Business/Economics E-Reference Ratings

ABI/Inform. ProQuest. www.proquest.com
Like all ProQuest products, this database is very intuitive and straightforward. Tabs easily narrow the search by scholarly journals, magazines, trade publications, newspapers, books, dissertations, and working papers. Suggested topics remain at the top of the search list to narrow your search even further. Over 4,055 journals (about 3000 full text) cover business and economic conditions, corporate strategies, and management techniques. 

Business and Company Resource Center. Gale Cengage. www.gale.cengage.com/BusinessRC
This unique file—which enables searching of company information and journals on the same platform—provides current information for thousands of firms. The featured profiles include contact information, variant names (companies acquired through mergers and acquisitions), SIC and NAICS codes, information about annual sales, employees, year founded, and more. Colorful tabs give other useful information, including news/magazines, histories, investment reports, financials, rankings, suits and claims, products, industry overview, and associations. Navigation is a breeze. 

Business Economics and Theory Collection. Gale Cengage. www.gale.cengage.com
With access to 450 full-text academic publications, this could be just the database to round out a large business collection. Powered by InfoTrac and highly customizable, it boasts over seven million articles on virtually every business-related topic. Search results are easily filtered to academic journals, magazines, books, news, and multimedia sources by clicking on tabs found near the top of the screen. To the left are links to narrow the results to book reviews, interviews, and product/service evaluations. 

Business Full Text. Wilson. www.hwwilson.com
This efficient and well-designed file provides access to magazines and scholarly journals, including indexing and abstracts for publications like the New York Times Business Section and the Wall Street Journal. User-friendly tabs (e.g., full text, full text PDF, peer reviewed, non-peer-reviewed) allow users to filter their searches easily. Other noteworthy features include Create Alert, RSS feed, and Link to Search. Over 650 publications are covered (410-plus full text), over 600,000 corporate names, and 190,000 subject terms. 

Business Source Complete. EBSCO. www.ebsco.com
Visually attractive and easily searchable, this business resource offers everything a user would expect from a native EBSCO product. Searches can be limited to academic journals, trade publications, magazines, newspapers, books/monographs, company profiles, SWOT analysis, country reports, industry profiles, market research reports, and product reviews. With over 4000 titles (3000 full text), the product is well worth the price. If your library can afford only one business resource this year, give this one a try. 

Corporate Affiliations. LexisNexis. www.corporateaffiliations.com
This valuable resource supplies basic information on 200,000 companies, including details about when they were founded, address, telephone, email, web site, financials, competitors, executives, board of directors, and more. The highlight is the colorful corporate hierarchy tree, which lists parent company, subsidiaries, branches, divisions, and joint ventures in a visual, family tree format. Hyperlinks throughout make browsing a delight. Other neat features include My Alerts, Merger News, and MergerTrak. 

Emerald Management Xtra. Emerald Group Pub. www.emeraldinsight.com
Emerald has brilliantly combined its web site and online database into a single platform to provide 85,000 full-text articles from 175 peer-reviewed journals as well as web site content. Search results can be limited by clicking on articles, abstracts & reviews, Emerald site, or other content tabs. Current journal issues are easily located from the journal list, which are displayed with cover images, and links to RSS, latest issue, editorial team, and submission guidelines. 

Factiva. Dow Jones. factiva.com
It's all about bells and whistles with this resource, which feels more like a friendly web page than a subscription-based database. Users can limit their search to images, listen to an article, or set up an RSS feed. The best feature is the ability to draw charts to compare stocks to NASDAQ. A first-rate collection of more than 14,000 sources, the file also includes the exclusive combination of the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times™, Dow Jones, and Reuters newswires and the Associated Press, as well as Reuters Fundamentals and D&B company profiles. 

General Business File. Gale Cengage. www.gale.cengage.com
Visually, this database is plainer than Gale's Business and Company Resource Center (above), which provides access to about the same number of business journals (5000-plus). What it lacks in appearance, however, it certainly makes up for in functionality, with features like links to company files, subject links in the article, and a quick box at the bottom of the screen for emailing abstracts. The dictionary link includes pronunciation, etymology, and definitions of terms. 

LexisNexis Dossier Suite. Lexis Nexis. www.lexisnexis.com
Covering over 43 million businesses, 58 million executives, and over 1000 industries, Dossier Suite is a powerhouse of business information focusing on financial and legal aspects. Provided are stock prices for the last 12 months, information about employees, industry classification codes, business descriptions, current news, key competitors, executives, financials, parent and subsidiary companies, legal information, and intellectual property. Designed with professionals in mind, it is ideal for corporate libraries. 

Management & Organization Studies: A SAGE Full-Text Collection. SAGE. online.sagepub.com
This wide-ranging resource includes the full text of 40 journals published by SAGE and participating societies, some going back 60 years and encompassing over 50,500 articles. Subjects covered include business and management, organizations studies, human resource management, marketing, sociology of work, and interpersonal communication. Every bibliographic record in the collection links to the appropriate full text in PDF format. Other notable features include RSS feeds, email alerts, ability to create “favorite journals” lists, and Google-like searching. 

Morningstar Investment Research Center. Morningstar. www.morningstar.com/go/MIRC
Despite the somewhat high price tag, this is one heck of a resource for investors. It provides valuable information on 9500 stocks and up to ten years of financial data. While the interactive charts are definitely a plus, it is the accessible writing style and logical organization that add to its overall value. If your library can afford to splurge on a top-notch business product, this should rank high on your shopping list. 

ProQuest Historical Annual Reports. ProQuest. www.proquest.com
This no-frills database contains information on more than 800 U.S. companies (1884–present). Citations include subjects, classification codes, locations, people, ticker symbol, NAICS codes, related companies, assets, and cash. The actual reports, available in PDF, are perhaps the most distinctive feature (e.g., history buffs will appreciate seeing an annual report from 1901). Search by term, company, and select years, or browse by company, industry, or date. 

TableBase. Gale Cengage. www.gale.cengage.com
Unlike other databases, which excel in full text, TableBase is all about, well, tables. For those accustomed to all the bells and whistles that ProQuest and Gale products serve up, this database may have a stark feel at first, but for those needing to search for raw data only, TableBase fully delivers. It includes data on companies, industries, products, and demographics, providing access to over 500 journal titles and more than 1000 sources.