New in the David Lam Library Blog

Learning with Cases

A practical guide to learning using the case method, aimed at those who are new to this method. Written by faculty members at the Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario. Also available at the Robson Square Library.

Teaching for Critical Thinking

A practical guide for  educators, on how to introduce critical thinking in a higher education curriculum and in various disciplines. Topics include critical thinking instructional activities, critical thinking criteria and learning outcomes and instructional strategies to facilitate critical thinking. Part of the Green Guide series from the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.

Creative Problem Solving

A practical guide for  educators, on inserting creative problem solving strategies into the curriculum. Part of the Green Guide series from the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.

Leading Effective Discussions

A practical guide for educators on leading discussions in the classroom. Topics include; developing class atmosphere; managing group dynamics; managing conflict;  and evaluating discussions. Part of the Green Guide series from the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.

For more books in the Green Guide series available at the Library, click here.

New Video Collection in Business Source Complete

A video collection is now available through the Business Source Complete database. The first videos in this growing collection are the Harvard Business School Faculty Seminar Series.

From EBSCO (the database provider:

“The series features engaging video lectures from renowned professors and experts at the Harvard Business School. All lectures are captured from executive education programs, and offer groundbreaking ideas, insightful research, and practical advice on management issues…The videos contain a table of content allowing the selection of a specific topic. Most lectures provide a transcript in PDF format.”

To access the videos, connect to Business Source Complete and click on the More link on the menu bar at the top. Select Business Videos/Images from the drop down box.  Search for videos by keyword (e.g. Harvard).

We have been spending more of our book budgets on e-books lately. Rising campus enrolments make space in short supply, and prompt libraries such as David Lam to send their older, less-used collections to the Automated Storage Retrieval Unit in the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, in order to free up space for learning activities. In the ASRS, the books and journals are safe and available for quick retrieval at click of a mouse.

UBC users – many of whom commute long distances or rarely come to campus – need research materials online and available remotely when needed. The e-book seems a good solution. A recent online poll of students in the David Lam Library revealed a 2:1 bias in favour of e-books. E-books can be searched by keyword, browsed, highlighted, and read on netbooks and other devices.

Over the past few years the UBC Library has been investing heavily in e-books, which now number about 320,000 titles in our catalogue. These include all e-books published by Springer, over 2000 e-books from Cambridge University Press, 4500 titles from eBrary, and 120,000 titles from Taylor & Francis.

A Sauder faculty member in the Operations & Logistics Division was pleased to hear about Simulation-based case studies in logistics education and applied research, a new book of Oplog case studies in manufacturing, supply chains, pharmaceutical distribution, fresh food supply chains, and several other industries. With an e-book such as this, cases could be assigned with no course pack requirement and no textbook purchase needed.

E-textbooks are the next frontier but there are hurdles to be surmounted before this is a truly viable route.

To browse some of our e-book collections, please see:
Cambridge UP E-Books
Oxford UP E-Books
SpringerLink or search in our Catalogue for specific titles and subjects.

Together with several other libraries at UBC, the David Lam Library installed new digital signage this fall. A large flat screen in the Library displays event notices, academic advertisements, student club notices, and news from departments around Sauder.

Recent additions consist of biographies and photos of our new faculty members. Upcoming content will include announcements of new publications by Sauder faculty members and regular announcements from the Hari B. Varshney Business Career Centre.

To submit appropriate Sauder content, please contact Yani Mitchell in the David Lam Library.

Renowned psychologist and Harvard professor B.F. Skinner wrote, “It has always been the task of formal education to set up behavior which would prove useful or enjoyable later in a student’s life.”

Librarians at the David Lam Library believe that the critical thinking and secondary research skills which we teach to Sauder School students enable them to excel not only in the assignment at hand, but throughout their time at Sauder, and throughout their careers.

Between September 1 and October 31, the David Lam librarians taught 32 classes in research methods to 1587 students. The orientations and classes were given in COMM 296, COMM 311, COMM 365, COMM 465, COMM 486M, COMM 497, ENGL 112, ECM, MBA ISP, MBA Precore, FTMBA Core, and MBA Exchange. Additional sessions were provided for undergraduate orientations and on behalf of the Hari B. Varshney Business Career Centre, as well as classes to the Sales and Marketing Executives program.

We have been experimenting with new instructional techniques. Clicker classes with the ECM’s and MBA’s this fall enabled us to quickly ascertain comfort levels with libraries, librarians and databases. Our interactive in-class quizzes, group discussion breakouts, and take-home quizzes test students’ comprehension of theories, techniques and resources being taught in class. MBA Pre-core students physically experienced the basics of search logic in the humorous Human Boolean exercise, in which they stand up and sit down based on rules which describe them by their undergraduate degrees and other characteristics.

Searching for information is an iterative process, and involves a series of interactions between thinking, research, revising, rethinking and research. Many students need coaching consultations throughout this multi-stage process. To help them at this critical preliminary stage, we’ve devised a tool – Jump-Start Your Research – which guides them through questions that help focus their thoughts.

As with other instruction at Sauder, our work involves more than directing students to useful resources for their assignments. Our real work, which occurs in the classroom and in reference consultations, is teaching critical thinking skills. And like other instructors, we work hard to articulate learning goals and outcomes, because we believe that these skills increase the success of our graduates and their future employers.

Building design strategy : using design to achieve key business objectives. 

Intelligence gathered from  international CEOs and presidents of major design firms, brand managers, and professors of design is combined with case studies from companies like Procter & Gamble, Caterpillar, Microsoft and Target to illustrate how design relates to corporate strategy.

In August, like others in the academic world, we gear up for the whirlwind that constitutes our life during September through May.

