Guest Logins

Now that we've got a tool we can use for creating guest logins for non-Baruch library patrons (see Arthur's post on the blog for details), I've added a button on the browser toolbar for both of the PCs at the front of the reference desk. The button is labeled "Guest Logins." Clicking it will take you to the page that allows us to set up temporary logins for both the wireless network and for the public PCs that require login.

New database: Audit Analytics

Requested by the accounting dept., we now have access to Audit Analytics, a database which provides detailed audit information on over 1,500 accounting firms and 20,000 publicly registered companies. Users can create reports by auditor, fees, location, industry and more.

We have one concurrent user.

However each user must have their own individual password. To receive a password, please email Tom Hardy at thardy@ivesinc.com. On the main page, you will be asked to log-in using your email address and the password (on the left side of the screen).

Thanks to Saad, there is a page explaining this after users try to connect to the database from the information resources page.
You can get to that page from: http://newman.baruch.cuny.edu/info_resources/audit.htm

Income, Poverty, Health Insurance in US, 2004 Census

Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2004 (pdf)

http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/p60-229.pdf

August 2005 demographic profile of the real median household income of US residents, along with material on the nation's official poverty rate and those persons without health insurance coverage. Notes that the nation's official poverty rate rose from 12.5 percent in 2003 to 12.7 percent in 2004. Also notes that the number of persons without health insurance coverage increased by approximately 800,000 to 45.8 million. Details such crucial research questions as how the Bureau measures income and poverty. Scout Report 9.9.05

New databases:

3 new databases:

• IEEE/CSLPe :
  New database, for computer scientists and other interested...
  Access to 22 periodicals published by IEEE and more than 1,500 conference publications in full-text, searchable formats.
  http://remote.baruch.cuny.edu:2048/login?url=http://www.computer.org/publications/dlib/

Coming to us with Sociological Abstracts, we also have access to:

• Physical Education Index:
  These abstracts feature a wide variety of content, ranging from physical education curricula, to sports medicine, to dance. Other coverage includes sport law, kinesiology, motor learning, recreation, standardized fitness tests, sports equipment, business and marketing, coaching and training, and sport sociology/psychology.
  Physical Education Index

• Applied Social Science Index and Abstracts (ASSIA):
  ASSIA indexes and abstracts cover health, social services, psychology, sociology, economy, politics, race relations and education. It is updated monthly.
  ASSIA: Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts

Printing from Baruch laptops

Students who have borrowed one of the library's laptops can now use them to send print jobs to the student printers. Students connected to the wireless network using their own laptops, however, cannot send print jobs to the student printers.

Graphing calculators all loaned out

All the graphing calculators have been loaned out for the fall semester. There is one available for 2-hour loan (from the reserve window).

Blackboard Problem-- and temporary solution

New students are having problems creating their Blackboard accounts. (They enter their information but CUNY Portal/Blackboard does not confirm the account; or they get blank pages when trying to enter Blackborad).

The Help Desk said that they can get around this ONLY by getting to Blackboard the following way:
1. From the Baruch homepage, choose "Blackboard" from the drop down menu under the "Computing" tab
2. Click on the link that says "Login directly to Blackboard (for registered users only)" --- even though they are not registered yet.
3. Under the sign-in boxes on the Login page, you will see "If you do not have a valid active CUNY Portal username and password, please go here". Click on "here", which is a link.
4. This leads to the "Validate CUNY Affiliation" page. They will need to type in their last name, SSN, and DOB.

They should get into Blackboard after these 4 steps. The Help Desk thinks this problem will be around for another week or two.

Guest Accounts for Internet Access

The college is testing its new guest password generator for network access accounts. The accounts are valid until 11:59 p.m. on the day following their creation. Any full-time member of the library staff may log into the application through the link below. Please feel free to provide an account to anyone who needs to use the Internet. The fact that someone has been admitted into the library demonstrates eligibility. We will announce the availability of guest accounts in the library, on our web site, etc. after we have tested the application and based on our experience, decided how to systematically dispense the accounts as a service. Please keep in mind that this is a test version of the application, so you may encounter bugs that you should report through the comments/suggestions form on the library's web site.

https://bdam.baruch.local

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.

GPO has trial project re chat reference

I noticed the following on the GPO Access page today:

Government Information Online (GIO) is a national pilot project sponsored by the Illinois State Library, OCLC, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. GPO is participating in the pilot along with more than 30 federal depository libraries from across the United States. Users of the service can interact online with government information librarians during a weekly chat schedule, or users can submit questions at any time using an email interface. To use the service, visit the project's website at http://govtinfo.org. The pilot is scheduled to run through November 14, 2005.

New databases

There's been a number of new databases added in the past few weeks:

• Encyclopedia Britannica
• Grove Art Online
• Grove Music Online
• In the First Person