It's always fun for me to look back over the monthly reports I have written in 2010 and pick out the highlights. This year is a blend of personal and operational achievements.
Toni Olshen, one of our business librarians, received the OCULA (Ontario College and University Libraries Association) inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award. Her contributions to assessment and diversity are legendary and Toni is well known inside and outside of York University for her work in these areas. She is very deserving of this award and I am so happy to see Toni being honoured in this way.
Dat Ngo, our evening circulation supervisor and the person responsible for making your Reserves available to you both in print and online, and his wife Yen were blessed with the arrival of their second daughter, Camilla.
David Clink, our circulation coordinator, is a published poet and Monster his latest book of poetry came out this year. I quote from a review "Monster is a poetry collection that Pandora would want to open, containing poems that Eve would bite into."
Yes, some of us do have lives beyond the Library!
Dr. James Gillies, the school's founding Dean, published "a memoir of the most interesting times in my career" entitled From Vision to Reality. I am honoured by Dr. Gillies praise for our Library. "The goal of having a truly remarkable library has been achieved. No
one in those early days could ever have imagined a library as
delightful, user friendly, efficient and effective as the existing Peter
F. Bronfman Library in the Schulich School of Business. " The book is a must read for SSB students and alumni.
We welcomed, actually it was more like shocked, the 2 millionth visitor to enter our library. Sabrina Stan, a Schulich School of Business 4th year accounting student was the lucky person and David Clink and I presented her with a copy of Dr. Gillies book.
It was a pleasure to welcome to the Bronfman Business Library the first MBA students from the Schulich School of Business India MBA cohort. They arrived in August.
Meghan Ecclestone, on contract with us for one year, and I wrote and Meghan created a number of instructional research videos on topics such as finding business articles. They proved to be popular and helpful so I asked June Hill and Sophie Bury to continue to create more offerings such as the ones on SWOT and Investext Plus. Please see our Research Videos guide for the list of what is available.
Our IM Chat and email services continue to grow. If you haven't tried contacting us this way you may wish to do so. Many students who seek research help using our IM Chat service are very pleased with the results.
June Hill and I offered a new service to some first year BBAs. We offered to become their Personal Librarians, i.e. we would help to answer their questions re Library policies, procedures and services and to assist them with finding information for research assignments, by helping them articulate their research question, identify the best sources, and formulate search strategies. As is typical in other universities that have offered this service, the initial response rate was about 7% and the continuing contacts fell to about 3%. I am always searching for more effective ways to assist students and I would be happy to receive your suggestions. You can email me at watson@yorku.ca
Printers were a win/lose experience this year. Those of you who stood in the long line-ups may be asking yourselves, what was "win" about the situation. In March, typically the busiest month in the academic year, students printed 132,448 pages and if you were to stack the pages it would result in a stack of paper 44 ft or 13.4 meters high! Now that's impressive but we have since beaten that record this November by printing 144,066 pages. The "lose" part is that as we only have 2 printers this has resulted in excessive waiting times during peak periods. I am happy to announce that we will have a third printer up and running sometime in January.
We added three new databases in 2010 - Sustainalytics, Mergent Horizon and SimplyMap.
Sustainalytics: This database rates companies on environmental, social and governance performance. For most performance issue areas, it includes aboriginal relations; community involvement; corporate governance; employee relations; environment; and human rights. The framework calls for a complete examination of each company's performance record in that area, as well as an evaluation of each company's record in these areas overall.
Mergent Horizon: A resource for finding company and industry information, including all companies that are actively traded on the NYSE, AMEX and NASDAQ. It highlights the relationships between a company's major customers, suppliers and partners and maps companies from the bottom up, based on actual products and services.
Simply Map: A web-based mapping database that lets users easily create professional looking thematic maps and reports using demographic (Statistics Canada), business and marketing data (Environics) for Canadian geographic areas. You will need to create your own login the first time you use this database.
When you return in January your will find QR codes on the group study room doors. Try it out or ask at the research desk.
And what's in store for 2011 - well part of this depends on you. Talk to me! My door is almost always open S237C, the second door on your left as you enter the Library or email me watson@yorku.ca.
The staff of the Bronfman Business Library wish you a happy, healthy and prosperous 2011. Happy Holidays.