Federal Reserve Board Governor Mischkin's speech about Globalization given at Baruch today

"Globalization: A Force for Good?", the speech that Federal Reserve Board Governor Frederic S. Mischkin gave as the Weissman Center distinguished lecture today has been posted on the Federal Reserve Board's web site. I didn't realize it was his first speech since being named a governor. I missed the speech because of the Accounting Resources workshop and so far I've just read the introduction where Governor Mischkin talks about his late father, a City College graduate of 70 years ago, and a benefactor of Baruch.

computer 1158 in room 130

There is a problem logging onto computer 1158 in room 130. The screen to enter logon information is upside down. I have sent a message to Saad about it.

Rita

Extended Hours for Circulation

Access Services staff will again offer extended weekend hours beginning this Friday, October 13th.

The circulation desk will be open Friday, Saturday & Sunday until 7:50PM to enable students to borrow circulating and reserve items.

Frederic Mishkin at Baruch This Thursday

Prof. Terry Martell asked me to share this with you.

The Weissman Center for International Business is sponsoring a talk by Frederic Mishkin on "Globalization: A Force for Good" on Thursday, October 12, 2006 in VC 14-220. (Details here).

Professor Mishkin just joined the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and chose Baruch for his initial speech as a governor. His father is a graduate of Baruch. Please encourage your students to attend.

Flash Drives, CD's, DVD's and Floppy Discs

What options are available on the student workstations?

• There are no floppy drives on any of the student computers.
• At the seated workstations, students can save to flash drives. They cannot open flash drives.
• At the standing workstations, students can save and open files on flash drives and CD/DVD's. In order to use CD/DVD's, they must be formated for Read/Write.

Margin of Safety

Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor written by Seth Klarman in 1991 is a title we own and all librarians should recognize. The book is notorious because it is long out of print and and sellers on Amazon and other websites are asking prices that range from $700 to $2,500 for used copies. Others have tried renting it out on eBay. Recently the book was featured in an article in Business Week ("The $700 Used Book" August 7, 2006). The article is worth reading because it explaines some of Klarman's theories. It says the book has taken on "iconic stature among value investors" and the book is "especially hot among those seeking jobs with value-oriented investment firms."

As for libraries, Business Week claims only 262 libraries worldwide own the title and it is one that is most claimed as lost. Our copy is in our Archive collection and students wanting to read it should make an appointment with Sandra Roff. Because of its condition, the book does not circulate nor can students photocopy pages or chapters.

Pre-CINAHL merged with CINAHL

EBSCO has integrated Pre-CINAHL into its CINAHL database, so now we can access that content as well.

Computer Problems

This morning (Saturday 10/7), I encountered two computer problems both reported earlier to BCTC. First the work station on the gray counter at the southwest corner of the reference desk won't boot up. Second the "Technical Report" page in "Library Forms" won't send in the machine on the southwest (adjacent corner) on the granite counter.
David

Blackboard (Plagiarism & tutorial) quizzes, permissions, and lockouts

Nelson has found out that there is apparently a new policy in uploading the plagiarism quiz to a particular class's Blackboard. The faculty member must contact BCTC either by email (helpdesk@baruch.cuny.edu) or
or by phone (646-312-1010) and ask them to add Nelson Santana as a TA (Teaching Assistant) in her class so that he has rights to upload the plagiarism tutorial.

Note that a high number of lockouts have been occuring when students take a quiz (plagiarism quiz, for example, or the library FRO quiz) in Blackboard.
Students often forget to use the submit button, or may have firewall issues on their home computers. Aisha and Nelson do try to clear them as soon as possible.

GDP and external debt sources

Several students have asked at the reference desk about GDP and external debt sources by quarter. With Harry's help, listed below are possible sources that I have found. If you know of any more, please comment. I have included some that include annual statistics too.

There is a new joint external debt database, a project of the Bank of International Settlement, the IMF, the OECD and the World Bank.

The OECD provides GDP figures by quarter. See SourceOECDStatistics in our databases. (Of course, not all countries are members of the OECD.)

