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.