The librarian is: BLOGGING | Journalism Library, Columbia University

The Journalism Library Blog has MOVED! This site is no longer being updated as of July 2009. Come find us at our new location:

https://blogs.cul.columbia.edu/journalism

See you there!

CQ Homeland Security (access restricted to current Columbia affiliates) is “a web-based intelligence service that brings subscribers the most up-to-date and comprehensive homeland security information. A dedicated team of CQ reporters and editors provide daily news and analysis on the latest homeland security spending and policy issues. Subscribers also have access to a special homeland security version of CQ schedules, complete with event dates, times and hearing room locations.”

Of potential interest to News21 students: the “Industry and Contracting” news link on the left-hand menu.

Factiva and ThomsonONE Banker (access restricted to current Columbia affiliates) are two central sources for doing background research on public companies and on executives. For more business research resources, visit the Business & Economics Library website.

Of particular importance on the site: the 24/7 Help feature is a searchable knowledgebase that guides you through databases and other resources, and the Guides link takes you to research guides on various topics.

ThomsonONE Banker

ThomsonONE Banker is a comprehensive database of company information (as well as data on indices, portfolios, stock markets, and deals). Its interface is quite user-friend for company searches. For more in-depth SEC filings and PDFs of company annual reports, see the companion database, Thomson Research (access restricted to current Columbia affiliates).

Getting the Most out of Factiva

Factiva, a joint product of Dow Jones and Reuters, is a source for the full text of thousands of news sources, including newspapers, wires, broadcast transcripts, and trade publications. It also contains a significant amount of company information, including stock prices, balance sheet information, and lists of competitors within the same sector.

When searching the News portion of Factiva, two types of searching can help to filter your results down to the most useful sources:

Proximity searching:
A proximity search puts search terms within a certain distance of each other in the story, and replaces “AND” as the connector between terms. Some examples:
gates same tuberculosis
(this will find the name Gates in the same paragraph as tuberculosis)
unisys w/10 homeland security
(this will find unisys within 10 words of the phrase homeland security – you can change the number of words to anything between 1 and 10)

Atleast searching:
An atleast search specifies a minimum number of occurrences of a word in a story (to a maximum of 50). It is particularly helpful for finding more in-depth stories, or transcripts of a broadcast on which a particular person was a guest. Example:
robert w/2 chen and atleast8 rae
(this will find Robert within two words of Chen, and at least 8 occurrences of RAE).

You thought Housing Maps was cool. Then you got all excited about the Google Maps Pedometer. But the insanity continues… To keep up, you can check in with Google Maps Mania, a blog that keeps track of all of the innovative ways that Internet users are customizing Google’s maps with new and exciting data.

Columbia Libraries now subscribe to Ancestry Library, the library edition of Ancestry.com (access restricted to current Columbia affiliates).

Ancestry Library includes: digitized images of the United States Federal Census from 1790 forward; the American Genealogical Biographical Index; Passenger and Immigration Lists Index; United Kingdom and United States Directories 1680-1830; court, land, and probate records; and many other resources. It also includes telephone directory information for the U.S.

I have had several recent questions from students on nonprofits research, so here’s a quick guide to finding information on them…

GuideStar is a database of nonprofit organizations which are identified as 501(c)(3) public charities. GuideStar requires registration, so set up a free login and password for access. Some portions of the site require payment, but you can retrieve the 990 form, which the organization is required to file with the IRS, without charge.

The Foundation Directory Database (access restricted to current Columbia affiliates), published by the Foundation Center, enables you to search both for grants and for foundations which make grants (note that the “990 Search” is not part of our subscription).

For a guide to other nonprofit resources at Columbia University Libraries, check out the Business Library’s guide to Nonprofit Organizations, which includes reference books and directories, links to useful databases, and websites of interest.

Last, but certainly not least, the Foundation Center’s New York library, near Union Square, is open to the public, and provides access to databases which list donors to organizations, individuals and their board affiliations, and much more.

Everyone has a favorite free reverse lookup website (don’t they???). Mine (by no means the best, or most comprehensive) is InfoSpace, which offers reverse lookup by both address and phone, accessed by clicking “search by phone” (that screen also links you to the reverse address directory).