Reference at Newman Library

The Census is slowly releasing data from the 2007 Economic Census and they are presenting the data in a new report called Industry Snapshots . These reports give a graphic picture of industries at the 2 and 3- digit NAICS levels and include graphs of total shipments/sales, shipments/sales per employee, and a map of shipments/sales per capita.  A table of industry ratios is included. Read more about these reports in this FAQ.

From any of the Snapshot reports, you can link to the Industry Sampler, the old familiar data page for an industry.

Students in a business communications course have to find a white paper and critique it.  Ordinarily we wouldn’t have a problem finding government white papers or white papers that cover social or political issues but in this case students are looking for white papers of a different sort, what the Wikipedia calls “commercial white papers“.  They define these as documents used by businesses as a marketing tool to advertise the benefits of a particular product or technology.

Examples can be found by doing some creative searching with Google.  Combine the term “white paper’ with the name of a company. Try it out with Apple or Cisco or Factiva or LexisNexis.  You could also combine “white paper” with terms like marketing, managment,  operations or technology. The Direct Marketing Association, Network World and TechRepublic all have white papers on their websites.

The SEC  issued three proposals yesterday to make trading through dark pools more transparent. To learn more about the proposals and how dark pools operate, read this SEC Factsheet.

Today’s workshop, “Database Survival: Better Searching Techniques,” brought out a large crowd of students.  The session was part of the library’s Workshops in 30 series.

Prof. Hensley teaching "Database Survival"

I know several of us have helped one or more of the teams who are researching the organic baby foods market.  I thought I would share a few of the more unusual sources that I found.

The USDA just published a report on Marketing U.S. Organic Foods. Charts and graphs from the report can be found here. It doesn’t include data on baby foods but has a good survey of who buys organic foods and how much organics cost.

The Economic Research Service of the USDA has a website devoted to Organic Agriculture. It points to a working paper on the demand for organic baby foods published in 2001 and this lead me to a database called AgEcon at the University of  Minnesota.  A search on organic baby foods there found four reports, the latest from 2009.

I have been using the MarketResearch.com database a lot lately and yesterday I sat down and looked into the companies that contribute market research reports to the MarketResearch.com Academic product that we subscribe to.The four contributors cover distinctly different industry sectors.

Packaged Facts covers food, beverages, household goods and consumer products.  They also publish reports on consumer market segments like Latinas, baby boomers, and Do-It-Yourself-ers.

Simba focuses on publishing, media and related technology sectors.  They have several current reports on the market for textbooks.

Kalorama publishes research on medical devices, pharmaceuticals and related biotech and life sciences fields.

SBI’s research is focused on enery, power and construction-related products like pumps, lights, doors, and furniture.

I didn’t mention the Icon Group reports which cover world markets.  You can find out more about this firm in the wikipedia article on its founder, Philip M. Parker.

The tutorial, called Industry Islands,  developed for BPL5100 and students doing industry research just went live.  Until we add it to the library’s tutorials page, you can find the direct link at this URL.

The tutorial is now accessible from on-campus and off-campus.  Off-campus users will be asked to login and will be directed to the tutorial following successful login.

Reading the Source Guide will give you a good overview of the sources that were used in the game, how you can use the sources, and additional sources of the same type.  The Source Guide was developed to “stand alone” and can be used at the reference desk when students ask how to do industry research.

I will be posting more about the game as I learn how students are using it. If you have a chance to play the game, I’d love to have your feedback.

Ryan and I were just working with a student on an assignment where he had to find out what economic news affected the markets during a particular time period.  Another student asked the same question yesterday in a slightly different way: What was happening in the economy that changed libor rates during one month in 2007? We found two approaches that work well.

Use Dismal Scientist. Choose the Country pages for the United States from the tab at the top of the page. Then use the drop down menu to pick a date.  You can choose any month and year back to 2006. The results are both announcements of the release of economic indicators and market wrap-up news and analysis.

Use Factiva.  In order not be be overwhelmed with too many stories, set up your search like this.  From “Subjects” in the indexing boxes, open “Content Types” and click on “”Page One Stories.”  Also from “Subjects,” choose “Economic News”  and “and” it with your page one stories.  Then pick a source. You can use just The Wall Street Journal, but I liked the results when I used the Dow Jones Publications from “Sources by Type.”

Several sections of COM1010 will be working on current event topics for their first informative speech.  Before I met with these classes, I did some brainstorming about sources with Barbara and Randy. Here are some databases and web sites we recommend.

For background, use CQ Researcher or the Facts on File World News Digest.

CQ Researcher has changed its interface and it is now better in most cases to search rather than browse by topic.  Their bibliographies are good for identifying research groups and government agencies.

Facts on File is especially good for foreign news summaries or country-focused issues. Search results can be filtered for “Analysis & Background” which includes editorials and primary documents like transcripts and congressional reports.

For News, we found C-SPAN has some good research features.  They have “Featured Topics” pages and if you scroll down past the video and news, you will see links to government resources, legislation, House and Senate committees, and public interest groups.

For Polls and Surveys, the web site of Publicagenda.org includes “Issue Guides” and  “Research Studies” (a little hidden in the tabs at the top of the page), both topical approaches to current issues.

For news, reports, and links to government agencies, USA.gov is a good place to start. Searches can be filtered by topic, agency or source, or you can just filter for sources with statistics. If you haven’t used this web site lately, it is worth another look.

For reports from think tanks and independent research organizations, we used PolicyFile, one of our databases, and a web site called Policyarchive.org.

The FarEastern Economic Review will cease publication this year.  Probably not a surprise considering the failed advertsing model that is affecting the publishing business today.  The Economist has another take on the closing: What if Asia as an idea no longer exists?  Read the article, “Without FEER or Favor” in the Septemeber 26 issue.