emba

Managing People and Organisations

Download 9librarythings.ppt

one other thing

Something I should have mentioned earlier today is that the library's electronic resources won't be available until when you actually start your classes - for some reason, the powers that be think that orientation doesn't count. So this means that MBA (Exec) students won't be able to login until next week.

slides from the today's presentation

Download embalibraryintro.ppt

The notes from my introduction to the Frank Lowy library

I was hoping that I would be able to do some live examples during this presentation, but this wasn't feasible because of the set up of the teaching rooms. That's why there are some differences between these notes and some of the things I showed.

Thank you for taking some time to learn a little about the AGSM’s Frank Lowy Library and what is has to offer.

Increasingly, companies are viewing knowledge as an asset – similar to their physical plant. (Tuemmler, Brian, Knowledge Assets, AIIM –E-DOC 18 (5), p. 50-52) And the ability to find information to improve decision making and improve their knowledge as a key competency. The information age and knowledge economy are kind of clichés now, but that doesn’t mean that it’s wrong. Successful companies don’t skimp when it comes to their human resources, you want to hire the best person for the job, not somebody who is just adequate. You would not hear a successful company saying, we’re okay with having a third rate IT department and who needs a firewall anyway? Neither would you hear one say, lawyers? Who needs ‘em? We can get all of our legal information from Google!

Don’t get me wrong, I love Google, I use it all the time. It’s a great place to start research, to suss out your topic so you can get a good basic overview. But while it's ok to start there, it's not the be all and end all.

But the thing is, everybody else has Google and Wikipedia. You guys also have a lot of great information in your course materials / webCT, but remember that everybody else has that information. If you want to get a competitive edge with your information, you need to go beyond what everybody else has. That’s where the Library comes in.

While you’re at student at the AGSM, you have access to the Frank Lowy Library’s resources. Yes, we have over 35,000 books, but the more important thing for you to be aware of is our electronic resources – which you can use from your homes or your work (although if your work has a hyperactive firewall, there can be issues – contact us and we’ll try to help you).

Yes, there’s a lot of free information out there on Google, so much that it can take you hours sorting out the gems from the drivel. The library gives you access to full-text journals, newspapers, market research publications, industry information and company reports. This information is quite expensive if you’re paying for it yourself, especially anything to do with market research, so make the most of it while you’re here.

A library database is just a large collection of documents. In the bad old days, they were only available on CD-ROM. Now they can be accessed via the internet, but only authorized users are able to use them. If you logon through the database via the library’s website, you will be allowed to use them, no matter where you are. What happens with databases is that the database owners make license agreements with publishers to store the articles in their database. Sometimes an article can appear in a number of different databases – sometime a database may only have permission to store the abstract (summary) of an article, not full-text. Each database usually has a different focus. So that you’ll see that Factiva has a focus on newspapers, ProQuest has good coverage of academic journals and Business Source Premier often has good full-text, particularly for magazines and trade journals.

Just before I leave this topic, I want to reiterate the reasons why you should consider using a library database for your research.

1. Access to high-quality publications, and often expensive journals which currently are not available anywhere else on the internet. These are the information sources which our faculty live and breathe, which they will expect you to be familiar with.
2. It is possible to do more precise searching in a database. You can use proximity operators and search in controlled-vocabulary subject fields. I don’t have the time today to explain why is helpful, but if you’re curious, ask me and I can give a demonstration.

[example 1: logging in, what’s new, portals, look up Harvard Business Review in the library catalogue, showing how “click for electronic access” links work to bring you into the proper database] [example 2: databases page, BSP, login/personalization, browse for HBR, search in HBR and “research and information”, Decisions with Blunders article in Jan 06 issue, note subject terms, do another search with “decision” (ti) and “decision” (de) and “information” (de), refined by magazines .. alternate proximity search, showing tips]

Research can be extremely frustrating at times – I’m saying this and I’m a research specialist. My last bit of advice to you is to ask for help early. Our job is to answer your questions. We like getting your questions and believe me, there are no stupid questions. The only stupid question is the unasked question. There’s no need for you to waste hours in frustration as a prerequisite before you contact us. [contact details]. The library staff is here to help you – and because we don’t assess you or anything

Finally about the handout. This contains some practical information and may be good for you to refer to the first few times that you log into the library’s website. It mentions some of the specific databases which the library has access to and gives some descriptive information about them.