IS Division - Email UPdate - May 31

Here's a brief update on latest developments for the IS Division.

1) I will be away from June 1-June 27. Until Louise Klusek returns from SLA at the end of next week, Gerry Jiao has agreed to act as coordinator for IS Division matters. If you are out sick or running late please contact Gerry at ext 1609.

2) We are pleased to announce that Alfredo Garcia will be joining our staff as administrative support for the division. Alfredo has 25 years experience in the library and brings a strong administrative skill set to the division. He is currently transitioning over from Access Services Division. His extension is 1604.

3) Please remember that summer session begins June 4.

LISTA with full-text -- TRIAL

We have a trial to LISTA with full-text until the end of June. It is in our list of databases.

WDI: new interface

WDI has a new link and a new interface. The link on the database page has been updated.

Student Accounts After Graduation

Remote access to databases and network login accounts will be terminated shortly after commencement.

We have not yet chosen a date for the termination of student e-mail accounts, but students should sign up for an alumni lifetime e-mail address ASAP. To obtain the address they should follow the "Alumni" link from the college's home page. Select "Alumni Privileges". Scroll down to "Permanent E-Mail."

Reminder: Continuing students will retain access to their e-mail accounts over the summer. However, they will not have library access or access to the 6th floor lab unless they are registered for summer session.

Is all data becoming metadata?

David Weinberger, a philosophy professor who is currently a research fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, has recently published a book, Everything Is Miscellaneous, that is stirring up lots of discussion among librarians about the future ways we (all of us, not just the librarians) will organize information in the digital world we live in. My copy of the book is waiting for me at the circ desk (thanks CLICS!), but if you want to get a great overview of what everyone is talking about, check out this 57-minute video of Weinberger speaking at Google about the core ideas in the book.

Sage full-text collections

Our access to the Sage full-text collections has moved from CSA to SAGE itself. I have updated the links in the database page.

Dollars & Sense

President Kathleen Waldron and Dean Myrna Chase are pictured on the Baruch website celebrating the publication of the 2007 edition of Dollars & Sense. It is the first full color issue of the magazine which has been published yearly since 1979. The article links to the archives of Dollars & Sense. All issues are available in PDF format along with a comprehensive annual table of contents. An index of authors and a topical index are also available. The most recent articles are featured in Dollars & Sense Online.

Congratualtions, Bonnie

Congratulations to our Spring reference intern, Bonnie Cohen Lafazan, who graduated last Friday from Pratt School of Information and Library Science.

Bonnie was interviewed in the March issue of Keyword, the SILS Student Association newsletter, about her mother Adrea G. Cohen who graduated from Pratt SCILS in 1974. The article "Pratt SCILS Legacies" featured two mother-daughter SCILS graduates. Issues of Keyword are found here. Bonnie is the webmaster for Keyword. Nice job.

New Reference Desk Referral form

We have taken the student worksheet from the Research Consultations and formatted it as a reference desk referral form. You will find copies at the reference desk. We hope it will help you when you are instructing students at the reference desk. The form provides a grid to brainstorm about producers of information, space to write out keywords, a table for suggested databases, and ample blank space to list other resources. The form is designed as a "take away" for the student. Please use the form. We will be asking for your feedback at one of the IS Division meetings in the fall.

Using Census Data

The last workshop in the three-part series on "Using Census Data" will take place next Tuesday May 29th From 12:30 to 2:30 PM in the Skylight Room, 17 Lexington Avenue at 23rd Street. The program is on "Using the NYCRDC and LED and LEDH Data." It will provide an overview of non-public Census microdata available through the reseach facilities of the New York Census Research Data Center (NYCRDC) at Baruch. It will also cover New York State labor market data available through the Local Employment Dynamics (LED) and Longitudinal Employer-Houshold Dynamics (LEHD) programs. This session should help librarians learn when to refer users to the CRDC.

The first workshop, held last April, covered "What Kinds of Data Does the Census Bureau Collect?" and was conducted by Rosemarie Fogarty, Information Specialist, US Census Bureau. It is now available in Baruch's Digital Media Library. Ms. Fogarty provides an overview of the Census Bureau data, using the Census’s website as the starting point. If you haven't explored the Census web site in depth this presentation will help.

CQ Electronic Library -- TRIAL

We have a trial until June 30 of the CQ Electronic Library, which includes the following resources: CQ Researcher plus Archive, CQ Weekly, CQ Voting and Elections Collection, CQ Global Researcher, CQ Public Affairs Collection, and CQ Encyclopedia of American Government.

Trial of Proquest's Accounting and Tax with Standards

We have a trial until July 1 of the Proquest Accounting and Tax with Standards database. (This was offered by the vendor.) It is listed in the alphabetical listing of databases on the Newman Library homepage as Accounting and Tax with Standards-trial. The password is posted on the Wiki. (It has been supplied to accounting faculty.)

