Year: 2010

Interesting post on publishing and distributing an e-book from Chamber Four,  a site concerned with reading, the publishing industry and e-reader technology.

To follow up on Randy Hensley’s emails regarding the forms we use this week to track reference interactions, I’ve uploaded the form to the reference wiki on the page for “reference desk statistics sheet.” You can also find copies of the same form at the reference desk.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has posted a news release about upcoming Initial Public Offering for  the new GM (General Motors Company.)

I thought this would be important for us to know for two reasons: when we are helping students research General Motors, it will be important to remember that this new General Motors Company is a separate and distinct company from the former General Motors Corporation, which  filed for bankruptcy.

Sometimes people invest in  Chapter 11 bankrupt companies thinking that they will receive stock when, and if, the “company” comes out of bankruptcy.  But if the new company is distinct from the old company, investors may or may not receive stock in the new company.  (Whether they will or not is part of the reorganization plan.)  In GM’s case, investors will not.

The FINRA news release explains the GM situation:

Investors holding “old GM” shares—shares issued before the company filed Chapter 11 in June 2009—are not entitled to receive the newly issued shares.

FINRA halted trading in old GM on July 10, 2009, and issued a new ticker symbol for the old GM stock—MTLQQ—to avoid confusion. The bankrupt company, now known as Motors Liquidation Company, and the new General Motors are separate and distinct.

Investors should understand that buying common stock of companies in Chapter 11 bankruptcy is extremely risky and can lead to financial loss. (FINRA used the boldface.)

FINRA suggests:

If you own shares in a company that has filed, or may be filing, for bankruptcy, or are considering purchasing shares of a bankrupt company, check the company’s website for information about the bankruptcy. Also check the company’s SEC filings, available through the SEC’s EDGAR database or on the company’s website, and other publicly available information for company statements about its reorganization plan as well as a copy of the reorganization plan itself.

I also checked the GM website and their FAQs covers the  situation.

Baruch students working with floppy disks can ask for an external floppy disk drive at the BCTC front desk, for use with the BCTC 6th floor lab computers. Although this request doesn’t come up often, I wanted to share this information. I added this to the wiki, as well.  This was confirmed by calling the BCTC Help Desk. (A student is doing work for her instructor. He gave her a floppy disk and she didn’t know if any computers on campus had a floppy drive.)

I received an alert announcing the annual  Educause study and thought I would pass it along.

Abstract:” …a longitudinal extension of the annual 2004 through 2009 studies. It is based on quantitative data from a spring 2010 survey of 36,950 freshmen and seniors at 100 four-year institutions and students at 27 two-year institutions; student focus groups that included input from 84 students at 4 institutions; and review of qualitative data from written responses to open-ended questions. In addition to exploring student ownership, experience, behaviors, preferences, and skills with respect to information technologies, including ownership and use of Internet-capable handheld devices, the 2010 study also includes a special focus on student use of social networking websites and web-based applications.”

At the professor’s request, I’m doing two workshops this weekend for Tax 9863. They will be in Room 135 on Saturday and Sunday at 3 p.m.  They will last about 90 minutes.

I have created two new Libguides. To help promote next week’s talk by Bruce Rosenstein there’s a guide Learning about Peter Drucker, covering books, articles and websites. I did one for English 2100-Prof. Grumet which focuses on their upcoming debate topics–whether assisted suicide should be permitted in New York, whether gay marriage should be permitted in New York, and whether the MTA should be allowed to raise fares.  Louise provided helpful suggestions about the guides.  I used some previous guides as models.

Please let me know if you have any suggestions or questions about them.

Today, my LIB 1015 class will not meet in the usual location, room 135, but will instead be in room 320a.

I was working with an ESL section of ENG2100 this morning.  Their assignment is to write about their native language, its history, grammar, alphabet and writing system.  There are several encyclopedias and handbooks in our reference collection that are good resources for this assignment:

Facts about the World’s Languages at REF P371 .F33 2001

The World’s Major Languages at REF P371 .W6 1987

The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems at REF Z40 .C67 1996

The World’s Writing Systems at REF P211 .W714 1995

and the Encyclopedia of Languages and Linguistics (9 vols.) at REF P29 .E48 1994

The GPO’s new federated search engine does a nice job of categorizing results by government database, date, etc.  It’s the first link on my Government libguide.