U of M gives rock ‘n roll jukeboxes a spin into the information age

from the Winnipeg Free Press, Wednesday, March 5, 1997, p. A7

A MARRIAGE of 1950s practicality and 1990s technology is saving the University of Manitoba's faculty of management $45,000 a year.

The A. D. Cohen Management Library is the new home of four jukeboxes. But instead of 45-rpm records, each of them holds 240 CD-ROM disks each.

The disks hold full-image articles from 400 management journals from the United States. Canada, Britain and Australia.

The disks can also access a further 600 journal abstracts.

This state-of-the-art technology is a timesaver for the MBA students conducting research for the 12-month program.

"I tested the system with a search for a recurring column in Forbes and got 34 recent columns in 10 minutes," said Dennis Ferbel, head of the library. "With the old system of bound journals, it would have taken up to two hours."

MBA students can search the four jukeboxes using either key words, journal names, authors, or geographic regions.

"It is even easier than searching the Internet," said Febel, "because it only searches management articles."

Time is a major concern for many of the MBA students, who have taken a year off from their jobs to get their masters' degrees.

The less time spent on library services, the better.

The faculty of management leases the system from Abstract Business Information for $75,000 a year. The library had been paying $120,000 a year for subscriptions to bound copies of journals.

The change to the new CD-ROM technology will save the library $45,000 a year as well as space that is now not taken up with stacks of bound journals.