Business Librarian Blog

Out-of-Office

2008-05-20T12:52:00.005-04:00

The Business Librarian (me) will continue to be on leave, possibly through the summer. Any business-related questions can be sent to Susan Metcalf at metcalf@email.wcu.edu or 828-227-3416. Have a great summer!

Dana

Best Business Plan Tools (According to Business Week)

2008-01-09T17:15:00.000-05:00

Business Week regularly posts wonderful little slide shows on specific topics. Today they had one on business planning tools that were considered essential by successful entrepreneurs. The list includes books (most of which are in our library network), blogs, and websites. Be sure to read the text that accompanies each slide as it explains not only why the resource is worthwhile, but what the limitations are.

Click here to read.

Click on the comments link to add any favorite resources that Business Week left out!

How to Drive People Nuts!

2008-01-03T10:28:00.000-05:00

NPR ran a funny but thoughtful piece on how business jargon raises the blood pressure of Financial Times columnist Lucy Kellaway. As she sees it, phrases like "going forward" and "at the end of the day" are mere fillers and therefore meaningless. Listen to the program here--it's just under four minutes.

Kellaway isn't the only person crusading against jargon. Brian Fugere, Chelsea Hardaway, and Jon Warshawsky have written an entire book on the topic entitled Why Business People Speak Like Idiots: A Bullfighters Guide which we have in Hunter Library. Click on the link to check for location and availability.

Great Website Alert!

2007-11-16T10:41:00.000-05:00

The World Bank and Google Maps have created a mash-up site called geo.worldbank.org. Anyone who has ever tried to navigate the regular World Bank site knows what a pain it can be. Geo.worldbank is a map with "push pins" on each country. Click on a pin and a box pops up with some basic information about the country and tabs for more details on statistics, projects, news and more. This site could be useful for economics and international business projects.

Related library databases:

STAT-USA for trade data

LexisNexis Academic for international news

Student Presentation Practice Room

2007-10-23T14:48:00.000-04:00

Do you require your students to do presentations for your class? Do they turn just a tad green at the idea? Hunter Library and Information Technology have a solution that will help calm jittery nerves and create better presentations: the Student Presentation Practice Room.

This room provides a place where WCU students, individually or in groups, can create, practice, and view presentations, and work together on projects requiring access to presentation and multimedia equipment and software. Groups of up to 11 students can use this room, which is equipped with a laptop with PowerPoint software and internet access, as well as a combination DVD/VHS player and a wireless keyboard and mouse.

The room is located in study room 46, behind the main stairwell on the ground floor of the library. Space may be reserved up to one day ahead of time by stopping by the Circulation Desk in person or calling the library at 227-7485. Up to two hours of time may be reserved.

This room is not to be used for classes, meetings, tutoring sessions, screenings – it is only for presentation practice by students!

If you have any questions, call the Circulation Desk at ex. 7485. Please share this with your students and encourage them to use the room.

The Student Presentation Practice Room is a joint venture of Hunter Library and the Division of Information Technology.

New Research Guides

2007-09-07T18:18:00.000-04:00

I am in the midst of revising old and creating new research guides for each department in the College of Business. When the library website was redesigned, we decided to post only new or updated guides rather than transferring all of the old ones. Here is a list of what is available so far:

Accounting

Business Law (courtesy of Becky Kornegay)

Entrepreneurship

Project Management

Sales & Marketing (Note the "mini-guides" to specialized areas)

Finding Company Information (Useful for all departments)

Coming next: an update to Writing Business Plans and a brand new guide for CIS.

Oxford Scholarship Online

2007-08-03T16:02:00.000-04:00

Oxford Scholarship Online is a searchable library of over 1350 books from Oxford University Press. A significant number are in economics and finance but philosophy, political science, and religion are also included.

The database can be searched by title, author, subject, or keyword. Books are organized by chapters and each chapter has its own abstract for quick review. Searches can be done within a major subject area, e.g. economics & finance, or across the full database.

All books in this database are in the Library Catalog with direct links included. Here is an example: The Globalizing Learning Economy.

Two new databases from Hunter Library

2007-06-08T17:20:00.000-04:00

Hunter Library has subscriptions to two new databases that will be of interest to many of you. While the focus is technology, they should benefit most people in the COB.

