3, p. 224, and this is available full-text only on Business Source Premier. It has been cited a number of times, so there is a possibility that this might come up again. I will alert ABI Inform about the error.

Student assignment re: how a small company benefits from a large company

Last night a student asked for help with an assignment in which he was to show how a small company benefits from a contract with a large company. After a brief discussion about "small" and "large," (there's no one definition of a "small business" from the government), he said he was thinking of a manufacturer and a supplier. I suggested the National Minority Suppliers Development Council as a place to start. (Members of this organization are included on the web site, and include some of the largest corporations in the U.S.) Most of these corporations have diversity programs, and some list "success stories" or ""partners", etc. Then, Business Wire or other databases could be searched about the companies. I thought two publicly traded firms might provide more information than non-public firms, or a publicly traded firm and a private one. For example, Bridgewater Interiors, a private firm, has had two very large ($400 million) contracts with the automobile manufacturers. We found some stories in Black Enterprise and other publications. Black Enterprise and Hispanic Business, among other publications, honor firms for their diversity efforts. This all took some time though. If you have other suggestions, please post them.

Business Source Premier Reviewed

The Charleston Advisor recently published a lengthy critical review of Business Source Premier. They explain in some detail the new interface, the filtering options, the dearth of "Cited References", navigation and content issues with the Datamonitor SWOT reports, and the quality of the subject indexing and abstracts. In comparison with ABI Inform, they prefer Business Source Premier because it has nearly 800 more scholarly journals and more than three times as many titles with full text. They conclude "In the world of business research, BSP is king."

RIA Checkpoint now includes e-mail option

RIA Checkpoint recently added the option to e-mail results.

Counterparty Risk Management Policy Group II issues report: Toward Greater Financial Stability: A Private Sector Perspective

The Report of the Counterparty Risk Management Policy Group II: Toward Greater Financial Stability: A Private Sector Perspective, issued July 27, was brought to my attention by Arthur Ainsberg, a Baruch alumnus who is on a number of the college's boards and committees, as being a very important report, a copy of which the library should have. I have printed out the report (in excess of 200 pages) and will have it bound. The full report is available through the group's website, and a pdf file is also available there. I have let the accountancy faculty know of the report and its availability.

GPO has trial project re chat reference

I noticed the following on the GPO Access page today:

Government Information Online (GIO) is a national pilot project sponsored by the Illinois State Library, OCLC, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. GPO is participating in the pilot along with more than 30 federal depository libraries from across the United States. Users of the service can interact online with government information librarians during a weekly chat schedule, or users can submit questions at any time using an email interface. To use the service, visit the project's website at http://govtinfo.org. The pilot is scheduled to run through November 14, 2005.

New databases

There's been a number of new databases added in the past few weeks:

• Encyclopedia Britannica
• Grove Art Online
• Grove Music Online
• In the First Person

Oxford Reference Online is back

In case you were wondering.

Oxford Reference Online

Per Oxford: they are experiencing system-wide access problems and are working to fix it soon.

Hoover's

Off campus access to Hoover's has been restored!

Oxford Reference Online connection down

Not sure why we can't get in to Oxford Reference Online right now.

Vendor Card Printing from Public PCs

Saad is continuing work on the 8 public PCs (behind the reference desk) so that users can print to the vendor printers. As of this morning, the three PCs nearest the popular reading collection (but not the PC for the disabled) can be used to print to the vendor printer. Users must select the printer icon for "hp5si1u on pserver1" not the "Vendor card printer" and they cannot name their jobs at this time. I will keep you posted.

New York State Demographics information

Gotham Gazette has an interesting article today on the differing demographics of Upstate and Downstate New York and the conflicts that result. The link in the article for the region's differing demographics is to a 49-slide Power Point presentation, "Demographics Overview of New York State: Implications for Education," given at the Board of Regents Retreat at the University of Albany, July 21, 2005.

Sneak preview of new Librarians' Internet Index

The Librarians' Index to the Internet has been undergoing a complete overhaul recently. You can see a preview of the new design, which looks like it will also feature slightly different name: Librarians' Internet Index. According to Karen Schneider of the Free Range Librarian, the URL for this preview version is temporary, so don't bother bookmarking it.

You can find more of Schneider's earlier thoughts about the redesign here on the Free Range Librarian. (By the way, she often uses the abbreviation MPOW to as shorthand for "my place of work," which happens to be the Librarians' Index to the Internet.)