Yearly External Debt by Country in World Development Indicators from the World Bank. See WDI (World Development Indicators in our databases.)

The International Monetary Fund (Build a table using data and statistics)
www.imf.org (There is a possibility of a five day trial to their data, and it appears individuals can give it a try.)

In print, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) International Financial Statistics Yearbook in Reference at REF HG 61.157 2005 has the GDP. Also, in print, in periodicals, the monthly International Financial Statistics from the IMF has quarterly figures for the most recent five years. You will need to look in past volumes to obtain the quarterly figures for all the years.

Another possible source may be a particular country's Central Bank Statistics, frequently available from web sites, or in the database ISI Emerging Markets (in our database list) under Sources, and then look for Central Bank, after a particular country is selected.

Zicklin grad student happy with online directories

Last night while I was on the reference desk, and shortly before 8:50 pm., a Zicklin grad student called to see if we had Nelson's Directory of Investment Managers as he wanted to use it for his job search.

As we don't have a current edition, I told him I would e-mail him information about electronic access to the S&P directories that Mike Waldman alerted us to earlier in the week and also explain how to get the Securities Dealers of North America online. I e-mailed the information to him, as well as that the Nelson directory is at SIBL and Brooklyn Business. He has e-mailed me twice with thanks, the second time to thank me for saving him a great deal of time.

So, here's the information about the directories:

From Mike Waldman:
As part of out subscription to the Money Market Directory of Pension Funds
and their Investment Managers, Standard and Poor's has lauched a new
electronic directory, MMD eDirectories.
It is unfortunately only available via password at this time.
Go to: http://www.mmdwebaccess.com
Click on MMD eDirectories
See the password and log-in information in the wiki, under Passwords


To get to the Securities Dealers of North America, go to Standard & Poor's NetAdvantage. Click on Directories. You can search by company name or personal name or use the Advanced Search to select criteria, including location.

Nelson's Directory of Investment Managers is available at SIBL. At Brooklyn's Business Library the 2006 edition is shelved with Services Directories under Financing (not by call number.)

Rita

SIBL Small Business How-to Videos and Podcasts

http://www.nypl.org/research/sibl/smallbiz/video.html
Taken from the website: "View a smallbiz how-to do business seminar! Each session can be viewed in parts, watch the video and text slides together, or download the audio only to an MP3 player. Choose high-speed version for Broadband connections, dial-up for modems. Download QuickTime free software to view, if you don't already have this software on your computer."
Example titles: "Legal Strategies for Small Business", "Pricing Your Product or Service", "Market Research", "Tips for Opening and Running a Restaurant in NYC".

Problem with accessing Learning Express

I've reported a problem of logging onto Learning Express to Mike. The problem was also reported by an accounting professor. Anyone else having a problem?

SPSS and SAS

SPSS and SAS are statistical analysis software packages available on the library's Graduate Workstations and in some of the BCTC labs. Due to increased pricing and a contractual dispute with SPSS, the most current version of SPSS on campus is 11.5 (the most recent release is 15.0). The SPA lab in 17 Lex used to have v.14.0, but had to roll back to v.11.5 due to the dispute. (I checked the SPA lab computers.) We are not sure when the disupte will be solved. This is a CUNY wide issue, and a committee is working on access to a more up to date version.

The Graduate Workstations have SAS v.8, but it has recently expired. I sent a Help Desk request to update to v.9, and hope this will happen soon. SAS v.9 is available in the 6th floor library building lab and the CIS lab.

SPSS 11.5 is also on the newer 3 day and hour laptops (thank you to Eric for sending this info.).

EBSCO experiencing problems

From EBSCO:

EBSCOhost is currently experiencing intermittent access issues, which could cause connectivity delays for some users.
If you experience problems logging in to EBSCOhost, please log out and attempt to access again. This highly unusual situation is currently under investigation by our network specialists.
We expect to resolve the problem quickly, and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

CUNY Proficiency Exam

CUNY just announced some new online resources for students about to take the CUNY Proficiency Exam.

