Datastream Navigator Available Again

The Datastream Navigator (the tool for searching for the mnemonic codes for series within the application) is again available. [It was not available last week due to a change in the embedded url which Theresa and I just updated.]

Map of Manhattan from 1609

Connected to the 400th anniversary of the first European contact with the Hudson River and the area that now makes up New York City, the Wildlife Conservation Society has launched an amazing mapping system of Manhattan that gives you a glimpse of what the land probably looked like here at the time the first Europeans were arriving.

The Mannahatta Project allows you to enter in a street address and see what that location may have looked like in 1609. You can then click on the virtual thumbtack on the map and get a popup window (like this one for 151 E 25th St) that will detail:

• what wildlife probably lived there (common names and scientific names are provided)
• any uses of the land there by the Lenape
• what the topography was like
• what the area is like now (you get a link to the OASIS map for the location; here's the link provided for 151 E 25th St)

You can drag the map around on your screen, zoom in and out, and even overlay the modern street grid.

Full text list

Serials Solutions is experiencing some sort of problem and our Full Text list page has temporarily lost all its customization. This is happening to libraries across the country. The search functionality is working fine however.

Serials Solutions records in CUNY+

Because Serials Solutions has changed the format for sending their e-records, the central office has had to reload all electronic serials records. Therefore the current changes are not reflected in the records currently in CUNY+. This would be a problem if we have canceled a title or if it was dropped from a database. Please double check with the Full Text list (which is updated) if you find something that CUNY+ shows we have but does not work. As always, feel free to email me if something is strange.

Ebrary now allows exporting to RefWorks and EndNote

ebrary just announced the new feature added to the QuickView menu.

Users must go to My Settings on the top right, where they have a choice to allow for the RefWorks and/or EndNote buttons to appear. Once you do that, after you have a book open, click on InfoTools and you will see the option to export to those softwares.

This is a user-driven option, so each user has to do this for themselves.

WNYC's On the Media critiques two new search engines

WYNC’s On The Media featured a segment this weekend on search engines. The segment discusses two savvy search engines, Wolfram Alpha and Cuil, but also is a good commentary on the current state of Search. Danny Sullivan from searchengineland.com was interviewed.

• Wolfram Alpha
  Wolfram Alpha is a new search engine that functions more as an “answer machine” in that it specializes in finding statistical facts. Some sample searches that yielded seemingly correct answers:
  
  Marshmallow AND Calories
  Lake Superior AND Average Depth
  Afghanistan AND Population
  United States AND Trade Deficit
  Ford AND 2008 AND Revenue
  Distance AND Moon AND Earth
  
  Interesting and fun, but I think the manner in which it displays the results is lacking. It is not exactly clear where the information came from so there’s no way to gauge the validity and reliability the information. The “Sources” link leads you to the formulas that calculated the results.
  
• Cuil
  The article also discussed Cuil which indexes and crawls more pages than Google. Cuil’s results rely less on popularity of pages for search results and more on the presence of related words within the search page.

“Holy Grail 2.0.” On The Media. WNYC. May 15, 2009. http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2009/05/15/03

Zotero

At today's Tech Sharecase, I demo'ed Zotero, an open source citation manager that works within the Firefox browser. If you want more info about Zotero, you may want to check out the LibGuide on Zotero that my friend Jason Puckett, a librarian at Georgia State University, put together for the students and faculty at his school.

If you do set up Zotero and set up your account to be saved on the web as well as on your computer, feel free to friend me in Zotero. Even if you don't set up Zotero, you can check out my library of citations (wkich I haven't really organized much into folders and subfolders yet).

Company History

At the last practicum we discussed an assignment about company histories. An entrepreneurship class has to find out about the history, management and strategy of a company before it went public. They need to answer the question: why did the company go public? To get the basic facts about who was the founder or CEO and when the company went public, the best source is the International Directory of Company Histories which is available in our reference collection (HD2721 .I54) and online in the Business and Company Resource Center. BCRC also includes Notable Corporate Chronologies.

Students that I worked with found the best information came from Business Source Premier using some creative searching. Interviews with the CEO’s had great information (Use the CEO’s name or ‘Executives’ and the subject term ‘Interviews’). You can also search BSP with the index term ‘Going Public (Securities).’

