Reference at Newman Library

Restrictions on Harvard Business Review Articles for Course Reserve

In case you hadn’t seen the notices that have been going up in various places lately (such as this one from the Baruch weekly e-news that just came in via email), faculty are being notified that due to licensing restrictions from Harvard Business School Press there are restrictions on use of articles from Harvard Business Review, which is exclusively available from ESBCO in Business Source Complete.

Here is the announcement from the weekly e-news:

Restrictions on Use of the Harvard Business Review
Baruch College faculty are advised that special restrictions regarding the use of the Harvard Business Review for course reserves have been put in place. The license agreement for the College’s digital version of the Harvard Business Review in EBSCOhost does not permit article-level linking from the database to course reserves, as the agreement does for all other publications in the database. This is a restriction imposed by the Harvard Business Review. As a result, the library cannot place articles from this journal on e-reserve. Faculty who assign articles from the Harvard Business Review in their courses may direct students to search for the article directly in the EBSCOhost database Business Source Complete. If you have any questions please contact the library’s access services department.

RefWorks has a new interface

I have updated the default interface for RefWorks to its new 2.0 interface. This new interface is in my opinion a big improvement over the older one – more user friendly, cleaner, easier to understand. The URL and access to it remains the same.

If you want to look to the older interface “RefWorks Classic”, there is a button on the top right that will take you back to that interface.

If you don’t see the new interface when you log-in, you may have to clear your cache.

Please let me know if you run into any issues or have any questions.

GIS Practicum Fall 2011

This semester’s GIS Practicum, Introduction to GIS Using Open Source Software, will take place on the following Fridays:

  • October 14th
  • November 11th

The day-long workshop runs from 9am to 4:30pm. Baruch & CUNY graduate students, faculty, and staff, Baruch undergraduates, and Baruch CAPS students are eligible to register. Registration is $30 and includes a detailed tutorial manual and a light breakfast. Participants must register approx one week before the workshop begins. Visit the GIS Practicum page to learn more and to register. Registration opens on August 26th.

Last semester’s practicum was well attended; forty-five participants representing a variety of academic disciplines and ten different CUNY campuses. The tutorial from last semester is available online. This year’s practicum has been revised, and participants will receive an updated manual.

Course Description:

Do you have a research question that you’d like to envision geographically? Maybe you’d like to study neighborhoods and businesses to target a market. Or perhaps you want to visualize the distribution of education, employment, or resources across the country or around the world. Have you ever wanted to add a map to your presentations or reports, but couldn’t find one that suits your needs?

This practicum introduces participants to geographic information systems (GIS) as a concept for envisioning information and as a tool for conducting geographic analyses and creating maps. Participants will learn how to navigate a GIS interface, how to prepare map layers and conduct a basic geographic analysis, and how to create thematic maps using the open source software QGIS.

New Desktop Client for Zotero

Zotero has long been my favorite tool for citation management. Sitting within my Firefox browser, this free tool made it dead simple to add citations from databases and selected websites as I surfed and searched. Now, Zotero has a desktop client that lets you access your citations from an interface independent of Firefox. Even better, there are now plugins for a few other browsers (Google Chrome and Safari) that let you save citations and send them to the desktop client. Zotero also offers connectors for Microsoft Word and OpenOffice so you can cite while you write.

If anyone really wants to get serious about Zotero, feel free to borrow my copy of Jason Puckett’s brand new book from ALA, Zotero: A Guide for Librarians, Researchers, and Educators.

Fall 2011 Loans of Graphing Calculators

Monique just gave me the distribution schedule for the graphing calculators we’ll be loaning out this fall:

The library will loan 400 calculators to Baruch College students.

A student’s library record must be updated for fall 2011 before they are able to borrow a calculator (they should bring a copy of an E-SIMS schedule of classes or bursar’s receipt) . This must be done at the circulation desk on the 2nd floor before going to the 3rd floor to borrow the calculator. Fifty calculators will be available at the Laptop Service desk 3rd floor, on a first-come, first-served basis at each of the following times:

August 26, Friday, 10:30 am & 3:30 pm
August 27, Saturday, 10:30 am & 3:30 pm
August 28, Sunday, 10:30 am & 3:30 pm

Additional calculators will be distributed at the same desk, on the same basis, beginning on Monday, August 29 at 10:30 am.

UPDATE (26 August 2011): Due to the weekend closing because of Hurrican Irene, we will distribute calculators on Monday at 10:30, 3:30 and 6:00, after which time they will be distributed first-come, first-served.

