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.