America's Most Shareholder Friendly Companies

The February 2006 issue of Institutional Investor magazine includes their first ever ranking of U.S. companies that treat their shareholders best. The rankings are based on a poll of bank analysts and portfolio managers who were asked to vote on the effectiveness of companies' governance and investor relations as part of their program to maximize shareholder value. The top 4 companies in 56 industry groups are listed. This cover story is titled: "The Fairest of Them All".

Problems with Gale Databases

The John Jay Library has been experiencing problems today accessing Opposing Viewpoints and other Gale databases. They have been in contact with Gale and Gale reports that the problems have been fixed in the last hour. Gale suggests that users still having problems, clear their cookies and cache and reboot.

CRSP Data Update

The CRSP database, part of our WRDS service from Wharton, has just completed their annual update with the addition of pricing data through 2005.
In addition, they have added historical data -daily pricing- for NYSE-traded stocks from 1925 through 1962. Historical pricing for AMEX and NASDAQ traded stocks remains unchanged. AMEX price history starts in July 1962 and NASDAQ prices begin in December 1972.

Freedom of Information Day Lecture at SIBL

SIBL is sponsoring a lecture and discussion by Corey Stoughton, a New York Civil Liberties Union staff attorney on the topic: "The Spy Files Project: Using the Freedom of Information Act to Uncover Government Surveillance of Political and Religious Groups." The program is free and open to the public and will be held on Thursday March 16 from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in Conference Room 018.

Chief Librarian's Office Closed Today

Due to illnesses, the Chief Librarian's office (4th floor) will be closed today, February 27th. Copy cards will be distributed from the reference desk.

Library website links to CUNY+ going to union catalog

I just put in a helpdesk request (#4365) asking for the CUNY+ links on our "Online Catalog" page to be updated. The links should be going to the Baruch catalog instead of the CUNY union catalog.

NYPL now subscribes to ARTstor

According to a posting today on the NYPL's feed of "Databases and Indexes Online- recent additions" (you can grab the feed as well as several others from this NYPL page), the research libraries now provide on-site access to ARTstor.

ARTstor offers more than 300,000 art and architecture images. You can read more about it on the NYPL page describing ARTstor or on the FAQs page on the ARTstor website. This is a great resource for students who need to find images that they can save and use in class presentations or research papers (details on ARTstor's downloading policy can be found on here on the FAQs).

Links to "Basic Business Research" tutorial

You can now find a number of new links to the "Basic Business Research" tutorial that Louise Klusek did with Kognito:

• "Business Sources" subject guide (this page is one of the library subject guides found on the "Information Resources" page)
• "Online Tutorials" page (a link to this page is found on the "Instruction" page)

In the redesigned library website that is being worked on right now, we'll have a more intuitive and less redundant placement of the link to this and other tutorials.

ACCESS SERVICES at the Newman Library Baruch College-CUNY

ACCESS SERVICES at the Newman Library Baruch College-CUNY

Gartner Research Available

We now have access to the Gartner research site through the CUNY portal. If you login to your portal account you will see "Gartner" in the SSO applications box. This link will automatically log you into the Gartner site. Gartner is an excellent source of research on IT issues from a business perspective. We are one of the few libraries in the country to offer this service. Unfortunately, at this time it is only available via the CUNY portal. Gartner access was requested by our graduate and undergraduate students, so we need to become familiar with it.

Title correction

An assignment from Blackboad, has students looking for Encyclopedia of American Migration. This title is wrong. The correct title is Encyclopedia of American Immigration, JV 6465.E53 2001, second floor reference.
Thanks to Rita for her assistance.


Yvette

Who can borrow from the Grad Center Library

Today I learned that Baruch staff can borrow materials from the Graduate Center Library. To capture this bit of info, I've created a new entry in the reference wiki for the "Graduate Center Library" that details which groups of users in the Baruch community have borrowing privileges.

This Week at the Newman Library

The ref desk copy of this listing is now being placed behind the ref desk schedule. A copy, as
always, is posted for the public to view.

Blackboard problems

Students are currently having problems accessing their class pages after logging into their Blackboard accounts. The HelpDesk is aware of the problem, and is working on a solution. Their suggestion is to have students try a different computer. (Some computers are directing students into the class pages, while others are not.) Perhaps you can send students to the BCTC computer labs until the problem is resolved, as the library terminals do not seem to be allowing access.

Business Source Premier and Harvard Business Review

When you use the full text journal link to get to HBR in Business Source Premier, the
old version of BSP comes up, not the enhanced. Mike has been notified.