Faulkner Advisory for IT Studies (FAITS)

Contains hundreds of detailed reports on the “critical issues, trends, market conditions, products, services, and vendors driving the information technology industry.” Topics covered include:

IT infrastructure
Telecommunications
Wireless communications
Data networking
Convergence
Information security
Enterprise systems
Internet and Web
Technology vendors

Reports on IT topics in healthcare and government have recently been added.

Other cool stuff: software selection guides for different industries (e.g. accounting), standards reports, product reviews, and best practice tutorials.

Faulkner Security Management Practices

Reports are formatted like those in FAITS but cover all areas of security management from bomb threats to SPAM.

As always, let me know if you have questions or need help with these databases.

Highest- & lowest-paying jobs

2007-06-08T14:05:00.000-04:00

Forbes.com has a neat article on the best and worst-paying jobs in America. What is most interesting is not the jobs themselves, as there are no big surprises, but the discussion about the statistics, such as who (self-employed and undocumented workers) and what (non-wage compensation) are missing.

The data for the article is from the May 2006 National, State, and Metropolitan Area Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates, which is published every year by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The data shows a snapshot of America, but like all snapshots there is lots more happening outside the picture frame.

For more information on compensation, Hunter Library has a database of research reports from the Conference Board. Select “Compensation” from the topic drop box and click the research button.

Westlaw Campus Research

2007-05-17T18:22:00.000-04:00

Hunter Library is pleased announce a new database subscription. Westlaw Campus Research provides access to an enormous array of legal, business, and news information.

Law content includes

United States Code Annotated (USCA),
all federal and state law cases (Courts of Appeals and higher),
statutes and regulations for all 50 states,
Code of Federal Regulations (CFR),
Federal Register.

In addition, there are high-quality analytical sources such as

American Jurisprudence 2^nd (Am Jur 2d),
American Law Reports (ALR),
over 700 law reviews and journals.

News formats consist of

newspapers,
magazines,
newswire reports,
transcripts of TV and radio news programs,
international sources, including an extensive collection of foreign language publications.

The business package has

Hoover’s Company Records,
SEC reports,
trade journals for almost every imaginable industry.

All this is available through a sophisticated but easy-to-use interface.

Two things to be aware of:

you must approve the license agreement every time you log in
pop-up blockers should be disabled.

As always, let me know if you have questions or problems.

RefWorks can make life easier!

2007-05-14T11:13:00.001-04:00

RefWorks is a web-based, citation management software tool for collecting, organizing, storing, and sharing citations from the Library Catalog, most databases, Google Scholar, and many other sources.

How does it work? I highly recommend the excellent tutorial. It takes about 45 minutes to go through the whole thing, but it is time well spent. You will learn how to:

set up a personal account;
create folders for different papers or projects;
export article citations from a database (such as Business Source Premier) into the folders;
share the folders with team members;
produce a fully formatted bibliography with just a few keystrokes.

Because it is web-based, you can use your RefWorks account from any computer that has Internet access. What could be easier?

What are RSS feeds and why are they useful?

2007-05-04T09:58:00.000-04:00

RSS stands for "really simple syndication," among other things, and is a technology that brings news information to you, so that you don't have to gather it from lots of different sources.

For example, if you regularly read certain sections of the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Raleigh News & Observer, you can subscribe to feeds for those sections and have them sent to your RSS reader. I use Bloglines as it's free, very easy to set up, and web-based, so you're not tied to a specific computer.

Feeds are time savers because you don't have to bother with sections that hold no interest for you.

It takes about 5 minutes to get started:

Set up an account for an RSS reader. Here is a list organized by platform, e.g., Web, mobile, Blackberry, etc.
Go to your favorite sites and find the feeds. They are often indicated by small, orange symbols. In the case of this blog, there is a link at the bottom of the page that states, "Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)."
Click on the icon or link, follow the instructions, and you're set!

Bloglines is the homepage on both my work and home computers.

Welcome!

2007-05-03T13:16:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the Business Librarian Blog.

I am using this blog to share with the WCU College of Business community the amazing resources and services of Hunter Library, including:

new databases
books
research guides
tutorials
training sessions
miscellaneous items of interest to the business world

I will post on an irregular, as-needed basis and encourage everyone to respond in the comments section with questions, suggestions, and ideas.

You can subscribe to this blog using the "Atom" link below and a notice will be sent to your RSS reader anytime I post an update.

Enjoy the blog and come back often!