This group of pages contains all the choices you have for assignment No. 4 listed under Course Requirements in the study guide. Note that you have several choices of options for some of them.

CHOICE NUMBER 1:

Using a business information scenario of your choice (e.g., academic, public, special, information center, marketing research, private entrepreneur, etc.) write a 3-4 page double-spaced memo on why you believe that a specific business related database product (this can be a CD-ROM product, a fee-based database service available via the Web for subscription, or a combination of the two) of your choice should be purchased for the library or information center. In writing this essay, be sure to take into account at least the following issues:

1. Nature of the user population being served
2. How the selected product fits in with your collection development plan and budget (be realistic!)
3. The characteristics (costs, coverage, frequency of update, quality, etc) of the selected product and why it is the best use of  your money
4. Why this product has been selected instead of some other competing products (name those competing products).
5. Any additional equipment needed to make it work, staff training needed, and any related problems (e.g., user education)
6. Any other factors associated with your place or this product as it relates to your specific situation (e.g., relationship to curriculum, faculty needs, user traditions, other locations or off-site users, license requirements, likely frequency of use, etc.)

You may find it wise to search Library Literature and other indexes for items of general applicability to the problem or specifically appropriate to your product or type of situation.
 

CHOICE NUMBER 2:

Option A

You have been a general reference librarian at Midsize University Library for the past 3 years. Recently you applied for and received the job of establishing the Business School Library (a branch of the main library). The Business School has a good undergraduate program (about 500 majors in Business) and a new MBA program (about 50 now growing to 150 over the next 3 years). It has about 50 faculty with a wide variety of interests in business.

You receive the following memo from the Director of the main library:

To: Librarian, Business School Library
From: Robert V. Williams, Dir., Midsize Univ. Library
Subject: New Library

As you know, we need to get started on our planning for the Business School Library. Please give me a memo by________ on your general plans for developing the collection. In your memo please address in some detail your plans for at least the following areas:

1. Reference collection: what will it be like and approx. how much will it cost each year.
2. Journal collection: general periodicals; faculty research journals; etc.
3. Stack collection: some rough and general estimates of what will be in it and how much annual costs might be. 

I am not so much concerned with a listing of particular titles of journals, books reference works, services, etc. that you will select for the collection. What I do need is a plan that will detail categories of types of materials and subject areas to be covered. Give approximate costs in each major area (eg., real estate, accounting, investments, etc.). You could show illustrative titles of major services or titles in these areas if it is helpful. I also need to know those areas or types of materials (eg. government document) in the main library that you will want to duplicate in the Business Library. Naturally, duplication should be kept to a minimum but do not harm the level of service that you aspire to maintain.

The maximum budget for the FY is about $50,000. The main library will handle all technical services work for you and maintain the card catalog in your library (with titles also cataloged in the main library). You will have 2 library assistants assigned to the library.
 

Collection Development Option B

You have just taken a job as the first librarian at Williams and Associates a large general management consulting company located Columbia, SC. W&A serves a varied group of clients worldwide in business and industry but particularly specializes in textile company management consulting (but not the scientific and technical side of textile manufacturing). W and A also has an affiliated company, Investors, Inc., that manages the personal portfolios of textile company executives and company pension funds. You have been with the company for about 3 months, learned your way around and have already incorporated the small "office libraries" into your library but find that this really does not make much of a systematic collection. You receive the following memo from the president of the Company.

To: The Director of the Library
From: Robert V. Williams, President
Subject: Objectives, Plans and Finances of the Library for the next 3 years

Now that you have been with the company for three months, we need to begin making specific plans for the library over the next three years. Please give me a memo by ____ that describes these plans. The memo should include at least the following:

(1) Your general objectives for the library with emphasis on the types of services you will provide;
(2) A broad outline of your plans for collection development supplementing it with some details on the types of materials (journals, statistical sources, investment services, company annual reports, government documents, etc.) you will need. (I do not need a listing of titles but you might cite a few as examples of the kinds of things you intend to purchase.)
(3) A rough breakdown of anticipated annual costs over the next 3 years for collection development by suitable categories of materials. (There is no need to give the costs of individual items but cost should be categorized in some way.) If you plan on using online database searching to any extent, you should estimate costs.

