Wikipedia has been one of the great success stories of the Internet, but as you all know, we teachers prefer you to use edited, reliable and trustworthy sources for your assignments. Unfortunately, Wikipedia is not always reliable, but now, there's a new product being developed from it that provides expert validation of the content. This is a great benefit for both teachers and students. The new product, called Veropedia, has 4009 verified articles at the time of writing.

One of the classes of my course on advanced research and communication, is about evaluating other people's research. It's really important to check how research has been carried out if you're going to use the results for your own purpose, whether that's for use in an assignment, or to help you make a real life business decision. In yesterday's Financial Times, there was a very good article written by John Kay relating to this. He comments that a great deal of market research today is carried out with the sole intention of promoting an organization's profile, rather than to genuinely add to our knowledge of the research topic.

The Junior Chamber of Commerce in Monaco has organized its second investment forum, Do It In Monaco! The purpose of the event is to promote investment and entrepreneurship in Monaco and to bring together advisors, investors and business people. Last year there were presentations by successful Monegasque businesses, and discussions about the different company structures. So keep your diary free for Thursday, 15 November, at the Centre de Rencontres Internationales.

If you want to know what's recently been added to the library stock, just click on this link to the What's new page. I'll be updating the page every couple of weeks.

If you haven't already picked up the press reports, you may be interested to know that the French luxury food company Hediard, has been bought by a Russian businessman. The company was sold by our very own Monegasque Michel Pastor, and becomes part of the Luxadvor group. Will we start to see more caviar for sale in the stores?

The Fall 2007 supplement to Time magazine contains what they call the Global Luxury Survey, which investigates the markets for luxury brands in China, Russia and India. We have a paper copy in the library that you can consult.

I just watched a great video (about an hour long) of a talk by Barry Schwartz, who wrote a book called "The Paradox of Choice". The gist of the presentation is that having no choice is bad, having some choice is good, but having too much choice is just as bad as having no choice at all. There were several references to research in the video, most of which boiled down to the fact that when you go shopping and you're faced with 50 different flavoured jams, you end up buying none of them. Whereas if you only have the choice of strawberry, raspberry or blackcurrent, you'll be more likely go home with one of them for your breakfast toast.

I was recently asked for help with research on knowledge management. The researcher left a brief message stating:

"I'm doing research on knowledge management and developing a questionnaire. Can you help to provide me with research and questionnaires on knowledge management?"

My reply went along the lines of "what is your research question?" which is something of a mantra for me when students and faculty ask for help. You can't do research effectively without having a clearly stated research question. And you certainly can't develop a questionnaire without having a specific problem to investigate. You'll find a bit more help on developing research questions here on our library website, under the research help menu for undergraduates. I'll be very happy to help with your research needs, but remember, my first statement to you is likely to be "what's the research question?"

A new peer-to-peer loan service called Lending Club was launched in May this year to users of the social networking website Facebook. It seems like a great business model. If you're a Facebook user, you place a request for a loan, then other Facebook users decide whether to lend you the money. The website says that they offer better rates that the banks, and that the loans are primarily used to finance purchases, pay for special events like weddings or holidays, and to refinance existing, high-interest debt.

What does "open source" mean to you? Most people associate it with "free" and "no cost", however there's more to it than that. Perhaps if I'd gone to the O'Reilly Open Source Convention in July I would have been able to give you a better explanation. Well, I can point you in the direction of a video of one of the conference presentations given by Steve Yegge of Google. Steve's blog also has an amusing write-up of how he came to be giving the talk.

Harvard Business School has just published a working paper called "Hedge Fund Investor Activism and Takeovers". It discusses what happens when hedge funds get involved with undervalued companies and whether they can increase shareholder value.

Champagne is not the "be all and end all" of luxury drinks. Those of you with a yearning for a special occasion tipple can also add beer to your list of beverages. The top two beers cost about 78 euros and 67 euros per pint respectively. Phew, it makes Jimmy'z look cheap.

That's the question you'll be asked if you book a first class ticket with Singapore Airlines, ranked 2nd in the list of World's Best First Class airline experiences. Top of the list is Qatar Airways. Despite the luxury price tags attached to first class air travel, one expert states that "it's not a major source of revenue", more of a marketing tool. Something to ponder for our new students taking their Master of Science in Luxury Goods and Services.

I came across an amusing video today. It shows what happens to books and other library material before you get to see them on the shelves. The library term for the department that looks after this is "technical services". Here at the International University of Monaco, your humble librarian, being a OMB, handles all the work herself, whereas in a large academic or public library such as the one portrayed in the video, there'd be teams of people doing it.

I had a hearty laugh at this action figure I came across while browsing the Internet the other day. The "shushing librarian" is available in a basic or superior model, and it's based on a real life person. Contrary to the popular stereotype, there are many librarians who will allow you to chat, as long as you don't disturb other users. In all my years working in libraries (not that many actually, as most of my career has been as a researcher for strategy consultants), I've never met a librarian who insists on total silence in the library.

