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A current awareness resource for students & faculty members in Business & Economics


Learn about financial markets... and earn a certificate! BMC is now online at SFU

Published by Mark Bodnar
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Bloomberg Market Concepts certificate
Is it possible to excel in any area of business or economics without a basic understanding of financial markets... of how bonds, equities, and currencies are valued, and of how those values are affected by changes in major economic indicators such as GDP? I'd argue it is not.

I'm not saying someone focused on, for example, human resource management needs to be an expert in all the esoteric inner workings of finance, just that an awareness of the jargon and the underlying structure of financial markets will undoubtedly be useful and even required at some point.

And if you need to learn such things anyhow, why not get a certification you can proudly list in your CV and your LinkedIn profile? All SFU students can now complete the Bloomberg Market Concepts (BMC) certification program online with no charge!

<Read on for details!>

New research starting point: Management section in Oxford Bibliographies Online

Published by Mark Bodnar
Logo of Oxford Bibliographies Online with the tagline:
When I'm starting to research a topic that is new to me, I usually hope to quickly get a sense of the topic overall, answering such questions as...
  • How is the field of research structured? What are the major subtopics and how do they interrelate?
  • What have we learned so far, and what are the gaps in our knowledge on the topic?
  • What are the major articles and books about the topic — the ones that confirmed long-suspected theories or broke new ground and that now serve as the foundations upon which new research is building?
  • What are the key journals and who are the key people? That is, where should I start searching for newer information on the topic? 
These are, of course, easy questions to ask, but they are often much harder to answer!

<Read on to learn about a new solution to such simple-but-complex needs!>

Making of the Modern World (Part IV): Deep coverage of the "Age of Capital"!

Published by Mark Bodnar
I'm pleased to report that SFU researchers now have access to Part IV of the Making of the Modern World online resource. We already owned the first three parts, covering 1450-1945. This new module expands and deepens the content available from the 1800-1890 period.
Banner image from the Making of the Modern World resource. Shows a man using a Morse code machine at a desk with various
​ <Read on for details about Part IV's "definitive coverage of the 'Age of Capital,' the industrial revolution, and the High Victorian Era"!>

Spread the word! Special pre-construction request period (Apr. 1-30) for books from the 5th floor of our Bennett/Burnaby library!

Published by Mark Bodnar
As you may have heard, the 5th floor of WAC Bennett Library has been closed since November 2022 when asbestos-containing debris was found in the area. The university is now moving forward with an asbestos abatement project, which means that the 5th floor books will continue to be inaccessible for approximately one year. 

We are taking several steps to provide access to our 5th floor collections, including opening a requesting period for 5th floor books (April 1-30, 2023)

<Read on for all the important details!>

Never miss an issue: setting up email alerts for The Economist

Published by Mark Bodnar
Screen capture of the
Earlier this week I wrote about an expansion to our archive of The Economist. I've since had a flood of questions (okay, two) about the more recent Economist issues — specifically about how to get alerted each time a new issue is available.

I'm avoiding other work right now, so I thought I'd have some fun and share the good news with you all: email alerts about new issues of The Economist are both feasible and super easy to set up!  Here's the shortest possible route...

<Read on for the 3 simple steps!>

The Economist Archive: expanded to 178 years of economic goodness

Published by Mark Bodnar
Logo for The Economist magazine
I'm pleased to report that SFU Library has expanded its online archive of The Economist. If I were asked about must-read news publications that cross the border between the realms of business & economics, The Economist magazine would probably be near the top of the list, so more is definitely better in this case! 

<Read on for details!>

Alert + workaround: Business articles (incl. HBR) not showing in Library Search results

Published by Mark Bodnar
​ About half of the articles in our Business Source Complete database are not showing up in Library Search or Catalogue results. This includes almost all of the Harvard Business Review (HBR) articles.

The articles are all still available in Business Source Complete — we haven't lost them entirely!

We're working on fixing this issue, but in the meantime please...

<Read on for simple workarounds and no loss of access!>

Slow down and read one of these new BUS/ECON ebooks!

Published by Mark Bodnar
Simple line drawing of robot running on a treadmill.
I've found this term to be like a treadmill stuck on the super-fast-can't-stop-help! setting — but I finally managed to catch my breath over the last few days. (Thank you, Reading Week!)

Once I had a chance to slow down, I thought I'd take a quick look back at the many economics & business ebooks we've added to the collection recently. And, because the human brain is an amazing pattern-detection machine (which is both good & bad), I immediately starting seeing trends and categories...

<Read on for dozens of new titles on project management, corruption, innovation, and more!>

Introducing Covidence, a web-based platform to streamline review research

Published by Mark Bodnar

Logo for the Covidence web-based platform
SFU researchers now have access to an institutional subscription to Covidence, a web-based platform designed to make conducting a comprehensive literature review much simpler and faster.

Although it is most commonly used for systematic or scoping reviews, Covidence can support and streamline essentially any sort of knowledge synthesis project, including less formal reviews required in some graduate-level assignments.

<Read on for more details about this valuable, time-saving tool!>