Reference at Newman Library

Year: 2019

Library Website Down for Server Maintenance on September 12

From 8 am – 9 am on Thursday, September 12, the library website will be down as BCTC does essential upgrades to the server where the site resides.

The following key systems will still be accessible during the outage, as they are not hosted on the same server at Baruch where our WordPress website lives:

New Industry Surveys in S&P NetAdvantage

Have a look at the current Industry Surveys in S&P NetAdvantage. Two new features have been added that are targeted to business students. First, there is a Porter five forces analysis in the section of the report that covers “Industry Trends”. This will be something that students taking BPL5100 can use.

For accounting and finance students, the other addition is forensic accounting information in the “How to Analyze a Company” section of the report. Boxes labeled “Watch Out” point out accounting gimmicks that companies can use to make their earnings look better than they actually are. They also identify items on the income statement or balance sheet that are key industry metrics that students should understand.

CFRA, the provider of the Industry Surveys to S&P, now offers coverage of 44 industries including new in 2019: Asset Management and Alternative Energy.

What To Do When SFX and the Catalog Are Down

This weekend, from 6 pm on Saturday (September 7) to 6 am on Sunday (September 8), the servers hosting both SFX and the library catalog will be down for planned maintenance. This will affect not only on the library catalog and the “Find it! @ CUNY” button that pops up in databases but also OneSearch. Here’s how it will change things temporarily and how to work around it.

SFX and the “Full text available” links

Say you’ve just run a search on “turtles’ in OneSearch. In this screenshot of the first four search results in OneSearch, you can see there are green “Full text available” links for each item; these links won’t work at all because SFX is down.

OneSearch results for turtles

(click image to enlarge)

Although SFX is down, that doesn’t mean we can’t get to the full text. Here’s the workaround for each of the four items in the screenshot.

Item #1: Morphology and evolution of turtles

  1. This is an ebook. Click the title of the book to get to the OneSearch record that has the full description of the book.
  2. On the OneSearch record for the book, you can see references to “SpringerLink.” That’s a database we have at Baruch.
  3. Go back to the previous screen to see the OneSearch page with the search results.
  4. Click “Databases A-Z” at the top of the OneSearch page.
  5. Look for “SpringerLink” on the list of databases and click to launch it.
  6. Search in SpringerLink for the book using the book title.

Item #2: Turtles

  1. This is a “reference entry,” which means it’s an entry in one of our encyclopedia databases. Click the title (“Turtles”) to get to the OneSearch record that has the complete description of the reference entry.
  2. On the OneSearch record for the reference entry, you can see a mention near the bottom of “Gale Virtual Reference Library” as the source.
  3. Go back to the previous screen to see the OneSearch page with the search results.
  4. Click “Databases A-Z” at the top of the OneSearch page.
  5. Look for “Gale Virtual Reference Library” on the list of databases and click to launch it.
  6. Search in Gale Virtual Reference Library for the reference entry using the title “turtles.”

Item #3: Turtles

  1. This is an article from a journal. Since you can see the name of the journal, the Journal of the American Mosquito Control Association, you don’t need to click through to get more info. All you need is here (the name of the journal and year of publication).
  2. Click “Journals A-Z” at top of the screen.
  3. When the “Journals, Newspapers, & Magazines” page opens up, search for the name of journal to see what database(s) have access to it and what years.
  4. Click to connect to the database that has the year you need and then search within that database for the article.

Item #4: The Turtles

  1. This is another journal article. Use the same steps as for previous item (#3).

The catalog and the real-time availability info in OneSearch

The other part of OneSearch that will be affected by this weekend’s maintenance is connected to the catalog being down. You’ll still be able to find print books and other physical items in our collections by searching OneSearch, but you won’t be able to tell if it is checked out or not. The only workaround is to look for the book on the shelf.

 

 

New Sign On Method for Safari Ebooks

There’s a new method of sign on for Safari that you will encounter when clicking the database link on our website or clicking on a “full text available” link in a OneSearch record for a specific Safari ebook. You’ll first see a glimpse of the Safari website or a landing page in Safari for a specific ebook and then you’ll be redirected to this new kind of login page:

Safari sign on page

This page asks for the same set of credentials that any student or staff or faculty member of Baruch or SPS should have: a Baruch username and password (similar to the ones entered in the proxy page). Once those credentials are entered, the user will be taken back to the Safari site and have access.

As you can see from the screenshot of the login page, it mentions “O’Reilly.” That is the company that owns the Safari ebook platform.

If you encounter any problems with this new system, please let Mike Waldman or me know.

Reading the Mueller Report

For students or faculty who want to read a copy of the Mueller report whose official title is the Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election, we have two print copies in our collection. Call number: E911 .M84 2019.

A copy of the redacted report from the U.S. Government Printing Office can be found online.

The New York Times has posted a searchable and indexed version of the redacted report online with their “Key Takeaways” and list of who’s been charged.

In addition, DPLA, the Digital Public Library of America, has published an enhanced version of the report which is freely available in ebook format to read or download. This version has links to more than 740 of the original documents referenced in the footnotes.

A brief summary of the report from Attorney General William Barr was released in a letter to Congressional leaders and can be found on the House Judiciary Committee website.

Fix for Off Campus Access Problems with Emerald

With the launch of the new interface and URL for Emerald, a number of libraries are reporting problems with remote access. I just used the recommended fix that Emerald has been suggesting and found that it works:

  1. Close all your open tabs in your browser, then open up a fresh one
  2. Delete the cookies from your preferred browser
  3. Try to connect again to Emerald

Catalog Down on July 22

From 6 am – 8 am on Monday, July 22, the catalog will be down for scheduled maintenance (the down time might be closer to just fifteen minutes). This will affect:

  • the “Books (print)” search option in the yellow search bar
  • item availability data in the catalog and OneSearch for things that can be checked out (books, technology, CDs, DVDs, etc.)
  • ability to place holds and requests for items that can be checked out

DealScan Now Available in WRDS

Access to DealScan has changed this week. We now can access it on the WRDS platform.

Once you’ve clicked the link on our databases pages for DealScan and logged into WRDS, you’ll see all the datasets we have access to in the “Subscriptions” section of the WRDS home page. Select “Thomson Reuters” from this list of datasets.

Thomson Reuters link on WRDS home

On the next page, you’ll see links to various datasets that are part of DealScan that you can work with.

DealScan datasets