Using Census Data

The last workshop in the three-part series on "Using Census Data" will take place next Tuesday May 29th From 12:30 to 2:30 PM in the Skylight Room, 17 Lexington Avenue at 23rd Street. The program is on "Using the NYCRDC and LED and LEDH Data." It will provide an overview of non-public Census microdata available through the reseach facilities of the New York Census Research Data Center (NYCRDC) at Baruch. It will also cover New York State labor market data available through the Local Employment Dynamics (LED) and Longitudinal Employer-Houshold Dynamics (LEHD) programs. This session should help librarians learn when to refer users to the CRDC.

The first workshop, held last April, covered "What Kinds of Data Does the Census Bureau Collect?" and was conducted by Rosemarie Fogarty, Information Specialist, US Census Bureau. It is now available in Baruch's Digital Media Library. Ms. Fogarty provides an overview of the Census Bureau data, using the Census’s website as the starting point. If you haven't explored the Census web site in depth this presentation will help.

CQ Electronic Library -- TRIAL

We have a trial until June 30 of the CQ Electronic Library, which includes the following resources: CQ Researcher plus Archive, CQ Weekly, CQ Voting and Elections Collection, CQ Global Researcher, CQ Public Affairs Collection, and CQ Encyclopedia of American Government.

Trial of Proquest's Accounting and Tax with Standards

We have a trial until July 1 of the Proquest Accounting and Tax with Standards database. (This was offered by the vendor.) It is listed in the alphabetical listing of databases on the Newman Library homepage as Accounting and Tax with Standards-trial. The password is posted on the Wiki. (It has been supplied to accounting faculty.)

This database basically adds the FASB, GASB and IASB (Financial Accounting Standards Board, Government Accounting Standards Board and International Accounting Standard Board publications to the ABI Inform Global database. (The "tax" part is the journals that can be searched for tax information, as well as accounting related publications in the database.)

We had an earlier trial of this database. One accounting professor, a very experienced researcher, thought it wasn't very "user friendly." He suggested to me that beginners and other search either the official literature or the journals separately as a combined search can be very confusing.

Since the FASB documents are current as of March 30, 2006, for more current information, one should search RIA Checkpoint--Accounting & Auditing & Corp Finance, or CCH Accounting Research Manager. RIA offers FASB and GASB. CCH Accounting Research Manager offers FASB and IASB. Both RIA and CCH update the information daily. If one of the organizations announces a new publication, it is available usually the next day. (Each of the organizations, FASB, http://www.fasb.org, GASB, http://www.gasb.org, and the IASB, http://www.iasb.org/Home.htm have websites that offer new announcements.)

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Rita

Candidate Presentation 5/23 at 2:00

The following message was sent several times over the past few days to BBLIB-L, but it has not been delivered.

Frank Donnelly, candidate for Geospatial Data Librarian, will be interviewing on Wednesday, May 23. At 2:00 he will be making his presentation in Room 620 of the BCTC (at the back of the lab). All library faculty are invited. Each division head has a copy of his CV.

A. Downing

Westlaw: working again

Westlaw: not working

We are having problems accessing Westlaw. I have called West and am trying to resolve the issue.

Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology

The encyclopedia is live and can be accessed from our database page. It will have catalog record shortly as well.

NewspaperDirect Press Display: TRIAL

We have a trial to NewspaperDirect until 6/16/07.
NewspaperDirect lets you access the latest 60 days of newspapers from around the world, as if you were reading the newspaper in print, including advertising, in that country's language. Of course one can also search for news.

DemographicsNow: TRIAL

We have a trial until 6/14/07 of DemographicsNow, a new Thomson Gale product. This database allows you to analyze market potentials in different geographic areas. In particular it lets you create your own reports and to see them not only in report format, but also in map format.

RAB database added

We have added the Radio Advertising Bureau database. It is not a very user friendly set-up, as they do not have IP authentication. We have a main Baruch login, which authenticates the user, and then each user must create their own personal login. The wiki has the Baruch login and more specific instructions.

Company Histories

In today's reference practicum we discussed the Boeing assignment. Students need to analyze Boeing's diversification strategies in the 1990's. Some sources that give a nice overview of what was happening at Boeing in the 1990's are the International Directory of Company Histories (REF HD2721) and Mergent's company "History" pages. After identifying key events, use a news database or Investext for analysis. The S&P Industry Surveys are also useful. The survey of the Aerospace and Defense industry goes back to 1999 in S&P NetAdvantage.

Institutional Investor Journals added

We have added the backfiles to 3 Institutional Investor Journals:

Journal of Portfolio Management, 1974-present
Journal of Derivatives, 1993-present
Journal of Fixed Income, 1991-present.

Factiva Adds WSJ.com

Content exclusive to WSJ.com, the online version of The Wall Street Journal, will now be available through Factiva. This just announced in Factiva's April new "Source Additions."

Human Rights Watch report on Wal-mart

The Human Rights Watch report, published last week on Discounting Rights: Wal-Mart's Violation of U.S. Workers' Rights to Freedom of Association is available in several languages as a pdf file. There is also an executive summary. The English version of the 200+page report has links to individual chapters. (I didn't check the other languages.) There are also some multi-media sources available on the Human Rights Watch web site for free in several languages that explain the report.

Alexander Street Press databases: access restored

Alexander Street Press databases: outage

Alexander Street Press is experiencing technical difficulties with their servers and service may be down until it is resolved. This affects Black Thought and Culture and Women and Social Movements.

Epiphany branch to be closed

NYPL's Epiphany branch on 23rd St. will be closed from May 14th to June 6th for renovation.

Historian takes aim at Google Books

On the American Historical Association's blog, there was an interesting post a few days ago by historian Robert Townsend about the problems he found in using Google Books on a regular basis for three months:

my experience suggests the project is falling far short of its central promise of exposing the literature of the world, and is instead piling mistake upon mistake with little evidence of basic quality control. The problems I encountered fit into three broad categories—the quality of the scans is decidedly mixed, the information about the books (the “metadata” in info-speak) is often erroneous, and the public domain is curiously restricted.

Read the full post by Townsend here.

NAXOS -- trial until 5/31/07

We have a trial to NAXOS until 5/31/07. Naxos offers access to over 75,000 tracks and more than 5,000 CDs with over 2,500 composers represented. Classical, Jazz, World, Folk and more types of music are represented.

It also offers faculty the opportunity to create playlists with static URLs to share with their students and/or for class assignments. Please contact me if you are a Baruch faculty member and would like to try this feature (it will also expire on 5/31/07).

Copier on 2nd floor

We now have a working copy machine available for student use in the second floor student printing room.