Graduate Students computers now on 2nd floor

 

While I was on the reference desk 4-6 BCTC told me that they had completed their work on relocating the graduate student computers to the second floor.  I appears that they are on in the tables located at 4A.  BCTC put up a sign,Graduate Computer Workstations, which apparently was used previously because it refers to the computers being located on the 3rd, 4th and 5th floors.   Early in my reference desk shift some grad students wondered about the removal of the computers from the floors.

Accounting assignment involving revenue recognition

I’ve learned that there have been several inquiries at the reference desk relating to a revenue recognition assignment (2 pages) for an accounting class.  Apparently they need to locate three companies in the same industry and make some comparisons.

Based on this limited information, and a student’s comment that he had an hour to locate the information, I would make the following suggestions:

Revenue recognition is a very broad topic.

The SEC has a topical index of revenue recognition issues at:

http://www.sec.gov/interps/account/sabcodet13.htm

To quickly identify three companies in the same industry with some revenue recognition problems (which would likely provide something to write about), I would suggest:

Go to the Audit Analytics Database

Select restatements in the right column and a text search.

Then, select an industry from choices available in the Industry box.

(If a company has had to restate their earnings, it’s usually a news making event.)

Restatements can occur for many reasons.  All four of these options in Audit Analytics

include revenue recognition as a choice, so the student can select the choice(s) the student wants.  The results can be downloaded and the three companies selected.

Databases such as Factiva, Business Source Complete, ABI Inform Global may have specific articles about the companies identified.  Edgar Online I-Metrix, Metrix, and other resources can be selected for keyword searching of SEC filings relating to revenue recognition by the companies.

Another possible search is on Factiva, limiting the search to specific industries, geographically to the the U.S. and the subject Commodities, Financial Market news, and a specific time period and doing a keyword search like (revenue recognition) and (FASB or SEC), and news articles for companies in the same industry will be retrieved.

The “gift card” assignment that some students have had in the past would be an example of a revenue recognition issue.  Searching ABI Inform Global for “gift cards” and “revenue recognition” brings up 14 articles, some which mention specific companies.

Since most retail companies have some form of gift cards, or customer loyalty programs, it would be easy to identify three retail companies and search their SEC filings as to how they account for them.

I hope that this information is helpful.

Mobile Databases Page

Introduction

Mike Waldman and I completed work on the new LibGuide that will connect users to the subset of library databases that are optimized to work on mobile devices (by way of shorthand, we’ve taken to calling it the mobile databases page). Over time we expect to add more databases as more vendors offer mobile-optimized interfaces. The easiest way to find the page is by going to the Databases page, which now features a mobile phone icon and a link to the page near the top.

About the Databases

  • Two types of mobile interfaces: (1) web pages specially designed to render well in mobile phone browsers (2) apps that the user must download and install
  • Major vendors that offer mobile options: EBSCO, Wilson, LexisNexis, OCLC (for WorldCat.org)
  • Major vendors that don’t offer mobile options: Factiva, ProQuest
  • Many vendors who don’t have mobile options are working on ones now
  • Vendors that offer mobile options that we decided not to use (because they are inadequate): Gale
  • Authentication for mobile web interfaces go through EZ Proxy just like our other databases
  • Authentication for apps require different (read: clunky) ways of authenticating (such as launching the app while on the campus wireless network so it can be “registered” or “tethered”)

How the LibGuide Displays on Regular Browsers and Phone Browsers

  • If you are on a mobile phone and go to a LibGuide, the LibGuides server will be able to tell that you are on a phone and give you an alternate version of the page that is slimmed down and has a different URL from the regular version of the page.
  • The mobile version of any LibGuide collapses a multi-page guide into a single page.
  • Each page in the regular version of a LibGuide becomes a box on a page for the mobile version that can be opened and closed.
  • The links to the new mobile databases page on the library will point to the version that is optimized for mobile viewing
  • URL for the mobile optimized version:
http://guides.newman.baruch.cuny.edu/content_mobile.php?pid=222624
  • URL for the regular version (note that the mobile version above has “content_mobile” as part of its URL):
http://guides.newman.baruch.cuny.edu/content.php?pid=222624

Design Process for the LibGuide

  • Three rounds of usability testing with students generated lots of changes over time
  • Some changes suggested by the testing were counterintuitive to us but were what worked best for the students (e.g., rather than organize the databases into broad subject groups like “humanities,” “social sciences,” etc. we learned that students more readily grasped what subjects would be in what category if we offered a cluster of subjects (instead of “social sciences” we have “Psychology, Sociology, Communication”).