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).