Ex Libris: News from the Library
Poetry Competition
Photograph by M. Furkan Akıncı (LAW/III)
Poetry is a big theme for the Bilkent University Library this semester! In addition to the new Poem Aquarium announced elsewhere in this week's Bilkent News, the Library will also hold a poetry competition as part of our celebration for the upcoming 49th Library Week. All Bilkent undergraduate students are invited to submit a poem on the subject "The Library." The poem can be in either Turkish or English, and should express your thoughts, opinions and expectations of the Bilkent Library or libraries in general. Submissions should be sent, as an attachment in Word document format via your Bilkent email account, to kutuphanehaftasi@bilkent.edu.tr by 5 p.m. on Monday, March 25 at the latest. The submissions will be judged by a jury of academics and librarians. The winning essay will be announced on April 2, at 12:30 p.m. in the Library, and a prize of a 100 TL D&R gift voucher will be awarded to the winner by our rector, Prof. Abdullah Atalar. For more details about the competition, and about other Library Week activities, please see our website. We would like to wish all competitors the best of luck!
This week on Wednesday, March 13, we will host the first Library Lunchtime Lecture for this semester. Our first speaker is Prof. Dilek Önkal, dean of FEASS, who will deliver a talk entitled "Future Management." In her talk, Prof. Önkal will outline a framework for future management with a special emphasis on the role of judgmental forecasts in managing uncertainty. Addressing the common pitfalls faced by both forecasters and forecast users when applying judgment, this talk will summarize research findings on predictions made by individuals versus groups. The scenario method has been popular for focused organizational learning, decision making and strategic thinking, yet its use in communicating forecast information has received little research attention. This is surprising, since scenarios may provide valuable tools for communication between forecast providers and users in organizations, offering efficient platforms for information exchange via structured storylines of plausible futures. Prof. Önkal will review the recent work on the effectiveness of using scenarios in future management and discuss directions for further work in this important area. If you would like to attend the talk, please come to the Library Art Gallery on Wednesday before 12:40 p.m., as this is certain to be a popular event! The lecture will be in English and lunchtime refreshments will be provided.