Published Friday September 13, 2013

BBL now serves the finance and business research needs of students and faculty better than ever before with vastly improved access to Bloomberg terminals. Not only do we now have four of these available at the library, a 300% increase from our former single terminal, but we’re offering you the swanky kind shown here. All four terminals feature dual-screen flat-panel monitors giving you huge flexibility to expand your view of Bloomberg’s myriad, and, frankly mind-boggling, data sources to suit your needs.

All York faculty and registered students can avail of the Bloomberg terminal for academic research needs. For your convenience we have an online booking system (Passport York Login requested) for the terminals which are bookable for up to two hours a day, seven or less days in advance.

And just when you thought the news possibly couldn’t get any better, think again! To assist you with Bloomberg’s many commands and functions, we’ve transitioned our print help manual online to an easy-to-navigate Libguide format. This guide created by June Hill, Reference Assistant, and this post’s co-author, Xuemei Li, the finance librarian, steps you through everything from navigating the Bloomberg keyboard, to doing research on a wide range of topics such as equities, bonds, industries, indices etc., to using Bloomberg’s Excel API, to enrolling for the Bloomberg Essentials qualification.

Go to guide

Published Thursday September 5, 2013

This summer I read Seymour Schulich’s book “Get Smarter: Life and Business Lessons” and, it is just that, a series of personal anecdotes shared by a truly successful and generous man on the two things he knows best; life and business.  We have 7 copies at the Peter F. Bronfman Business Library.

Schulich begins this book by recalling a story that warms the heart of every librarian, his discovery of the public library and a love of reading.

 “ At eight years of age, I went to the closest public library and made a wonderful discovery: I could borrow three books for three weeks. I started to read a book a week. If you read a page a minute, then set aside an hour a day, it’s very easy to read a book a week….”

What is exceptional about his recollection, which at first has casual sense about it, is that Schulich figured out a system for reading consistently each day and that he continued to apply this system for the rest of his life.  Like many successful people he reads broadly on many topics to provide himself with different perspectives and to feed his curiosity.

He tells us this book is aimed at university students and his wish is to impart “lessons on choosing a career path and a mate.  In my experience, the years in age from twenty to thirty are, in many ways the most difficult because of the search for direction in these two areas.”  He does include chapters later in the book for people who are more established in business and in life.  The simple but underlying theme is that there is no separating business and life; they are inextricably bound.

“Get Smarter” would be a good reading choice while on the bus, as each chapter is short with a single defining nugget of wisdom directly and clearly stated.

Another read I would recommend would be Dr. James Gillies (founder of the Faculty of Administrative Studies at York which later became the Schulich School of Business ) “From Vision to Reality:The Founding of The Faculty of Administrative Studies at York University 1965-1972” that chronicles the history of development of a business school at York University but also provides an insider’s view on how business was done in the early days in Toronto.