Ford Library

Here are a few older DVDs worth checking out:

• Gosford Park–Written by Downton Abbey scribe, Julian Fellows, this film is a murder mystery set at an English country estate. The upstairs/downstairs class division present even inthe 1930s facilitates director Robert Altman’s penchant for overlapping dialogue and numerous subplots. This Academy Award winner won Best Original Screenplay and features an all-star cast including Helen Mirren, Maggie Smith, Emily Watson and Kristin Scott Thomas.
• Bleak House–Not a movie, but a Masterpiece Theater production, this miniseries features Charles Dance (Game of Thrones, Lord Tywin Lannister) and Gillian Anderson in Dickens’ indictment of the Victorian legal system. Plot twists, a murder mystery and an infamous inheritance are at the center of this multi-character epic.
• Death at a Funeral–Featuring a key role by another Game of Thrones favorite, Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister), this  drawing room comedy features plenty of sight gags. At the funeral of the family patriarch things get off to a bad start when the wrong corpse is delivered, and things go downhill from there. A far funnier film than the American remake.

Do you know how to respond to an interviewer who has just asked you to tell them about yourself, your weaknesses, or your accomplishments? Fall interview season is here, and employers agree that the key to interview success is preparation. Ford Library offers several new titles on career planning filled with sample interview questions and responses, advice on overcoming interview jitters and avoiding common mistakes, and practical guidance on finding a meaningful career. Visit our career book display or follow the links below to place your hold today.

CAREER PLANNING

Dan Beaudry. Power ties: the international student’s guide to finding a job in the United States.

Drew Tewell. The dream job program: get the job you want. 1^st ed.

Gayle Laakmann McDowell. The Google resume: how to prepare for a career and land a job at Apple, Microsoft, Google, or any top tech company.

Gillian D. Elcock. How to get an equity research analyst job: a guide to starting a career in asset management.

Heather Krasna; with a foreword from Max Stier. Jobs that matter: find a stable, fulfilling career in public service.

Lily Madeleine Whiteman. How to land a top-paying federal job: your complete guide to opportunities, internships, résumés and cover letters, networking, interviews, salaries, promotions, and more! 2^nd ed.

Michael Farr and Laurence Shatkin; foreword by Kristine Dobson. 50 best jobs for your personality. 2^nd ed.

Shelly Cryer. The nonprofit career guide: how to land a job that makes a difference.

INTERVIEW SKILLS

Alison Doyle’s job search guidebook.

Enrico Moretti. The new geography of jobs.

(more…)

If you’ve seen the movie The Iron Giant, you know it’s about a boy and his enormous robot which is capable of doing just about anything and doing it loudly.  In a nutshell, that’s how I describe Bloomberg.  Where  most news services are pulling back on coverage, Bloomberg is expanding.  Name an esoteric market instrument and Bloomberg probably carries its data.  From around the world to your town’s latest bond offering, Bloomberg covers just about everything market related, which may be why this Goliath commands an estimated third of the $16B global financial data market.

Used by our finance students, Bloomberg is also popular with faculty performing research due to the system’s large data footprint and its easy-to-use Excel add-in. Initial training on the system can take no more than 20 minutes for the new user to be up and searching, or they can enroll into Bloomberg University through the system to gain more expert knowledge.  An added bonus, it provides a responsive help desk via chat.

There are drawbacks for the academic user.  Because its software is loaded on individual computers, it can’t be accessed through the web.  And though it contains an enormous data warehouse, it’s hard to say exactly what’s in there other than to dig through the search engine.  Like the Iron Giant, Bloomberg is not the nimblest resource out there, but in terms of comprehensive news and financial information, it’s hard to beat.

Datamonitor 360 has changed its name to MarketLine Advantage. MarketLine Advantage and Datamonitor 360 will both remain available to users until July 31. After July 31, links to Datamonitor 360 will be removed from Duke Libraries catalog systems and web pages.

A change in database content is also pending. After August 31, 2012, Business Insights industry report content on MarketLine Advantage will no longer be available to academic customers.

