News & Events

Partnership Results in Additional Online Career Resources

Students making post-graduate professional decisions may get an extra boost from Vault online career library.

A veritable one-stop career resource, Vault includes information on everything from occupation, company, and industry profiles, internship databases and message boards, to tips on resumes, cover letters, and interviewing.

Vault is available to IUB students, faculty, and staff thanks to a collaboration formed in the fall of 2007 between the career service offices of SPEA and the Kelley School of Business, the Career Development Center, and the IUB Libraries.

Prior to the partnership, Ray Clere, director of career services at SPEA, says that SPEA and the Kelley School of Business purchased individual Vault subscriptions, thereby limiting its access exclusively to students within the two schools. Clere approached librarians at the Herman B Wells Library to explore a consortium subscription, thus sharing the cost of the resource and making it available to the entire IUB community.

Emily Okada, associate librarian in the Information Commons in the Wells Library, says the Libraries were eager to make Vault available campuswide. "We're always working to respond to the needs of students," she says, "and Vault was identified as a valuable resource already being utilized by students on campus."

Okada says that Vault's convenient electronic format complements the predominately print career reference collection at the Wells Library. Unlike a book that can only be used by one person at a time, Vault accommodates unlimited simultaneous users and is accessible via the Resource Gateway of the IUB Libraries Web site. Electronic materials also tend to be more reliably accessible and current than their print counterparts. "Online resources can't be misshelved or lost," she says, "and the content is easier to keep up-to-date."

Okada and Clere note that Vault is unique in that it provides users with an inside look at companies and industries. While a lot of company information exists on the Web, it's often hard to find information from the job hunter's perspective such as insights to company culture, which may be invaluable in preparing for an interview.

The collaboration has recently partnered to purchase another electronic subscription. Going Global is an online career and internship resource with an international focus. The resource is also available to the campus community via the Resource Gateway of the IUB Libraries Web site.