Database of the month: Business Source Complete

This month we’re featuring Business Source Complete, as our database of the month. It’s a key database for students in the School of Management because it covers a broad range of subject areas, related to business and economics.

As part of the comprehensive coverage offered by this database, indexing and abstracts for the most important scholarly business journals back as far as 1886 are included. In addition, searchable cited references are provided for more than 1,300 journals.

Business Source Complete includes the following:

• Academic journal articles
• Trade publications
• News
• Market research reports
• Company information
• Industry profiles
• Country profiles

You can access Business Source Complete via iFind or the Management library guide. The library guide also provides advice on finding different types of information and guides to using our databases including Business Source Complete.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Academic Misconduct Workshop

The university takes academic misconduct very seriously and it can have a serious and detrimental effect on your results.

On Wednesday 8^th February a workshop, to help you avoid academic misconduct, is being held in the Bay Library from 14.00-15.00 in PC room 2.

During the workshop we’ll look at:

• What constitutes academic misconduct.
• The definition of plagiarism, collusion and the commissioning of work.
• Why it’s so important to reference.
• How to reference and common mistakes.
• Where to find help with referencing.
• Tools that can help you reference.

There’s no need to sign up, you can come along on the day.

Trial access to HS Talks:Business & Management collection.

We currently have trial access to a new resource until 30^th June – HS Talks: the Business & Management Collection.

The Business & Management Collection contains 900 online video lectures and case studies by  leading world experts.

Categories

• Finance, Accounting and Economics
• Global Business Management
• Management, Leadership & Organization
• Marketing & Sales
• Strategy
• Technology & Operations

To access on campus go to www.hstalks.com/business  – no username necessary.

To access off campus – please email buslib@swansea.ac.uk  from your university email to request access.

Academic staff – you can embed any of these videos in your Blackboard  modules until end of trial in June.

1. Find a suitable video in HS Talks
2. Click on video title.
3. Click on “Embed in course”
4. Copy link to clipboard, then paste into a BB module , website, blog or email.

Send any queries or comments about this trial to buslib@swansea.ac.uk

 

Password security

Hi Bay Library users, I’m Grant and I work here as a Service Adviser on the Library desk at the Bay.  Previously I worked for IT Support at Aberystwyth University.  Here are some top tips regarding the security of your university password:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Go to https://mypassword.swan.ac.uk  to change your password from the default password you were given at the beginning of your SU studies.
• Make your password more than 10 characters long. The longer the better.
• Use higher and lower case letters.
• Use at least, 2 numbers and 1 special character ($%*&) in your password.
• Use different passwords for different systems.
• Change your passwords every now and again.
• Never share your password with anyone – not even a member of Library and IT staff.

Keep secure. Stay safe.

 

Looking for business-related information from and about Europe?

• Need to read Jonathan Hill’s (EU Commissioner for Financial Services)  latest speech on Capital Markets Union?
• Looking for the recent report on “A Digital Single market Strategy for Europe” or the European Investment Bank’s “Investment Plan for Europe”?
• Or the latest info on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership?
• Need detailed comparative data of inflation rates across EU countries (Harmonised Indices of Consumer prices)?

 

The European Union has many divisions and websites for the Parliament, Councils, Commissions, Bank, Courts – it can difficult to navigate.  However there are two key resources which could help you:

EUROPEAN SOURCES ONLINE
http://www.europeansources.info/search.jsp
European Sources Online (ESO) is an online database which provides access to information on the institutions and activities of the European Union, the countries, regions and other international organisations of Europe, and on the issues of importance to European citizens and stakeholders. ESO provides access to thousands of expertly selected websites, documents and publications from the EU and other international organisations, national governments, think tanks, stakeholder organisations, working papers etc., full text articles from Financial Times and European Voice, plus bibliographic records to key academic textbooks and periodical articles, and a series of Information Guides compiled by the ESO Editorial Team. Updated daily. Link to our Guide.

EUROSTAT

http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/
Eurostat is the Statistical Office of the European Communities in Luxembourg. Eurostat gathers data from the official statistical agencies in EU member countries. It then has to ensure that the data is harmonized so that meaningful comparisons can be made across several countries.  Eurostat covers all subjects especially business, economics, finance.

156 new ebooks!

Good news! We have recently bought two ebook collections for our School of Management students. These titles come to us via Elgar Online, which is a database of research books, handbooks, companions, encyclopaedia, dictionaries and other academic material.  Swansea University students can now access the 2014 Economics & Finance collection of ebooks (99 titles) and the 2014 Business & Management collection (57 titles) from Elgar Online.

The available ebooks have all been added to our iFind Discover library catalogue, so you’ll see them cropping up in your results as you search for library resources as normal. If you’d like to view a list of all these new titles, just search for Elgar Online on iFind Discover and follow the links to the database homepage. From there, you’ll be able to choose Browse from the options along the top. Once the titles are listed, remember to choose the option for All accessible content under Refine by access to ensure you’re viewing the ebooks from the collections we’ve subscribed to.

