Author: Biz India

Editor: Fabrice Papy Publisher:  Wiley-ISTE – 303 pages Book Review by:  Paiso Jamakar This book is a collection of articles written by people working in and familiar with the development of public and academic libraries, both in physical and digital form. The article writers are mainly librarians, information officers, researchers and editors. Fabrice Papy, a professor at the University of Paris, compiled contributions from 22 people who wrote their insights on various aspects and issues relating to this subject,  edited them and put them together in this unique book on the brave new world of digital libraries and other virtual (non-printed) sources of information. The range of topics in this book is extensive, from the growth of physical libraries and their evolution into digital forms, to the changing roles of librarians and information officers (e.g., can there be libraries without librarians?) to real-life experiences of users of a digital library at the Pasteur Institute, to a French university students’ unique information-access strategies, to the “digital spirit” of democratizing physical and digital libraries and making a whole lot of other storehouses of information available to the masses though the Internet. . Other questions covered in this unique book are: how to access physical library catalogs in this new age of digital libraries and how to use search engines more effectively to locate the information you and I are looking for;...

Author: Patrick Bet-David Publisher: Tico Publishing -159 pages Book Review by:  Sonu Chandiram One of the first things I do when I begin to review a book is to read about its author. At the outset I cannot understand what Patrick Bet-David means when he states in his “About the Author” section that his financial services company People Helping People (PHP) had 5,500 “associates” two years after founding it. That’s like gaining 230 “associates” in an average month. Based on an average 24 working days per month including Saturdays, that’s like getting almost 10 people to join you each day. What exactly do these associates do, is not mentioned in his brief write up on the last page of this book. I suppose they are sales people. There is a lot of churn of sales people in financial service companies. They leave as easily as they come in through the door. There is a constant revolving-door phenomenon in such firms. Another example of low retention of people is the shallow-bowl concept wherein you pour a lot of milk quickly but most of it is lost as it is pushed out of the bowl with the force of pouring it. The most important questions for financial firms are: how many people remain for the long haul, and how much total net income they produce in a year for themselves and...

Authors: Iwonna Dubicka and Margaret O’Keeffe Publisher: Pearson Longman – 184 pages Book Review by:  Paiso Jamakar This book has a unique organizational format, which is practical and relates to real-life experience, including readings and photos you see in newspapers. The best way to describe it is that it is non-academic. Pearson developed this third edition in association with one its business units, the Financial Times newspaper. The book’s mission is to teach you basic business English. One expects in a book like this is that the authors’ mother tongue would be English. But the authors – Iwonna Dubicka and Margaret O’Keeffe – who reside in Spain and have had work experience there, are likely people who do not speak in English at home. So like most people whose native language is something else other than English, they assumably understand the experience one goes through learning a new language. In any case, let us not dwell too much on assumptions and get right into the purpose and contents of this book. The authors write that Market Leader is a course for students of business English. It is also for business people who are not that proficient in English, to communicate with others in the business world whose native language is English. It is therefore a book with a practical purpose. It has multiple levels of difficulty, although it has...

Authors: Bryan Sullivan and Vincent Liu Publisher: McGraw-Hill  – 331  pages Book Review by:  Venkat Balasubramaniam The dilemma faced by firms that want to avoid intrusion and theft of their secrets (data containing customers’ names, quantities and dollar amounts of their purchases, to give one simple but critical example) by hackers is illustrated by the authors in the story below of  The Wizard, the Giant and the Magic Fruit Trees in the Epilogue of this very useful book. Here is how the story goes: The hero of this story is the wizard, who owns an enchanted orchard planted with fruit trees. The wizard lives in a tower within the orchard. In the tower is a collection of the wizard’s magic scrolls, crystal balls, wands and other valuable materials. The wizard lets people living in a village nearby to pick his fruit and buy his magic potion. But the last time the wizard checked his orchard, he was shocked and dismayed to find that most of his trees had been wrecked. To protect his fruit trees from intruders, the wizard had a moat built around his orchard.   The moat contained hot lava. The problem though was that the moat also kept away the good villagers who came to pick his fruit and buy the magic potion from him. So the wizard got his friend the giant to help him. The...

Author: Judy Capko Publisher:  Greenbranch Publishing -150   pages Book Review by: Nano Khilnani Bad time management hurts doctors financially as they fail to serve an adequate number of patients, or fail to serve each of them adequately, resulting in loss of patients and thereby, revenue. The goodwill that doctors build up with patients is invaluable for long-term, ongoing income, as well as new revenue gained through referrals by satisfied patients. Gaining new patients to replace those lost costs money, time, and effort. I fired my ex-doctor because I could no longer bear her repeated offenses of making me wait and wait and wait in her constantly crowded waiting room and her being late half an hour or more beyond the set appointment time. My time, even as most of my appointments were after 6 pm, was as valuable as hers’ if not more. She failed to respect it, and as a consequence, lost my respect for her. I got rid of her as my doctor because she would also want to see me unnecessarily, only to make money. When I asked her the results of my blood tests, rather than briefly discuss them with me over the phone, she would insist on seeing me in person. It made no sense for me to waste further time and pay her as well for wasting it. Many of her patients called...