If the CEO was a well known figure (we were looking at Dave Thomas of Wendy’s) the Biography Reference Bank was useful since it had profiles from Current Biography and links to current articles. The Biography Resource Center includes Business Leader Profiles for Students which is simple but helpful for chronologies.

Student printing accounts end May 26 at midnight

A student inquired, and after calling the help desk, we learned that student printing accounts for the semester will terminate May 26 at midnight.

Sources for Advertising Metrics

A couple of patrons came to the desk this morning looking for advertising metrics for audience reach including CPM (Cost Per Thousand). The following sources will have data on advertising audiences and reach:

• TVB (Television Advertising Bureau) Online Go to Research Central and choose Ad Revenue Track.
• TV dimensions 2009. - Stacks, non-circulating - HE 8700.8 .T917
• SRDS Media Solutions. In addition to television, other mediums like radio, newspapers and outdoor advertising are also covered.

Also, today I received another question today from a patron about the advertising revenues for the top newpaper/magazine publications.

• Advertising Age. This information is found in the Data Center online, but we do not subscribe to the Data Center. But it's also available in the print version--Advertising Age Annual 2009. We have this issue on microform.
• Magazine publication advertising revenues are available from the Magazine Publishers of America. http://www.magazine.org/advertising/revenue/by_mag_title_qtr/pib-1q-2009.aspx

These sources and more are available from Peggy Teich's comprehensive Advertising Subject Guide. Let me know if you'd like me to make you a copy.

XBRL Update

Baruch held its 5th annual XBRL conference yesterday and there is some news to report. We are only 33 days away from the first large scale filings of 10-K’s and 10-Q’s in XBRL format. The SEC requires that all companies with a market cap over $5 billion (about 500 or so companies) begin filing in XBRL for their fiscal quarter ending June 15th. Other large accelerated filers, about 1200 companies, must begin filing in 2010 and small cap companies in 2011.

Companies must make the filings available on their web sites as well as filing with the SEC. David Blaszkowsky, the director of the SEC’s Office of Interactive Data, reported that 26 companies have already filed, even some small and mid-cap companies that are not yet required to use XBRL. The SEC rules require that all 10-K’s, 10-Q’s, 8-K’s or 6-K’s that revise or update financial statement data, as well as Registration Statements be filed in XBRL.

Our students can access the reports through the database EDGAR Online or use IDEA, the SEC’s new EDGAR filing database. Reports filed in IDEA are clearly identified with a format label saying either ‘document’ or ‘interactive data.’ The financial statements filed in XBRL can be downloaded to Excel.

Analyst Reports

I just want to point out the places to find analyst reports now that we no longer have Investext.

The best source is Thomson One which students can access from the Reuters terminal at the reference desk or any of the terminals in the Subotnick Center. This is the most comprehensive collection in terms of its global coverage, the types of reports (equity, fixed income and economic), and the number of contributors. It is also the most frequently updated and offers the best indexing and search features.

Analyst reports are also available from Bloomberg. To find reports for a company, type in the ticker symbol, the EQUITY key, the letters 'ANR', and then press the GO key.

Business and Company Resource Center also offers research reports but they do not include reports from any of the top ranked banks or independent research firms. (See my previous post for more detail).

NYPL adds Mango online language instruction

The New York Public Library recently added the Mango online language instruction collection. You need to enter your NYPL library bar code to access the collection. However, sample lessons for each of the languages may be accessed without a card. Lessons for English speakers include Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, German, Greek, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, French, Italian and Russian. There are English courses for speakers of Spanish, Polish and Brazilian Portuguese.

New CPA exam review series available: Gleim

Acc 5400 students of Prof. Paquita Davis Friday will likely be asking for the Gleim version of the CPA exam review book for Auditing. She has recommended that they use that to review for their final exam which is Monday. Through Prof. Friday's work the library received a copy of this four volume (with a business supplement) CPA exam review series for free from Gleim. They were recently added to the library's reserve collection.

