Ford Library

The WRDS web site will be unavailable during scheduled maintenance from 12:00 noon – 8:00pm EST on Tuesday, September 29, 2009.

However, access should continue for for faculty and PhD users accessing WRDS through UNIX and PC SAS Connect. Interactive queries during this period should also continue to run unaffected.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused by this peak use time outage. The services of a non-WRDS IT contractor, who was available only during business hours, were required to complete the upgrade.

View a list of the affected databases.

If you experience difficulty connecting to the WRDS web site after 8pm tomorrow, please send an email to reference-librarians@fuqua.duke.edu.

The end of the Bernie Madoff story has yet to be written, but books are already rolling off the presses, including five books in the month of August alone.

Here is a list of titles just purchased by the Ford Library last week.

• Betrayal: The life and lies of Bernie Madoff
  by Andrew Kirtzman
  Written like a novel, this book is the most readable of the lot, and gives readers an inside look at Madoff, his family and the investors.
• Too Good to be True: The rise and fall of Bernie Madoff
  by Erin Arvedlund
  A well researched book by an investigative journalist, who first warned investors about Madoff in Barrons in 2001, providing the clear explanations about how hedge funds and Madoff’s scam worked.
• Madoff with the Money
  by Jerry Oppenheimer
  A portrait of Madoff as a flawed man, as revealed through anecdotes from his family, friends and business associates.
• Catastrophe: The story of Bernard L. Madoff, the man who swindled the world
  by Deborah and Gerald Strober
  One of the first books about Madoff,  published by two historians in March 2009, is a chronicle of the weeks immediately before and after Madoff’s arrest.
• Bernard Madoff: Masterminding a billion dollar fraud
  by Filiquarian Publishing, LLC
  A summary of news articles about the Madoff scandal.

Tip: If any of these books are currently checked out, you can recall them by clicking the “Get this Title” text in the catalog record when you follow the links above. More about recalls …

© Reviewer: Meg Trauner & Ford Library – Fuqua School of Business.
All rights reserved.

All ProQuest databases (including ABI-INFORM Complete) will be temporarily unavailable this weekend while the vendor performs necessary system maintenance.

This maintenance outage will take place from Saturday, September 26, 2009, at 11:00pm EST to Sunday, September 27, 2009 at 10:00am EST.

Fuqua & Duke users may select alternative databases for article searches during the maintenance window by visiting our Databases By Subject page.

Thanks for your patience during this essential maintenance.

.

UPDATED: The popular Vault.com Online Career Library web site will be rolling out a major redesign on Tuesday, October 6th. Monday, September 28th

.

In addition to a re-branding of the site, here is a quick summary of the changes and how they will affect your use of the site.

• Fuqua School of Business students, faculty, & staff only will continue to access the new Vault Career Insider site from Ford Library’s secure web page link at: http://library.fuqua.duke.edu/internal/vaultlib.htm
• The new site is designed to be personalized, so you will need to create an individual user account after connecting. Although, this may add an extra step to your access, there are several benefits: (more…)

Latest titles are:

Pride and Glory
Rudo y Cursi
State of Play
Sugar
Sunshine Cleaning
Tom and Jerry’s Greatest Chases
Trouble the Water
Velveteen Rabbit
Yes Man

Nilekani, Nandan. Imagining India : the idea of a renewed nation. Penguin Press, 2009.

Software entrepreneur Nandan Nilekani is proud of the economic progress made by India in the last 25 years, but senses that the inequities that remain are limiting India’s ability to take full advantage of global opportunities. The challenges must be resolved before India can rise to a new level of prosperity, yet within India, there is resistance.

Nilekani posits that ideas lead economic and social policy. He explains the evolution of ideas in India, including core beliefs among the population. He discusses changes in attitudes that are the heart of India’s success, some of which have been implemented and others that have yet to see results. He sees India’s human capital, English proficiency and information technology as huge advantages in a globalized world.

The most important driver for growth lies in expanding access to resources and opportunity. Nilekani charts a new way forward for a young and impatient nation.

© Reviewer: Meg Trauner & Ford Library – Fuqua School of Business.
All rights reserved.

The Director’s Picks

Fuqua School Dean Blair Sheppard asked Ford Library Director, Meg Trauner to select 5 recent business books that should “be on his nightstand”.

Click the titles below for information on location and availability.

• The Post American World by Fareed Zakaria
  – Optimistic view of a world no longer dominated by the U.S.
  – Also available as an audiobook.
• What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis
  – Control is out. Connection is in.
  – Also available as an audiobook.
  – Read the full review.
• How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer
  – Based on new research in neuroscience.
  – Read the full review.
• Imagining India: the idea of a renewed nation by Nandan Nilekani
  – Cultural intelligence on how India operates.
• Fool’s Gold: How the bold dream of a small tribe at J.P. Morgan was corrupted by Wall Street greed and unleashed a catastrophe by Gillian Tett
  – Gripping narrative and education on derivatives.
  – Read the full review.

Tett, Gillian. Food’s Gold: How the bold dream of a small tribe at J.P.Morgan was corrupted by Wall Street greed and unleashed a catastrophe. Free Press, 2009.

In 2003, Warren Buffet described derivatives as “financial weapons of mass destruction.” He was later proved to be a prophet. Yet a decade earlier, when credit derivatives were first conceived, they appeared to be a win-win for the financial world, freeing up capital, diversifying risk and increasing profits.

This is the story of a small group of young employees at J.P.Morgan investment bank, who discovered the latent power of derivatives, products which initially seemed so promising, but later evolving into cyber-world instruments that even the financiers struggled to understand.

Fool’s Gold is a lively narrative that reports behind the scenes about the workings of an elite company and its bankers. The story also describes the complicated financial instruments and shows how they combined with greed and stupidity to create a global financial disaster.

© Reviewer: Meg Trauner & Ford Library – Fuqua School of Business.
All rights reserved.

David Silverman, Harvard Business Blog author, tells you how to “Ask a (Near) Stranger for a Favor“.  Make sure your email to those possible professional contacts isn’t overlooked or deleted outright.

Jarvis, Jeff. What would Google do?. Collins Business, 2009.

Media leader and founder of Entertainment Weekly, Jeff Jarvis, describes Google as the first post-media company. He analyzes company principles and shows how companies, organizations and people can use Google’s worldview to re-engineer their own strategy and behavior.

In business, the mass market is gone. Today’s economy is a mass of niches. Google goes to where the customers are, instead of requiring the customers to come to Google. As a network and platform, Google organizes and distributes content to an enormous market and payment is made by people and companies who want to reach that market.

For example, in the old economy, the media covered the cost of publications by charging readers and viewers. In the new economy, the publications are free — media charge advertisers for reaching the customers.

Author Jeff Jarvis recommends that every human being needs a search presence on Google. “Today, if you can’t be found in Google, you might as well not exist.” Exaggeration and hyperbole are abundant in this book. Yet the underlying ideas ring true and the conversational style makes this book an interesting read.

This title is also available in audiobook format in Ford Library.

© Reviewer: Meg Trauner & Ford Library – Fuqua School of Business.
All rights reserved.