News and tips by and for staff providing reference services at the Newman Library, Baruch College (New York, NY).
A quick roundup of recently published LibGuides:
The server issues from yesterday have been sorted out. Some mudslinging from librarians, though, had to be addressed by Springshare.
Summer time is a great time to work on LibGuides. If you are updating links on an existing guide or creating a new guide, please make sure that you are linking to library databases correctly. I just created a set of instructions with annotated screenshots walking you through the process; you can find it on this page in the “LibGuides–Best Practices” guide.
Let me know if you have any questions.
I have updated the LibGuide for Accounting 4100 Summer. There are two sections being taught by Prof. Jian Xiao. This is a communications intensive course. The students are doing research on one of 12 companies that are listed in the guide. All of the companies, except Facebook, are non-U.S.-based public companies that trade their shares on U.S. exchanges as ADRs. The company websites, Edgar Online I-Metrix, Mergent Online, Standard & Poor’s NetAdvantage, Audit Analytics, Factiva and Value Line, are among the suggested resources to help the students prepare their presentations. The students need to discuss the impact of International Financial Reporting Standards on the company’s bottom line, and whether to invest in the company. (Facebook, uses the FASB Accounting Standards Codification, rather than IFRS, and being newly publicly traded hasn’t filed a 10-K.)
The course runs through July. I made a presentation to the two sections yesterday but I also said that they could get help at the reference desk if I were not available.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
I’ve done a LibGuide for Prof. Leibowitz’s MGT 9495 class. Students are working on a capstone project in which they are making an employment handbook on some current aspect of employees’ rights, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Family Medical and Leave Act, Veterans’ rights in employment, workplace privacy and sexual orientation and gender identity in the workplace. (Some of these topics have more legal protections than others.)
The guide has links to federal administrative agencies; legal databases available through the Newman Library homepage, and databases offering secondary sources–such as ABI Inform Global, Business Source Complete, and SSRN, which have articles regarding complying with the different requirements of the laws and regulations. I hope it is helpful. Please let me know if you have any comments or questions. Prof. Leibowitz has reviewed it.
On January 20th (tomorrow) the original version of the Census Bureau’s American Factfinder will disappear, and the New American Factfinder will take it’s place. You’ll want to update any links you have in guides, web pages, and handouts to the new version at http://factfinder2.census.gov/.
The new version gives users a lot more options and paths for searching for census data. Unfortunately, this avalanche of options can make searching more daunting, as it’s tough to figure out where to start. You can look at the Quick Start guide for a brief intro or view a number of video tutorials and guides.
One approach is to use the old approach – choose the dataset first (Decennial Census, American Community Survey, Population Estimates, Economic Census, etc), choose your geography second, and then select the tables you want to view and download.
I’ve updated the census related libguides (US Census Data and New York City Data) and revised the Finding NYC Neighborhood Census Data Handout to reflect the changes. The Factfinder is one of several ways to access data (others being the Social Explorer for national or City data, and the City Department of Planning and Google Maps I’ve created for City data).
Gale recently rebranded Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center as Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Since everyone who linked to this database in various LibGuides used the canonical link in the system (which, like all database links, can be found on the LibGuides–Reusable Links guide), I was able to make the change to the canonical link (as well us update the URL) and have that update roll out automatically to the three LibGuides that connect to the database.
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
How the LibGuide Displays on Regular Browsers and Phone Browsers
Design Process for the LibGuide
Here’s a quick roundup of some LibGuides that have been published in the past few months: