question about student printing accounts for the January term

Could someone please provide the details of the student printing accounts for students taking courses this January term? A student just told me he received an error message when he tried to print the syllabus for his January class. Thanks.

Wall Street Journal Changing Today

The Wall Street Journal is making major changes to its print edition starting today. The size of the paper is shrinking and more content, notably breaking news and market statistics, is going to the online edition. A recent letter from the publisher outlined "What is Changing -- and What Isn't -- In the Wall Street Journal."

A key change is the launch of a Markets Data Center that will be available free in WSJ.com and will feature downloadable data, interactive charting, and mutual fund and ETF screening. There will be more emphasis on exclusive news and analysis in the print edition. Librarians should note that the "Marketplace" section has a daily index to People in addition to its index to Businesses.

To introduce the changes, the Wall Street Journal Online is free today at www.wsj.com. It is worthwhile to take the tour and read the "Help: A Guide to Finding Tables" found in the Markets Data Center.

Infoshare Database down

On Dec. 21, Loren Mendelson at CCNY reported on CULIBS that the Infoshare database is not working. Their server crashed a couple of days ago and they're have problems bringing it back up.

UPDATE: Infoshare is now working again.

Firefox at the reference desk

My article in Library Journal, "Firefox at the Reference Desk," was just published today in the December 15th issue. You can read it online at the Library Journal web site. One thing that didn't make it into the final version of the article was a list of links to the resources discussed in my article:

BookBurro
http://bookburro.org/

Book Borough
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/1498

Firefox 1.5
http://www.oldapps.com/firefox.htm

Firefox 2
http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/

IE Tab
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1419/

Internet Explorer 7
www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/

L2
http://lib20.com/blog/

Mycroft
http://mycroft.mozdev.org/

OpenURL Referrer
http://www.openly.com/openurlref/

Pearl Crescent Page Saver
http://pearlcrescent.com/products/pagesaver/

Snapper
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2703

If you'd like to try some of these things out, the staff PC at the front right corner of the reference desk has Firefox installed with these extensions: Book Burro, L2, IE Tab, OpenURL Referrer, Pearl Crescent Page Saver, and Snapper.

Vendor Printer

The vendor printer was reading "service required" at 7pm Wednesday evening and wasn't working. I sent a request for service to the Help Desk.

Paper for Printers in room 238

The paper supply is running low in room 238. Nelson has been notified. He stated that the suppliers are scheduled to arrive today (Dec. 13th) to save the day.

Preview LexisNexis Academic redesign

There's a bit of information available on the LexisNexis Redesign 2007 page about the upcoming changes. (Thanks to Rita for sharing this with me.)

Databases that require patrons to set up free accounts

A handful of our databases require patrons to register for a free account before they can access the database at all:

• Audit Analytics
  
• Books24x7
• Gartner (you have to have a CUNY Portal login to get to this database)
  
• LearningExpress.com
• MRI+
  
• netLibrary
• RefWorks (no remote access yet)
  

Some databases don't require registration but offer it (or request an e-mail address at the outset) so that you can get useful personalization:

• CCH Business & Finance
• CCH Capital Changes
• CCH Tax Research
  
• ebrary

If I forgot a database, please add it in the comments section of this blog post.

Wilson to offer retrospective Library Literature databases

Just saw an announcement that next January H.W. Wilson will launch Library Literature; Information Science Retrospective: 1905 -1983.

New Videocamera Loan Service

I've just created a videocameras page in the wiki that details everything I know about this new service. Please add any other details to the wiki page that you think should be there (just click the "Edit page" link on the videocameras page, login using the password that we've always used for logging in to the wiki, type in your corrections or additions, and then click "Save.")

Investigative Journalism Web Links

Barbara Oliver, Director of Research for the NY Times, was a guest lecturer at my Research Methods course at the Graduate Journalism School last week and was kind enough to share the following list of links used at the Times for investigative stories.

The sites might be useful for helping students at the reference desk and for updating online subject guides.

