Reference at Newman Library

Year: 2014

Trial: ACLS Humanities E-Book

For the next 60 days we have trial access to an ebook collection called ACLS Humanities E-Book. The titles are from a variety of quality publishers (including major trade publishers, university presses, and scholarly societies).

A link to the database can be found on the Trials tab of the databases page. Access requires a different password for each month of the trial. The user name and the monthly passwords are visible when you mouse over the link to the database.

Please share this with any members of the faculty who might be interested and encourage them to provide feedback.

Handout with Annotated Screenshot of Library Home Page

I thought I’d share a handout I use in workshops I do each fall for honors sections of Freshman Seminar. It’s a one-page handout that just has a screenshot of the library home page with annotated bubbles pointing out a handful of services and resources. This works best as a color printout.

I’ve been doing versions of this for a couple of years and still consider it a work in progress (I’d like to cut down the number of bubble annotations by one or two). I’ll put a copy of this here so that you can right-click on it to save your own copy and put a copy in the Library Services wiki on the Handouts page.

If you have any suggestions about how to make this handout better, I’d love to hear them.

Annotated screenshot of library website

Trial: Rosetta Stone

Through October 26, we have access to a trial for Rosetta Stone. Offered via the EBSCOhost platform, Rosetta Stone offers online instruction in 30 different languages. Access should work off campus as well. Here’s how get started:

  1. Go to the Trials tab on the main databases page and select “Rosetta Stone”
  2. If you are off campus, you’ll see our usual Baruch login; if you’re on campus, you’ll go straight to a Rosetta Stone/EBSCO login page.
  3. On the Rosetta Stone/EBSCO page, you’ll want to register as a first-time user. Enter your Baruch email address and select a password that has at least 6 letters and 1 number. Then select the language you want to try out.

Rosetta Stone works with your mic on your laptop, headset, etc. so you can learn to speak as well as read. You can do lessons without the mic, though, if you’re only interested in learning to read a language. One important thing to be aware of: once you’ve logged into Rosetta Stone, you can switch from one language to another. Instead, you have to log out entirely and when you’re back at the login screen, select a different language at that point.

Please share this trial with any faculty who might be interested and encourage them to provide feedback via the form on the Trials tab of our database page.

Economic Data for North Korea

An Economics class is currently researching countries using economic data.  Students have been logging on to chat and asking where to find GDP, PPP and other economic indicators. We all know about the standard country data sources including World Bank open data and the IMF International Financial Statistics (in Periodicals).  But what happens when the student needs data on North Korea, a country not covered by the IMF?

Here is one way to proceed.  Check out the Europa World Yearbook (REF JN1 .E85). It includes basic data pages but it will also tell you if NK belongs to any international organizations. North Korea is a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as well as the United Nation’s Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

The UN puts very little of its data on the web but you can find the annual Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific (from ESCAP) in reference HC411.U4A23 and their Statistical Yearbook for Asia and the Pacific in reference HA1665.S73.

ASEAN has economic data about its member countries on the web site including a PDF version (almost 300 pages) of its Statistical Yearbook.

I also found this blog from a policy researcher who follows the economy of North Korea and he posted an extensive list of sources that can be used for economic research http://www.nkeconwatch.com/north-korea-statistical-sources/

I haven’t looked at Datastream or Bloomberg but they might be worth a try.

Upgrades to MasterFILE and MEDLINE

Thanks to CUNY funding, all CUNY libraries have an upgraded subscription to MEDLINE and MasterFILE from EBSCOhost. We now have access to MasterFILE Complete and MEDLINE Complete, both of which offer more full-text content. On our databases pages, you’ll see that the listing for MasterFILE Premier now says MasterFILE Complete. The listing for MEDLINE remains the same as MEDLINE (EBSCOhost), which is worded that way to distinguish it from other places where students might encounter MEDLINE access: within Web of Science and via PubMed.