Reference at Newman Library

EBSCO’s Ebook Academic Collection trial

We have a trial to EBSCO’s Ebook Academic Collection trial until June 30, 2012.

This is a new product from EBSCO, comparable to the collection we have from ebrary. Like ebrary, there are over 70,000 titles (only about 51,000 for this trial), unlimited simultaneous users and downloads. Because this is a trial, we will not add the records to the catalog, but if we were to subscribe, they would be added.

We will be actively comparing this product with ebrary’s so please share your comments in the comments below or email me directly. In particular, I would like comments on ease of downloading, search capabilities, on-screen display, marking, saving and emailing capabilities, and any other feature you may consider important.

“Black Swan” complaint for lawsuit regarding unpaid internships

I had an inquiry for the complaint filed by unpaid interns who have filed a class action lawsuit again Fox Searchlight. The interns worked on the film “Black Swan.”  Their lawsuit was filed last fall in federal district court in Manhattan.  I found the complaint posted on the Internet. The lawsuit generated a lot of interest, when it was filed, and many are interested in it.  PACER, which requires an account, is a usual source of complaints, but sometimes they are posted on the Internet.

Accounting assignment re: New Century Financial Corporation

An accounting class is assigned the Harvard Business School case re New Century Financial Corporation.

As we know, this must be purchased from The Harvard Business School cases, and the link is: http://hbr.org/product/new-century-financial-corporation/an/109034-PDF-ENG?Ntt=%2520new%2520century%2520financial.  (Some students mistakenly think the library has the case.)

Students are also asked to read the final report by Missal.  This 294-page report  can be found at http://pdfserver.amlaw.com/ca/newcentury01_0327.pdf.

If students ask what other resources have information about this company’s failure, ABI Inform Global, Business Source Complete, Lexis-Nexis, Factiva, and SSRN can be recommended for news stories as well as coverage in professional and academic publications.  It received a great deal of coverage.

If a student needs more assistance, he/she can contact me for a research consultation.  However, I think the above information should be enough for the students.  They need not contact me directly to learn that the Harvard Business School case needs to be purchased.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

 

New Database: Ulrichsweb

We now have access to Ulrichsweb, which is a great place to go when you need to look up just about any basic information about a periodical, such as:

  1. whether it is “Academic / Scholarly”
  2. all the places where it is indexed and in full text (including databases we don’t subscribe to)*
  3. RL for it at the publisher’s website
  4. history of name changes
  5. subscription costs
  6. whether it is open access

* This index/access info is general info and not limited to the databases we subscribe to. To see exactly what access we at Baruch have, look on the right side of the screen for our “Find it! @ CUNY” icon that can do a lookup for you in SFX and let you know what online and print access options that are specific to Baruch.

 

Trying to Find Standards and Codes

There is a great guest blog post by Carl Malamud at BoingBoing this week (“Liberating America’s Secret, For-Pay Laws”) about efforts to make standards and codes referred to in state and federal law freely available:

By making things like the National Fuel and Gas Code, the standard for safety in wood and metal ladders, or the standards for safety and hygiene in water supplies readily available to all without restriction, we make society better. People can read the standards and learn, they can improve upon them by making searchable databases or better navigational tools, they can build new kinds of businesses. Innovation and education are just two of the benefits of opening up this world, but at the root are basic issues of democracy and justice. We cannot tell citizens to obey laws that are only available for the rich to read. The current system acts as a poll tax on access to justice, a deliberate rationing and restriction of information critical to our public safety. That system is morally wrong and it is legally unconstitutional.