Reference at Newman Library

Replacements for Hoover’s

Now that we no longer subscribe to Hoover’s, we’re seeing a number of students asking where it is and how to access it. Many of those students looking for Hoover’s are in BUS 1000 and have been using the Beginner’s Guide to Business Research tutorial, which points them to that database as a way to get basic company info.

Louise says that we’ll get that tutorial updated so it no longer mentions Hoover’s. In the meanwhile, she recommended to me that we steer students to Mergent Online, which will give them the basic info they need (including the ability to generate a stock price chart for a company to which you can add data for up to four other companies). She also suggested we send students to Business & Company Resource Center.

I’d also like to note that with the redesign of the EBSCOhost interface, there is a slightly less circuitous route to get to the thorough company profiles in Business Source Complete that are published by Datamonitor. Here’s the fastest way to find a Datamonitor company profile in BSC:

  1. From the main search screen, click “More” in the top navigation bar (up where it says “New Search | Publications | Thesaurus | Author Profiles”
  2. When you click “More,” select “Company Profiles” from the drop down list of options
  3. On the Company Profiles page that opens, search by company name and then click the corresponding PDF icon for the company in the search results list.

Bernanke’s guide to understanding the financial crisis

Fed Chief Ben Bernanke was asked at last week’s Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission what readings he would suggest for those wanting to understand the financial crisis. The Wall Street Journal reported his recommendations in an article titled “Ben Bernanke’s Labor Day Reading List.”  The only book on the list was The Lords of Finance by Liaquat Ahamed. We have a copy at HG172 .A2 A43 2009. The rest of Bernanke’s testimony can be found in the September 2nd hearings on “Too Big to Fail.”

EBSCO not working in Bearcat

Per Serials Solutions:

“searches conducted against EBSCO databases using 360 Search are not returning results. It appears that EBSCO made changes to how federated search queries are handled against their databases, which in turn broke 360 Search connections. Unfortunately, we learned of this earlier today.

We are working as quickly as possible to resolve this issue, and will provide you with an update by the end of today. ”

Please let me know if you run into anything else.

Finding Recent Demographic Data on NYC Neighborhoods

Thanks to Frank’s great LibGuide on NYC data, I learned that if you want to get demographic data about a NYC neighborhood from the Census that is reasonably up-to-date, your best bet is to find a PUMA that matches your neighborhood and then search the American Community Survey (ACS) data for numbers. I just taught a JRN 3060 class today for Prof. Roslyn Bernstein in which I walked them step-by-step in going from the PUMA number to the Census pages for the ACS. Recognizing that they may not be able to recreate that search for data when they are really ready to do it, I created a quick video in one-take about the steps and posted it to my YouTube page. I then emailed Prof. Bernstein with the URL for the video so the students can return to it if needed.

Here is the video I made, “Neighborhood Demographic Data for New York City.”

Community District Needs: Freely Online Now!

A key resource for getting background info on a NYC neighborhood and the issues that the community is confronting is an annual publication from the City of New York called Community District Needs. While looking for the latest volumes in our print reference collection, I discovered that the latest we have is from 2008. Today, I discovered that the books are now available in full text as PDFs from the City of New York on this page of  the City’s bookstore site.

Complete title for book required for PAF 9180

I tried to help a PAF 9180 student find the book by Eugene Bardach that had the title the Eightfold path to more effective problem solving.  We had some trouble locating it anywhere but then we discovered the complete title is A practical guide for policy analysis: the eightfold path to more effective problem solving.

We have a print copy that is currently checked out.

We also discovered that this is available electronically through the Newman Library’s Netlibrary collection.

Scanners in 6th Floor Lab

Scanners in the 6th floor computing lab are flatbed scanners and are designed to scan individual sheets or photographs. They are not designed for bound volumes/books. Unfortunately, six scanners had to be replaced due to “book abuse”. BCTC staff will explain to students that the scanners are for flat items only. If students ask for scanners, please advise them of this before sending them to the 6th floor lab.