Let me know if you’ve heard this one:

Last week, this undergraduate finance major comes by my office. “I’ve been searching in IBISWorld for hours and hours trying to find an excel-downloadable balance sheet for Estee Lauder. By the way, I need a ten-year spread. I’ve looked in every corner, every pocket of IBISWorld and I can’t find it.” So I say to this undergraduate finance major, “The reason you can’t find it is that you’re searching in the wrong database. Mergent Online will have what you’re looking for.” People, I can’t make this stuff up!

Here’s another:

So, this student team all visits me at the reference desk. “Emily,” they moan, “we have spent three DAYS combing through ABI/Inform and Business Source Premier, looking for the perfect statistical chart on HDTV purchasing by demographics. We don’t sleep. We don’t eat. All we do is research, but we can’t find the statistics we need.” “First of all, you can’t do good research when you’re starving and exhausted,” I explain to them. “Next time, don’t wait for three days to talk to me. You can find just what you need in a database called Tablebase.” Seriously! Can you believe it?

Ok! Ok! Just one more:

I answer the phone, and there’s this MBA on the line. He’s actually crying! I mean totally sobbing and hiccupping. “What’s the matter?” I ask him. “All I want to do is create a list of veterinarians in the Philadelphia area,” he weeps, “but I can’t do it! I’ve been fighting with the Business and Industry database all day.” “Dry your tears,” I order, “and try D&B Million Dollar Database. You can create a list based on industry, location, and even size, all in a spreadsheet.” I kid you not!

People, let me explain something. The right search in the wrong database is no way to get what you want. To make it easier to choose the right database, try the library’s research guides. These guides will give you the best resources to use for a variety of different business research tasks.

To find the business resource guides:
Go to www.library.drexel.edu
Click on “Research Guides”
Click on “Business”

* Originally published on May 15, 2009. For business research tips & tricks in real-time, subscribe to LIB-BIZ-KIT .

This world-wide financial crisis is really harshing my mellow.

Companies and industries are changing so quickly, and I’m finding it difficult and frustrating to do research. For example, my usual favorite for industry research is the wondrous IBISWorld. But IBISWorld is updated every four months. That’s terrific most of the time, but not useful to me these days. IBISWorld’s Real Estate Loans and Credit Lines Industry Report from July 18th, 2008? I’m, like, whatevs. Like that’s going to help me.

So what’s a library user to do?

Here are some of my current databases of choice:

Hoovers
For company information, Hoovers is really stepping up to the plate. Their company information is updated as events happen and is a reliable source for who’s buying out whom. The information isn’t all that in-depth, but it is current.

Factiva
Factiva is also leading the charge for up-to-date information. For stock prices and analysis, use the “Companies/Markets” tab at the top (and check out the interactive charts and graphs). You can also use the “News Pages” link to see the day’s major business newspapers and journals all in one place.

Business & Company Resource Center
Up-to-the-minute industry information is hard to come by these days. Business & Company Resource Center can help. Do an “articles” search within the database for the industry. For example, you can do a search for “Airline Industry” or “Real Estate Industry.” This will give you articles from newspapers, trade journals, and other publications. It’s not as quick and easy as IBISWorld’s reports, but you’ll know the information is current and correct.

For up-to-date resources and in-depth coverage from many sources, check out this pathfinder from our librarian-friend Louise Feldmann at Colorado State University:

Financial Crisis Pathfinder
http://libguides.colostate.edu/financialcrisis

* Originally published on October 17, 2008. Special archived addition of the LIB-BIZ-KIT Archives. Updates are usually added a 4-month lag. For business research tips & tricks in real-time, subscribe to LIB-BIZ-KIT .

This year, I have a very special new valentine.

My valentine is named Global Market Information Database, but I like to call him by his nickname: GMID.

GMID is the best! He is so helpful and knowledgeable!

GMID knows all about international industries, countries, and consumers. He showers me with daily articles about global news events and lovingly provides me with endless statistics and research reports from over 200 countries.

He’s the perfect blend of the quantitative and the qualitative!

I would like you to meet GMID.
He can be found at www.library.drexel.edu Click on “Find Databases/Journal Articles”
Search for Global Market Information Databases.

A few tips about getting to know GMID:

1) GMID is menu-driven. That means that you can’t really keyword search to find what you’re looking for. Take a look at the search choices on the right side of the screen and you can click-click-click away until you find the information you need.

2) You may also want to skim this handy GMID user-guide. It’s just 4 pages long, but it can be really helpful to decipher GMID’s interface. http://www.euromonitor.com/pdf/GMID_User_Guide.pdf

3) By licensing agreement, GMID is only available to current Drexel faculty, students, and staff. Sorry, Alumni — even if you come to campus, you will not be granted access to GMID.

