Foster Business Library Introduction

Facilities:

New library, opened in July 1997;

Located in the basement of the Bank of America Executive Education Center, adjacent to Balmer Hall;

Two floors and over 23,000 square feet of study space and library resources;

First floor: entrance/exit, circulation, reserves, reference, general stacks, public computers, periodicals, newspapers, library lab, Business Writing Center, seminar room, photocopiers, annual reports, and the majority of study seating;

Second floor: eight group study rooms and more study seating;

Ten collections of business library books and other materials;

Seating for over 200;

Most tables and carrels have laptop ports and power connections;

Four wireless hubs in the library;

Eight group study rooms;

Over fifty desktop computer workstations;

One Canon LiDE 500F Scanner station;

Two self-service photocopiers;

In-house Business Writing Center:

Two self-service printers, each with its own computer station and card reader;

Near the Balmer Café;

Open 86 hours per week.

Eighteen-terminal library library lab, with seating for 28;

Library seminar room, with seating for 17.

Resources:

Extensive Foster Business Library homepage;

Over 70,000 business books;

New business books added regularly;

6 million books on three U.W. campuses;

Access to over 25 million books from 30 academic libraries in Washington and Oregon via Summit;

Over 500 Business PhD and Masters dissertations;

Over 50 business databases; subject index to databases;

Access to most of these databases from off-campus;

Full text articles available online for 11,000 periodicals;

Electronic journals in business and economics;

Subscriptions to over 300 business periodicals;

Seven business newspapers on display;

Annual reports for over 800 companies;

Business sites on the Web;

Reference collection dictionaries, encyclopedias, handbooks;

Bloomberg terminal;

Access to numerous other UW Libraries' databases and catalogs;

Over 90 Business Research Guides;

Team consultation archives, with over 200 webpages on companies, industries, countries, etc.;

Nearly 600 Frequently Asked Questions;

Foster Business Library, From A to Z.

People:

Four business librarians, with a combined 100 years of experience in libraries, including 50 years in business libraries:

Two graduate Information School reference assistants, for added coverage of the reference desk:

Kristin Buxton;
Jason Felton.

Four library technical assistants:

Amber Brock;
Dan Halligan;
Anita Kavarian;
Katherine Savage.

Five student circulation assistants:

Yoon Choi;
Lauren Fong;
Milana Kuliyeva;
Madeline Smith;
Danielle Walker.

Classroom instruction and class websites;

In-person Team librarian consultations;

In-person reference desk assistance, many hours per week;

Online suggestion/question box;

Telephone reference at (206) 543-8012;

E-mail reference at balib.u.washington.edu.

28 August 2003; updated 18 December 2006. Peter Stevens, Business Librarian, stevens@u.washington.edu, 206-543-4360.