I'm one of the four business librarians in the Foster Business Library, serving over 100 Business School faculty and lecturers and over 3,500 graduate and undergraduate students, in day, evening, and executive programs. In your hands is a handout:

• Page one:   Foster Business Library homepage
  • Library homepage URL: http://www.lib.washington.edu/business/
  • Off-Campus access button; if asked for login and password, usually it means you did not use this button
  • "About Foster" menu bar tab:   Hours, especially around holidays
  • Search the UW Libraries Catalog (Books)
    • Limit results of searches to Foster Business Library
    • 70,000 business books, with new books added monthly
    • Use Request/Place Hold feature
    • Repeat search in Summit feature (over 30 academic libraries in WA and OR)
  • Search ProQuest Databases (100 million articles, thousands of new articles daily, in scholarly journals, magazines, trade publications, newspapers)
    • 800 business journals in Foster, with lists under Periodicals Lists
    • Most articles are in databases, but not all
    • See our Top Forty Business Journals
  • Databases, including List of All Databases and Database Index
    • Databases on homepage are most used 25 databases
    • List of all databases is about 62 databases, at present
    • Index is best approach to databases

• Page two:   Business Research Guides:   over ninety of them, more guides than all the other 24 UW libraries combined
  • Basic organization of guides:   Foster databases; web resources; reference books; books; articles.
  • Most used guides are for:
    • Company Research
    • Industry Research
    • International Business
    • Marketing Research

• Page three:   Business & Economics FAQ:   over 900 of them, more than any other business library on earth

• Page four:   Team Librarian Consultations
  • Note the variety of those listed for the current or past quarters
  • Note, at the bottom, the link to the Archive of Team Consultation Web Pages
  • Before requesting a team consultation, be sure to check this archive, since 50% of all requests for a consultation are for a company, industry, product, or topic already in the archive.

• Page five:   Archive of Team Consultation Web Pages (over 200 of them, none older than 2004)
  • Arranged alphabetically, under Industries/Products, Companies, Countries/Markets, and Issues/Topics
  • Organized similarly to the research guides:   Foster databases; web resources; reference books; books; articles.
  • If there is no webpage for your company or industry, there may well be a webpage for a similar company or industry.
  • Note the indexes at the top of the archive: by Industry, Class or Program, Title of Assignment, and even by academic Quarter

• Page six:   Student Toolkit (with links to answers to the most commonly asked questions from students at the Foster reference desk)
  • As an example, information on Foster Group Study Rooms and how to reserve them
  • Links to online full text for:
    • The Economist
    • Harvard Business Review
    • New York Times
    • Wall Street Journal
  • Course Evaluations
  • Team Consultation and Research Guide Index

Questions?   If you think of any, later, see my mail address, on page one of your handout.