Reference at Newman Library

Year: 2012

LibGuide on CPA exam review resources updated

I have updated the LibGuide on CPA exam review resources to show 2012 resources.  The 4-volume sets from Bisk and Wiley are available in Reserves.  Books 24×7 also has some resources, including access to older material. 

Because there were many changes made to the exam in 2011 the older volumes of review books, found in reference and in the stacks, have been removed from the collection. Please encourage students to use the most recent materials.  The LibGuide has other information about the exam.

Baruch’s  accountancy department is sponsoring a session on the CPA exam Feb. 4th.  They also offer assistance throughout the year in explaining what needs to be done to register for the exam and prepare for it.

Google Scholar Now Listed on Databases Page

We’ve recently added Google Scholar to our list of databases on the library website and in the set of reusable database links in LibGuides. After looking at the database listings for 66 schools (all the libraries in CUNY, SUNY, the CIC, and the Cal State and UC systems), we found that 48 of those institutions had Google Scholar on their A-Z database lists.

Given that many of our students and faculty already use Google Scholar, we decided that it was worth adding so that we can ensure that our users get the most out it. With that in mind, we created a special link to it that runs the user through our EZproxy system AND sets up the Google Scholar advanced preferences option so that our users will see links to SFX next to most items on the search results page.

As you can see from this screenshot, Google Scholar won’t display the usual “Find It” icon we see in our library databases but instead offers a link labeled “Find Full Text at Baruch.”

Library catalog unavailable January 20, 2012, 7 a.m. until January 22, 2012, approx. 12 p.m.

On Friday, January 20, 2012 at 7:00 A.M. CUNY Central CIS will be migrating CUNY’s library systems to newer, more powerful hardware. For the duration of this maintenance, the library catalog will be unavailable.

For users who wish to find out if Baruch owns a specific book, please check WorldCat.  For help with WorldCat or any other questions, please feel free to contact us.

We expect service to be restored by approximately 12:00 P.M. on Sunday, January 22, 2012.

New American Factfinder

On January 20th (tomorrow) the original version of the Census Bureau’s American Factfinder will disappear, and the New American Factfinder will take it’s place. You’ll want to update any links you have in guides, web pages, and handouts to the new version at http://factfinder2.census.gov/.

The new version gives users a lot more options and paths for searching for census data. Unfortunately, this avalanche of options can make searching more daunting, as it’s tough to figure out where to start. You can look at the Quick Start guide for a brief intro or view a number of video tutorials and guides.

One approach is to use the old approach – choose the dataset first (Decennial Census, American Community Survey, Population Estimates, Economic Census, etc), choose your geography second, and then select the tables you want to view and download.

I’ve updated the census related libguides (US Census Data and New York City Data) and revised the Finding NYC Neighborhood Census Data Handout to reflect the changes. The Factfinder is one of several ways to access data (others being the Social Explorer for national or City data, and the City Department of Planning and Google Maps I’ve created for City data).

Wikipedia Going Dark Tomorrow (Wednesday)

This is just an FYI as it occurred to me that we may well get questions or complaints on Wednesday–my apologies if you already know all about this:

Wikipedia (along with a number of other sites) is planning to shut itself down for 24 hours this Wednesday as a protest against SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act. SOPA (the Senate version is called PIPA, the Protect IP Act). As you might guess, the idea of the act is to stop piracy by making it possible to “blacklist” or shut down sites that host pirated content.

Critics–including a lot of major websites–say that the effect will instead be to cripple them, and cripple access to information in general, because the law would mean any site with anything on it that might possible be piracy could be shut down entirely (so, like one pirated video on YouTube would mean YouTube would disappear).

I imagine Wikipedia and other sites participating in the protest will have explanatory statements on their sites, but I am also guessing we may get questions from students, so it’s probably best to be prepared.

Read more about Wikipedia and other sites going dark on Wednesday:

h/t to Laura Crossett for post idea and language

Turning Off Google’s New Personal Search Setting

This week, Google made a huge change to the way search results are delivered. If you are logged into your Google account while searching (e.g., you’ve recently logged into Gmail or Google Calendar in your browser), then the search results you will see will be heavily populated by items that are connected to you in ways that Google is aware of. Google says that when you are signed in and run a search, you’ll see results that will include items from:

Google products: Search for publicly and privately shared content visible to you, like your Google+ (and Picasa) photos and Google+ posts from your friends.

Social Search: Discover relevant images and pages shared by people in your Google+ circles and by suggested connections.

Web History: Get customized results based on your past search activity on Google, such as searches you’ve done or results you’ve clicked. Learn more about Web History

Profiles in search: When you search for a friend’s name, you might see a link to the relevant Google+ profile in the list of autocomplete predictions. With personal results, you’re more likely to see your friend John’s profile than some John you’ve never met.

After Frank Donnelly shared with me this eye-opening post from Gizmodo about why some people might switch from Google to Bing as their default search engine, I decided to investigate how to turn off Google personal search (i.e., how to opt out).

Here are the steps to get to the settings options in Google when you are logged in:

In the upper right corner, look for the gears icon that gets you to the settings for your Google account:

Select “Search setttings”

On the search settings page that opens, scroll down to “Personal Results” to select “Do not use personal results.”