Laptop availability via CUNY+

In the browse section of CUNY+ search screen ("Browse an Alphabetical List") type "baruch laptop" and go to the holdings info in the item records for each of the following:

• Baruch Laptop
• Baruch Laptop - iBook
• Baruch Laptop - Latitude D600
• Baruch Laptop - PowerBook

Study room availability via CUNY+

In the browse section of CUNY+ search screen ("Browse an Alphabetical List") type "study rooms baruch" and go to the holdings info in the item record.

Hoover's: on campus=yes; off campus=no

This week we got on-campus access to Hoover's back, but they are still refusing to allow off-campus access (via EZ Proxy).

NOVEL Databases access via driver's license

One more option for remote access to databases. Anyone with a NY state driver's license or with a NY state non-driver photo ID can now access NOVEL databases from this special NOVEL databases page.

New features of NOAH database

If you haven't looked at the NOAH database lately, it has an updated and revised appearance.
For a number of health related topics, you can also now view short videos.

Intra-campus telephones

A brief experiment today confirmed that the intra-campus telephones in the alcoves where the pay phones are located can only be used to dial campus phone numbers that begin 646-312. They can't be used to dial numbers that begin 212-802.

Calculators for Second Summer Session

Calculators will be available, first come, first served, at the 2nd floor circulation desk beginning Monday July 11th.

Property information needed for financial aid

This morning I helped an incoming freshman student who needed property valuation information in order to complete her financial aid information. She had a web site that she had received from the financial aid office, but when we entered it, it was an old address.
The correct address is:
http://nycserv.nyc.gov/nycproperty/nynav/jsp/selectbbl.jsp (This takes you to the page in which the information about a specific lot can be entered.) If they don't know their block and lot number, there is a link that allows them to search for it on this page.

I let the Financial Aid office know about the new address.

Although it was probably not following our policies, I set her up on a side computer at the reference desk to do the search and allowed her to print the one page out, on recycled paper. I mention this because there might be other requests and without a Baruch student account, she couldn't sign on, and getting a vendor card and printing to the vendor print seemed like a bit much to me, but I can understand that others might think otherwise. Perhaps most students will have access to other computers with a printer.

Rita

College Now Students

Sudents enrolled in the College Now program have a printing budget and can print to the student printers. They have the same Library privileges as Baruch students except that, as of now, they cannot borrow laptops. I will let you know if the laptop policy changes.

New Search Interface for Euromonitor

Euromonitor's GMID database will soon have a new search interface. I heard about this - but didn't see it - at SLA. Here is the official announcement.

Hoover's Online not available

Hoover's Online has temporarily disconnected Baruch as a subscriber. According to Saad, Hoover's has issues with the way that Baruch allows access to our subscription to their product. No word at the moment about when we will be able to get our connection back.

Changes in Course Reserve Listings

Title and author searching in Docutek for course reserves is no longer an option and the tab "Course Reserves by Title" has been removed. This is to comply with "fair use" guidelines that require password protection for title access to all course reserve items.

Borrowing Laptops

During July and August, students should go to the circulation desk on the second floor to borrow laptops.

Fortune rankings--available electronically with posted password

I would like to remind everyone that we have electronic access to the various Fortune rankings by going to www.Fortune.com and entering in our subscription number, which is listed in the Reference Desk passwords.

Tonight a Baruch student whom I had previously helped on a Wednesday evening to gain access to the rankings told me that when she had inquired at the reference desk for help on another day to gain access to this listing, she was told that the access was possible because I was a business librarian. (When she asked if I were a "business librarian" I had to give a brief explanation of our library and its positions.)

This year the Fortune 500 list is 50 years old. On the Fortune website you can search by company name, among other options, and obtain a listing of the rankings of the company for each year the company has made the list. (You then have to select each individual year.)

The print copies of the Fortune 500 listings are cataloged under various titles, Fortune 500, and the Directory of U.S. Corporations, on CUNY+. (call numbers HG4057.A283 and HG4057.A282. The student discovered that the 2000 issue is bound with the Fortune magazines, March-April 2000, in periodicals on the third floor. The Fortune 500 listing is published in mid-April now, although I don't know if it has been for all of the past 50 years.

Typewriters on campus

Does anyone know of where students can gain access to a typewriter here on campus? I realize that there isn't one we make publicly available here in the library, but it would be good to know if there is one elsewhere on campus.

