Jackson Library

Harvard University Arts & Sciences faculty voted on February 12 to give the University a worldwide license to publish their scholarly articles online, making them available free of charge. This act on the part of a world-class university will be seen as a major step in the expansion of the open access movement. Harvard faculty will continue to retain copyright for their articles, subject to the University's license, but will be allowed to obtain a waiver of the license in particular cases.

How did Kenny G make the cover of the Billboard February 16, 2008 cover? He has left his music label and is selling his new album exclusively through Starbucks. It has turned out that besides imbibing your latte at the store many consumers have been buying music too. Starbucks has become one of the most powerful retailers in music, selling over half a million copies of Paul McCartney's last CD. You can read more about this in a series of articles in Billboard about music and Starbucks entitled 'The Future Sound of Starbucks'. A report on the Sunday morning show entitled G Whiz goes into more detail about the business relationship between the coffee maker and music.

Well, the sun is not coming out in Palo Alto today, and rain is on the way. The title of my blog has to do with an article in The New York Times about Silicon Valley becoming a world leader in cheap and ubiquitous solar panels for the masses. The author suggests some of the valley’s best brains are captivated by the challenge of prodcing low cost solar panels and they hope to put the development of solar technologies onto a faster track.

Fishing for reading for the holiday weekend? The Popular Books Rack in Jackson Library has some new catches. Revolt in the Boardroom: The New Rules of Power in Corporate America, a new book by Alan Murray of the Wall Street Journal, describes the recent shift of corporate power from CEOs to the boardroom. Former President Bill Clinton's Giving: How Each of Us Can Change The World reveals the innovative efforts being made by companies and organizations to solve problems are save lives, and calls upon each of us to join in, "regardless of income, available time, age, and skills." Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls by Noel M. Tichy and Warren G. Bennis offers a framework for making tough calls when the stakes are high and the right path is far from obvious. In Opting Out: Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home, Pamela Stone interviews professional women who returned home after promising careers, and concludes that most of these women were not 'opting out' but were being forced out. Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus points us toward 'creating a world without poverty' in his book of the same name. Finally, The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York by Chandler Burr of the New York Times Style Magazine, chronicles an unprecedented year spent behind the scenes of the industry, focusing on perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena and actress Sarah Jessica Parker and their independent quests to create 'the perfect scent'. All this -- and more -- on our Popular Books display.

Were you struck by Cupid’s arrow, or does your prospective partner just smell right? Much like the rest of the animal kingdom, humans respond to olfactory cues. Pheromones and MHC tend to impact who we choose as a mate. And rejection may activate the regions of the brain that control addiction. Could this be the reason you can’t stop thinking about the lover that said adieu before you were ready to say goodbye? Read about the science behind the romance in the January 28th issue of Time magazine. Happy Valentine’s Day.

Local police departments, including Palo Alto, use a public database by Public Engines, a private company that works only with government entities, to plot daily crime incidents using Google Maps. 45 agencies now use the web site, which launched last spring in Washington, D.C. "Citizens can do a search in their particular community to see what's going on in their neighborhoods," Sgt. Sandra Brown of the Palo Alto Police Department said. After a recent burst of national publicity, the site handled more than 100,000 visitors in a single day.

Reported in Palo Alto Daily News

According to the LBO section of Mergers and Acquisitions magazine (February 2008), the article The Mezz Revival: As other financing option fade, the mezzanine market marches forward mezzanine providers are swamped with work. Churchill Capital mentions they have up to 15 transactions waiting in the wings. During this time of financial ups and downs the mezzanine investments are more stable than other forms of financing.

The Environment News Service reports that the Carbon Disclosure Project, a collaboration of 385 institutional investors with assets of $57 trillion ( that's with a t ) under management, has issued a request to the world's largest corporations. Companies are asked to measure and disclose their greenhouse gas emissions, and report on their strategy for dealing with risks and opportunities associated with climate change. The resulting information will be held on the website of the Project, an independent not-for-profit organization based in London. Also available on the website is Bill Clinton's 2007 launch speech, as well as a video message from Rupert Murdoch and a letter from German Chancellor Angela Merkel. As more and more leaders testify, green is the way to go.

A chance for free books and a free lunch can be found in the February issue of JacksonLine. You can get details on our new source for analyst reports and learn about a new Lehman Brothers offering that we are testing.

A blog by GSB Professor Bob Sutton notes a recent HBR piece that argues female corporate superstars are importable across firms, their male counterparts less so. Sutton points to Harvard Professor Boris Groysberg's article 'How Star Women Build Portable Skills' in the Harvard Business Review, that makes the case for the transferability of women superstar employees. Groysberg writes that there are at least two explanations for this discrepancy ... Well, you'll need to read the article. Or at least Bob Sutton's blog. The issue is on our current periodical racks in Jackson Library (or, if you are a member of the Stanford community, go to the Business Source Complete database.)