E-reserves for CUNY Online BA Students

Please note that in Docutek all CUNY Online BA courses are grouped together as if the CUNY Online BA program were its own department. Look for it in the dropdown menu.

The CUNY Online BA program offers classes in different disciplines (Psychology, Math, History, Computer Scicence, etc..) but these classes are not listed under any of these departments in Dokutek.

FRO (Freshman Orientation)

For the benefit of those who were not able to attend today's IS Division meeting, I thought I'd recap what Aisha Peña had to say about the library's participation in the FRO (Freshman Orientation) program. I've also added in some additional info from the Baruch web site.

First, according to the Baruch faculty handbook, FRE is:

A required 12-week non-credit course for freshmen...[that] offers students an opportunity to engage in the Baruch community during the initial, and sometimes unsettling, first semester on campus. Led by a faculty or staff member and a trained upperclassman, freshmen seminars provide information about college life and the College. The program helps students learn and adopt methods to be successful in college. Structured class exercises encourage participation and provide an avenue for interactions with the students. Seminar leaders play a vital role in helping students adjust and in influencing their educational objectives.

This fall, there will be close to 2000 freshmen in FRO seminars. Starting in the next week or so, they will be taking the "New Students Library Tutorial" by following these steps:

1. With the instruction sheet provided to them by the instructors in their FRO sections (we have extra copies at the reference desk), the students will come pick up three paper handouts from the library (#1 is at the reference desk, #2 is at the circulation desk, and #3 is at the 3rd floor service desk) and one electonic handout (#4) that is available as a PDF via a link on the Ask a Librarian page of the library web site.
2. After getting the handouts, students will log into Blackboard, go to the FRO course page (students in the Learning Communities will see a course labeled "2006 Freshman Learning Communities" and everyone else will see "All Fro 1000 Fall 2006"), click the appropriate course listing, then click "Assignments" on the FRO page, and take the quiz.
3. Students must get an 80 on the quiz for it to count as successfully completed. Students may retake it as many times as they need to.

If a student reports being locked out of the quiz (i.e., the student can get into Blackboard and onto the Assignments page with the quiz but they can't actually launch the quiz), then tell them that the problem will be fixed by the next day (we have to manually "unlock" those quizzes that have been so frozen and will do so on a daily basis).

A smaller subset of students in the FRO seminars are part of the Learning Communities, which the faculty handbook describes as follows:

Faculty who participate in Learning Communities build on the advantages of block programming by highlighting intellectual links between courses and by scheduling co-curricular activities that complement course material. In a Baruch learning community, faculty members develop their courses collaboratively and confer regularly with each other and with their students, both in person and on line.They also create a range of other activities that supplement in-class instruction, increase engagement, and reinforce the collegial ideal of students and faculty working together on the common project of education.

The Learning Communities sections of FRO have to do a second tutorial and quiz:

1. In the "Assignments" section of their FRO course page in Blackboard, students should look for a link for the "Newman Library Help" tutorial (the direct URL for this is http://newman.baruch.cuny.edu/help/tutorial/home.htm)
2. After reviewing the tutorial, they should go back to Blackboard and do the "Exercise" that is linked to on the Assignments page (it's another Blackboard quiz).

As with the quiz for the "New Students Library Orientation," students may find themselves locked out of the quiz (particuarly if they abandon the quiz without completing it). Just tell students in this situation that the quiz will be unlocked by the next business day.

If you have further comments or clarifications, please post a comment to this blog entry. If you have further questions, you may want to contact Aisha Peña directly.

Updated map of NYC emergency incidents

The NYC-themed blog, Gothamist, offers a new mapping service that locates on a Google map recent emergency incidents (fires, bank robberies, motor vehicle accidents) in near real-time.

Quick Start Guides for ebrary

Copies of ebrary "Quick Start Guides" are available at the reference desk to give to students. I will also put some copies in the stand next to the desk.