This collection of nine papers aims to provide business librarians with current information on available Internet resources, as well as illustrate how librarians and users can collaborate to build productive partnerships.
The work is split into two parts ‐ “Business services and the internet and networking”. It also contains indexing and abstracting details, special bibliographic notes, a comprehensive index, references, as well as providing order forms for the Howarth document delivery service.
The editor, Katherine Shelfer, is also co‐author of one of the papers presented in this volume. In her introduction she stresses a need for librarians to market themselves and develop lasting partnerships with their users. She proceeds to offer a synopsis of how the co‐authored papers in this volume, demonstrate “that the strategic alliance concept is alive and well.” She hammers this point home in her closing remarks, commenting that “this series of papers included faculty, students, external users, non‐librarian supervisors, and other librarians as co‐authors. Clearly collaboration is alive and well.”
Interest sparked, the volume then launches into the first section, promisingly called “Business services and the Internet”. Jeanie Welch and William King report on a project in which librarians and a management professor combined forces: “Using the internet to teach US business research to students of English as a second language”. The paper, like others in the volume, comprises a summary, background to the project, discussion of the project, evaluation and conclusions. The project was carried out at the American Graduate School of International Management, which has a large English as a second language programme, with the assistance of business librarians from other institutions. A major part of the student programme involved finding information about a US company and its place in its industry. The paper discusses the structuring of the course, the creation of the Website, the collaboration between the lecture and the business librarian and the effect of the Website on the quality and quantity of students’ research. These all appear as statements of fact and fail to go into sufficient detail. We are told a Website was created but scant mention is made of processes involved, technology used or problems encountered. The title of the paper is slightly misleading, the “teaching” consisting of a one‐hour library instruction session and a handout of Internet “basics”. Professionals looking to this paper as a prototype will find little of practical use to assist them in setting up a similar service.
Luckily the volume does not continue in this vein, as can be seen in Katherine Shelfer and Chase Crawford’s paper “Developing an internet site for school business officials;benefits of a reference librarian ‐ external User partnership”. The paper describes how an academic business reference librarian and an external user worked together to identify useful Internet resources, which resulted in direct benefits for the libraries’ primary users. The paper paints a vivid picture of all the processes involved from inception of the project, hurdles encountered through to implementation. The benefits of this partnership can be clearly seen; the librarian is introduced to the other types of user information needs, as perceived by the user. Although heavily US biased the paper provides examples of information categories covered for the business official’s links‐led Website; these categories can be easily used by professionals anywhere else in the world to set up a similar site.
In the paper “Company information on the World Wide Web: using corporate home pages to supplement traditional business resources”, Joseph LaRose outlines the benefits of using company Websites to supplement traditional business resources. As well as listing many useful URLs (once again heavily US biased) the paper also provides a comprehensive guide to the major search engines, outlining search strategies for each, including the use of Boolean operators. The paper is clearly written, avoiding unnecessary use of jargon, and should provide a useful overview to anyone seeking to use the WWW to gather business information.
The section on “Networking”, as the title suggests, contains six papers outlining partnership projects. Linda Medaris and Mark Manley’s paper, “Building a better mousetrap; networking with community business resources”, describes how librarian and community business consultant partnerships can assist new product developers. The paper provides much useful information on the patent search and product development process, and should prove useful to UK professionals, as well as US.
Under the banner “The information specialist customer partnership”, Christine Bennett and Duane Wapp report on three partnership projects. The paper fails to do much other than provide an overview of duties, which can be performed by information specialists. It fails to provide detailed information on the projects undertaken or clear evidence of how partnerships were developed.
“Information seeking behaviour of business students: a research study”, by Joseph Atkinson and Miguel Figueroa, describes a joint librarian‐student research project, to investigate library use and research behaviour of business students. Although it provides a detailed description of the survey undertaken, including methodology and results, the paper offers little evidence of the partnership relationship. There is little new information in this paper, summed up by the authors’ statement that “findings confirm assumptions of business students’ behaviour in the earlier literature.”
Of a more useful nature, is the paper by Paula Crawford and Thomas Barrett, “The reference librarian and the business professor: a strategic alliance that works”. The authors realised the value of pooling limited resources, skills and capabilities to achieve a common objective. This stimulating paper focuses on the background, problem recognition,challenges, problems, outcomes and, importantly, the future. (A factor which many of the other papers seem to have completely overlooked.) The clear benefits of the programme to the students can be seen, coupled with a demonstration of how to set realistic achievable targets. Problems encountered are taken on board as lessons learned. This paper should prove interesting reading as a useful overview for anyone seeking to establish a joint library‐academic user education programme.
Maybe better placed in the “Business services and the Internet section is bibliographic instruction for business classes: how to avoid information overload” by Barbara Huett, Amy Sims and Vanessa Villalon. This paper outlines a co‐operative venture to assess and improve methods of bibliographic instruction for business classes. Bibliographic instruction sessions were set up for students following feedback from academics and students. Although the project identifies nothing new (most academic libraries run similar sessions) the handouts from the sessions, which are reproduced here, may provide US readers with a useful guide to business resources. The URLs of business, newspaper and government sites on the WWW, as well as details of directories, indexes, etc., available, are all listed in the handout notes. Also useful are the session evaluations from a student point of view, a perspective rarely heard in the literature.
The final paper in the volume is “Reference services and collection development: faculty outreach through the campus network” by Elizabeth Simmons and Randall MacDonald. The paper aims to demonstrate that partnerships between the library and academics ensure that curricular needs are satisfied. The arrival of a campus network gave the library the opportunity to improve communications with the college community and establish itself as a leader in using new technologies. The project, however, is in its infant state, so the paper is unable to provide much in the way of an assessment on the effectiveness of the programme. The enthusiasm for the project is evident in the paper, but the project is not yet at a stage where it could draw quantifiable data to establish the effectiveness of efforts. Perhaps a future paper, as the project progresses, will provide more enlightening data!
Although it contains many interesting papers, for the most part this volume does not achieve the aims suggested in its title. Readers looking for information on business services and the Internet will find more useful publications widely available. The “Networking” section, offers little new information, with most UK professionals probably finding themselves already ahead in many of the fields, as described in this volume. The heavy American bias may make the volume more attractive to audiences in the USA, while library students may find it useful background reading to support learning. In summary, at times, an interesting read, but by no means an essential acquisition for UK information professionals.
