“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)

Outliers: the story of success, by Malcolm Gladwell.

Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, is interested in people who are outliers— who are so accomplished and so extraordinary and so outside of ordinary experience that they are as puzzling to the rest of us. In Outliers, he looks at corporate lawyers in New York, hockey players, Asian math whizzes and software entrepreneurs.

The global brain: your roadmap for innovating faster and smarter in a networked world, by Satish Nambisan, Mohanbir Sawhney.

In this book, two business school professors provide practical guidance on every facet of network-centric innovation, from identifying opportunities to implementing metrics, enhancing operations to overcoming “not invented here” cultures.

The July/August issue of BizEd focuses on sustainability. BizEd is the bimonthly magazine published by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). It covers such issues relating to business schools as pedagogy, marketing, new media, and development.

BizEd can be read online or in print in the David Lam Library.

“Online since 2003, IPA Source is the web’s largest library of International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) transcriptions and literal translations of opera arias and art song texts.”

“Ha, stolzer ozean!” Who said that? Find out at IPA Source.

(…psst, I think he was Dutch)

*UPDATE* The switch-over date is now September 1st not January 1st.

“To date, the SAGE Full-Text Collections have been available on both the ProQuest CSA Illumina platform and the SAGE Journals Online platform. After December 31, 2009, the SAGE Full-Text Collections will be available exclusively on SAGE Journals Online.” -Sage Library Newsletter, July 2009

For you, this means you’ll have to change any bookmarks you have for Sage titles on CSA Illumina. We will be updating our A-Z list and OpenURL linking.

Rare Books and Special Collections and University Archives will be closed on Monday, August 17, 2009 for a staff retreat.

We thank-you for your understanding and regret any inconvenience this closure may cause.

If you have any questions, please contact us by email spcoll@interchange.ubc.ca or by phone at 604-822-2521.

UBC Library now has access to Selden Society Publications and the History of Early English Law. This contains access to the Selden Society Annual Series, Selden Society Supplementary Series and the Centenary Guide to the Publications of the Selden Society published in 1987. It also contains more than 100 English Legal History Classics including abridgements, digests and dictionaries, with access to early English case law and links to other online publications in early English history.

For more information, see http://heinonline.org/HeinDocs/Selden_Society.pdf

KD554 .W666 2005 (LC)
Patrick Wormald, The First Code of English Law ([Canterbury]: Canterbury Commemoration Society, 2005).

KE7722.D6 C667 2007 (LC)
Canada, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Consultation Report on Matrimonial Real Property (Ottawa: Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, 2007).
Online access: http://www.nwac-hq.org/en/documents/CR_English.pdf

KE8440 .S66 2009 (LC)
Alan W. Bryant, Sidney N. Lederman, & Michell K. Fuerst, Law of Evidence in Canada, 3d ed. (Markham: LexisNexis, 2009).

KEB194 .H88 2009 (LC)
Carol Huddart & Trudi Brown, British Columbia Family Law Practice (Markham: LexisNexis, 2009).

*UPDATE* Box fixed. Now you can sort your Library Catalogue search results. “Thank you,” to the Systems folks!
The title of this post basically sums it up: the “Sort By” drop-down box which appears with your search results in the UBC Library catalogue currently does nothing. We are working on the problem. Stay tuned.

The Library’s RefWorks crew has updated their information page. Please take a look. Remember to use the CORRECT URL for UBC patrons. Or as the Library’s RefWorks crew puts it:

“Do NOT create an account from the US refworks site.”