2010 – Page 15 – Reference at Newman Library

2009 Global Rankings of Think Tanks

The 2009 Global “Go-To Think Tanks” report was released earlier this year.

“The rankings are based on a global survey of hundreds of scholars and experts, according to the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania”.

The report discusses global trends and transitions for think tanks. Ranking categories include: World (non-U.S.), Top U.S., By region, By research area (global), and Special categories.

Guides at Baruch

If you haven’t checked out the Library’s Guides lately, there are twenty-six guides published and ready for use. In the last two weeks we have added Guides for:

Graduate Student Services
Computer Information Systems
Communication Studies
Primary Sources in American History and Culture
New York City Data
Health Care Administration

You can click on “Recent Guides” to see what’s new or search all the Guides from the search box on the library home page.

Crain’s New York Business article re Baruch’s entrepreneurial program

Crain’s New York Business has an article today on Baruch’s entrepreneurial program:

http://mycrains.crainsnewyork.com/executive_inbox/2010/04/can-entrepreneurship-be-taught.php

ACC 3202 assignment information

Several students in Prof. Lapoolsa’s ACC 3202 class have inquired about the Warren case assignment at the reference desk and sought help. However, they didn’t have the assignment with them. One said it involves journal entries. I know what journal entries are, but having received a C- in financial accounting, I offer no help with journal entries other than to direct students to a number of books that help with journal entries in our collection. (Books 24×7 and accounting textbooks offer suggestions.) As there is nothing on reserve for the assignment, I contacted the professor who said it is for sale in the bookstore, and suggested any other inquiries from students be addressed to him by email.

JSTOR Arts and Sciences VIII

We now have access to JSTOR Arts and Sciences Collection VIII, which include titles in history, language and literature, art and art history, and education. Forthcoming in this collection will be rare 19th and 20th century periodicals from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Frick Collection and the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

Columbia’s Reference Symposium

The presentations from the 2010 Reference Symposium at Columbia University Libraries are up on the web. In a month’s time, video recordings of the presentations will also be available.

Problems Printing Guest Logins via Firefox

For several years now, we’ve relied on a free addon (an extension program) to the Firefox browser that helps us when we need to print out guest logins. That addon program, IE Tab, doesn’t work with the latest version of Firefox (3.6 or higher). Until the developer of IE Tab is able to update the program so we can all download the latest version, you’ll need to use Internet Explorer to generate and print out guest logins.

If anyone has some clues as to why the guest login system is unable to print natively from Firefox, it would be great to solve that problem directly instead of having to rely on third-party programs like IE Tab.

Lehman bankruptcy filings

The SDNY Bankruptcy Court is loading documents from the Lehman bankruptcy at http://chapter11.epiqsystems.com/Project/default.aspx. An unofficial version of the docket can be accessed via the “docket” link at the top of the screen. The “key documents” link at the top may also be useful.

When Students Need to Save Large Files

This CNET article has a nice roundup of free and for-fee web services where people can upload large files that they may want to share with others. Although a lot of students just email files to themselves, saving them to one of these web services offers very valuable additional functionality:

larger files can be stored than may be permissible in an email service
you’re not clogging up your email account with large files you’re trying to store there
instead of sifting through your email looking for the one with that file attachment, the web services give you clear navigation of your hosted files
some services give you a unique URL for each file you upload, which makes it easy to share the file with your classmates, friends, teachers, etc. (you just email those folks the unique URL so they can download your file)

How College Students Seek Information in the Digital Age

Here is a link to a report from Project Information Literacy which a CUNY colleague brought to my attention that I thought to share: http://projectinfolit.org/pdfs/PIL_Fall2009_Year1Report_12_2009.pdf

Abstract: A report of findings from 2,318 respondents to a survey carried out among college students on six campuses distributed across the U.S. in the spring of 2009, as part of Project Information Literacy. Respondents, while curious in the beginning stages of research, employed a consistent and predictable research strategy for finding information, whether they were conducting course-related or everyday life research. Almost all of the respondents turned to the same set of tried and true information resources in the initial stages of research, regardless of their information goals. Almost all students used course readings and Google
first for course-related research and Google and Wikipedia for everyday life research. Most students used library resources, especially scholarly databases for course-related research and far fewer, in comparison, used library services that required interacting with librarians. The findings suggest that students conceptualize research, especially tasks associated with seeking information, as a competency learned by rote, rather than as an opportunity to learn, develop, or expand upon an information-gathering strategy which leverages the wide range of
resources available to them in the digital age.