Jerry

Here are the links:

Public record finder

http://www.brbpub.com/pubrecsites.asp



State Courts

http://www.ncsconline.org/D_KIS/info_court_web_sites.html



Incarceration records by state

http://www.vi nelink.com/index.jsp



National Sex Offender registry

http://www.nsopr.gov/



Updates on law, media and technology

http://www.bespacific.com/



Targeted leagl research

http://www.llrx.com/



CT case lookup

http://www.jud.state.ct.us/jud2.htm



CT professional licenses

http://www.dcpaccess.state.ct.us/DCPPublic/LicenseLookup.asp



NJ Civil Motion calendar

http://www.judiciary.state.nj.us/acms/MOTN/CV0390W0E.ASP



NJ Professional licenses

http://www.state.nj.us/cgi-bin/consumeraffairs/search/searchentry.pl



NY Professional licenses

http://www.op.nysed.gov/opsearches.htm



Federal Tax Court

http://www.ustaxcourt.gov/docket.htm



NYS Attorney look-up

http://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/attorney/html/AttorneyWelcome.html

NYC Civil Servants

http://www.citylaw.org/cityadmin.php





HEALTH AND MEDICINE

http://denison .uchsc.edu/education/eval.html



Evaluating Risk

http://www.stats.org/stories/media_distort_nov21_2006.htm



Questionnable Doctors

http://www.questionabledoctors.org/



The Cost of Poverty

http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err26/err26.pdf



BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS



Public Company Information

http://www.sec.gov/



Business filings by state

http://www.llrx.com/columns/roundup29.htm

Simmons Choices III and Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy available again!

Saad has set up a new CD-ROM server, thereby returning access to Simmons Choices III and the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. These two databases may only be accessed from selected PCs in the library.

SimNet tutorial

According to the 11/20/06 Ticker, the SimNet tutorial will no longer be free and available through the BCTC.
Reasons were not given in the article.

Students will have the option of purchasing a $35 SimNet study guide from the Bookstore starting sometime in the Spring 07 semester. SimNet is an assessment test on Excel that must be passed in order for students to be able to take CIS 2200 or STA 2000. It takes 1 hour 15 minute (max) and is administered all year by the Office of Testing and Evaluation. Students will have the opportunity to take it a number of times, with a 30 day wait period.

I suspect we will see increased interest in Excel (e) books (and BCTC workshops).

Student research and satisficing

Interesting post today by Steven Bell at ACRLog, "Moving Students Beyond 'Good Enough'" that addresses ways that college assignments might be designed to combat the habit of students to follow a satisficing model when looking for information.

CUNY Policy Documents Site

80th Street has announced a new Web site where CUNY policies are posted:

http://policy.cuny.edu/

American Chemical Society Journals

We have unfortunately lost off-campus access to this database again, due to systematic downloading. Saad is investigating further.

SWOT analyses

After the discussion at yesterday's ISD meeting about how to assist students working on SWOT analyses, I stopped by Louise's office to discuss the matter further. I believe we should probably do something other than just direct students to search Business Source Premier (and also Business Monitor Online) to see if there is a SWOT analysis for the company they are researching. (Louise and I agreed that at a future ISD meeting we should have more discussion about whether we point students to the Business Source Premier SWOTs at all, or if we do, how we should frame that recommendation.)

I'd like to share a couple of tips that Louise gave me in assisting students. First, students should always start by reading specific portions of the company's 10-K if the company is public: Item 1 (the "Business" section), Item 7 (the "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" section, and Item 7A ("Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures about Market Risk.")

Then students may want to look for analysts' reports in Investext Plus and industry reports in the usual databases. Once students have the necessary background information, then they are ready to look for articles on specific topics they might include in their SWOT analysis.

If students want in-depth instructions about how to do a SWOT analysis, a good source is Craig S. Fleisher's Strategic and competitive analysis : methods and techniques for analyzing business competition.

I also like to recommend a few notable websites offering instructions on how to do a SWOT analyses:

• Danca, Anthony C. "SWOT Analysis."
• MindTools. "SWOT Analysis."
• UCSD Libraries. "Get Started with Business Research."
  

Rebooting instructors' computers in classrooms

The instructor's computer in 130 had a frozen blue empty desktop screen yesterday. The desktop came back when rebooted. However, it is necessary to hold down the power on/off buttom very firmly, and for several seconds, until it reboots. Saad said that this is often the case with newer machines.

American Chemical Society Journals

Off-campus access has been restored.

Stewart's presentation today on WorldCat.org

Here are links to things that Stewart discussed today at the ISD meeting:

• WorldCat.org
• Lorcan Dempsey's blog (and his post, "Making Data Work Harder")