Today, most of us take Google and Wikipedia for granted when we want to find information. Simply go to one of those websites, type in a search term, and voila--instant access to articles, news stories, and links to relevant websites about your topic of interest.
However, in the dark days of the internet before graphical browsers debuted in the mid-1990s, research tended to be a more laborious and time-intensive process. Users navigated text menus, uploaded and downloaded data through FTP, and data was transferred via telephone line at a snail's pace. It was in this environment that Carter McNamara, an alumnus of the Executive UST MBA Program, began his online management library.
His site, www.managementhelp.org, was recently featured in the StarTribune. With more than 1 million visitors per month, the site is used by entrepreneurs, researchers, MBA students, and the general public. It provides thousands of articles, free of charge, that cover topics as varied as media relations, talent management, and e-commerce. While it was a text-based site until fairly recently (2005), it now has the graphical hypertext interface that 21st-century web surfers have grown to know and love.
So the next time you're working on a project at work or a paper for your MBA class, keep in mind the Free Management Library--a great resource provided by a visionary UST MBA alumnus.