Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis announces economic newsletter written for librarians on the latest economic topics

I recently received this announcement and found the resources to be extensive.

The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis is pleased to announce the Liber8 Economic Newsletter, written for librarians, on the latest economic topics.

"Subprime," the inaugural issue, was released today and is available at http://liber8.stlouisfed.org/newsletter/2007/200709.pdf. This issue discusses the current problems in the subprime mortgage market, provides links to articles with more detail, and lists the major sources of data for researchers interested in housing and mortgages. RSS and email subscriptions are available for the newsletter (http://liber8.stlouisfed.org/newsletter).

The two-page newsletter will be published 9 times per year, January through May and August through November, to coincide with the academic calendar.

More on Liber8:
The Liber8 Economic Information portal (http://liber8.stlouisfed.org) provides a single point of access to the economic information that the Federal Reserve System, government agencies, and data providers have to offer.

Liber8 also offers the International Economic Statistics (IES) database (http://liber8.stlouisfed.org/iesd) with links to individual economic indicators for countries worldwide.

Yahoo! MapMixer

I just ran across this map, which superimposes a map of New Amsterdam over a current map from Yahoo! The Yahoo! MapMixer site allows you to take your own images and float them (to scale) over Yahoo! maps. Here are some other interesting examples:

• USC campus map
• New York City subway
• Brooklyn Bridge (this is someone's photo of the bridge laid out on the map)
• City College of San Francisco
  

Beach Boys + Clash

= "Andy Will Know"
Thanks for the song---some memorable lines and it is nice to be appreciated by young rockers.
Regina

Conference Room Key is at reference desk for 7 p.m. meeting tonight

The key to 415 (the conference room) has been left at the reference desk.
Mike Waldman called me to ask that I get it and leave it at the reference desk for a group that is meeting at 7 pm. tonight. (Mike remembered it earlier today and called me.)

A pop song for reference librarians

The indie band SNMNMNM has a song called "Addy Will Know" about a real reference librarian.

• Listen to the song on this embedded player
  
• Get the MP3 for "Addy Will Know" here

This fun bit of fluff has been bouncing around the biblioblogosphere and Twitterverse for the past week.

Book for Arthur Ainsberg has been left at the reference desk

There's a book in an envelope at the reference desk for Arthur Ainsberg. A messenger service will pick it up for him on Thursday. Nothing more needs to be done--just give it to the messenger.

I realize this is not the normal procedure but this was what was easiest to work out for the parties involved.

Please let me know if you have any questions. Rita

Update: His assistant, who is named Korenne,emailed to say she will pick it up tonight (Thursday). She is a Queens College student who was coming to the library to get a book she needs.

Availability of some SEC publications on CCH Business & Finance

Yesterday I received a question from Dean Elliott asking if we subscribed to a Westlaw product that includes specific SEC publications. We do not have access through Westlaw (we have the a
academic version). But we have access through CCH Business & Finance to the publications included in the Westlaw product. In case this comes up, here's where the information may be found:

Log onto CCH Business & Finance.
Click Securities tab.

Under Federal Securities-Reporters and Primary Material, three of the publications are:

SEC No Action Letters
SEC Staff Comment Letters (the Westlaw product refers to Staff Review Letters)
SEC Telephone Interpretations Manual

The other Westlaw product is SEC Official Forms

To access forms via CCH,

Scroll down further, to the SEC Accountants' Module,
Practice Manual is listed. If you click on it, one of the choices is Forms, which can be drilled down further. For example, if you select Form 10-K (after several clicks), you will see in the explanatory material, a hyperlink to a blank Form 10-K that can be filled out for submission to the SEC.

A faster way to retrieve the form, if you know what you want, is to Select the Practice Manual, then use Find by Citation at the top. You can enter the form number that you want, and it is retrieved.

(You could also use Find by Citation as soon as you select the Securities tab, although if you do, you will receive a very long list of possibilities, and you need to scroll down to the Practice Manual to see the choice for Form. If you select Practice Manual first, the choices are narrowed to four, of which Forms is one choice.)

