Reference at Newman Library

Tag: New in the Library

Introducing eMarketer

eMarketer is an aggregator of marketing research related to online marketing and e-commerce.  Information from different sources is evaluated by a process through which such information is weighed and analyzed.  By distilling thousands of facts and opinions into comprehensible reports and comparative estimates, eMarketer gives users the most complete view of the digital world available.

Global, current and projection information is available on such topics as Advertising & Media Usage, B2B, Consumers & E-commerce, Demographics, Email, Industries, Mobile, Online Searching, Social Media, and Video in the form of reports, articles, interview, virtual roundtables and webinars.

As seems to be an increasing trend among many new database platforms, all information is easily downloadable in useful formats such as xls, pdf and even charts.

Training sessions will be organized in the fall semester 2011, but I encourage you to familiarize yourself with this new database and consider it when making recommendations to students/faculty interested in online marketing and e-commerce.

New Database: Cambridge Collections Online

This database offers the full text of 393 different reference works from Cambridge University Press in the subject areas of literature, the classics, philosophy, religion, and culture. Each year a few more titles are added to the collection. Here are some newly added titles:

The Companions to Literature and Classics

  • Copeland/McMaster, The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen (2nd Edition)
  • Hirst/Zwicker, The Cambridge Companion to Andrew Marvell
  • Bigsby, The Cambridge Companion to Arthur Miller (2nd Edition)
  • Diver/Niles, The Cambridge Companion to Anthony Trollope

The Companions to Philosophy, Religion and Culture

  • Morrison, The Cambridge Companion to Socrates

Links to this database have been added to the databases page and to the literature and philosophy subject guides.

New database: Mergent Bondviewer for Corporate and Municipals

Today, Mike Waldman has added Mergent Bondviewer to  the Newman Library databases.

This database includes both U.S. corporate and municipal bonds.  This is the first time we have had access to extensive municipal bond information online in the library.  Bonds and notes are promises to repay money  that has been borrowed with interest, at specific time periods.   They do not convey ownership in a company or in a municipality.  Active issues are those in which some debt is still outstanding.  Inactive issues have been repaid.

There is very good help available on the database.  I have learned the following from the help, and asking our vendor representative for details:

Corporate or Municipal Portfolios can be created to save search results.  A maximum of three portfolio per email address  can be saved at one time. Maximum number of issues in any portfolio is 200. Use Baruch email address to create portfolio.

Here’s a description for the library’s web page.

Includes active and inactive U.S. corporate bonds, municipal bonds, and retail notes, and offers ratings, historical pricing, summary of issue’s covenants and provisions, and portfolio tracking. Limited coverage through 1950; extensive coverage begins in 1993. To access, click on Enter Bondviewer. Use Baruch email address to set up maximum of three portfolios per email address. For individual companies, long term debt information also included in Company Details through Mergent Online database.

This  information was provided by Mergent:

Right now there are roughly 273,846 securities going out to customers in the corporate database.  There are about 2,659,445 maturities (around 278,352 total issues containing those maturities) for the muni side.

Corporate Issue Inclusion Criteria: the database includes publicly underwritten corporate securities issued in the United States: Yankees (U.S. dollar-denominated securities issued by foreign issuers), U.S. agencies, supranational securities, convertible bonds, Short, Medium and General Term Notes (Notes began in September 1993); high yield, adjustable rate securities, ESOP securities, underwritten exchange offer securities, equipment leased-back securities, strips (not secondary market derivatives); and mortgage-backed agency securities. In addition, Rule 144A issues (including non-U.S. dollar denominated securities) are included in the data base on a best-efforts basis.

The database does not track publicly traded bonds that are issued outside of the United States, including Canadian, foreign bonds or Eurobonds (securities registered in Europe, but issued by U.S. firms). At this time the database also does not include secondary insured remarketed bonds nor certificates of deposit; municipal securities, REMICs, CMOs, PASS-THRUs, PAY-THRUs or other Asset Backed securities.

