INLS 247: SPECIAL LIBRARIES AND COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE

Class Projects
Spring 2001

Syllabus     Schedule     Description     Reserves     Websites    

• Competititve Analysis of the Online Grocery Ordering/Delivery Business -- Allison Fong
  

• Competitive Assessment of Key Players in the U.S. Paints and Coatings Industry -- Endrina Tay
  

• Competitive Intelligence Analysis of four Network Equipment Suppliers -- Carol Viscount
  

  Lucent, Nortel, Cisco, and Juniper all sell the routers and switches for the core Internet and the optical equipment for the optical Internet and all are working to develop new products in the field of the wireless Internet. For this report, Carol will investigate the telecommuncations industry, examine the products and services of each company and estimate their market share for their principal products and financial situation. Using clues from the news media and the company's own publications, Carol will determine which company might be the best one for an investment bank to select for an investment.

• Information Service for Immigrants within a Public Library -- Emily Stambaugh and Rebecca Lee
  

  The service will provide information to immigrants to help them settle in the area, to gain access to community services, such as healthcare, education, employment, and to help them participate fully in the cultural and civic activities in the surrounding county. The service will be set in a medium sized public library in a country with a small but growing population of immigrants. Our model library will be Durham County Publicv Library and librarians there will be interviewed. The goal of the project is to learn the planning process and to develop a model of service that could be implemented elsewhere in another public library with similiar demographic setting and environmental characteristics.

• Library/Information Service for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) -- Nicole Urquhart and Sambhavi Cheemalapati
  

  The focus, at least initially, will be one region (Africa) and possibly two of the agency's seven initiatives (HIV/AIDSand/or Crisis prevention and Recovery). Interest is in how the UNDP disseminates information internally and externally.

• Patient Library in a Hospital -- Stephanie Holmgren
  

• Special Library for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation -- Paul Showalter
  

  The Sloan Foundation awards millions of dollars in grants in about twenty differenet fields. A library will be designed that will serve as a resource for the different grant coordinators. Its purpose will be to keep the coordinators aware of the work of their colleagues, to provide current awareness in their areas of expertise, to provide archival services, etc. The library will also serve researchers who are applying for grants or who are studying the work being done in a particular field. Sloan's 1998 and 1999 annual reports are available on the website: www.sloan.org.