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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Database of the month – Mintel Oxygen: Market Research Reports

Are you looking for market research, market analysis or product intelligence? You need Mintel Oxygen! Mintel Oxygen is a leading market intelligence database which gives you access to top quality data and expert analysis.

Content includes:-

• Market research reports on food, drink, leisure, technology and e-commerce
• Trends
• Brands reports
• Lifestyle reports (UK) and Attitudes & Trends (China)

Mintel Oxygen is easy to use. You can search for a company or industry that you’re interested in (remember you will only find market research reports on the industries listed above, but you will find other reports and analysis in other areas too) or you can browse the areas:

• Trends
• Categories (sector, theme or demographic)
• What’s new

Check out Mintel’s guides and tutorials to find out what else you can do.

Find more information at http://libguides.swansea.ac.uk/management/marketresearch. If you are accessing Mintel from off campus, please see our earlier blog post. If you have any questions, please contact buslib@swansea.ac.uk.

Database of the month – Zephyr: M&A deals and rumours with integrated company financials

This month we are highlighting an excellent database which focuses on mergers and acquisitions – Zephyr. It contains information on M&A, IPO, private equity and venture capital deals & rumours. It’s updated hourly, so you’ll always get the latest information!

We’ve made a short screencast to show you how you can search Zephyr.

Accessing Zephyr

You can access FAME in two ways:-

• Go to iFind and search for Zephyr
• Follow links from the online Library Guides, where you’ll also find guides to using Zephyr

Getting help

If you need any help using Zephyr please email us on buslib@swansea.ac.uk or come to see us in the library.

Image courtesy of watcharakun at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Database of the month – FAME (Financial Analysis Made Easy)

This month we are highlighting an excellent database of company information – FAME (Financial Analysis Made Easy). Use FAME to find financial data on UK and Irish companies with a turnover of £1.5 million or more. This includes information about:-

• Financials
• Adverse filings
• Directors and Managers
• Financial strength metrics such as credit scores and CCJs
• M&A deals and rumours
• Industry descriptions, SIC codes and research
• News
• Accounts and Documents as filed at Companies House and Companies Registration Office in Ireland

Accessing FAME

You can access FAME in two ways:-

• Go to iFind and search for Financial Analysis Made Easy
• Follow links from the online Library Guides, where you’ll also find guides to using FAME

Getting help

If you need any help using FAME please email us on buslib@swansea.ac.uk or come to see us in person.

 

 

New database trials – tell us what you think

This is a reminder of the three database trials which we have running at the moment:-

• Marketline Advantage (until 26^th February, which is this Friday!)
• WARC (World Advertising Research Centre) (until 6^th March)
• IBIS World (until 14^th March)

All three trials are available on campus only. You can find out more about each database and how to access it by clicking on the title above. Please take some time to explore these resources – you may find some useful material for your assignments!

If you’d like to offer your thoughts on these databases, please complete our short online survey. As a thank you, we have USB memory sticks to give away to 10 students via a raffle on the 6th March. Just include your student number on the survey to be entered int he draw. Your opinions count and will help us to make a decision on whether or not we will take up a subscription. We are also happy to hear your thoughts via email at buslib@swansea.ac.uk.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Trial access to Marketline Advantage this week only

Swansea University has trial access to Marketline Advantage for four days only from Tuesday 23rd to Friday 26th February.

You may recognise Marketline as an important publisher of business information. Marketline Advantage offers access to:-

• global industry profiles
• company profiles
• country reports
• case studies
• news
• financial deals

from the UK and major marketplaces around the world.

You can access Marketline Advantage by going to http://advantage.marketline.com/ from a campus PC (the trial is not available off campus).

Please take some time to explore Marketline Advantage, but be quick as the trial ends on Friday! We’d love to hear your feedback at buslib@swansea.ac.uk.

Making Subject Headings work for you – targeting your search using the Thesaurus in ProQuest and Ebsco

Are you having trouble finding relevant articles in your database search results? Are you struggling to identify the right keywords to define your topic? The Thesaurus could help!

It might sound like something out of Jurassic World, but a database thesaurus is actually a searchable list of the ‘controlled’ subject headings used by that database. These standardised headings are used ‘tag’ articles to help you find what you want. Since terminology can change from country to country and over time, these standardised subject headings can pick up articles which you might miss when you think of your own keywords. The Thesaurus will also show you broader, narrower and related terms which can help to guide your search.

So, for example, if you look up ‘Strategic Management’ in the ProQuest Thesaurus, you’ll find ‘Corporate management’ as a broader term and ‘Balanced scorecard’ as a narrower term. You’ll also find related terms such as ‘Enterprise risk management’, ‘Market strategy’ and ‘Strategic planning’. You could add some or all of those terms to your search to find articles you need.

ProQuest has made a short video to help you find and use the Thesaurus. It’s well worth a look!

The Thesaurus in Ebsco’s Business Source Complete works in a similar way. There’s a guide available with more help and information.

If you have any questions or would like to find out more, please get in touch with us at buslib@swansea.ac.uk.

Get the intel on Mintel! (And other sources of market research information)

Have you used Mintel, our fantastic source of information for marketing research, yet? If not, or if it’s been a while, take a look at the brand new video tutorials  now available on the Mintel help pages. The videos cover the following areas:-

• Category Overviews

Useful if you want to browse the most recent content by Sector, Theme or Demographic

• Added Value Content

This is good if you want to find out about those ‘added extras’ which are available in Mintel, like Webinars, Analyst Insight and Quarterly Updates

• Creating Email Alerts and Saved Searches

Shows you how to set up a profile so you can keep up to date with the latest content in your areas of interest

• Creating Report Graphs

Who doesn’t love a graph? This video shows you how to create one from a table of figures

• Finding What’s Available in Your Subscription

Shows you how to check which Mintel content is available to you (Swansea University subscribes to the following industry categories: e-commerce, food, leisure, technology and drink)

• Running a Search

Does what it says on the tin! Tips for searching Mintel content

• Structure of a Report

Highlights the key features of the Mintel reports so you know where to find the information you need

The videos are particularly useful if you’re using Mintel Oxygen, which is great for finding independent market research reports containing analysis, commentary and data. At Swansea University, we also have access to Mintel Market Sizes, where you’ll find data on industries and countries, including market size, market share and forecast data for thousands of consumer goods categories worldwide.

Although Mintel provides our specialist market research database, you may also find relevant reports on two of our other key databases, EBSCO Business Source Premier and ProQuest Business Collection. For help finding market research reports via these sources, check our guide on Blackboard under the heading ‘Can’t find the market research you need on Mintel?’.

All four databases are available off-campus as well as on-campus, so you’ll always have a wealth of marketing information available at your fingertips!

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.

New e-Resource now available – SCOPUS database

Swansea University Library now has a subscription to SCOPUS.

SCOPUS is the largest abstract and citation database of both peer-reviewed research literature and quality web sources. With nearly 19,500 titles from 5,000 publishers worldwide, SCOPUS offers researchers a quick, easy and comprehensive resource to support their research needs in a wide variety of subjects including science, engineering, medicine, health and life sciences, arts and humanities, social sciences, psychology, and economics.

If you are a researcher you can…

• …find out who is citing you, and how many citations an article or an author has received.
• …use the refine results overview to quickly see the main journals, disciplines and authors that publish in your area of interest.
• …uncover important and relevant articles for your topic.

Take a look at these online tutorials to see how SCOPUS can help your research.

Available both on and off campus, you can access SCOPUS using this link to iFind Discover, the library catalogue and click on the Access this resource link (Athens username and password required)

If you need any further help using this new resource please contact your subject librarians