We think these extra resources are going to be really useful, so do please have a look at them when you get a chance. If you have any questions or need any help, please contact the School of Management subject support team at buslib@swansea.ac.uk.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Advice on Tackling a Literature Review

If you have to do a literature review for a dissertation or PhD, it’s a good idea to get some expert advice on how to approach it before you get started. We have picked out some of the best guidance both in the library and on the web:

1. If you prefer to have a print book to browse, we have lots of books in the library on doing a literature review that can give you a detailed overview of the whole process. Some of these are specific to undergraduate, postgraduate or business research.

2. For expert advice from an academic, the excellent Patter blog (which discusses research and academic writing) has discussed many aspects of doing a literature review: for example this post on scoping or trying out a questions approach. You can see a full range of posts here.

3. If you like interactive web resource, “The Final Chapter” is a learning object from Leeds University. See the “Doing a Literature Review” and click through the sections on the bottom of the screen.

4. Some universities have a wealth of detailed advice on their websites: try the pages from RMIT Australia or more detailed advice from Deluth (“Guidelines for writing a literature review“) or the University of Southern California.

5. This presentation by Professor Hazel Hall looks at Critical Reading skills for a literature review. The advice is aimed at PhD students but there are many useful issues covered for students at all levels.

6. The publisher Emerald also has pages on “how to carry out a literature review for a research paper or dissertation“. See the menu on the right for the different sections.

 

Perfect referencing for dissertations

One of the last tasks with a dissertation is usually writing and/or checking the reference list. If you are using APA 6th (the form of Harvard that the School of Management recommends) here are the key things to check:

• If you have used any ideas – either as quotes or put into your own words – from another author, you need to reference them both in the text and in your reference list. This ensures you cannot be accused of plagiarism (passing off someone else’s work as your own).
• Your reference list should contain a full reference for everything you have mentioned in the body of your dissertation. 
• Your reference list should be in alphabetical order of author’s surname.
• Each reference should contain the correct information for the type of reference (e.g. website, journal article) so that someone else can find the exact item you used.

We have a short guide to APA (PDF) which covers the essential types of material you may have used (books, journal articles, websites) but there is also our Full Guide to APA Referencing (PDF) which also includes specific business examples (p.22) such as…

• Market research reports from Mintel Oxygen
• Industry profiles from EBSCO Business Source Complete
• Company data from FAME
• Data from Datastream
• Global market data from Mintel GMN
• Official documents or reports (p.12)

The APA style blog is also very handy for advice on more unusual reference types but please do email your librarians on buslib@swansea.ac.uk if you are stuck – we will do our best to advise on the correct reference to use.

(From the Washington Post) “The solutions to all our problems may be buried in PDFs that nobody reads”

The World Bank recently published a report analysing how their numerous reports and publications are used. This article by Christopher Ingraham from the Washington Post pulls out the highlights including the depressing fact that roughly one third of their reports have never been downloaded at all. The report has given rise to various debates (see the comments on the Washington Post article) ranging from how little impact research has on policy to the issues with publishing via PDF (“Is the PDF hurting democracy?”).

It’s worth highlighting what the World Bank website has to offer for academic students: it’s particularly handy for finding information by country or region:

• The World Bank is an authoritative source for information for assignments: their reports and analysis will have been commissioned from experts in the field.  Open Knowledge Repository is their gateway to papers and can be browsed by country or region.
• We have already blogged about World Bank Data is also a great source for reliable country data.
• “World Bank Blogs” also has expert bloggers posting reports – a good source of current awareness on global issues.

 

Exploring one of our top resources: Proquest Business Collection

One of our top business resources is Proquest Business Collection. Easy to use, it makes finding scholarly journal articles as fast and straightforward as Googling (or faster: the quality of results is guaranteed so no need to analyse the source).

Under the hood, this is actually the following distinct databases:

• ABI / Inform Complete
• Accounting & Tax
• Banking Information Source
• IBSS = International Bibliography of the Social Sciences
• Proquest Asian Business & Reference
• Proquest Entrepreneurship

So as well as a strong coverage of business topics, it is also a good bet for anything in the specific areas mentioned above. We have our own guide to the database (PDF) but to get the most out of it, try the in-depth resources that Proquest themselves provide:

Detailed User Guide (PDF)

YouTube playlist of videos that cover every aspect of the interface. Most of the videos are under 2 minutes long. Try using the thesaurus to help you find the best search terms for your topic:

 

or the Advanced Search for power-searching tips:

 

Note: The Business Collection shares the same interface as other Proquest subject resources (e.g. ASSIA) so the Proquest guides refer to the general interface, not the business collection specifically.