E-Views and Reviews: Make It Your Business

By Cheryl LaGuardia -- Library Journal, 2/15/2007

File Updates Columbia University Press is relaunching two of its well-known databases this spring: Columbia Granger’s World of Poetry Online and Columbia Gazetteer of the World Online. Both products have received a new look and feel and enhanced functionality, and both feature audio capability and expanded content. Granger’s has grown to include 190,000 poems in full text and 450,000 poem citations, while the Gazetteer now includes historical population figures for the United States and maps, with links to outside sources added.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK “With speed, accuracy, and freedom from bias, Noozz provides a web-based news service of resources from around the world, featuring in-depth reporting and original research on emerging countries, specifically in the Middle East. Successful business involves identifying opportunities and managing risk, a daunting task when relating to a country with a different language, culture, and legal framework. Noozz offers a solution to this through a simple annual subscription tightly focused upon the worlds of business, politics, economics, and finance. With our own team of in-country journalists and researchers, as well as outstanding content providers for breaking news, Noozz is the most comprehensive and accurate source of information covering the Middle East.”—Richard Ream, President, Noozz America

Business Source Complete
EBSCO; www.epnet.com

Business Source Complete (BSC) is a bibliographic database indexing more than 11,000 journals in the fields of accounting, economics, finance, MIS, management, and marketing, over 10,000 of which are available in full text. A complete list of titles is available at www.epnet.com/titlelists. EBSCO notes that indexing and abstracts for the most important scholarly business journals go as far back as 1886. The file also includes citations to books, trade publications, financial data, conference reports, company profiles, and market research reports, as well as searchable cited references for more than 1200 of the journals covered and author profiles for 20,000 of the most-cited authors in the file.

How Does It Work? The database is available in two search interfaces: one is the well-known EBSCOhost web search system shared by most other EBSCO products. The other is a business searching interface (BSI) developed by EBSCO. Here, we’ll concentrate on the less-familiar to librarians BSI version.

The BSI screen opens with a Basic search screen of a single search box with six radio buttons for type of search arrayed below it: Keyword, Industry, Publication, Company, Author, and Subject. There’s also a link to detailed Search Tips to the right of the search box and, at screen bottom, links to Browse by Company Profiles, Industry Profiles, Country Reports, or Market Research Reports. Then there are tab options at screen top for Advanced Search (a screen that looks remarkably like the standard EBSCOhost interface, with the significant addition of nearly 20 document types to which you can limit your search with a box click) and Visual Search.

Can You and Your Patrons Use It? I tried a Browse search in Company Profiles for a favorite store, J. Jill. I was interested to see how the system would handle the slightly unusual listing, but my typed “j. jill” brought an immediate result for the J. Jill Group, Inc., with Company Name, Address, Country, NAICS Code/Description, descriptive Abstract listing revenues and net profits, a Products/Services description and list, and a Persistent link to the record. There was also a link to a January 2006 Datamonitor report on the company in PDF, links to Trade Publications on the company, and magazine and newspaper articles.

The next search was a Browse in the Industry Profiles. My search for Computer Games found zero in both the alpha and subject lists, so I retried with the simpler Gaming and got highly satisfactory results: different profiles for a variety of gaming, including Online Gaming Industry Profiles for France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States. I also retrieved hits of Wireless Gaming Industry Profiles for all the above, plus Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and Singapore.

Just How Good Is It? Confession time: I’ve been using this file for months in my reference work, and it has worked like a dream. I find more—more easily—than I can find in any other business file. For business librarians and researchers, the BSI version may work better, but, frankly, I get great results with the regular ol’ EBSCOhost interface. Given the price, I would like to see more international and regional material. That deducts half a point, but this is a powerhouse 9.5 product.

What’s the Cost? The annual cost for Business Source Complete typically ranges from $30,000 to $200,000, depending upon the type and size of institution. Multisite groups can cost more.

The Bottom Line This is the broad-spectrum business file your researchers will use. Highly recommended for all public, academic, and special libraries serving business and industry researchers.