For an end user, the design and functionality of the MarketLine Advantage web site is almost identical to that of Datamonitor 360.  But we encourage users to begin conducting their research now on the MarketLine Advantage site, linked from our Ford Library Databases page.

Links to MarketLine Advantage will also be available in Duke Libraries catalog system and other web pages during the 2nd week of July 2012.

This is advance notice that effective June 30, 2012, The Economist magazine will no longer be available in Duke Libraries subscription to the Factiva database.

However, the current full text of The Economist will continue to be available via the ABI/INFORM Complete database; and full text and full image of The Economist will continue to be available via the EIU database.

If you have any questions or concerns, email us at reference-librarians@fuqua.duke.edu.

Learning a language as a high school student, I thought I would never use it.  Who spoke Spanish in rural North Carolina in the 1970s?  Fast forward many years and you’ll find amazing little tiendas and taquerías selling everything from tortas to Tejano CDs.  Sure wish I’d paid closer attention to Senorita Black all those years ago.

So now on my bucket list?  Learn to speak Spanish.  Luckily the Duke Libraries now subscribe to a new language instruction resource called Byki Online.  With over 70 languages, from Afrikaans to Zulu, you’ll find blogs, flashcards, words-of-the-day, and many other tools to speed your conversational skills.

You can locate additional information here, and after signing up, start your new language adventure.

With only a few weeks before graduation, many of our students have accepted positions and look forward to a new employer.  However,  for those  still looking for that elusive company that fits their needs, I recommend Onesource.

A jack-of-all-trades database, Onesource allows students to build a list of companies meeting their needs for where they want to work, which industry, how large or small, and/or whether the headquarters are in the US with subsidiaries in Tahiti.  From that list, they can download the list and include data such as location, size, and officers names’ and titles.

Though Onesource can’t tell you if there’s a job opening within a company, it can help you pinpoint your search to a select list.  Need more information?  Feel free to ask us now.

At this time of the year, we’re usually elbows deep in working with students’ who are searching for a job.  This means we’re leading job hunters workshops, some aimed at either our international students who would like to remain in the US.  Finding companies with a history of filing H1B visa, which allows them to hire foreign employees, has not always been easy to find.  Oh yes, the data is out there.  The US Department of Labor collects it and makes it available as an Acess database.  But it’s a huge, hard to search, set.

Now, we have access to that data through GoingGlobal.  By clicking the link to H1B Info, Fuqua users can locate companies by city, state, and industry which can be sorted by job title, wage, and number of H1B petitions.  Being able to locate these companies helps our students narrow their search by focusing on companies who are willing to work with them in their pursuit to work in the US.

Need help searching GoingGlobal?  Feel freen to contact me and I’ll walk you through it.

Through the years, Fuqua’s collaboration with other Duke University schools, including the engineering and medical schools, has increased which has corresponded with our need to provide more in-depth research on biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and energy markets.  To assist our students looking for these reports, we’ve turned to BCC Research.

A major strength for BCC  is their use of experts within the industry to analyze and write the reports.  Though it’s not a database I suggest for many of our student projects, it is one I see as an outstanding resource for the whole Duke community.

Need more information on BCC?  Feel free to email me.

A French film based on several true stories, Joyeux Noel takes place along the Western Front in World War I when the Scottish, French and German infantry units declare a truce on Christmas Eve. The movie was a Golden Globe, Academy Award and BAFTA nominee in 2006. War movies are unusual Christmas fare, but this film is hopeful without overindulging in sentimentality or brutality.

A Nightmare Before Christmas showcases Tim Burton’s peculiar brand of dark wackiness and is great fun. Jack Skellington, King of Halloween, grows bored with his own holiday and tries to take over Christmas with disastrous results. It’s a film worth watching if only to hear Ken Page, playing a gambling bogeyman, sing the Oogie Boogie song.

A rare R-rated comedy, Bad Santa features Billie Bob Thorton as Willie, a foul-mouthed drunken reprobate who makes a living robbing malls after scoping them out by getting hired as Santa. Not a movie for the easily offended, Bad Santa does have some truly hilarious dialogue. Watch it after the kids have gone to bed.