Mary Lee Kennedy: KLS has a unique information research support model. However, we have very limited experience working with Chinese resources and only a nascent practice in supporting Chinese research.

In FY 2008 alone, the Harvard Business School (HBS) faculty  produced hundreds of working papers and research articles, books, book chapters, field cases, and other teaching materials. Of these, 37% focused on global research, with China representing one of the largest research interests.

At HBS, strategic plans include opening a classroom in Shanghai in FY 2010, continuing to offer annual immersion programs in China to MBA and doctoral students, and expanding executive education programs in China over the next three years.

To address the growing importance of China and to meet the needs of these programs, HBS Knowledge and Library Services (KLS) has established two key goals:

•    to establish relationships with universities, business schools, NGOs, and other public- and private-sector organizations in order to support the HBS faculty’s information needs for research and teaching; and 

•    to establish a network of colleagues (e.g., academics,  practitioners, and information professionals) to contribute to a global information network in support of business management education and research.

Most recently, these goals translated into a fact-finding trip to China, during which KLS staff met with colleagues in government and non-government agencies with strong ties to business, professional services firms, and universities, including

•    Hong Kong University

•    Chinese University of Hong Kong

•    Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

•    Chinese European International Business School

•    Fudan University

•    Tsinghua University

•    Peking University

In reviewing the China trip, KLS Executive Director Mary Lee Kennedy provided the following reflections for Library Notes readers.

“Business as an academic discipline has a short history in China, and our findings reflect its relative newness. Given the emergence of business education, we recorded our findings about degrees, student population, joint programs, and anything else we felt might be of interest to the broader HBS community.”

“We were interested in Chinese content–vendor relationship management, how institutions manage purchased information and intellectual capital, and how they provide access to their information resources.”

“We discovered that the institutions are way ahead of us in terms of digitization; however, the degree to which they are making it accessible and the manner in which they preserve digital objects require further investigation. There are more efforts in institutional repositories than we understood in our early analysis, all of which may be of value to our faculty.”

“KLS has a unique information research support model. However, we have very limited experience working with Chinese resources and only a nascent practice in supporting Chinese research. Our focus was on identifying unique resources, understanding to what degree our faculty and students could have access to them, and recording any topics that the various institutions highlight as key to their research programs. While we have a more sophisticated research support function than any university we visited, there are many resources we have to review in terms of their usefulness to our faculty. There are also research capabilities in China that may be of use to our faculty, such as that available through the Shanghai Municipal Library. Mandarin fluency (written and verbal) will be essential.”

“One of the primary goals of HBS faculty is knowledge dissemination. KLS plays a role in this and is particularly interested in how knowledge is shared within andoutside of institutions. China was a complete blank slate for us, and we used this visit to increase our understanding.”

“We are taking what we have learned, working with China experts at Harvard University, as well as with our newly established Chinese colleagues, to establish the appropriate support mechanisms for faculty and students at HBS. China is a long-term commitment.”