This database basically adds the FASB, GASB and IASB (Financial Accounting Standards Board, Government Accounting Standards Board and International Accounting Standard Board publications to the ABI Inform Global database. (The "tax" part is the journals that can be searched for tax information, as well as accounting related publications in the database.)

We had an earlier trial of this database. One accounting professor, a very experienced researcher, thought it wasn't very "user friendly." He suggested to me that beginners and other search either the official literature or the journals separately as a combined search can be very confusing.

Since the FASB documents are current as of March 30, 2006, for more current information, one should search RIA Checkpoint--Accounting & Auditing & Corp Finance, or CCH Accounting Research Manager. RIA offers FASB and GASB. CCH Accounting Research Manager offers FASB and IASB. Both RIA and CCH update the information daily. If one of the organizations announces a new publication, it is available usually the next day. (Each of the organizations, FASB, http://www.fasb.org, GASB, http://www.gasb.org, and the IASB, http://www.iasb.org/Home.htm have websites that offer new announcements.)

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Rita

Candidate Presentation 5/23 at 2:00

The following message was sent several times over the past few days to BBLIB-L, but it has not been delivered.

Frank Donnelly, candidate for Geospatial Data Librarian, will be interviewing on Wednesday, May 23. At 2:00 he will be making his presentation in Room 620 of the BCTC (at the back of the lab). All library faculty are invited. Each division head has a copy of his CV.

A. Downing

Westlaw: working again

Westlaw: not working

We are having problems accessing Westlaw. I have called West and am trying to resolve the issue.

Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology

The encyclopedia is live and can be accessed from our database page. It will have catalog record shortly as well.

NewspaperDirect Press Display: TRIAL

We have a trial to NewspaperDirect until 6/16/07.
NewspaperDirect lets you access the latest 60 days of newspapers from around the world, as if you were reading the newspaper in print, including advertising, in that country's language. Of course one can also search for news.

DemographicsNow: TRIAL

We have a trial until 6/14/07 of DemographicsNow, a new Thomson Gale product. This database allows you to analyze market potentials in different geographic areas. In particular it lets you create your own reports and to see them not only in report format, but also in map format.

RAB database added

We have added the Radio Advertising Bureau database. It is not a very user friendly set-up, as they do not have IP authentication. We have a main Baruch login, which authenticates the user, and then each user must create their own personal login. The wiki has the Baruch login and more specific instructions.

Company Histories

In today's reference practicum we discussed the Boeing assignment. Students need to analyze Boeing's diversification strategies in the 1990's. Some sources that give a nice overview of what was happening at Boeing in the 1990's are the International Directory of Company Histories (REF HD2721) and Mergent's company "History" pages. After identifying key events, use a news database or Investext for analysis. The S&P Industry Surveys are also useful. The survey of the Aerospace and Defense industry goes back to 1999 in S&P NetAdvantage.

Institutional Investor Journals added

We have added the backfiles to 3 Institutional Investor Journals:

Journal of Portfolio Management, 1974-present
Journal of Derivatives, 1993-present
Journal of Fixed Income, 1991-present.

Factiva Adds WSJ.com

Content exclusive to WSJ.com, the online version of The Wall Street Journal, will now be available through Factiva. This just announced in Factiva's April new "Source Additions."

Human Rights Watch report on Wal-mart

The Human Rights Watch report, published last week on Discounting Rights: Wal-Mart's Violation of U.S. Workers' Rights to Freedom of Association is available in several languages as a pdf file. There is also an executive summary. The English version of the 200+page report has links to individual chapters. (I didn't check the other languages.) There are also some multi-media sources available on the Human Rights Watch web site for free in several languages that explain the report.

Alexander Street Press databases: access restored

Alexander Street Press databases: outage

Alexander Street Press is experiencing technical difficulties with their servers and service may be down until it is resolved. This affects Black Thought and Culture and Women and Social Movements.

Epiphany branch to be closed

NYPL's Epiphany branch on 23rd St. will be closed from May 14th to June 6th for renovation.

Historian takes aim at Google Books

On the American Historical Association's blog, there was an interesting post a few days ago by historian Robert Townsend about the problems he found in using Google Books on a regular basis for three months:

my experience suggests the project is falling far short of its central promise of exposing the literature of the world, and is instead piling mistake upon mistake with little evidence of basic quality control. The problems I encountered fit into three broad categories—the quality of the scans is decidedly mixed, the information about the books (the “metadata” in info-speak) is often erroneous, and the public domain is curiously restricted.

Read the full post by Townsend here.

NAXOS -- trial until 5/31/07

We have a trial to NAXOS until 5/31/07. Naxos offers access to over 75,000 tracks and more than 5,000 CDs with over 2,500 composers represented. Classical, Jazz, World, Folk and more types of music are represented.

It also offers faculty the opportunity to create playlists with static URLs to share with their students and/or for class assignments. Please contact me if you are a Baruch faculty member and would like to try this feature (it will also expire on 5/31/07).

Copier on 2nd floor

We now have a working copy machine available for student use in the second floor student printing room.