Ford Library Blog

The lecture, “Building a Sustainable Energy Future: Market Approaches to Choices and Trade-offs” will be held today; Thursday, November 5th from 4–6 p.m. in Geneen Auditorium.

This is the first of a four-part series and represents a joint collaboration between the Fuqua School of Business and McKinsey Quarterly.  The series will consist of forums on the following areas:  energy, the financial system, globalization and business education.

Check out some of these new titles from the Ford Library on sustainability (click on a link to place a hold or check availability). Or come browse our Sustainability display at the front of the library:

• Profession and Purpose: A Resource Guide for MBA Careers in Sustainability by Katie Kross
• Investing in a Sustainable World: Why GREEN is the New Color of Money on Wall Street by Mathew J. Kiernan
• Sustainability Strategies: When Does it Pay to be Green? by Renato J. Orsato
• Making Sustainability Work: Best Practices in Managing and Measuring Corporate Social, Environmental and Economic Impacts by Marc J. Epstein
• Sustainable Investing: The Art of Long-Term Performance edited by Cary Krosinsky and Nick Robins
• Sustainable Development Handbook by Stephen A. Roosa
• Global Warming is Good for Business: How Savvy Entrepreneurs, Large Corporations, and Others are Making Money While Saving the Planet by K. B. Keilbach
• The Gort Cloud: The Invisible Force Powering Today’s Most Visible Green Brands by Richard Seireeni

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.

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.

Ford Library welcomes our students participating in the HSM Bootcamp Program this week at Fuqua. Below we’ve listed 10 leading new book titles that are part of our Health Sector Management Collection here at the Library.

Please visit us and check out any of these new titles to get a head start on managing the business of health care.

Click on a book title to see if it’s available, and to place a request in our online catalog.

• Fortenberry, John L. Health care marketing : tools and techniques
  Ford Library | Stacks | RA410.56 .F675 2010
• Christensen, Clayton M. The innovator’s prescription : a disruptive solution for health care.
  Ford Library | Stacks | RA971 .C56 2009
• Berry, Leonard L. Management lessons from Mayo Clinic : inside one of the world’s most admired service organizations.
  Ford Library | Stacks | RA982.M6 B36 2008
• Graban, Mark. Lean hospitals : improving quality, patient safety, and employee satisfaction
  Ford Library | Stacks | RA971 .G64 2009 (more…)

How many movie love stories are written by former Marines?  Bob Comfort wrote the screenplay for Dogfight which features River Phoenix playing Marine Eddie Birdlace.  Birdlace and his buddies are out on the town in San Francisco the night before they’re due to ship out to Vietnam.  They organize a callous “dogfight” at a local bar where each man puts in fifty dollars and brings the ugliest woman he can find.  Birdlace picks unassuming, self-contained Rose (Lili Taylor).  The scene where she finds out about the dogfight sets the film off in an unexpected direction.

Nancy Savoca’s direction, Bob Comfort’s script, and the lead performances make what initially appears a run-of-the-mill narrative into something more moving and honest.  The great soundtrack features a host of 1960s artists like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Pete Seegar.  This film had a very small release in 1991 but deserves a wider audience.

Anyone who attended a U.S. high school in the late 1970s or early 1980s should see Dazed and Confused.  Even those who weren’t in school in 1976 should still see the movie.  Director Richard Linklater’s day-in-the-life of a group of friends on the last day of school ranks among the best high school movies ever made.  You’ll see early performances from Matthew McConaughey and Ben Affleck, and it’s great to see Affleck play a jerk rather than a square-jawed hero type.

The movie has no plot to speak of, but the characters keep things interesting and the soundtrack rocks (Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, War, Steve Miller Band, etc.)  Not just a 1970s nostalgia-fest, the film manages humor and introspection in equal doses.  Jason London’s character Randall “Pink” Floyd offers up a perfect example with “All I’m saying is that if I ever start referring to these as the best years of my life, remind me to kill myself.”  Don’t miss it.