Summer Hours at CUNY Libraries

Students are looking for a place to study on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and are asking about summer hours at CUNY libraries, so I checked the library websites and found that only three libraries have weekend hours in July. The Graduate Center is open Friday and Saturday; the College of Staten Island and LaGuardia Community College are open on Saturday and Sunday.

In addition, the following libraries are open on certain Fridays:
CUNY School of Law –Friday July 8
Hunter School of Social Work Library- Saturday July 9 and 16
John Jay College-Friday July 8
Queens College-Friday July 8
LaGuardia Community College- Friday July 8

For Baruch students, the best bet might be New York Public’s SIBL at 34th and Madison. They are open Friday and Saturday from 10 to 6 p.m.

For detailed information on summer schedules at CUNY, click on the links below. They go directly to the library hours or calendar page.
Brooklyn College
City College - Morris R. Cohen Library
City College - Science/Engineering Library
College of Staten Island
CUNY School of Law
Graduate Center
Hunter College
John Jay College
Lehman College - Summer hours are not posted
Medgar Evers College - Summer hours are not posted
NYC College of Technology
Queens College
York College

And for the Community Colleges --
Borough of Manhattan
Bronx - Summer hours are not posted
Hostos
Kingsborough
LaGuardia
Queensborough

Library Access for CAPS Students

Students in the certificate programs for Continuing and Professional Studies (CAPS) have borrowing privileges, inter-library loan privileges, and access to study rooms. They do not have wireless access or remote access to Newman Library databases or other electronic collections.

Upload images to your blog posts

Blogger now makes it possible to upload images to accompany your posts to our blog. Instructions can be found on this post on Quick Online Tips and on this help page in Blogger.

Comparing Google and Yahoo!

Here's an interesting tool that may be valuable in workshops as well as for reference work: a website called Twingine that presents Yahoo! and Google search results side by side. Here's a Twingine search for "baruch college" as an example.

Supreme Court decision of interest to Public Affairs students re right of local governments to seize people's homes and busineses

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled 5-4 today that that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses against their will for private development. The case is Kelo v. City of New London. I have helped a number of students who have been researching this issue. The Supreme Court's decision is already available in Westlaw Campus and Lexis-Nexis.

OCLC pilot projects

One of my favorite blogs, It's All Good, is the creation of three OCLC employees who write about all manner of library subjects. The blog is not an official OCLC blog but instead reflects the unique opinions of the three contributors. Today, Alane Wilson wrote a nice post detailing the various pilot projects that OCLC has launched recently or will soon.

One of those pilot projects they mention, the Ask a Librarian pilot in Open WorldCat, offers links to the digital reference service (e-mail and/or chat) of OCLC member libraries. Here's how it works. As you may know, OCLC records are now indexed by Google and Yahoo. When a searcher finds an Open WorldCat record via a Google or Yahoo search, the page for that found item includes a list of libraries that own the item. If a library in that list has a digital reference service, there is now a link to it from that Open WorldCat page.

For an example, see this Open WorldCat page for Jerry Bornstein's book, An American Chronology (look for the question mark icon to the right of where it says Baruch College in the local libraries section of the page).

More on File Sharing

To add to Stephen's post on DRM and file sharing (June 16th), the Federal Trade Commission has issued a report from a workshop titled "Peer-to-Peer File-Sharing Technology: Consumer Protection and Competition Issues". Presentations from the workshop and other documents are posted at the FTC Website. I found this item on today's ResourceShelf.

Other sources for older newspapers

The New York Public Library's Humanities and Social Sciences Research Library has a large collection of newspapers on microfilm. Another source to consult is the New York State Newspaper Project ,which is part of the NY State Library. By consulting this last night, I was able to tell a student where she could find some old Rochester newspapers. (Rochester and NYPL.)

Update on Hoover's

I wanted to follow-up on Diane's post about some new features in Hoover's. I have been showing the BUS1000 classes the Hoover's Stock Chart that you will find in the "Financials" area of each company page. It's an easy to use alternative to Reuters or Factiva. You can compare prices for up to four companies or graph a company against the Dow Jones or S&P 500 stock index.

A new feature is "CEOs on Camera" a collection of video interviews from CNBC. (This link goes to the CEOs on Camera directory). Other CNBC video interviews are in Analyst Watch. These are interviews with business leaders and Wall Street analysts. If you use the "Browse Industries" link from the home page, you can access these reports by industry sector.