A recent news item reports that a company has had to pay a $300,000 fine because it distributed copyrighted press clippings internally. The company "disseminated copies of relevant magazine and newspaper articles in the good faith belief that it was lawful to do so", but unfortunately, ignorance of the law did not protect them. Most librarians are taught about copyright law as part of their professional education, so if you have questions about what you can or can't do with other people's published material, please contact me and I'll do my best to advise you.

Way back in December 2006, I posted some entries on the library website about a new library management system. Well, work is progressing, slowly but surely. At the moment, I'm sticking barcodes into all the books so that I'll be able to register the ones you borrow electronically. I've already tried the system with one of the faculty, and it works. Hopefully, when you return in September, I'll be ready to go with the new system

For those of you who are interested in microfinance, we have 2 new books in the library:

Dowla, A. and Barua, D. (2006) The poor always pay back: the Grameen II story.

De Aghion, B. A. and Morduch, J. (2005) The economics of microfinance.

Copyright laws were first introduced with provision for fair use - a limited ability to copy for education, art and critique. The United States and Korea have released the draft text of their free trade agreement and it completely eliminates these fair use provisions. Erosion of copyright law in this way is a worrying trend that threatens educational resources. You can read more discussion here.

BBC's technology correspondent Bill Thompson shares some personal thoughts about how student assessment is changing. Are we really assessing a student's ability when we isolate them from everyday resources like the Internet? From the article:

"the way we currently do things has more to do with satisfying the needs of university admission officers and the administrators of the Victorian civil service than helping people show their talents and abilities to the best."

Controversial words indeed...

Thanks to all those students who contacted us for part-time work in the library. We've now filled all the time slots, but if you're still interested, we'll keep your name on file for next term and for work during exam and holiday periods.

If you're interested in working in the library during Spring Term, please contact us. We prefer junior or senior students with previous work experience. You should be able to work on your own and to use your initiative. Besides taking care of the library, you will be expected to perform a few simple duties such as data entry, helping library visitors, taking messages, keeping the library tidy, and preparing books for the library. Several time slots are available:

Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays: 17.00 - 20.00

Mondays and Wednesdays: 08.00 - 13.00

Scourge of students everywhere, the Californian company Turnitin has been accused of breaking copyright law by two Arizona high school kids. The anti-plagiarism service is used by 6,000 institutions in 90 countries and stores each student work submitted in its database. The pair claim that it violates their right to control their own copyrighted work.

The father of one of the plaintiffs thinks schools should teach students that cheating is wrong. "You can't take a person's work and run it through a computer and make an honest person out of them" he said.

Quite.

Following a problem with our server on Wednesday, we took the opportunity to bring forward our planned move to a new home. The library site is now on a new dedicated server with more bandwidth and more space. This should mean a faster response and greater reliability for you, our visitors.

You may have noticed we're now on a new address. This was unfortunately unavoidable, so we're sorry if we've caused you any inconvenience. However, your old bookmarks should still work.

If you experience any difficulties or would like to get in touch about any other aspect of the service, please use our contact us page.

MIT has made one of their books freely available to download, although at over 500 pages, you might want to borrow the copy we have in the library, rather than print it out from the pdf file. Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software is a collection of essays about ... free and open source software. This is something we in the library fully support, as our website was created using an

I've just returned from the morning session of the Next Generation Entrepreneur Forum in Monaco and it was great. We heard from 3 speakers who all had something thought provoking and useful to say to entrepreneurs. Here are the highlights from my notes.

Heidi Roizen, Mobius Venture Capital

The title of Heidi's talk was "10 things I've learned as a venture capitalist that I wish I'd known as an entrepreneur". And here are the 10 things, as noted down by me:

1. Venture capital is a "hits" business - there are only a few successful projects that will support the many failures. Heidi shared some statistics with us to the effect that 60% of entrepreneurial ventures return less than the capital invested in them, and the top 3% of ventures return over 50% of the capital invested.
2. Venture capitalists are portfolio managers.
3. Venture capitalists often turn down good companies. VCs are looking for "hits", but they're also looking for an exit strategy, or a specific sector, a certain size of fund or stage of fund.
4. Due diligence is gut + homework + time. Early stage investors often bet on people, especially if they don't recognize the target market in themselves.
5. If you don't trust someone, don't invest.
6. The best entrepreneurs don't hide the ball. In other words, don't keep the bad news to yourself.
7. Entrepreneurial startups are not always great CEOs. As an entrepreneur, you should take the role to which you're best suited, and hire in the best team you can for the other jobs.
8. Virtually all startups change course.
9. Be prepared to invest more.... or not.
10. Venture capitalists need to find exits.

A final comment on my notepad says "venture capitalists take preferred shares and then sell your company. You will lose control."

One of the executive MBA students alerted me to this excellent article in the International Herald Tribune today. A French professor called Pierre Bayard has written a book called "How to talk about books you haven't read" which is proving very popular with people who wish they had more time to read. However, behind the humourous exterior lies a serious purpose.