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

Sophie Bury, Business Librarian & Head, Bronfman Business Library
Published Wednesday August 28, 2013

So you talked and we listened! During the most recent academic year the Schulich student body and the Office of the Dean of Schulich communicated a strong interest in longer Bronfman Business Library opening hours to support study needs.

In the short-term we responded by extending our hours in the run-up to exams and during the exam period in Winter term 2013. We extended our hours for four solid weeks from Mar. 25^th to Apr. 21^st, and offered longer hours on six out of the seven days each week! At the time we both blogged and tweeted about this to spread the happy word. The fact that this was our most popular tweet of the year also made us pay attention!

The final outcome, we hope you’ll agree, is a pretty awesome one! Commencing Sept. 9^th 2013 (the first day of Fall classes) we will be offering longer opening hours at the Bronfman Business Library every day of the week (Monday to Sunday) for the length of the Fall term (until the exam period ends).

This marks the breaking of new ground for us. We hope you love our longer opening hours and that our usage statistics (and comments!) will tell a tale of a gap in your study needs unmet to date.

Here’s a summary of the new hours which will apply this Fall term totalling an additional eleven hours of opening time:

Mon.- Thurs.              8 am – 11 pm [we used to open at 9 am and close at 10 pm]

Fri.                              8 am – 6 pm   [we used to open at 9 am]

Sat.                             9 am – 6 pm [we used to open at 10 am and close at 6pm]
Sun.                           11 am – 8 pm [we used to open at 12 pm and close at 8 pm]

Published Wednesday, July 10, 2013.

Google Scholar at scholar.google.com is an important search engine to have in your suite of research tools when carrying out business research. We’ve even tweeted about it before; but here’s the nitty gritty. It can help you uncover useful academic sources for business research assignments and projects when used in tandem with the Bronfman Business Library’s wide-ranging suite of subscription sources available from our Business Databases A-Z web page.

Google Scholar facilitates broad searching of scholarly literature across many disciplines and types of information sources including articles, theses, books and more.

Here are a few tips to help you get the most out of Google Scholar:

Tip #1: You can access many York University library resources using the Google Scholar search engine, especially the full-text of scholarly articles, but to make sure this works access Google Scholar through the main search box of the library home page at http://www.library.yorku.ca like this:

If you access Google Scholar this way then links to York library holdings will appear if available, i.e. you’ll get links labeled “Find it @ York” which allow you to click through and get the full-text of articles and other publications.

Tip #2: Google Scholar, when accessed as described above, is a very quick and easy way to find a specific scholarly article you are looking for. This is a handy time saver when professors list scholarly articles on reading lists.

Let’s say you want to find this article:

Arend, R. J. (2013). A Heart-Mind-Opportunity Nexus: Distinguishing Social Entrepreneurship for Entrepreneurs. Academy Of Management Review, 38(2), 313-315.

Use the advanced search option in Google Scholar to find this article (just click on the arrow in the search box to get the advanced search option).

Just paste the title of the article in to the search box which facilitates searching “using the exact phrase” and put the last name of the author in the relevant box as shown below:

The article title and abstract appears and the “Find it @ York” link will allow you to retrieve the PDF of the article via the library’s e-resources.

Tip # 3: Google Scholar can be used to search the scholarly literature for business topics (by using keyword searching as shown below) but we recommend that you think of it as a way of supplementing what is available in our top recommended sources. This includes Proquest Business and Business Source Premier– specialized business article databases that the library subscribes to.

Google Scholar allows you to search more broadly than business alone so that can be useful if your topic is interdisciplinary in nature, for example IT governance or health management. It may also help you retrieve conference proceedings or scholarly papers etc. that nicely complement the articles retrieved through searching of Proquest Business and Business Source Premier.

Tip #4: Be a savvy Google searcher and familiarize yourself with search strategies that work best to ensure you get results that are relevant.

For a handy illustrated summary of key search tips check out this really great infographic titled “Get More Out of Google: Tips and Tricks for Students Conducting Online Research”

Published Wednesday, May 1, 2013.

Having a hard time finding information about a niche or emerging industry? In the past year we’ve had business students ask our librarians to help them find information about everything from the elevator industry, to the smoothies industry, to the sleep clinics industry.

Now thanks to the recent addition of IBISWorld U.S. Specialized Industry Reports, we offer detailed reports about all three of these industries, in addition to many other niche and emerging industries. In fact, this database contains over 400 industry reports.  Moreover, at any given point in time, some 70-80% of the current report titles will have been published within the past 12 months.

The main industry sectors covered by IBISWorld U.S. Specialized Industry Reports are as follows: advisory and financial services, business franchises, consumer goods and services, industrial machinery, gas and chemicals, life sciences, online retail, retail markets, specialist engineering infrastructure and contractors, and technology.

Once again, enjoy! And remember, if you’ve got questions about using IBISWorld, ask us for help.

You may have discovered the value of Simply Map already for market research in Canada. It allows you to generate both maps and tables displaying demographic or spending patterns data for one or more specific geographic locations in Canada, e.g. cities, towns, municipalities, neighbourhoods and so on. It also allows you to plot on a map the location of businesses operating in a specific industry in a geographic location of your choosing within Canada. Tables and lists generated can be exported to Excel and maps can be inserted in to power point presentations and other file formats.

Have we piqued your interest? If so, we recommend you take a look at our recently created, handy guide to using Simply Map prepared by business and map information experts at York University Libraries, which features three scenarios illustrating common marketing and business planning tasks.

