Business finance center

The Business and Finance Division announced the winners of its second annual Center of Excellence Awards. The awards, presented at the annual conference in New York, recognize quality in the management and delivery of information. The awards take their inspiration from the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards, which are given annually to U.S. organizations to recognize and promote quality as a critical part of innovation and competitiveness.

The awards recognize the best of the best practices in three categories: technology, management, and service. Any member of SLA may apply for consideration in any of the three categories. This year's winners are the Knowledge Network Group, Microsoft; the Nike Design Library; and Kresge Business Administration Library at the University of Michigan Business School.

The Knowledge Network Group, winner of the technology award, serves 54,000 Microsoft employees globally. Professionals in library and information science, computer science, and journalism work together to achieve the group's mission of connecting people, information, and knowledge for business success.

The group recently reoriented itself from reference on demand to research focused on strategic priorities; its new library portal is designed as a self-help tool to support information needs. The portal delivers information on a one-to-many model, and a team of research analysts focus on one-to-one relationships with strategic customers.

The judges were interested in the processes and outcomes surrounding the creation of the new portal, especially Microsoft's approach to portal design and the new positions created to support the portal. The planning process--in particular the implementation of the persona model, which resulted in the identification of five key user groups--and the integration of internal and external content were significant and deserving of replication.

The Nike Design Library earned the award for management because of its leadership role for Nike design. In the judges' estimation, the library met or exceeded most Center of Excellence Award standards, and successfully executed its vision and charter by capturing and presenting new ideas and materials in a manner that provides inspiration to its design clientele.

The Kresge Business Administration Library serves the University of Michigan Business School, which was recently ranked number two in the country by the Wall Street Journal. The business school has approximately 856 full-time students and 1,400 part-time students. The judges chose the library for the service award on the basis of the imaginative and relevant services it offers to students, faculty, and staff, such as

* "electrifying content," for example, digitizing career resources to keep them current and enabling students to prepare for interviews regardless of their location;

* leveraging Kresge e-Library licensed databases to lower costs to students for printed course materials and integrating library resources into Webbased course management software;

* "innovative instruction"--partnering with the Computing Services Department to create an online learning module that allows for on-demand learning about the technology environment;

* creating course-specific Web pages that contain library resources and posting them in Web-based course management software;

* digitizing Business School working papers to make them keyword searchable to researchers around the world;

* and creating the position of advanced technologies librarian to offer one-stop shopping to faculty for all their course materials and course technology needs.

The division judges who chose the winners were Jan Chindlund, Pamela Clark, John Ganly, Hal Kirkwood, Pam Rollo, and Donna Scheeder.