Five Days of Ford – Reference

August 10th, 2011

Five Days of Ford

Day Three is all about “Reference”.

Reference help is the guidance our librarians give you with locating and using resources for your classwork, and job search.

Here’s the third survey link. Thanks for your participation!

Five Days of Ford – Circulation

August 9th, 2011

Five Days of Ford

Day Two introduces you to “circulation”.

When books are checked out and checked in by borrowers, they’re said to be “circulating” — like blood cells carrying the oxygen of knowledge through our student body :-).

Here’s the second survey link.  Thanks for your participation!

Five Days of Ford – Connect!

August 8th, 2011

Five Days of Ford, Day 1

Day One of the 5 Days of Ford invites you to engage with our social media outlets. Get to know our presence on these sites and connect with us!

Here’s the first survey link.  Let the games begin, and thanks for your participation!

Book Review: Reckles$ Endangerment

August 8th, 2011

image courtesy amazon.com

Morgenson, Gretchen and Joshua Rosner. Reckles$ endangerment : how outsized ambition, greed, and corruption led to economic armageddon. Henry Holt and Co., 2011.

Why read another book on the housing bubble and financial crisis that led to the recent recession? If you have read the numerous other books released in the past several years and are not familiar with name James Johnson, then that is a reason enough.

The other accounts have understated the role of Johnson, the Chief Executive of Fannie Mae from 1991-1998. Gretchen Morgenson, a New York Times reporter, and Joshua Rosner, an adviser to the financial industry, target Johnson as the architect of the private-public partnership to promote the home ownership drive.

Interestingly, Johnson and the other players in the book draw strikingly familiar parallels to Ayn Rand’s characters a half century ago. Rand demonstrated what can happen if unscrupulous characters in the private sector and the government form an alliance. Although Rand’s characters are fictional, unfortunately Reckless Endangerment’s are not.
Read more …

Sister Jane Welcomes Thee!

August 3rd, 2011

We’ve taken a vow to help you get all you can out of our services and resources.

Book Review: Tears of a Clown

August 1st, 2011

image courtesy amazon.com

Milbank, Dana. Tears of a clown : Glenn Beck and the tea bagging of America. Doubleday, 2010.

Casey Anthony was declared not guilty and released from prison in July.  People were outraged.  Crowds chanted outside the prison.  Facebook and Twitter exploded with emotion.  Celebrities vented their shock and disbelief.  Even Kim Kardashian said she was speechless, and it was her father who got O.J. Simpson off from his murder charge.

Many people enjoy being outraged, the intense emotion providing a rush, spiking excitement into an ordinary day.  If you enjoy raging against the atrocious, consider the book Tears of a Clown, by Dana Milbank.

Author and journalist Dana Milbank tells the story of how a self-confessed “recovering dirtbag” ends up as the deranged and/or brilliant Glenn Beck on Fox television, where he rants nightly, shouting, smiling and weeping.  Beck refers to himself as a schmo, yet he lives in a walled community in Connecticut and manages a business empire earning $32 million a year.  He calls his enemies Nazis, makes anti-Semitic remarks and lambasts the “evil SOB, Woodrow Wilson.”  Beck lies, exaggerates, and distorts the truth.  But Milbank says all the craziness is for show and Beck is a gifted performer.

Since this book was written, Beck lost his spot on Fox, because his ratings fell to rock bottom and ad revenues dried up.  His last show was on June 30.  Without a TV platform, Beck and his media business may fade into the woodwork.    But for now, Milbank’s book makes for entertaining reading.

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

New Movies for July

July 28th, 2011

Here are our latest additions to the DVD collection:

13 Assassins
The Adjustment Bureau
Alpha and Omega
Another Year
Battle : Los Angeles
Biutiful
Ceremony
Cruzando
Happythankyoumoreplease

How Do You Know
Insidious
I Spit on Your Grave
The Lincoln Lawyer
Of Gods and Men
Patiala House
The Season of the Witch
Sucker Punch
Wake Wood

New Movies for July

July 11th, 2011

Our latest titles for this month:

Black Death
Blue Valentine
The Company Men
Gnomeo & Juliet
Hall Pass
Just Go With It
Kill the Irishman
No Strings Attached
Passion Play
Pontypool
Red Riding Hood
Sanctum
True Grit

The Conference Board

July 11th, 2011

Founded in 1916, The Conference Board is an independent research group that focuses on corporate leadership; economies, markets and value creation; high-performing organizations; and human capital.  Their reports are considered by corporate decision makers to be the best on key issues such as economic analysis as well as management, leadership, and corporate citizenship best practices.

In addition to their white papers, The Conference Board is also known for its Consumer Confidence Survey as well as its annual executive salary report.

Though not a resource used by our students daily, it is one that is essential to business leaders looking for trusted, thorough analysis on today’s most important issues.

Fourth of July Hours & News

July 1st, 2011

Happy 4th of July!

Ford Library will be closed Saturday, July 2nd through Monday, July 4th in observance of Independence Day. Our summer hours will resume on Tuesday, July 5th.

In other important news ….

Duke Libraries will be releasing a newly designed online library catalog on Tuesday, July 5th. The new catalog design will be based on that of  Search TRLN (http://search.trln.org/) but will limit searches to Duke materials and have  Duke-specific branding.  The new catalog will allow users to immediately access features in Search TRLN (‘shopping cart’ feature, ILL requests from the catalog, viewing TRLN holdings within the Duke catalog), any future additional TRLN functionality and will provide faster search results.

You can view a demo of the new catalog design here. Please note that before the live date, the information in the catalog won’t be current, and any requests made won’t actually happen, but you’ll be able to get a sense of how it will look and function.

Ford Library will be performing annual maintenance on our Database Room workstations from July 5 – July 11. Only a limited number of workstations may be available for your use during this time, so please plan your work accordingly.

Wishing you a safe and relaxing Fourth of July!