Collaborating for success

Abstract

When a small library team at a research-intensive university is tasked with acquiring and integrating Bloomberg terminals into its array of resources, they never could have imagined the level of research and partnership that this would entail. Through a benchmarking analysis of labs in Canadian universities, they discovered that this industry-standard tool, along with state-of-the-art finance labs, were available in a majority of the business schools. This institution was behind and it was time to catch up. How could a two-person team engage key stakeholders including deans, faculty members, and IT staff as well as manage student expectations for this popular tool, while also creating an actual laboratory space for experiential learning? Collaboration was clearly going to be key. But what else? This case will outline how two academic librarians brought their research and knowledge-sharing skills to the fore, and flexed their leadership, communication, project management, and influencing muscles to support the creation of a lab that became a hub of activity where theory and practice are fused.