The books are in reserve, under Ref 000

Here are the call numbers:

Gleim, Irvin N. CPA review. Auditing / 2008 Book Baruch Reserve HF5661 .G543 2008


Gleim, Irvin N. CPA review. Regulation / 2008 Book Baruch Reserve
HF 5661 .G544 2008


Gleim, Irvin N. CPA review. Business / 2008 Book Baruch Reserve
HF 5661. G542 and HF 5661.G543 Supp.


Gleim, Irvin N. CPA review. Financial / 2008 Book Baruch Reserve
HF 5661. G541


Students using CUNY+ may locate them by a keyword search Gleim and auditing (for example) if they forget the exact title of CPA review Auditing.

RefWorks Remote Access

I got a call from a student being asked for a group code for RefWorks after trying to access it from our DB page. This happened also back in November....I never learned how or if it was resolved. The patron also tried to find out what to do through chat (I think after she spoke to me and I was unable to help her). I've left the chat transcript up in QP so that someone can get back to her that way.

New MLA Guides

The new MLA guides are here, and I will put them at the reference desk. As Stephen mentioned in his post the other day, there are some big changes that you will want to look at.

The new guides come with online access. The username and password are not for public use. If you would like to see the online version of the book, or show it to students, I will post more information on the wiki. We should not give the username and password out to students, according to the terms of use.

Reports from the Schwartz Communication Institute Symposium

Jerry, Stephen and I attended the 9th Annual Symposium on Communication and Communication-Intensive Instruction here at Baruch last Friday. Videos from the symposium are being posted on the Schwartz Communication Institute blog, Cac.ophony. The first video online is Gardner Campbell's workshop on "Speaker, Listener, Network: The Concept of Audience in Web 2.0 World." He speaks about the global conversation we can connect to with Twitter apps. To quote Luke on the blog, "His interest is in exploring the broad, rich ideas generated by these new methods of communication." Campbell, from Baylor University, also writes an EdTech blog called Gardner Writes.

Journal Citation Reports from Web of Science

The Graduate Center has added Journal Citation Reports to their Web of Science subscription. Data is available for 2007. Data for 2008 will become available this summer. More detail can be found in the post on the Minna Rees Library News blog.

Summer Reading List

The current issue of The Ticker has a recommended summer reading list of books suggested by the business editor, Emmanuel Onyenyili. It has both current classics like The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness as well as standards like The Intelligent Investor and A Random Walk Down Wall Street. Onyenyili says, "From an early stage in my college tenure I realized how critical it was to read books that enhanced my level of knowledge of finance and broadened my vision."

Chat Reference in May

For much of May, I will be on research leave. If you have any trouble with the QuestionPoint software or the service itself, please speak with Louise Klusek about it.

Judaic Library CD

I have had a couple of requests at the desk over the past few days for Bar Ilan's Judaic Library. It is a CD on reserve. Yesterday Professor Ruth Adler called the desk and said her students have been unable to use it. Apparently the disc requires some set up and a password, but she didn't know how it worked; the record says there is a user's guide with it, but the Cd and guide were checked out. I am not sure if anyone else has had this issue--I didn't see that it was loaded on a reference computer.

New MLA citation rules

Today, I posted an entry on my Digital Reference blog about some of the key changes in MLA guidelines for citations, which were updated this spring in the just-released seventh edition of the MLA Handbook.

No Access to MLA Intl. Bibliography or Literature Resource Ctr.

This afternoon I noticed that I couldn't connect MLA International Bibliography or Literature Resource Center. Oddly, I could get to Literature Criticism Online, which is also from Gale. I'll notify Mike about this.

Student sends thanks for MarketResearch.com report re diaper industry

Last Wednesday night a student came to the reference desk looking for information about the infant diaper industry as he has an idea for a new type of diaper. He had done research on some of our databases but needed more. We found a MarketResearch.com report that he later emailed me and said thanks as it had all the information that he needed. The report has quite a bit on the use of cloth v disposable diapers.

guest login problem

Today before the reference desk closed at 4:50 we had problems with generating guest logins. I called the help desk and they said the system had to be restarted. At 7:30 p.m. a student just asked for a guest login as the circulation desk (still open) was also unable to generate the passes. Hopefully this will be resolved by Saturday morning.