First Kellogg’s had us listen to our cereal snap, crackle, and pop.

Now Factiva wants us to listen to our newspapers.

That’s right. Factiva has created a new “listen” capability that allows users to have articles read to them. This feature is available for any article in the database, as long as it has less than 4,000 words. The mellifluous voice is obviously computer-generated and, while lovely to listen to, it certainly won’t win any awards for dramatic interpretation. That being said, it’s a cool feature, and I’ve been enjoying listening to the Wall Street Journal today.

Look for the “Listen to Article” link at the top of most articles, including alerts and newsletters as well.

Find Factiva
1. go to www.library.drexel.edu
2. Search for Factiva in the blue search box
3. Factiva is limited to 11 concurrent users. If you can’t get into the database, wait a few minutes and try again.

* Originally published on May 28, 2008. For business research tips & tricks in real-time, subscribe to LIB-BIZ-KIT .

The Drexel University Libraries has a new subscription to the database: IBISWorld Industry Market Research Reports.

Use these reports when you want a current in-depth overview of a particular industry. I especially like these reports for their specificity. Want an industry report on Luggage and Leathergoods Stores or on Flour Milling and Malt Manufacturing? Look no further!

The reports cover over 700 US industries (at the 5-digit NAICS level) and provide key statistics (including some industry ratios), market characteristics (including market share), segmentation, industry conditions, and industry outlook. You can search by NAICS code or by keyword. It’s very easy to browse report titles as well.

Reports are about 25-40 pages in length and are updated every 4 months.

To find IBISWorld
Go to www.library.drexel.edu
Click Databases/Articles
Click Business & Economics
Click IBISWorld

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

* Originally published on May 11, 2006. For business research tips & tricks in real-time, subscribe to LIB-BIZ-KIT .

I really should have thought of this before.

We’re always on the lookout for articles.

Articles about the effects of computer use on earning in Italy.

Articles from Fast Company about prediction on the next New Killer App.

Articles about online political advertising in South Dakota.

Articles from the newest Harvard Business Review about global warming.

In order make it possible for all of us to search less and find more, I’ve created a new subject guide just for finding business-related articles. Here you’ll find the best databases for academic, trade, and news articles pertaining to business-related subjects.

You can find it here:
Go to www.library.drexel.edu
Click on “Business” in the green box.
The guide is called “Business Articles”

PS. While you’re there, you may want to take a look at some of the other research guides for business. I use them all the time. And you should, too.

* Originally published on September 28, 2007. 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 .

If Dr. Gregory House was a librarian instead of a doctor, he would limp angrily through the library stacks. He would stash his Vicodin pills in books with call numbers that start with RM138.

Librarian Gregory House would slash his cane in the air, and proclaim, “Citations lie!”

And yes, he would be right. Citations do lie. In fact, they lie all the time.

To us it looked like a perfectly professional and reasonable citation. But Librarian Gregory House would jab his finger at the citation, and proclaim, “This citation is lying! Health Marketing Quarterly is a QUARTERLY publication, so it will only come out four times a year! There is no seventh issue!”

After a quick investigation, and popping a pill, Librarian Gregory House would say, “That article titled ‘Choice experiments, site similarity and benefits transfer’ from Environmental and Resource Economics was written by Robert J. JOHNSTON, not Robert J. JOHNSON.”

Frequently, at the reference desk, Librarian Gregory House would look disgusted. “Yes, Anne Perkins has an article in the Harvard Business Review called ‘Bemoaning the Rotten Client’” he would concede. “But it was written in 1993, not 1953! Citations lie!”

It would seem like magic to us — the way he’d hunt down the proper citations. But if we asked very nicely, Librarian Gregory House might explain his process for correcting faulty citations:

1. He would try to find the article with the given citation by searching for the journal using the library catalog.
2. If that search didn’t find the article, Librarian Gregory House would then try a quick Google Scholar search for the citation. He would not look for the actual article, but just a reference to the article.
3. If he found a reference to the article, he’d compare the original citation to the Googled citation to see if there were any discrepancies.
4. When faced with a particularly difficult citation case, he might call for a consult with other librarians at the reference desk, either in person, or by calling 215-895-2755.

For more about finding full article from a citation http://www.library.drexel.edu/resources/tutorials/findingfulltext.html

Google Scholar
scholar.google.com

For more about House

http://www.fox.com/house/

*Originally published on October 19, 2007. 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.

Finding statistics such as market share, demographics, or production statistics can be a real drag. There’s nothing more frustrating that sifting through thousands of articles, trying to find what types of food people eat before they go to bed, or the market share of steakhouse chain restaurants, or what automotive features are most important to mothers.

For these types of questions, I recommend Tablebase, a really useful database that provides tabular information pulled from a variety of trade publications.

How to find Tablebase

1) Start at www.library.drexel.edu
2) Click on “Databases/Articles”
3) You can use the “Browse Databases by Title” list to find Tablebase
4) If you’re off campus, you’ll be prompted to log in using your Drexel email username and password

Tablebase Tips

- Don’t be alarmed by the complicated search screen. You can use the keyword search at the top, or the variety of the pull-down menus. I find a combination of one or two keywords and the “concept term” menu works well for me.

- Once you get your results list, you can look at the tables, or if you’d like see the article from which the table was pulled, click on the document icon on the far right side of the screen.

- If you enjoy using Tablebase’s extensive search options, you may also want to try its sister database Business & Industry which provides articles instead of tables.

* Originally published on November 15, 2006. For business research tips & tricks in real-time, subscribe to LIB-BIZ-KIT.

There’s been a lot of confusion about finding full text for Harvard Business Review articles and Harvard Business School Cases.

Let’s start with the Harvard Business Review

If you are looking specifically for articles from the Harvard Business Review, you can do a Journal Titles Search for Harvard Business Review

1. Use the big blue search box on the Drexel University Libraries Website. Search for Harvard Business Review, switching the pulldown menu from “catalog” to “journals”
2. Click on “Click for Resource” which will pop up a page from SFX
3. On the SFX page, click on the red GO!.
   
4. Use the chronological menu to find a specific article or use the “search within this publication” link to do a keyword search only in HBR. Full-text will be found right in this database.

Easy!

OK, now on to Harvard Business School Cases

I often get questions about finding full text for Harvard Business School Cases. Sorry Charlie, Drexel doesn’t have them. Actually, no library anywhere offers access to Harvard Business School Cases. Everyone must individually pay for Harvard Business School Cases. Period.

In fact, this morning I called the Harvard Business School’s Baker Library to learn that not even Harvard Business School students get access to all Harvard Business Cases for free.

This gets a little confusing because EBSCO Business Source Premier does give citations for the cases, but there’s no way to get the full text. It’s an impossible tease.

How to tell the difference.

Harvard Business Review article citation:
Complex Aggregation Strategies. Harvard Business Review, Nov2003, Vol. 81 Issue 11, p80-80, 1p.

Harvard Business School Cases citation:
Francisco de Narvaez at Tia: Selling the Family Business. By: Hill, Linda A.; Doughty, Kristin C.. Harvard Business School Cases, Oct 01, 2000, p1, 12p.

As you can see, the differences between the two are subtle. HBR articles will have volume and issue numbers, and the cases don’t. Also each publication is very clearly specified.

* Originally published on October 18, 2005. For business research tips & tricks in real-time, subscribe to LIB-BIZ-KIT.