research

Database of the month: Business Source Complete

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Database of the month bannerbscomplete_logo

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Library Detox: 2018

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Happy New Year and Happy New Semester and welcome to the Library Detox.  This is a series of blog posts to promote good information literacy.

IL smoothie

Each day for two weeks, starting from the 15th January, there will be a new blog with a simple tip to help you improve your information literacy and make managing your information cleaner and easier for your studies and research in 2018 and beyond.

Over the last few months, Swansea University Information, Services and Systems have been working towards creating an Information Literacy framework. The framework is built on seven skillsets: Identify, Scope, Plan, Gather, Evaluate, Synthesise and Present and it is these skills that the Library Detox will address. Further information on the framework can be found here.

Further information is available from your subject specialist support.

Business Library Team: buslib@swansea.ac.uk
The Bay Library
Swansea University
T +44 (0)1792 505500
Find us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/SwanseaUniLib

If you haven’t already, please sign up to our blog.

RefME becoming Cite This For Me

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We have important news for users of the popular free referencing tool RefMe. It has been announced today that RefMe will be changing to Cite This For Me on February 28th 2017. Full details on this news can be found on the RefMe website.

If you have a RefMe account you will still have access to your account and saved Reference lists until June 1st, 2017, but you will need to export them before this date or you will lose them.

If you want to create an account for Cite This For Me it will cost £6.99 a month but you are able to generate a reference list without creating an account. However without an account your reference list won’t be saved for future use.

There are a number of reference management tools on the market and Swansea University’s supported solution is EndNote. This comes in a free online version and the full desktop software, which is available on open access PCs in the library. As well as storing all your bibliographic references, EndNote can find and store PDFs plus it integrates neatly with Word to insert and format references. If you’d like to find out more about EndNote please look at our EndNote Library Guide.

 

The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Strategic Management

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We’d like to introduce you to one of our newer resources – The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Strategic Management. This online encyclopaedia brings together over 700 individually commissioned entries and a further 85 signposts, written by leading academics and practitioners. The entries define and explain theories and concepts in the field of strategic management, including general management, leadership and organizational behaviour.

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You can use the encyclopedia to create a list of topics for your revision and you’re able to bookmark any articles that might be of interest.

There are a number of ways to navigate around the encyclopaedia:

  • Search by keyword, title or author
  • Browse an A-Z list of entries
  • Browse by themes

You can access the encyclopedia on campus by navigating to http://www.palgraveconnect.com/esm

You can access the encyclopedia off campus by searching iFind.swan.ac.uk and log in, when prompted, with your Swansea University username and password.

If you’d like more information you can access a guide to using the encyclopaedia here.

 

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

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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.

Finding information on research methods for your Masters dissertation

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The Library has a large collection of books and journals on research methodology for  business and the social sciences.  Here are some tips:

Organizational Research methods

Qualitative Market Research

Qualitative Research in Accounting and Management

Qualitative Studies.

Journal of Methods and Measurement in the social sciences

Journal of Mixed Methods research

Social Science research

International Journal of Qualitative methods

Social Research Update

  • Alternatively when using one of our subscribed databases such as EBSCO Business Sources Complete, include words such research, methodology, qualitative research, quantitative research when searching in order to locate articles which include information on the research methods used:
EbscoSearch

Screenshot of a search in Ebsco’s Business Source Complete (click the image to see a larger version)

Help with dissertations & research projects

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We have several books in the library that provide expert help and advice with business research projects or dissertations:

Riley-Cover“Researching and Writing Dissertations in Business and Management” by Riley

 

 

 

Polonsky-Cover“Designing and Managing a Research Project: a business student’s guide” by Polonsky & Waller

 

 

 

 

Easterby-Smith-Cover“Management Research” by Easterby-Smith, Thorpe and Jackson

 

 

 

Wilson-Cover“Essentials of Business Research: a guide to doing your research project” by Wilson

 

 

 

As well as covering the entire process of starting and completing a research project, these books also mention the value of using your librarians! From Riley (2000, p.63):

Sadly, many students (and some academic staff!) rarely familiarize themselves to any extent with the facilities of their library and are thus deprived of knowledge relating to the full range of available information
and from Polonsky & Waller (2011, p.123)
We strongly encourage you to go to your university library and talk with a reference librarian regarding the data sources your university has and the training related to searching these databases and/or reference management systems provided. You will be amazed how happy librarians are to help you learn how to search for information. They will, however, be less helpful if you simply expect them to do your work. The library and librarians are a critical resource that all too many students do not avail themselves of. While you can get a lot of materials from the Internet and alternative data sources, librarians have expertise in searching for information so getting support from them is similar to getting support from the literature. It can save time reinventing the wheel!
and from Wilson (2010, p.66)
your academic library will have information specialists who are there to guide you in your net searches. Make sure you can tell them just what it is that you are seeking, and be prepared to listen to their advice 
The School of Management can be contacted via buslib@swansea.ac.uk for one to one appointments for research projects. We also teach literature searching classes on many programs and are running business information seminars this term.

Visiting the British Library

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If you are in London and wish to visit the British Library for your research you may want to take a look at these useful new videos they have produced.  The series of videos include:

The Informed Researcher, and other great Researcher booklets from Vitae

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Vitae is the UK organisation championing the personal, professional and career development of researchers  in higher education. You can download 5 great little booklets from their website. The Informed Researcher is particularly useful.

http://www.vitae.ac.uk/researchers/169081/Researcher-booklets.html