With Hoover's SEC Filings you have the option to retrieve and print pages or segments of the reports as well as the full document. Unfortunately they must use an automatic parser because parts of the 10K are not labeled in any standard way and some segments are only identified out by page number.

LACUNY Directory

A copy of the LACUNY Directory 2004-2005 is available at the Reference desk.

Manhattan Real Estate Reports

I received an e-mail yesterday from an EMBA student with a research question that asked: Is there a real estate bubble in Manhattan? Many of the market research firms in Doug's Real Estate Subject Guide focus on the commercial real estate sector but I was able to identify three that include reports on the Manhattan residential market.

Manhattan Market Overview , published quarterly by Prudential Douglas Elliman. Their Manhattan Market Report 1995-2004 looks at historical trends.

The Manhattan Residential Market Report, a quarterly from Brown Harris Stevens.

The Corcoran Report published 2x/year.

The Real Estate Board of New York also puts out data on Manhattan co-op and condominium sales in their Press Releases.

Newspapers in microfilm

Students often are looking for old newspaper articles published at the time of a notable historic event (such as the attack on Pearl Harbor, etc.) Athough I have already put up a posting about what newspapers we have deep access to in our databases, I thought it might be helpful to see a list of what we have in microfilm:

• Amsterdam News [1962-present]
• Atlanta Daily World [1931-1987]
• Baltimore Afro-American [1893-1987]
• Call and Post (Cleveland) [1934-1987]
• Daily Telegraph (London) [1978-1979]
• Los Angeles Sentinel [1969-1987]
• Los Angeles Times [1980-1992]
• Michigan Chronicle (Detroit) [1943-1987]
• New York Times [1851-present]
• St. Louis Argus [1954-1985]
• Ticker (Baruch College) [1935-2001]
• Times (London) [1975-2002]
• Wall Street Journal [1889-present]
• Washington Post [1986-present]

U of Michigan agreement with Google

Here's the link to the agreement between the University of Michigan and Google:

http://www.lib.umich.edu/mdp/um-google-cooperative-agreement.pdf

Vendor card printing

This will, I hope, be the last post we see about vendor card printing in the library. As of today, the vendor card printers can be accessed from all public PCs on the 2nd floor the library. Saad just announced on BBLIB that he's figured out a way to allow the vendor card printer to work even from the PCs requiring login first (via Bluesocket). Here are the steps for those PCs that require a Baruch student/faculty/staff login:

1. User must login using their username and password (Baruch students will type their Baruch usernames, Baruch staff and faculty will enter the same login info they use for the PCs in their own offices on campus).
2. Once the user has logged in, he or she must click the "activate vendor printer" icon on the desktop of the PC.
3. The user can then send print jobs to the vendor card printer whenever he or she clicks the "File>Print..." command. (For details on this step, see the "Network Printing: Non-Student Users" page that explains the vendor card printer.)
4. Once the user is done, he or she should logoff as always and then click the "clear vendor printer" icon on the desktop.

The 8 public PCs behind the reference desk (which don't require login but which are limited to database/Blackboard/CUNY+/Baruch web site use) continue to have the same access to the vendor card printer that they've always had.

Update: Vendor Cards & Student Printing Accounts

This amends my previous post on student printing accounts during the summer.

At present, Baruch students who are NOT enrolled in summer school can still log onto the Internet, email, etc. as they did before, but cannot use a vendor card to print from any computer that requires a student login. They can only use vendor cards to print from the eight "database-only" computers behind the reference desk.

According to the BCTC Help Desk, vendor cards cannot be used in BCTC labs.

Mary Ellen Bates at SLA

Mary Ellen Bates spoke at several programs at the recent SLA conference. You might want to check out her Website where she has posted the handouts or powerpoint slides from these sessions. The session that I attended, "Mining the NEW Web for Information: RSS Feeds, Blogs, Social Networks and More," was a great introduction to new Web research tools. Her annual guide to searching with "60 Tips in 90 Minutes" is a good update on Web search techniques.

Update on Borrowing Reference Books

In April I did a blog post about the policy for borrowing reference books and I said the signed authorization form would be kept in a folder at the reference desk. You will find that folder in the drawer with the printer keys. It's a green folder marked "Reference Loans." The due date will also appear in the CUNY+ record since these items are checked out at the circulation desk.

