Reference Transactions

"I'm a senior journalism major working on my capstone project. My group is doing our capstone on the Museum of the Confederacy (its formal title is Confederate Memorial Literary Society). We are trying to get Form 990s for the nonprofit organization for the past 10 years (form 990s are public financial statements). Guidestar.org gives access to the past 3 years of Form 990s for free, but after that, you have to be a "premium subscriber". Do you know of any other way to get the Form 990s for the organization?"

My response:

"I have consulted with a law librarian and have chatted online with "Aly" at the IRS and here is what I think:
You can request up to 8 years of a non-profit's 990 forms directly from the IRS by submitting this form.
However, there is a fee of $39 and -- worse -- they say to allow up to 60 days for a response. (!)
Which, of course, probably is why Guidestar exists.

I am still awaiting responses from the office of our local legislator, Ben Cline, and from the Virginia Dept. of Taxation, but I think Guidestar is your best option for quick access."

Update 5/8/07: I have been contacted by Ben Cline's office and by an official with the Museum of the Confederacy to find out if they can be of further assistance with these students' request. The MOC guy has offered to "dig out" the 990's, if needed.

Posted by Dick Grefe at 9:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On April 25th I did a demonstration of PsycINFO and Scopus for Megan Fulcher's Psych 120 class.

I also tied in the research process, but with such a short time I concentrated on the two databases. I used the same research guide from last year, with just a few minor changes: http://library.wlu.edu/science/psyc120.asp.

Posted by Mary Abdoney at 11:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Renaissance Lives in Film
April 23, 2007
Prof. Gwyn Campbell
6+ students
Merrill

In-class presentation and research guide.

Assignments: oral presentations on films. No written assignments.
Research Guide

Posted by Yolanda Merrill at 10:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"I am a junior at Washington and Lee and I am currently studying abroad at John Cabot University in Rome, Italy. I was wondering if I could get the password from you to access Jstor and, if possible, the other Art History databases available on the Leyburn Library website. I am currently researching projects for Early Renaissance Art History and Baroque Art History, and access to these databases would help immensely."

My response:

There is no W&L password for JSTOR.

Access from off-campus locations is controlled by your login to the campus computing network, so you MUST enter JSTOR (or any other W&L subscription database) via the library Web site, such as from this page. You cannot take any short-cuts, such as going straight to www.jstor.org.

You will be prompted to enter your Novell network ID and password. Once you do that, JSTOR recognizes you as a member of the W&L community, and the same is true for almost all other databases, including the art databases.

The only road-block to this situation I know of is that sometimes students in off-campus locations may be using a computer which is within another institutional or corporate network which is "protected" by a firewall. When that happens, it can be impossible to get around that firewall to identify your affiliation with W&L.
Let me know if you continue to have problems.

Additional suggestion (from John T.):
We have been unable to determine why the Library's proxy server does not work for some people. If the patron is not prompted for a Novell password as they attempt to connect to Library database, one work around that I have found to be successful most of the time is this:

• Go to the proxy server login page: https://ezproxy.wlu.edu:2443/login


• Use the standard login for the campus network to log in


• After you log in, you will be greeted by a long list of databases in no discernible order (there is one, but not one that anyone would recognized on this page) ignore this page


• Go to http://library.wlu.edu/ and navigate to the desired database

Posted by Dick Grefe at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The 9 students in Professor Goluboff's Spring Term course will be "interpreting via anthropological theories someone's biography or autobiography" -- either a perpetrator or a victim of terrorism or violence.
The research guide is here.

Interestingly, this is the second request I have had for a Spring Term research guide to be ready before the term begins.

Posted by Dick Grefe at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)