New dictionaries!

You may have already noticed today that the dictionary stands on every floor now have brand new dictionaries:

• two copies of the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (11th edition)
  
• one copy of Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged
  

The English liaisons realized last spring that the dictionaries that had been on the stands were beat-up, missing pages, and often antiquated. Please encourage students who ask for a dictionary to use these and to bring them to the tables or cubicles in the library where they are working.

Ulrichsweb.com downtime: 7/20/07 6 pm to 7/21/07 12pm

Crain's New York has listing of largest minority-owned companies in the New York area

A list of the 25 largest minority-owned companies in the New York area, ranked by projected 2007 revenues, is published in the July 16, 2007 issue of Crain's New York Business.

New article on the Free Academy

My article titled "Spreading the News: Revisiting the History of the New York Free Academy Using 21st Century Technology" has been published in the latest issue of American Educational History Journal, Volume 34, Numbers 1 and 2. This is the first article to appear on the academy in many decades.

If anyone would like to read the article please let me know and I will make it available to you.

NBER working papers

We've had an (online) subscription to the NBER working papers for a while, but there is very little use, so I've decided to add it to the list of databases. Enjoy!

Your opinions are sought on book publishers

Hello, A Baruch professor who is doing some research on intercultural communications, has asked my help and also yours in providing perceptions of book publishers in the humanities and social sciences. (I have provided her with the few journal articles I have found that have been written on this topic--a 1996 article states that no major study had been done for more than 20 years. ) The 1996 article surveyed collection development heads in selected academic libraries.


There are more studies on journals. Of possible future interest for us is the European Reference Index for the Humanities Research (2007) which has benchmarks categories for journals as either A, B, or C for journals in different disciplines.

The publishers the professsor is interested in are:


Blackwell
Intercultural Press
Sage
Cambridge University Press
Oxford University Press
University Press of America
University of Michigan Press
Jossey Bass
Rowman Littlefield
Routledge
Lawrence Erlbaum
Allyn and Bacon
Prentice Hall
McGraw Hill
Thomson Wadsworth

Please let me know if you have any perceptions about these publishers. I will not identify you to the professor unless you want me to do so.

Thanks, Rita

40 Years of FOIA, 20 Years of Delay

A new publication from the National Security Archive at George Washington University ...

40 Years of FOIA, 20 Years of Delay: Oldest Pending Freedom of Information Requests Date Back to the 1980s. Nielsen, Catherine. Published: July 2007.
Presents findings from the Knight Open Government Survey, which surveys government offices and agencies on the status of their public information requests, and finds that extensive backlogs persist. Funder(s): John S. and James L. Knight

Other interesting and recent titles/reports from the NSA: (1) File Not Found: 10 Years After E-FOIA, Most Federal Agencies Are Delinquent (2) Pseudo-Secrets: A Freedom of Information Audit of the U.S. Government's Policies on Sensitive Unclassified Information

About the NSA: An independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University, the Archive collects and publishes declassified documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. (more)

About the BPL 5100 reading list

I have helped several students this reference desk who have Prof. LaManna's BPL course. Students have been provided an extensive reading list which looks great but lacks the page numbers of the articles. However, once the students have an explanation on how to find if we have an journal online, they seemed not to worry about the page numbers. Just thought I would let you know.

Rita

Indices

Colleagues:

In case you are hunting for old indices I have several "ancient" indices not checked out overnight, which I am using to prepare for a class. I expect to return these in early a. m or place them on reserve:

• New York Times 1851-1862
• 19th Century Reader's Guide to Per. Lit.
• Poole's Index [19th cent]

Louise Klusek out this week

Please note: Louise Klusek is on AL for the rest of the week. I (Jerry) may have to appear for jury duty starting Tuesday. In the event I have to be at court, Lewis Liu will be acting head of reference. Please refer any problems to him.

Also a number of changes have been made to the reference schedule for Weds and Thurs. On Weds, David will cover email reference, Stephen will cover chat reference from 10:00-12:30, and Aisha will work the ref desk from 6-9pm.

On Thurs. Brian will cover chat from 10:00-12:30, and will arrive at the ref desk at 12:30 (joining Rita).

Educause on Wikipedia

One of the features of the Educause website is a collection of guides for academics that explain new technologies and their implications for teaching and learning. Just recently they added "7 Things You Should Know about the Wikipedia." It includes a scenario of a graduate student using the Wikipedia for a research paper. On the whole, a nice balanced account.

Rankings of book publishers?--Follow up

I have received an inquiry from a communications professor here at Baruch asking for rankings of book publishers specificially in relation to scholarly works in the humanities and social sciences. The publishers are Blackwell, Intercultural Press, Sage, Cambridge University Press, University Press of America, University of Michigan Press, Jossey Bass, Rowman Littlefield, Routledge, Lawrence Earlbaum, Ally and Bacon, Prentice Hall, McGraw Hill and Thomson Wadsworth. If you know of any sources for this type of information, will you please share it will me (and others.)
I will let you know what I find. She is also looking for journal rankings, which I think will be easier to do. Thanks for any help.

To follow up on this posting, I have found some articles about the perceived quality of book publishers that I will review before I send them to the professor, who is currently abroad during research.

The professor is interested primarily in intercultural communications. Following a suggestion by Stephen, I used WorldCat, did a keyword search for intercultural communications, limited the search to a specific publisher, and limited the years to 2000-2007. The detailed records available were emailed to the professor, who thought it was the greatest!

She was also inquiring about the rankings of specific journals and I learned that two have ceased publication and I found the impact factors of several listed on the journal websites, and also through other sources on the web. I am reviewing some journal articles about the rankings of the journals.