Does the conversion to Outlook 2007/Exchange Server have you down or struggling with your email, contacts, calendar, etc.?   Then check out one of these new Outlook 2007 books available from the Ford Library (click on the link to check availability or place a hold):

• How To Do Everything with Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 by Bill Mann
• Outlook 2007: Beyond the Manual by Tony Campbell, Jonathan Hassell
• Outlook 2007: Business Contact Manager for Dummies by Karen S. Fredricks and Lon Orenstein
• Outlook 2007 All-In-One Desk Reference for Dummies by Jennifer Fulton and Karen S. Fredricks
• Managing Contacts With Microsoft Outlook 2007 Business Contact Manager by Edward Kachinske, Stacy Roach, Timothy Kachinske
• Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 Inside Out by Jim Boyce, Beth Sheresh, Doug Sheresh
• Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 Plain & Simple by Jim Boyce
• Teach Yourself Visually: Microsoft Outlook 2007 by Kate Shoup
• Microsoft Office 2007 Simplified by Sherry Willard Kinkoph.

Our second movie title in the series is the 1991 British release Enchanted April.  Movies are rarely charming anymore, but this one is both sweet and amusing.  Rose and Lottie, two depressed English women (played by Miranda Richardson and Josie Lawrence) decide to rent an Italian villa. A crochety Mrs. Fisher (Joan Plowright) and bored aristocrat Lady Caroline (Polly Walker) make up the foursome who share the summer rental.

Plowright, her character by turns funny and touching, was nominated for Best Supporting Actress.  At one point Lottie asks, after Mrs. Fisher name drops several literary figures, if she knew Keats.  Plowright’s indignant, “No, I didn’t, and I didn’t know Shakespeare and Chaucer either!” is one of the best scenes in the movie.

The opening shots the morning after the women arrive at the villa make one want to buy a ticket for Italy immediately.  It’s filmed on location, and the cinematography is stunning.  The  atmosphere has a restorative effect on the villa’s inhabitants, and when Lottie and Rose decide to invite their husbands (played by Alfred Molina and Jim Broadbent) even these less sympathetic characters fall under the its idyllic spell.  The film showcases some fine acting and lovely cinematography.

We offer our alumni a selection of databases for remote use.  You will need your NetID and password for access.  If your password doesn’t work, please see our help page. Our databases include:

• Business Monitor Online–daily macroeconomic, financial and company news and analysis on emerging and key global markets.
• Business Source: Alumni Edition–More than 1,350 full text business magazines and journals, of which more than 350 are peer-reviewed. Includes publications in nearly every area of business including marketing, management, MIS, POM, accounting, finance, econometrics, economics and more.
• Reference USA–database of directory information for 12 million US businesses that is searchable by SIC code, geographic location, Yellow Page heading, company, etc. It includes some names of corporate officers as well as contact information.
• GoingGlobal–an excellent resource for information on international job searches, life and study abroad, international internships, and much more.

We also provide links to free or low cost databases in our alumni e-library.

I’m going to highlight a few movies from our DVD collection over the next couple of months that you may have missed when they first came out.  Some are older and some are just more obscure.  File this first title under horror with a smidge of science fiction.

Silk is a Taiwanese film originally released under the title Gui Si.  A group of researchers, led by paranormal scientist Hashimoto, have managed to capture the ghost of a little boy.  The scientists see the ghost talking to itself, but its speech is inaudible.  In a sublimely creepy scene, one of the researchers does manage to capture the spirit’s attention, and the ghost shifts from mysterious to menacing.

The group enlists the help of a special agent who has superior eyesight and lip reading skills to help uncover the circumstances behind the child’s death. Not a strictly plot driven narrative, the film provides the viewer with far more character motivation than the average horror flick.  Any fan of horror films or mysteries should check this one out.  It was an official selection at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006.