URLs not displaying the holdings record

URLs for electronic resources are not displaying in the holdings record at this time. Please ask patrons to check the bibliographic record where the URL is visible and clickable.

SmartPros offers accounting and finance professional salary survey

Smartpros, an online accounting newsletter, offers their annual salary survey for CPAs and CFOs (respondents answered a survey between 10/31/ and 12/31/2005 so it isn't scientific). The survey indicates a !0% increase in beginning (unexperienced) accountants' salaries in 2005 from 2004.

No remote access to SpringerLink

Over the weekend, it was noted that remote access to SpringerLink is down. It may just require a quick update on our EZ Proxy settings for this database. A helpdesk request (#4338) was submitted this morning.

Update: As of Wednesday, Feb. 15, access has been restored.

Volunteer Tax Assistance Program (VITA)

The VITA program will start this week in Room 320 although publicity about the program will not be released until next week. The program will operate from 10:00 am to 8:00 pm from Tuesday to Friday.

New research on NYC's economy from the Federal Reserve Bank of NY

“Challenges Facing the New York Metropolitan Area Economy,” by James Orr and Giorgio Topa. Summary: The skilled and well-educated workforce of the New York metropolitan area has played a large role in enabling the region to withstand adverse economic shocks and adapt successfully to a services economy. A further expansion of this “human capital” will enable the metro area to meet the challenges ahead: attracting new firms, maintaining immigration flows, and competing successfully with fast-growing metro areas in other parts of the country.

CUNY+ weirdness

Is it just me or has anyone else noticing some real weirdness in CUNY+ right now. In both our local catalog and the union catalog, I get the strangest result after doing a "title begins with" search for "gotham." The search shows the full title of the book I'm looking for, Gotham a history of New York City to 1898, but when I click on the title, I get a completely unrelated list of 18 different records (none of even have the word "Gotham" in the title). What's even weirder is that when I click on one of those records (say, "Plants Database") I get the full record for a completely different item: Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Symposium, Republic, translated by B. Jowett; edited, with introduction, by Louise Ropes Loomis.

Huh?

CUNY Records in WorldCat

Pat Young at CUNY Central announced today that OCLC has finished adding records for over 19,000 CUNY books and serials. This is great news! It brings our holdings up to date in WorldCat (as of August 2005). Going forward, CUNY will be sending files to OCLC monthly. The 6 month lag will always remain by agreement so that CUNY records are clean.

Hoover's offers free pass today (Thursday) for Hoover's Pro

Today is one of those infrequent days that Hoover's offers its Pro version for free. You need to register and it ends at 7 p.m. today. You can build executive lists, etc.

Register now!http://communication.hoovers.com/cgi-bin13/DM/y/eel20OktJ40FZX0Nf70Av

Periodical sample collection in 135

A small collection of various types of periodical literature is being developed and is now
available on a shelf in the closet in 135. Please feel free to add to it. Some of the issues are duplicates; some are discards.
Diane

Textbook for MGT3800

MGT3800, Management and Society, is now a communications intensive course with a new syllabus developed by Prof. Michael Stauffer and members of the business faculty. The text for this course is listed in CUNY+ under the title "Management: Communications Intensive Course, instructor:Michael Stauffer, Bernard Baruch College". When students ask for the copypack text for MGT3800, this is it. It is on Reserve at the call number HF5718 .M364 2005.

The individual titles in the course pack are also in CUNY+. They are:
-Business and Society by Anne T. Lawrence (11th ed)
-Taking Sides:Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Business Ethics and Society by Lisa H. Newton
-Business Communication:Building Critical Skills by Kitty O. Locker (2nd ed)

Proquest Content Update

The latest content update from Proquest (Feb 2, 2006) contained a long list of permission changes that signal a disturbing trend. Euromoney Institutional Investor,Palgrave Macmillan,and Emerald Group, major publishers of important finance journals, are lengthening their embargo period to 12 months. My quick check found that most of these journals have an embargo period of 4 or 5 months in Business Source Premier.

Two questions need to be answered: Is ABI/Inform losing critical content and currency?; Do we need to subscribe to both the print and online versions of journals to serve our users?. It seems to me that by including more and more titles with embargo periods of a year, ABI becomes a database for "historical" research or even a historical repository, following the JSTOR model.