I think that covers the essentials of what I need to know. I will leave the problems of cataloging, processing and arrangement to you and your staff (two para-professionals should join you in a few weeks). As I am sure you recall from our earlier discussions, I hope to keep the materials costs for the library under $20,000 a year (with about a 10% increase per year in that figure). 

Collection Development  Option C

You have just taken a job at New Town Public Library and have been placed in charge of a new reference department that is forming to serve local business and industry. New Town is about 100,000 in population, with light industry (textiles, some product manufacturing, etc.), traditional businesses (merchants, insurance, banks, etc.) and is rapidly becoming a center for new high technology industries (computer software and hardware, semiconductors, etc.). New Town State College, a general, all purpose college, is located about 10 miles out of town and has about 5,000 students.

You receive the following memo from the director of the library: 

To: Business Reference Services Librarian

From: Robert V. Williams, Dir.

Subject: Collection Development for Business Reference

I am pleased that you have taken on the responsibility of developing, within the context of the General Reference Dept., reference services for business and industry. Because of fairly rapid changes in the last few years in the amount of new business and industry moving into New Town, you will want to immediately address the issue of collection development. As you have no doubt surmised from your few weeks here, we are not well equipped to deal with reference work in this area even though we do have an excellent general reference collection. I think you can safely assume that we will continue to have excellent cooperation with New Town State College Library but you might want to indicate just how you will rely on them. 

Please send me a memo by______outlining your general plans for developing the reference collection in business and industry. This plan should include attention to the ready reference collection and a good "stack" reference collection in your area of specialization. It would be very useful to me if you could detail your major objectives for collection development in this area. You need to consider the needs of the small investor, the local business community, students and the general public. I particularly want you to be able to serve the needs of the new industry coming into town and to have adequate information available on all local business and industry. I am particularly concerned that we do not have detailed information on our local companies.

It is not necessary to list all the titles (journals, services, monographs, etc.) that you will buy but it would be helpful to me if you would illustrate your categories with examples of titles that you are considering for purchase. What I need right now is a plan and that plan can be rather general in terms of the specific titles that you will buy when we implement the final plan. On funds, it is necessary that you keep the first year's expenditures in the neighborhood of $25,000, with about 15,000 for the next two years. Again, I do not need specific costs of titles but you might give rough indications of how your various categories break down in terms of rough costs. 
 

CHOICE NUMBER 3:

There is a lot of good stuff and a lot of bad stuff on the Web these days, particularly in the area of business. How do you tell the difference? What makes one Web site on a particular topic better than another? What determines trustworthiness of the information on a Web site? Can you rely on any of the usual things that librarians/information professionals have used to determine quality of (usually published) information? What is good organization of a Web site--or pages on a Web site? When do you need a search engine? What is a good search engine? And, so forth. 

Your job in this assignment is to:

1. Choose a business related topic of interest to you that has at least 10-15 Web sites. 
2. Using what you know (and we will cover some of this in class but you will also need to read on your own) about the evaluation of information resources evaluate at least 7 of these Web sites on quality criteria that you select. You should have at least 5 criteria on which you evaluate each site. If you want to evaluate these web sites with a particular scenario (e.g., a public library business reference department or an academic library used by undergrad business students) then be sure to describe this situation. 
3. Write up your evaluation in a 3-4 page double-spaced memo to me. 
4. Conclude with a summary sheet or table that evaluates each site using a 1-5 scale (1=poor; 2=fair;
       3=OK; 4=good; 5=excellent

Your may want to consult some of the following sites for information on Web site evaluation: 

Evaluating Web sites: criteria and tools:  http://www.library.cornell.edu/okuref/research/webeval.html

Evaluating quality on the net: http://www.tiac.net/users/hope/findqual.html

Evaluating Internet based information: http://www.lme.mankato.msus.edu/class/629/Cred.html

Thinking critically about WWW resources:  http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/college/instruct/critical.htm

The development of subject specific Web sites: http:gwis2.gwu.edu/~scottlib/development2.htm

(If you find some other good sites/sources, then let me and the class know about them.)

Possible topics:

mutual funds for beginners
IRA's explained
Roth IRA
Investments for the beginner
business web guides for undergrads
Internet brokerage agents
business school library web pages
investment sites on the major search engines (Yahoo, Excite, etc.)
business information sites by the major broadcasters
glossaries offered by some specific category of web sites (e.g., mutual funds)
sites of the electronic brokers