Newman Library, Graduate Research

The following are some commonly used library databases for NUF capstone papers. Please remember we have many more databases, so don’t limit yourself to what is listed below.

• ABI/Inform Global – Business & industry; trade journals, scholarly articles
• Academic Search Premier – Interdisciplinary database; popular and scholarly articles
• Business Source Premier – Business & industry; trade journals, scholarly articles, reports
• Education Full Text – includes abstracts and full text of articles from nearly 400 journals
• Ethnic Newswatch – Full-text collection of articles, editorials, and reviews published in the newspapers, magazines, and journals of the ethnic minority and native press.
• JSTOR – Full-text, historical, scholarly articles in many disciplines
• Lexis Nexis – full-text database that provides access to a wide range of news, business, legal and reference information; international newspapers
• MEDLINE (EBSCOhost) – provides information related to medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system and the preclinical sciences, etc.; Abstracts 4,000 biomedical journals. Updated monthly. Will link to full-text subscription databases.
• PAIS International – bibliographic index to the literature of public policy, social policy, and the social sciences in general.
• Policy File – public policy research and analysis from think tanks, university research programs, research organizations and publishers.
• PsycInfo – Psychology database
• Social Sciences Full Text – articles covering addiction studies, area studies, community health and medical care, corrections, criminal justice, economics, environmental studies, ethics, family studies, gender studies, geography, gerontology, law, public administration, political science, psychiatry, psychology, social work, sociology and urban studies.
• SocINDEX with Full Text – Sociology database
• WorldCat (or connect to http://www.worldcat.org) – Combines the library catalogs of 9000 libraries. Includes more than 67 million items. If a book was ever published, chances are it’s listed in here.

You have a research paper to write, and you need to do a literature review. Not sure what that is, how to do it, or how to incorporate it into your paper? Here are some websites to help you:

• The Literature Review: A Few Tips On Conducting It – U. of Toronto
• Writing the Literature Review – Empire State College, SUNY.Links to online guides and sample literature reviews.
• The Literature Review – Central Queensland University, Australia. Tutorial with QuickTime video clips.
• How to Write a Literature Review – U. of California, Santa Cruz

During the final exam period when the library is open 24 hours, students can use group study rooms until midnight. (Only Baruch students have access to the group study rooms and only Baruch students have access to the library after midnight.)

• Keys that normally would be due at the closing time of the circulation desk will be due at midnight.
• Keys should be returned to the secure drop box located at the security desk on the 2nd floor of the library.
• Keys that are not returned by midnight will accrue late fees.

Winter Recess …

• The library will be closed from December 24 through January 1, 2009 for Winter Recess*. The library will reopen January 2, 2009.
  
• *Exceptions to schedule: On December 26th, 29th, and 30th, the library will be open from 9am to 4:50pm to Baruch faculty and patrons who need to clear their library accounts or return equipment.
• The book drop will be located on the 1st floor of the 25th Street building, beyond the turnstiles.

January 2009 Intersession …

• From January 2nd to January 25th, the library will be open from 9am-9pm, Monday – Sunday*.
• *Exceptions to schedule: The library will be closed on January 24th and 25th.
• Service desks (Reference, Circulation/Reserve, Laptop Loan) close earlier in the day.  Please view the library’s hours page for service desk hours.
• The library will begin spring semester hours on January 26th.
  

BCTC now offers free fax service.*
Location: 6th floor of the William & Anita Library Building (151 E. 25th St.) in the BCTC Computer Lab.

This service only supports out-going calls to NYC area codes and toll free numbers, which include: 212, 347, 516, 631, 646, 718, 800, 866, 877, 888, 914, and 917.

*Baruch College students are invited to test an on-campus fax service. The service supports only the sending of a fax; faxes cannot be received at the machine. The results of the test will determine whether the service will be put into production in the main computing lab and other locations on campus.

Many of you know the Conference Board for its reports on the Consumer Confidence Index and economic indicators of the business cycle but they are also active researchers in many areas of management , corporate governance and executive compensation. In May 2007 The Conference Board formed a Research Working Group on Hedge Fund Activism and just this month the group released their findings in a report titled Hedge Fund Activism: Findings and Recommendations for Corporations and Investors. Some of the many recommendations that came out of the report include:

• Companies should actively monitor trading in the company’s security holdings to be alert to activists using equity swaps
• Corporate boards should understand the investment strategies of hedge funds owning company shares
• Companies should promote transparent proxy voting procedures
• Management should consider meeting with activist hedge fund owners.

The report includes considerable information on hedge fund activists including information on their common demands and tactics, the types of companies they target, their success rates, data on the outcomes of recent activist campaigns and a list of notable activist hedge funds. The report also offers advice to companies about how to gather ownership data with SEC filings and market intelligence.

This report and others can be found in the Conference Board Research Online database available from the Newman Library.

To get an idea of the types of research the Conference Board is involved in, use the pull-down menu under “Topic” on their search page.

It is the start of a new semester so make sure you ….

• Validate your Baruch ID card at the Circulation desk on the 2nd floor of the library so you can borrow materials and use other CUNY libraries
• Subscribe to the Newman Library Graduate Services blog to get updates about library developments and to read research tips (subscription options in the menu on the right)

When researching a company’s product(s), one should also consider the competition. The Mergent Horizon database, available through the Newman Library website, has a feature allowing users to generate reports identifying a company’s competitor(s) by product.

1. Once connected to Mergent Horizon, search for a company by ticker symbol or company name
2. In the company record that appears, select “Detailed Reports” in the sidebar located on the left side of the screen
3. Select the “Competitors by Product” report
4. Mergent Horizon presents a list of your company’s products with comparable products from competitors.

Mergent Horizon is a Newman Library database of US-traded companies. It is organized by the goods and services from which companies derive their revenues, as well as their key business relationships (customers, suppliers, partners).

Do you need a country’s Consumer Price Index, health expenditure per capita, literacy rate, exchange rate, imports/exports, or other development indicators?

Then use the Newman Library database called WDI: World Development Indicators. This database provides international social and economic data for over 550 development indicators and time series data for over 207 countries and 18 country groups. Includes social, economic, financial, natural resources, and environmental indicators from 1960 to 2000, where data are available.

To use: select a country or countries, select a topic in one of the series (Balance of payments; Development framework; Environment; Exchange rates & prices; External debt; Financial statistics; Government finance; National accounts; Social indicators; and Trade), and then choose a year or range of years.