Other content changes include:
Discontinued full text coverage of the Journal of Business and Statistics, the Journal of the American Statistical Association, and The American Statistician published by the Anmerican Statistical Association
- discontinued full text coverage for several regional business journals published by American City Business Journals
- discontinued coverage of The Wall Street Transcript.

New York-New Jersy BLS

I had a telephone call Friday from a graduate student in the MPA program who is an analyst at the local Economic Analysis and Information Unit of the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Varick Street. He asked that I remind everyone that you can speak to a BLS analyst by calling 212.337.2400 and selecting menu option "0". More information can be found at the Bureau of Labor Statistics Web pages for Region 2 which covers New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

WSJ and NYT together in ProQuest NewsStand

I just noticed that the ProQuest NewsStand database contains both the NYT and the WSJ.
This situation does not exist in ABI where only the WSJ is available.

Diane

Who's Who remote access problem

There is an "easy proxy" problem w Who's Who which seems to be interrupting
remote access. Mike said this may be similar to a problem with
Euromonitor. Both remote access problems have been reported to Saad.

(Who's Who permits only 1 user at a time to access the database)

Diane

Printer at reference desk

Printer is again jamming, even with plain paper. Help desk request sent. #4330.
Diane

Info on scholars in CSA search results (forthcoming feature)

As you can see from this tutorial from CSA (Cambridge Scientific Abstracts), we will soon see a "Community of Scholars" tab in our search results in the databases we get from them (e.g., Philosopher's Index, Social Services Abstracts, and Sociological Abstracts). From what I can tell from the CSA tutorial, on the new tab there will be additional info about the authors whose articles came up (basically, info take from the author affiliate field) and the ability to browse through the list of authors by subjects/disciplines.

Although the "Community of Scholars" feature isn't available yet (so I haven't had a chance to actually run searches yet in the enhanced interface), it seems like this might be useful in helping our users think more critically about who an authority is (where is the author affiliated, is he/she they writing about a topic that seems to be out of their discipline, etc.) It may also enhance our efforts to teach students about the world of academic discourse as one characterized by competing and complementary voices of authors.

Some news re: Resume printing in the BCTC

Last Thursday night a student came to the reference desk wanting to print his resume on resume paper like in the BCTC. When I told him the service was available only in the BCTC, he told me that the resume printing service in the BCTC was only available until 5 p.m. I have checked with the BCTC help desk and learned that the 5 p.m. cutoff is the present policy, but if there is a lab manager available students may seek the lab manager out after 5 p.m. for assistance with resume printing. This probably came up Thursday night because the internship fair was on Friday afternoon. But it is good to know.

Reference desk PC not working

One of the two sit-down terminals for staff to use at the reference desk isn't working this morning; it won't turn on at all. I've submitted a helpdesk request (job ID # 4328).

Update: As of Wed., Feb. 8, it's working again.

Solutions Manual for Kieso's Intermediate Accounting no longer on reserve

At the request of accountancy faculty, the two-volume paperback Solution Manual for Kieso's Intermediate Accounting has been removed from reserves. (The copies were on reserve under Benis.) The main reason for the removal was the students in the classes using this book now have electronic access to homework problems selected by their professors. The problems are also graded electronically. The professors did not want all the problems and the solutions available via reserves. If there are questions, students should consult their accounting professors.

Guest logins are working ...

as of this morning.

Diane

EDGAR Filings and XBRL

For those of you who attended the EDGAR Online demo this morning and are confused or intrigued by the XBRL standards movement there is a good article in the January/February issue of Financial Executive (available through ABI/Inform). "Ask FERF about...Sources of Information on XBRL" is a guide to key documents at the websites of the XBRL consortium, the SEC, and the Financial Executive Research Foundation. They also suggest reading a white paper from EDGAR Online.
Although the SEC is promoting filing reports in XBRL, the number of companies in their voluntary program is still very small. Go to this page in the EDGAR archives to see all the XRBL reports filed since the program was announnced in 2004.

Guest Logins -- Temporarily not working

There is a problem with creating guest login accounts. When trying to login to create an account, you will get the following error message, "Authentification failed". Saad has been contacted. It is due to a problem with a BCTC server--and an update is needed. Saad was told that the problem should be resolved by the afternoon, today (Feb. 2nd).

FirstGov.gov gets a tune-up

The search engine behind FirstGov.gov is now powered by Microsoft's MSN search tool and results are now clustered using technology from Vivisimo. Details can be found on this article in Government Computer News.

Here's a sample search from FirstGov.gov for "baruch college." Note how you can switch between search results "by topic," "by agency," or "by source."