Like Louise, I attended the SLA conference in D.C. two weeks ago.
Harry, Ryan and I did a poster session on Lessons Learned relating to a workshop we arranged and conducted for Prof. Cherny’s auditing class last fall relating to lessons learned from one of nine audit failures. This poster session, organized for the first time at the conference, by librarian Karen McDonald, was very well received and the B& F division plans to make it an annual event. The different presentations, dealing with information literacy and business information, are available at http://units.sla.org/division/dbf/conferences/2009postersession.html.
I moderated a session on Tuesday morning in which Nell Minow, the co-founder of The Corporate Library, spoke on corporate governance issues, particularly executive compensation. These contracts are required to be filed with the SEC. Among her comments were that one should check the media releases about the contracts against the actual filings, which may be made several weeks following the media releases. The session was well received by those who attended. Ms. Minow had testified before a congressional committee on executive compensation the week prior to the conference.
Some news from some vendors:
CCH will soon offer a new format to their web based resources, IntelliConnect. One will be able to do a federated search of all subscribed CCH products. Initially, this change will not include the CCH Accounting Research Manager, which will be incorporated into the new scheme in few months. The change will take place before the fall semester begins. I will keep you posted. I think unless students select specific titles or laws or codes, that the results retrieved may be very overwhelming. However, the results are separated into categories…such as regulations, case law, explanations, etc.
Audit Analytics was a first time vendor at the SLA conference. Baruch College is one of the largest academic users of this product. They recently added SEC comment letters to their service for an additional $4,000 a year.
A demonstration of Advertising Database was very interesting as this product focuses on brands and where they are advertised, with ad spending data and titles, email addresses and direct phone numbers for brand and ad agency decision makers. Advertising Database is located in NYC. I will pass the information on to Lisa.
Elsevier is offering a reaxys for chemists. Information about this product is available at http://www.info.reaxys.com/about_overview. In a vendor demonstration of this product, a chemist could find links to reactions of various chemicals, vendors for the chemicals, and links to research via Scopus that mentions the chemicals, all within reaxys. I will confess to knowing very little about chemistry but this demonstration was impressive.
A number of vendors expressed thanks for business with Baruch and with CUNY.
Other information:
On Thursday morning, a “tour day”, I visited the National Archives downtown. I had not visited since a remodeling was completed several years ago. The National Archives is 75 years old this year. The major documents–the Constitution, Bill of Rights, etc., have been reincased. They have very interesting exhibits on what the National Archives hold in the entry level to the rotunda where the documents are on display. (Since you can’t take luggage into the National Archives, it is good to know that you can check luggage only at the 4th St. entrance to the National Gallery of Art, where your luggage will also be x-rayed. This entrance is not far from the Archives.)
One of the special exhibits at the National Gallery of Art is the still lives of the Spanish painter Luis Melendez. I learned from a guide that he was one of the first painters to show chocolate in his paintings. At the time, according to the guide, the English thought ending a meal with sweets was not acceptable and referred to such a practice as being “very French,” an insult to the Spanish. Thankfully, ideas have changed. The National Gallery also has an exhibit of Judith Leyster’s paintings, http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/leysterinfo.shtm. She was born 400 years ago in the Netherlands.