Rita

980 posts and counting

Including this one, there have now been 980 posts to the reference blog since we started in on September 22, 2004! I'm really proud of what we've accomplished over the past three years and am eager to see who is going to publish the 1000th post; I am so excited by this that I promise to provide a special (edible or drinkable) treat to whomever that person is.

PS: When I was a lowly editorial assistant in the college textbook division at Harper & Row, I helped lead an impromptu celebration for the main photocopier in the office when it hit one million copies.

Crain's New York has special issue on vital stats on New York City

Sandy Roff has found that the July 2, 2007 issue of Crains New York Business is a special issue on vital statistics on the New York City economy.

More on Nonprofit Budgets

In addition to the other suggestions (here, here, and here) that have been made concerning nonprofit budgets I would add the following two sources from the Newman Library book collection:

1. Budgeting for Not-For-Profit Organizations by Robert D. Vinter and Rhea K. Kish, call number HF5686.N56V56 1984. The entire book is a comprehensive discussion of budgeting considerations for a nonprofit organization. (Be aware though, it does not contain detailed examples of complete budgets from nonprofit organizations.)
   
2. Management Control in Nonprofit Organizations, 6th edition by Robert N. Anthony and David W. Young, call number HF5686.N56A571999. Chapter 10 of this book deals with budgeting--distinguishing a capital budget from an operating budget, followed by explanations of various points to consider in creating an operating budget. The discussion is followed by detailed examples of budgets for four different types of nonprofit organizations.

More on Budgets for Non-profits

I had a look at the Foundation Center and they have a free tutorial called Proposal Budgeting Basics. It covers the elements of a project budget and the financial documents needed for a proposal. Besides teaching about the budgeting process the tutorial includes a list of resources that point to websites with "samples of project budgets." One is a budget for the Bush Foundation in St. Paul, MN.

Follow up on nonprofit budgets

I have had some luck searching nonprofit operating budgets and nonprofit operating budgets via Googlem and also nonprofit foundation operating budget. The H. John Heinz Center for Science posts its operating budget. (The other budget would be likely be a capital budget.) Some organization note that their annual budgets are an approximate amount and provide a pie chart with percentages of the allocations, so one might figure out the general idea of a nonprofit's operating budget that way. Figures available on the Form 990s (available via Guidestar) could help, but these would be actual expenses, not budgeted expenses. I posted a comment to Stephen's posting of yesterday about the Dormitory Authority of New York, which is a public benefit corporation. They provide an annual budgeted amount and what percentage had been spent by the current month.

I hope this is helpful.

Stumper: finding actual budgets for nonprofits

Can anyone help me with a question I got at the reference desk today from a couple of SPA students? They are required to find a recent budget from a nonprofit. While I suppose I could help them find the Baruch budget, I think they may be looking for other examples. I've looked into the following resources with no luck so far:

• CUNY+ for any recent books on nonprofit management or budgeting or finance or accounting that include actual budgets
• Business Plans Handbook (only 2 entries in this 12-volume set had nonprofits, and no detailed budgets were included for these)
  
• Help4NonProfits
• NonProfit Times
• Alliance for Nonprofit Management: Financial Management
• GuideStar.org (maybe if we subscribed to it the info we need would be there)

Although I promised to email the students with any leads I get, I did also refer them to the library at the Foundation Center over on Fifth Avenue as well. If anyone has any ideas, please add them as comments to this blog (as opposed to just hitting the "reply" button in your email program that you may be using now to read this post).

Thanks.

Test the Searchable Ticker Archives

Saad Abulhab led a project to scan the Ticker from microfilm and develop a custom search interface. The link to the test version is below. Please do not share it with users, because it will change soon. Saad is completing the quality review. If you spot any errors, please let him know. If you search by author or title, you are searching data that were keyed in manually. If you search full text, you are searching an index created from an OCR scan of the microfilm images with at least 70% inclusion. You can also browse by issue.

http://150.210.172.53/ [Only available on campus]

New searchs features of Westlaw Campus

Westlaw Campus now offers News and Business as a search possibility, along with court cases, law reviews, and other legal documents that have previously been available.

From information available on the site regarding News and Business Content:


Newspapers. Includes current and archival newspapers like The New York Times, USA Today, Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Boston Globe, Financial Times, and hundreds more!

Magazines. Provides current and archival issues of sought-after sources like Newsweek, the Economist, Consumer Reports, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, Spectator, Publishers Weekly, and Business Week.

Trade Journals. Offers current and archival issues for virtually any discipline. Includes titles like U.S. Banker, Securities Industries News, Accountancy Age, Advertising Age, PR Week, Modern Physician, and many more.

Company Information. Provides SEC filings and Hoover’s company records, including profiles for thousands of private and public U.S. corporations. (Various documents and time periods may be selected for searching the SEC filings, from today to 10 years ago.)

International Publications. Includes popular international sources like European Report, Middle East Observer and World News Connection.

Newswires. Get the most current news from more than 400 newswires, including the Associated Press, U.S. Newswire, and numerous international wires.

Newsletters. Access timely information across many specialties, including Alternative Medicine Alert, Agriculture Chemical News, White House press releases, Wireless News, and many others.

Broadcast Transcripts. Offers more than 900 television and radio transcripts that includes national and local news content from ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, NBC, PBS, and BBC radio.

Foreign Language Publications. Search non-English news sources available in Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish.

There are a limited number of users for this database. (Perhaps for the SEC filings it might be good to suggest other databases, such as Thomson, Edgar Online I-Metrix, and others.)