As with other CCH searches, these sources may be searched individually, or combined. You may also select the sources and do key word searches. For example, if you wanted to see what the SEC Staff Comment Letters and SEC Telephone Interpretations Manual had on "debt equity swaps", you could select the sources, and enter a keyword search. Another example might be that you want to see references in these SEC sources to FASB statement 123R, which has to do with stock options.
You can type 123R in as a keyword.

Please let me know if you have any questions. Rita

Guidelines for renewals

Today, I received an email from Hunter letting me know that a book I had borrowed was overdue. The body of the email detailed renewal policies that I was not aware of (or had reason to look up). The gist of those policies is that you may renew online if all three conditions below are met:

1. you have less than $5 in fines CUNY-wide and
2. the item borrowed is less than 21 days overdue and
3. the item borrowed has not been requested by another person

I have updated the Renewals page in the reference wiki to include this information.

Wilson databases are back

Guess it was just a temporary problem on their end. Who knows...as long as they're back.

Wilson databases down

Not sure why but I can't get in to any Wilson databases at the moment. Anyone know why?

Social networks and reference services

The next meeting of the Virtual Reference SIG (hosted by the Metropolitan New York Library Council) will discuss how reference services are being offered via social networks (particularly Facebook and MySpace). This event is free and open to all. Please RSVP to me (stephen_francoeur@baruch.cuny.edu) or to Scott Johnston (sjohnston@gc.cuny.edu) to let us know if you'd like to attend. Here are the details about time, date, etc.:

November 28, 2007
10 am - 12 pm
To be held at the offices of Metro (57 East 11th St., 4th floor, NY, NY)

For more information, see our SIG's wiki.

Books on Greek and Latin roots of English words

Stanton Biddle passed along a request from George Hill in the Dept. of Fine and Performing Arts that we be prepared for students asking for books that featuring Greek and Latin roots of English words. Aside from traditional dictionaries, which would offer origins of specific words, we don't have any of the kind of "vocabulary builder" books that might feature lists of common Greek and Latin roots. Until we can acquire some books like this, I'd like to share this list of books I made in WorldCat.org. Please note that many of the books on this list can be found at local public libraries as well as other CUNY libraries. (FYI: If you create an account at WorldCat.org, you can create your own list of books and share them publicly or keep them private.)

Next week, I'll try to find some web sites that might also meet this info need.

Lost intermediate accounting book turned into security

Thursday night when Stewart and I were working, a student brought an intermediate accounting book to the reference desk and said that another student had left it by a computer.
There wasn't a name inside. I turned it into the security personnel at the 2nd floor station.

Students with e-Permits and printing privileges

ePermit is an online system for requesting approval to take a course at a CUNY college other than one's home college. (It is accessible via the CUNY portal, after logging in and scrolling down.) Students registered for Baruch courses via e-Permit do have Baruch usernames and passwords, but they do not have printing privilges. (Their home campus receives tuition and tech fees.)

Baruch FAQ for e-Permit
CUNY News Release about e-Permit

Please hold off on FRE sign ups

Please refrain from signing up electronically for FRE sessions for the moment.
In order to assure equitable workload distribution, I have been visiting people in their offices to sign up for sessions.
So the authoritative list is the hardcopy I am using.
Please hang on until I get to you.

Jerry

Distributing Workshop Week Flyers at Ref Desk

In order to assure the success of workshop week (Sept 27-30), reference librarians should give a Workshop Week flyer to each student patron at the reference desk. Please suggest to students that they register online for workshops.

We will continue this practice through Sept. 24.

Thanks for your cooperation.

Jerry

Kurzweil Reader not Working

The Kurzweil reader behind the reference desk is not working.

IRS warns against e-mails scams

Today I released from "proofpoint" messages one that appeared to be from the IRS, and learned that I have a refund coming. It seemed suspicious, so I checked out the IRS official site, and learned they are again warning against e-mail scams. It is best to delete the message without opening it, according to the IRS. The IRS states it does not use email to initiate contact with taxpayers.

Reference desk stapler is broken

The stapler at the reference desk is broken. I asked Alfredo to see if a replacement is available but I think he is at lunch.

Rita

Computer problem reported

Computer 2061C is frozen and nothing I did worked so I have submitted a help desk request.
This is the third computer in the row near the index tables (to the right of the reference desk as you look out)