I know that the minute you meet GMID, you’ll want this database to be your valentine, too!

* Originally published on February 14, 2008. For business research tips & tricks in real-time, subscribe to LIB-BIZ-KIT .

Looking for specific information about how a company operates can be as frustrating as searching for a needle in a haystack. Business and Company Resource Center is an excellent database to use when you are ready to stop searching and start finding.

If you’ve used Business and Company Resource Center to research a company, you probably tried a “Company” search. This makes complete sense. From this search, you probably found a lot of company basics – address, annual sales, number of employees, and a few article categories down the left side of the page. Useful, but not all that exciting.

The real magic in the database is in the “Articles” search. If you do an “Articles” search for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc., for example, you will get 1175 articles. If you just want to see these articles in chronological order, just click on the “View 1175 articles” button. However, if you are looking for more specific information, click on “Narrow by Subdivision” button. This takes those 1175 articles and actually categorizes them by topic. Here you will find hard to research categories such as “human resources management,” “forecasts and trends,” and “economic aspects.”

To access Business and Company Resource Center:

1. Go to www.library.drexel.edu
2. Click on Databases/Articles
3. Choose Business and Economics
4. Click into Business and Company Resource Center

Note: if you are off campus, you will be prompted for your last name and Drexel ID number.

The “Articles” search also works for industries as well as companies. Give it a try.

* Originally published on November 17, 2005. For business research tips & tricks in real-time, subscribe to LIB-BIZ-KIT .

Factiva is a fantastic new database providing articles from nearly 9,000 sources, from 152 countries, and in 22 languages. It is an essential business resource and you should start using it pronto!

You can use the “Search” page to use a combination of keywords and cascading menus to search by source, company, subject, industry, region, or language.

Quickly browse today’s top news from newspapers and magazines in the “News” tab. A pull-down menu on the upper left side allows you to change newspaper groups by region and by topic, including “top business news.”

Finally, take some time to explore the “companies/markets” tab, which offers several interesting features. For example, if you want to know what made a stock soar or plummet on a particular day, click on the stock pricing chart to enlarge it. Click on any day on the chart and you will be taken to articles about that company on that day.

Factiva tips

1. Only 11 people can use Factiva at one time. So, if you can’t log in, try again in a few minutes.

2. Factiva will log you off after about 3 minutes of inactive time. So, in the time it takes to make some tea, answer the phone, or put on a sweater, you’ll be logged off.

3. Interested in the future look of Factiva? Get a sneak preview by click on “Factiva Search 2.0.”

* Originally published on May 5, 2006. For business research tips & tricks in real-time, subscribe to LIB-BIZ-KIT.

I’d like to introduce you to Mergent Online, a new database from the Drexel University Libraries. Mergent Online is an excellent resource to choose when looking for company or industry information. Like nearly all of our electronic resources, you may use Mergent Online from off campus.

Here are just a few ways to use Mergent Online:

1) Try a basic search for company details. You’ll find a synopsis, history, executive information, business descriptions, and more.
2) Click on Industry Reports to look at reports on a variety of industries. Mergent offers North American, Asia Pacific, and European industry reports.
3) The Annual Reports tab renders full-color annual reports put out by companies to their investors – current and historical.
4) You can also use the EDGAR search to look at SEC filings, all searchable by keyword.

* Originally published on February 2, 2006. For business research tips & tricks in real-time, subscribe to LIB-BIZ-KIT.

I’ve always thought of Business Source Premier as one of the databases to use when looking for scholarly articles. Especially the Harvard Business Review. But lately, I’ve stumbled across something very exciting: Business Source Premier has all kinds of stuff in it!

This stuff includes:

1) Country Reviews from CountryWatch
2) SWOT analyses of companies from Datamonitor
3) Product reviews from a variety of sources
4) Country-specific industry profiles from Datamonitor
5) Company profiles from Datamonitor
6) Market research reports from MarketWatch

Even better, all these types of information are really easy to find.

Rather than putting in complicated Boolean searches, you can put in one or two simple keywords. When you get your results, you’ll see a collection of links along the top of the hit list: All results; Academic Journals; Company Profiles, SWOT Analyses, Market Research Reports; etc. You can use those links to narrow your search to just that type of information.

So, if I want to find out more about ice cream consumption in various countries, I would do something like this:

1) Start at www.library.drexel.edu
2) Click on “Databases/articles”
3) Use the “databases by title” list to go to Business Source Premier
4) In Business Source Premier, I can do a simple search: ice cream
5) Once I get my results, I can limit the search to just industry profiles
6) From here, I can look at ice cream industry research from Europe and Asia as well as a global report.

* Originally published on March 1, 2007. For business research tips & tricks in real-time, subscribe to LIB-BIZ-KIT.