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Fall 2003 • page 14 Tomalee DOAN Library Director Kristine FERRY Advanced Technologies Librarian Kresge Business Administration Library Michigan Business School Providing quality services for different audiences in academic environments can be difficult particularly in the current budget crunch. The Kresge Business Administration Library, winner of the Business & Finance Division’s 2003 Center of Excellence for Service Award had to come up with some creative ideas to let their constituents know, that despite the growth of online information, library staff do make a difference and can offer them quality service and solutions to their information needs. The Kresge Business Administration Library serves the Michigan Business School, one of the top–ranked business schools in the country and recently ranked number 2 by The Wall Street Journal. The business school has approximately 856 full–time students and 1400 part–time students. In addition to the students, faculty, PhDs, and staff we also support the school’s related programs and institutes such as the Executive Education Program, William Davidson Institute and Mitsui Life Financial Research Center. Independent of the University of Michigan Library, we also provide information and services to our alumni, researchers from around the world and the general public. The library staff consists of 7 librarians, 12 support staff and numerous temporary staff who are mostly students. Our goal is to provide our various constituents with information when and where they need it by providing excellent customer service and offering innovative instruction and support. By constantly assessing our services, we are able to meet and exceed our constituents’ needs and offer them timely value–added products. There are six services that show creative solutions to common problems. • Digitizing career resources to keep them current and enable students to prepare for interviews regardless of their location. • Leveraging Kresge’s licensed databases to lower costs to students for printed course Business & Finance Division Bulletin • number 124 CENTERS OF EXCELLENCE AWARD WINNER FOR SERVICE: CUSTOMIZING SERVICES FOR MULTIPLE CONSTITUENT GROUPS IN AN ACADEMIC ENVIRONMENT materials and integrate library resources into web–based course management software. • Partnering with Business School’s Computing Services department to create an online learning module called Core Knowledge which allows for on–demand learning about our technology environment. • Assigning librarians to specific Multidisciplinary Action Projects student teams and creating collaborative team web spaces so that students can communicate with each other and librarians for the duration of their project even when they are overseas. • Creating the Faculty Research Service where librarians work on in–depth research questions providing research strategies and results. • Contributing to Business School’s life– long learning initiative by providing alumni access to licensed databases. My interview is tomorrow. I need information FAST! On campus recruiting of our students by companies is an essential function of the school. Interviews are competitive and students feel they can make or break their careers during these meetings. At the same time, companies expect the students to be well prepared. Kresge assists in this preparation by offering a variety of career resources. We converted our collection of over 600 company files into an electronic format. These files contained paper clippings of company–specific newspaper articles and company literature. These files were difficult to maintain and were susceptible to theft. Now each recruiting company has its own web page which contains a durable link to Gale’s Business & Company Resource Center. Every time a student clicks on the link the search is refreshed so that students get the most current news at any time. Material provided by the company is scanned and placed on the web site so all students have the same advantage. Pages also include links to other materials on the company in our catalog and key links to the company’s web site and annual report if available.
Business & Finance Division Bulletin • number 124 In addition, we provide a link to that company’s Insider Guide by WetFeet.com if available. Why are my course materials so expensive? The course materials production process and staff were recently incorporated into the library. Kresge staff is now responsible for producing course materials for the entire business school including obtaining copyright, payment and distribution to students. A study of course materials determined 70% of the items were available from library databases. Leveraging the content of our subscription databases, we are able to offer these electronic course materials as well as those that require copyright. Having administrative rights to all of the business school web sites in the course management software gives us access to post materials. This has caused the costs of course materials to students to be lowered considerably. Students can save up to 48% of traditional course materials costs. Working with the University of Michigan Printing Services we are also able to offer a print solution. I just started working here and a professor needs me to find an article for his class today. I don’t even know where to start. Kresge Library partnered with our computing department in a program called Core Knowledge available at http://mtrack.bus.umich.edu/ coreknowledge/default.htm . This program first designed for faculty and staff, but soon to be released to students, is geared towards making the most of the business school’s technological environment. Users can use Core Knowledge to take a self–assessment in different information technology areas including one called Making the Most of the Kresge Library. They can then take self–paced tutorials which include web– based videos to help improve their skills. They can also arrange to have a live session with an instructor on a one–to–one or group basis. This allows users to learn on demand no matter where they are located. I’m in India and my group needs to know what the market for castors is like here. Each year, the business school sends out approximately 300 MBA students to work on Multidisciplinary Action Projects, (MAP). MAP is the flagship course of the Michigan Business Fall 2003 • page 15 CENTERS OF EXCELLENCE AWARD FOR SERVICE: The Kresge Business Administration Library School. The students work on MAP projects for real companies both here in the U.S. and abroad. The primary instructional objectives of MAP are to develop personal abilities, professional competencies, and academic knowledge that increase the likelihood of career success. MAP allows students to ‘learn by doing’ in a real business setting. These students often need assistance with research and competitive intelligence strategies. Web–based group workspaces are created by the library so students can communicate with each other and have a central place to store their work. Their faculty advisor and assigned librarian also have access to this site. Librarians meet with each group before they go to their companies and offer strategies to assist them in their research. In addition, a basic set of company research is done for them and posted in the workspaces. Throughout the term, when the teams are onsite with the company they can continue to work with their librarian who can post relevant resources in the group site. Our librarians became an integral part of the resource development needs of the group and correspondence between the students and librarians continues even when the students are in different countries. I need some hard–to–find information for my manuscript. Librarians were spending a lot of time on in– depth reference questions given to them by faculty. These questions were no longer coming to us through our Information Services Desk but rather through email. In December, we launched a new service for faculty called the Faculty Research Service. In collaboration with our Research Computing department, we are offering in–depth research consultation for faculty looking for qualitative and quantitative data. All questions and answering strategies are stored in a knowledge database. Faculty fill out an online form available at http:// eres.bus.umich.edu/web/facultyresearch. html . Librarians meet with faculty to negotiate the scope and time of the project and offer strategies and other assistance. This service allows us to keep better statistics on the types of reference questions we handle and the amount of time we spend on them. We created new metrics to help us channel these requests to the appropriate people. Any question that would take less than one hour to answer is handled by
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