Although the database does have some publicly traded bonds issued outside of the United States, we do not have a provider for this information. If we come across an issue of this type, and are able get the information, the security may be added to the database.

There are a handful of securities in the database from the late 1800’s through 1950. Limited coverage starts in 1950 with the number of securities representing each year thereafter growing almost exponentially. Extensive coverage begins in 1993.

Municipal bond coverage—which has not previously been available in any of our databases:

Municipal Bonds (Coverage of 2,659,445 bonds)

 

The following types of bonds are in Mergent’s coverage for Municipal Bonds:

All General Obligation Bonds including short and long term notes including taxable bonds

  1. All Revenue Bonds including short and long term notes including taxable bonds
  2. All Variable Rate Bonds including bonds which have a daily, weekly, monthly…etc reset.  As well as Auction Rate, Floating Rate, Adjustable Rate and Index Linked Bonds.  Coupons are not reported on Index Linked Bonds or Variable Bonds in the daily, weekly, monthly or adjustable modes.
  3. All Derivative Bonds on a best effort basis
  4. All Zero Coupon Bonds including Capital Appreciation, Deferred Interest, Compound Interest, Stripped Principal
  5. All Build America Bonds and Recovery Zone Economic Bonds (except for tax-credit bonds) including make-whole calls. (only for 2009 & 2010)
  6. Qualified School Construction Bonds (If not a Tax-Credit)
  7. Others – Certificates of Participation, Certificates of Obligation, Tax Anticipation Notes, and Bond Anticipation Notes…etc.
  8. Remarketed Bonds including Tender Data
  9. Hospital, Industrial, Serial, Term, Housing, Education, and Healthcare Bonds are in coverage
  10. New Issue Bond Program Bonds
  11. All Prerefunded, Unrefunded and Secondary Insurance CUSIPs.

The following types bonds are not in Mergent’s coverage for Municipal Bonds:

 

  1. 144A’s of any type
  2. Commercial Paper (unless there is a valid CUSIP)
  3. Qualified Zone Academy Bonds (QZAB).
  4. Any type of Bond which is only paid out as a Tax-Credit
  5. Bank Bonds
  6. Some Private Type Deals

Before I became a librarian I worked as legal assistant in a public finance department of a Minneapolis law firm so if you have any questions about municipal bonds, or other offerings, please let me know.

 

 

 

JSTOR IX Added

Thanks to CUNY Central we now have access to JSTOR Arts and Science Archive Collection IX. While currently the collection has 39 titles, it is expected to grow to at least 150 titles by the end of 2012. Some of the notable titles in this collection that might be of interest at Baruch include The American Sociologist, International Journal of Sociology and Public Affairs Quarterly. More information on this collection, including a complete list of titles, can be found here.

Patron-driven acquisition at Baruch

The Newman Library has started a patron-driven acquisition experiment with about 2,700 books from Coutts’ MyILibrary. The records for these books were carefully selected according to subject matter, publishers, years of publication, price and other variables to give us a current list of titles we do not own but that might be of interest to our users. A purchase is triggered the second time someone looks at the e-book.

How does this work? A user finds an e-book they are interested in in the catalog. They’ll click on the link which will take them to MyILibrary where they will see a Summary page with title and citation information, a brief summary, and a table of contents. This is free viewing. If they go on and take a look inside the book, this will count as a view, whether they look at it for 10 seconds or read the entire e-book. After a second view, the e-book is automatically purchased, and we will own it.

Every month new titles will be added and older ones removed. I will have access to the usage statistics.

The records for these titles have been added to the catalog but they look exactly like any other e-book record, and for obvious reasons, I cannot give an example to look at.

This is just one small part of our total monographic acquisition. It is not intended to replace our regular ordering procedures, but to supplement it.

It is hoped that this will alert us to gaps we might have in our collection, give users the ability to access immediately material of interest to them that we do not already own, and guarantee that there is already a verifiable interest in the e-books we purchase.