And the value of using Simply Map just got even stronger with our recent addition of a new module called the PRIZM C2 Marketer’s Handbook from Environics Analytics. This module, integrated within the existing Simply Map product as shown here, is a consumer segmentation system for Canada which classifies Canadians in to one of 66 lifestyle types with names like Electric Avenues, Pets & PCs and Les Chics. Detailed profiles of these consumer segments are available including psychographics providing insights in to the behaviour and mindsets of consumers.

Enjoy! And if you’ve got questions about using Simply Map, ask us for help.

Published Thursday Mar. 14, 2013

As assignment deadlines approach, remember the BBL (Bronfman Business Library) reference team is available to help you out!

Need help finding more articles on your assignment topic? Could you do with a hand identifying more sources of information on the industry you are researching for an assignment? Need help with gathering financial data on a company you need to investigate for a project you are working on? Need guidance on citing the information you’ve found correctly?

These are the types of queries that our qualified business information experts at the Bronfman Business Library can help you with. We are very happy to point you to a rich range of e-resources or print information available at the Bronfman Business Library (BBL) that can play a crucial role in notching your assignment up to a higher level! So if getting your hands on relevant information for an assignment is a source of stress, stress no more, our BBL reference team are at hand to help you out! We look forward to helping you!

Our reference team is here to guide and advise you in-person, by phone and virtually nearly the whole time the Bronfman Business Library (BBL) is open. That is: Monday to Thursday: 9 a.m.-7.30 p.m., Friday: 9 a.m.-6.00 p.m., Saturday: 10 a.m.-6 p.m. and Sunday: 12 p.m.-8 p.m. If you prefer to connect with us by chat you’ll see the option to chat with us on every web page of the BBL web site. Also you can e-mail us at bgref@yorku.ca and expect a response from us within 24 hours and finally you are welcome to contact us by phone at 416 736 5139.

Our team comprises seven people. We are:  Sophie Bury, Colin Deinhart, June Hill, Xuemei Li, Amy Menary, Kim Stymest, and Rebecca Segal. You can find more information about all of us at our BBL staff information page and we encourage you to feel comfortable approaching any of us at our reference desk at any time.

Rebecca Segal is the newest member of our team and we were delighted to welcome her aboard in February of this year. Carey Toane who posted to this blog in Fall Term 2012 has now left us for a full-time term position as a Business Librarian at the Bud Johnston Library at the University of Western Ontario. We wish her every success and were lucky to have her with us in the earlier half of this year. We also extend our thanks to Bill Denton who also worked as a member of our reference team part-time during this academic year but now works full-time at the Steacie Science & Engineering Library.

Image Source: http://www.librarian-image.net

Sophie Bury, Business Librarian & Head Bronfman Business Library

Published Friday Nov. 23, 2012

My name is Sophie Bury and I’ve been at York University since May 2003 and boy has time flown since then! My role at York during the past nine years or so has primarily been one of business librarian. I love being a librarian, even though I was not impressed when my late mother suggested to me, as a final-year undergraduate in 1992, that I might think of becoming one in my future career! I think I suffered from the influence of stereotypical images a bit like this one shown here. Ah, but didn’t she know me so well!  And heck, if one of my favourite vocal artists, Tori Amos, can title a whole album “Tales of a Librarian” and classify the songs in it with Dewey Decimal call numbers, there must be something cool going on with this profession! And so my current image of what it is to be a librarian has changed dramatically and I now like to think we’re really “A Hipper Crowd of Shushers”, as a quite recent New York Times article explains.  Check it out!

The role of business librarian at York is quite varied and my favourite part of the job is undoubtedly the public service element including helping students with their research, as well as teaching sessions about how to find, use, evaluate and cite business information sources as part of workshops and classes. Librarians like to describe this as “information literacy” – often non-librarians don’t know what we are talking about which is, admittedly, an issue – but it’s an important life-long learning skill and if you’ve got it there’s research to show it translates in to academic success, while being a transferable skill that employers often value.

In early July 2012 my role at the Bronfman Business Library changed when I assumed the role of Head of the library for a five-year term. I feel lucky to have learned so much from senior colleagues, especially Elizabeth Watson (founding Head of the Bronfman Business Library) and Toni Olshen (former business librarian and Associate University Librarian). I feel privileged to have been given the opportunity to take on this new role and every day is varied and stimulating and brings new opportunities and challenges. In academic librarianship we experience an information world that is rapidly changing and where technology is constantly evolving and so we are always kept on our toes and never bored! Indeed, in my experience, it’s very rare to find an academic librarian who doesn’t love their job. So, not surprisingly, a big part of the joy of this position is that I work alongside very talented and motivated librarians and staff, some of whom have already introduced themselves to you on this blog. More introductions will follow, so stay tuned…

In terms of other things to share with you, I’ll just mention that I have a number of research and professional interests and if you are interested you can read more about them on my professional web site (http://sophiebury.ca). A bonus of being an academic librarian at many universities in Canada is that you are basically expected to attend and present at professional conferences and to engage in some research.

Let me conclude by expressing my sincere hope that you’ll feel comfortable approaching me if you have any suggestions or concerns about library services or resources at the Bronfman Business Library. We want students and other patrons to feel welcome in our space and comfortable approaching us for help at our reference desk or circulation/reserve desk and through other means including our online reference chat service. If you see a librarian’s office door open and you have a library-related or research question, please feel free to approach us. My office is the second door on the left when you enter the Bronfman Business Library.

We’re aware assignment deadlines are looming, so remember we are here to help and we hope you enjoy our quiet study atmosphere as you prepare for assignment deadlines and get ready for end-of term exams. Remember the holiday season will be upon us before long and then we all get to take a well-earned break!