Much behind-the-scenes work has been happening all summer to revise student library orientations, update online research guides, and prepare new in-class instruction modules.

We’re also thinking of new ways in which we can support our faculty at Sauder. We currently offer services such as course reserves, online subject guides, library orientations, and acquisition of needed resources for our faculty members. But there are some new services we’d like you to know about.

1) Online assignment guides and in-class instruction on the best resources for an assignment. We’ll work with you on your course assignments to identify valuable resources, potentially saving you time and improving the quality of student output.

2) Electronic reading lists, with links to online articles and books embedded by library staff. We can also train you on how to create persistent links to articles in our databases. (Unfortunately we cannot embed links to articles in the Harvard Business Review, due to an intellectual property discussion between Harvard Business Publishing and libraries.)

3) Embedding library resources within your WebCT/Vista course.

4) Providing training sessions on RefWorks to faculty and PhD students. RefWorks is the citation management software subscribed to by the UBC Library, and we have a RefWorks expert – Lindsay Ure – in the David Lam Library. We also provide resources and assistance in educating students about citing articles correctly.

5) Providing quizzes for your courses to improve students’ researching skills.

6) A new FAQ database from the Wharton School, which will point users to the best resources for complex business questions. As a partner with Wharton’s Lippincott Library, the Lam Library will be taking ownership of its own version of the Wharton FAQ and adding our own content. It’s a reference librarian at your fingertips 24/7, and will be coming this winter.

7) Finally, we’re building a database of names and biographies of Sauder School alumni who wish to come to Sauder and interact with students in the classroom. These are seasoned, senior-level alumni who’d like to convey their experience and wisdom to our students. We’ll provide you with their biographies and contact information, should you wish to host them as guest speakers in your classes.

We look forward to working with and supporting you this year!

Looking beyond profit : small shareholders and the values imperative.  Author Peggy Chiu argues that financial risk and return are not the only factors affecting the investment behaviour of small shareholders.  She lays a theoretical and empirical framework which asserts that personal values strongly influence the decisions about the types of investments these shareholders make and in which companies they choose to invest.

Managing corporate social responsibility in action:  talking, doing and measuring.  The authors of this collection of essays focus on different aspects of managing corporate social responsibility  in order to explore differences between discourse and practice.  They explore three major areas–talking about CSR, performing CSR and measuring CSR–and conclude by suggesting strategies to overcome difficulties which might arise from the reality of CSR implementation.

The living code:  embedding ethics into the corporate DNA.  This short book presents a model to create, develop and implement codes of conduct in companies.    The practical tips and examples are illustrated with results from a study of the Fortune Global 200 and the author’s own experience working with KPMG.

New Databases

UBC Library now provides access to the MINT Global and ORBIS databases from Bureau van Dijk.

MINT Global (for student users)

MINT Global provides information on over 50,000 publicly-traded companies and 5 million private companies from around the world.

MINT GLOBAL gives access to a wide variety of high quality information covering companies, news, directors* and market research as well as providing access to original documentation and filings. It has simple screens to help you find relevant data. You can search for companies or news stories that match your specific criteria, and build reports and lists that contain your chosen content.

MINT Global is a simpler platform for ORBIS, designed for student users. Advanced users should see the ORBIS database.

Click here to access the MINT Global database.

ORBIS (for advanced users)

ORBIS provides information on over 50,000 publicly-traded companies and 5 million private companies from around the world. As well as descriptive information and company financials, ORBIS contains further detail such as news, market research, ratings and country reports, scanned reports, ownership, and brief M&A data.

ORBIS includes advanced search and analysis software so you can identify and evaluate companies around the world.

Click here to access the ORBIS database via the Library website.

Trial Databases

OSIRIS

UBC Library has trial access to the OSIRIS database (from Bureau van Dijk) until March 2010.  Please try out this database and provide us with your feedback.

OSIRIS is a comprehensive database of listed companies, banks and insurance companies around the world. Covering more than 190 countries OSIRIS contains information on over 57,000 companies. In addition to the income statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement and ratios, other information includes news, ownership, subsidiaries, M&A activity and ratings.

Click here to access OSIRIS via the Library website and provide feedback to the Library.

“In the world of convergence, technology, content, and distribution are converging at a speed never before seen. Consumers are now empowered by new technology and distribution platforms to engage with media and advertising in entirely new ways. Convergence is going to fundamentally redraw today’s business map, fuelling a power shift towards consumers that verges on social revolution.” (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2009)

Business librarians are no strangers to convergence, and have been at the forefront of creating unified platforms for consumers to retrieve information they need.

B-School libraries are enthusiastic partners in organizational convergence, working with career centers, program offices and other units to deliver services through a cohesive service model. A new article in College & Research Libraries News describes a fruitful partnership between the library and career center at the Katz Graduate School of Business in Pennsylvania, in which the two partners collaborated to augment preparation for MBA students for internship and job interviews. The two different skill sets made instruction sessions livelier and improved the value of the workshop for the students.

The Lam librarians work with staff in the Hari B. Varshney Business Career Centre at the Sauder School to enhance the research and critical thinking skills of students engaged in career searches. It’s been a fruitful convergence for staff and students.

This article also demonstrates another kind of convergence which will revolutionize traditional online library databases. The user can read the article, download a podcast of it – choosing a male or female voice – or translate the article into twelve languages. Of all the bells and whistles our databases have been displaying recently, this is one magic tool that will make library databases easier to use and more accessible for all users.

It’s convergence at its best.

Citation: Librarians on the case: Helping students prepare for job interviews in an uncertain economy. College & Research Libraries News v. 70 no. 7 (July/August 2009)