Author: rormsby

Last Thursday the Human Resources Council and Center for Nonprofit Strategy and Management at Baruch College presented a forum, called The Helpers Need Help: New York City’s Nonprofit Human Service Organizations Persevering in Uncertain Times.  The report has been getting a lot of media attention, including the following, which has  a link to the full report:http://www.humanservicescouncil.org/ , which can be downloaded.

Today’s NYT has an interesting story “At Festival, A Splash from Michael Moore but Cautions on Documentaries” (headline of print edition).   The story mentions a new report from the Center for Social Media at American University, “Honest Truths: Documentary Filmmakers on Ethical Challenges in Their Work.”

From an information literacy viewpoint, as a librarian I found the article’s references to the report, based on interviews of documentary filmmakers, indicating that manipulation of “individual facts, sequences and meanings of images” if that might help viewers to grasp the documentary’s “higher truth” very interesting.  I took a brief look at the full report and plan to read all of it.

The descriptions to the CCH databases, CCH Capital Changes, CCH Business & Finance and CCH Tax Research have been revised on the Newman Library homepage to reflect the new name of the database to CCH Intelliconnect.

After discussing this change with Mike Waldman, we decided to retain the names of the current databases, CCH Capital Changes, CCH Business  & Finance and CCH Tax Research for awhile and make a reference to see CCH Intelliconnect.  There is also a new listing for CCH Intelliconnect.  (CCH Accounting Research has not been included in the revision of the CCH databases.)

In CCH Intelliconnect:

Users may search all CCH information products to which Baruch subscribes.  (One may not want to do this as thousands of results may be retrieved.  Results may then be filtered.

One can limit one’s searches by selecting from among the Practice Areas, or  the Quick bar (on the left, which allows one to locate specific sources for news, court cases, IRS rulings, and explanations and other practice tools.  I will be doing some workshops next week for graduate students in taxation and after that I will be happy to give demonstrations to any librarian who would like one.  Alternatively,  one can go through the Intelliconnect Quick Start Guide, available on the website.

While on the reference desk I received a telephone call from a faculty member, working at home, who said when he tried to use the persistent link to an article from The Economist, entitled “Generation Y Goes to Work,”  which he located using ABI Inform Global, for his Blackboard site, he received a message that asked for the ABI Inform Global password.  He wanted to know the password.  I checked with some colleagues, who suggested that he use e-reserve for the article, or scan it and put it up as a pdf.  However, the faculty member said that they were told to use Blackboard.

So, we tried locating the same article, and another Economist article for the same course, Bus 9551, on Business Source Premier.  He was able to successfully use the persistent links in Business Source Premier on Blackboard.

He said that there are many sections of Bus 9551, all with the same readings, so I am offering this information in case others call/email that they have trouble linking from ABI Inform Global.

He also said that some Harvard Business School cases are assigned for this course and the students are being told that they need to buy the cases.

Yesterday, Grethen Morgenson wrote in the NYT,  a story entitled Fair Game, New Rules for the Muni Market, available at http://emma.msrb.org/EA281897-EA1286-EA570212.pdf.

Ms. Morgenson mentions the new free source, Electronic Municipal Market Access (Emma), http://emma.msrb.org/

which allows people to view official statements, and other information, about municipal bond offerings, refundings, etc.  (Bonds are issued by cities, counties, museums, the City University of New York through the New York Dormitory Authority to finance construction, remodeling, equipment and other projects.)  These official statements have been difficult to obtain in the past for free.  Since July, all offerings need to be included on EMMA.  EMMA’s information starts in 1990.

In addition to the detailed financial information available, and the terms of repaying the bonds these documents can provide valuable summaries of information that must be disclosed to potential investors.  For example, I looked at the official statement for the $990,095,000 City of New York General Obligation Bonds issued earlier this year.

Subtopics of information included Recent Financial Developments, City Services and Expenses, Sources of City Revenues, Government and Financial Controls, Indebtedness, Financial Operations and an Appendix with Economic and Demographic information.

Email alerts are also available so that one might want to track particular offerings.

This site might be very helpful for information about cities around the country and for investors.

While at the reference desk this morning, I was asked by a student where the prayer room was located.  I was reminded that there is not an official room.  The Muslim Student Association, room 3-227 in the Vertical Campus, can provide an explanation as to unofficial resources.

I just noticed that the “Today in the Library” notice about the SLA NY meeting reads that it is in Room 415. It is going to be in the outer room of the Subotnick Center.  There is a sign in the lobby, but in case anyone asks at the ref desk, please direct the people to the first floor.

We occasionally get requests at the reference desk for Series 7 exam review books.  There are some available in the Finance Pro offerings of Books 24×7 for which we recently received access.

You can do a keyword search or if you select the topic certifications, these books, and others, such as the Wiley preparation for the CPA exam are available, and a series for the CFA exam.

Library Journal today has a story, http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6675972.html, about some accounting students in a Business and Technology class who have served as “consultants’ to a public library in Prince George British Columbia.

Among their projects in the past several years was one called “terms of endearment” in which they provide an estimated  performance measure of patrons’ enjoyment from the library’s materials–reading and videos for example.

I met the accounting professor involved with the project, John Shepherd, at the recent conference for the American Accounting Association here in NYC.  He did a poster session about the projects. I mentioned it to a friend at LJ.
The final reports for their projects, that are publicly available, can be found on the following webpage:

http://www.lib.pg.bc.ca/cncbits.

One of the students was later hired by the library, according to Shepherd.

Rita

Recently Mike Waldman was able to have the “business books” collection added to the collections available through Books 24×7.  I would like to thank him for gaining this access and I would like to encourage everyone to see what is available.

This additional collection will be very helpful to accounting students as among the books available online are the 2009 Wiley CPA exam review books, which have been available only in reference.  There are a number of 2009 publications on the International Financial Reporting Standards and many books for the non-profit sector, both in financial areas and other aspects of their operations.

Students interviewing for accounting internships and positions need to know about IFRS and this resource adds greatly to what Baruch students can access.  I haven’t explored the other areas yet.  I am going to alert the accountancy faculty and also the SPA non-profit faculty of these available resources.

Again, I would encourage you to check out the collection for your subjects and also to know what is available.

Rita