Digital rights management info in FAITS

Digital rights management (DRM) is emerging as a key component in the debate on the legality of file sharing of music and video files. Many of our students, especially those in ENG 2100, want to write on whether or not file sharing (and the hardware and software that makes such file sharing possible) has impacted the music, TV, and film industries. Students working on such topics might want to check out the FAITS database, especially since (as Mike just noted in a BBLIB message yesterday) we've picked up a new section in that database on "information management." Within this new section are some nice reports on DRM:

• "Protecting Digital Rights"
• "Digital Rights Management Marketing Trends"
• "Digital Rights Management Company Directory"
• "Digital Rights Management Software"
  

EBSCOhost Maintenance this Saturday

EBSCOhost will be doing maintenance this Saturday from 8 a.m. to noon that may result in periods of downtime. Contact customer service at 800-801-4573 if you have questions.

Correction: Directory of Foreign Firms Operating in the United States

Contrary to my hasty assertion in a posting a few weeks ago, I've learned (thanks to Eric) that you can indeed find a list of South Korean companies with operations in the United States. The Directory of Foreign Firms Operating in the United States does have a listing under "South Korea" (which makes more sense than my initial and embarrassingly rash assumption that such an entry would only be listed under "Korea"). The book can be found on Index Table 5B (Ref. HG4057 .A155 2004).

AirBaruch

Students have been asking how they can join Baruch's cell phone service, AirBaruch, but the pilot project is not accepting new users at this time.

Student Printing Accounts-Summer Update

Theresa reports that student records have just been updated. Only students currently enrolled in summer school have active printing accounts.

Factiva

The problem is with Factiva, and they're working on it, but we may
experience down times throughout the day. Right now, it is working, but
will probably go down again.

Factiva down

Factiva is down as of 1:30pm Thursday 6/2. I am working on getting our access back.

Faculty and Staff Log in

Faculty and staff can log in to computers in the library with the same user name and ID that they use to log in to their office PCs. For those who don't remember, the user name is their first initial and last name and the ID is the last six digits of their faculty ID number.

Reminder: TI-89 Calculators

Calculators for the first summer session will be distributed at the circulation desk beginning at 9:30 a.m. today.

What Do They Tell Their Students? Business Faculty Acceptance of the Web and Library Databases for Student Research

That is the title of an article in the latest Journal of Academic Librarianship, v.3, no.3 (2005). http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00991333

Student printers working again

as of 4:30 PM Thursday.

Printers down

As of 3:00 PM, student printers are down in the library and the BCTC lab. Theresa will notify the reference desk staff when the printers are working again.

Medical Web Sites

LLRX has just posted a potentially useful list of medical web sites.
It can be viewed at

http://www.llrx.com/features/medical2005.htm

Diane

Finding foreign firms with US operations

I thought I'd share a reference interaction I had recently about how to get a list of Korean companies with US operations, mostly because it turned out to be tougher than I first imagined. As it turns out, one resource that you'd think would have the info, doesn't: The Directory of Foreign Firms in the United States (Ref. HG4057 .A155, on Index Table 5B). There are lists of companies from 75 countries in this book; oddly, Korea is not among them.

After trying a few different databases that will help you find a list of companies based on where their headquarters are (Factiva, Kompass), I found only one that allows you to do a complex enough search to also limit to where subsidiary operations are located: Corporate Affiliations.

Here are the abridged instructions for doing the search that I e-mailed to the user:

When the Corporate Affiliations database opens, you will have to click the link on the left side of the screen labeled "Advanced Search."

On the Advanced Search screen, you'll see four rows of boxes (with two boxes in each row).

In the first box in the first row, select "Parent Country" from the list of options.

In the second box in the first row, click the "Get Values" link, which will open a new window with an alphabetical list of countries. Click "Korea (South)" to select it. This will automatically add it in to the second box in the first row. Now the row is set up to search for companies whose Parent Country is Korea (South).

In the first box in the second row, select "Country" from the list of options.

In the second box in the second row, type USA in the box. You've now set up the search to also limit the list to companies where the address is in the US.

Run the search and you should find 71 companies in your search results. If you click on any particular company in the list, you'll see the information for the US operations. For example, if you click on the listing for "A N D Music Corp." you'll see its address in the US (Lakewood, WA).

If you want to see the name of its Korean parent company, then you will want to click that says "Hierarchy." That will open a new window listing "Young Chang Akki Co. Ltd. " as the parent company. If you click on the name of the parent company, you can then view a page with details on that Korean company.