Reference at Newman Library

Year: 2009

SLA NY meeting tonight is in the Subotnick Center

I just noticed that the “Today in the Library” notice about the SLA NY meeting reads that it is in Room 415. It is going to be in the outer room of the Subotnick Center.  There is a sign in the lobby, but in case anyone asks at the ref desk, please direct the people to the first floor.

Series 7 exam review books on Books 24×7

We occasionally get requests at the reference desk for Series 7 exam review books.  There are some available in the Finance Pro offerings of Books 24×7 for which we recently received access.

You can do a keyword search or if you select the topic certifications, these books, and others, such as the Wiley preparation for the CPA exam are available, and a series for the CFA exam.

Vendor Card Dispenser Problems Remain

The company that services our vendor card system did not let us know today that they left some of the orange 50 cent copy cards in the machine (as opposed to the usual 30 cent cards with 70 cents of value). If a someone gets an orange card out of the dispenser (a 50 cent card), you can send them to the chief librarian’s office on the 4th floor to fill out a complaint slip that will get them a 20 cent refund.

LJ article re accounting students helping public library

Library Journal today has a story, http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6675972.html, about some accounting students in a Business and Technology class who have served as “consultants’ to a public library in Prince George British Columbia.

Among their projects in the past several years was one called “terms of endearment” in which they provide an estimated  performance measure of patrons’ enjoyment from the library’s materials–reading and videos for example.

I met the accounting professor involved with the project, John Shepherd, at the recent conference for the American Accounting Association here in NYC.  He did a poster session about the projects. I mentioned it to a friend at LJ.
The final reports for their projects, that are publicly available, can be found on the following webpage:

http://www.lib.pg.bc.ca/cncbits.

One of the students was later hired by the library, according to Shepherd.

Rita

Credit Ratings On Bloomberg Professional

The Bloomberg Professional terminal, located in the Subotnick Financial Services Center, has credit ratings on companies including international banks. You will find ratings by Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s, and Fitch (if tracked) for each company.

After you type in the ticker for a bank, for example, you can next type the command, CRPR , to get a credit rating profile. The credit history on these companies seems to go back as far as 10 years.

You can use the command, RATC , to get an alphabetical list of companies with their recent credit rating revisions as well as historical ratings (over 4000 companies). You can then sort from this point on.

Tour of the New Reference Wiki

Over the summer, an assistant in the reference office, Moon-Seok King, helped us migrate all the wiki pages from the reference wiki from PBworks (a free, hosted wiki service we had been using for over four years) to Confluence (wiki software that the college has bought and installed on a server here on campus). As of now, you can begin using the reference wiki at this new location:

https://www.baruch.cuny.edu/confluence/display/lib/Reference+Wiki

You will want to bookmark this URL on your own computer so you can easily return to the wiki. Today, I’ll make sure that the link on the browser toolbars on the reference desk computers goes to this version of the wiki. This means that you should now rely on the new version of the wiki and not the old (I’ll delete the old wiki from PBworks very soon).

I’ve created a video tour of the new wiki that shows you how to:

  • log in (same user name and password that you use to login to computers here on campus)
  • search for content (there is a search box in the upper right corner)
  • edit a page (look for the “Edit” button in the upper right corner of any page)
  • log out

At the next ISD meeting, I hope to talk a bit more again about the new home of the wiki.

Video Intro to the New Reference Blog

Here is a short, narrated video tour of the newly re-launched Reference at Newman Library blog.

There are two buttons to get the video playing; the button on the left with the standard play icon (the little triangle) will play the video within the blog post page and the button on the right with the four arrows will open a full-screen version of the video that makes it easier to see all the detail.

Books 24×7 offers expanded access to business books

Recently Mike Waldman was able to have the “business books” collection added to the collections available through Books 24×7.  I would like to thank him for gaining this access and I would like to encourage everyone to see what is available.

This additional collection will be very helpful to accounting students as among the books available online are the 2009 Wiley CPA exam review books, which have been available only in reference.  There are a number of 2009 publications on the International Financial Reporting Standards and many books for the non-profit sector, both in financial areas and other aspects of their operations.

Students interviewing for accounting internships and positions need to know about IFRS and this resource adds greatly to what Baruch students can access.  I haven’t explored the other areas yet.  I am going to alert the accountancy faculty and also the SPA non-profit faculty of these available resources.

Again, I would encourage you to check out the collection for your subjects and also to know what is available.

Rita