A chance to win $100!

Proquest, publishers of ABI Inform and European Newsstand, are asking for your feedback and offering the chance to win a $100 prize.

RefWorks competition!

RefWorks is running a 'Tweet and Seek Challenge' competition next week - prizes include iPods and gift vouchers.

New BOPs and BIFs!

New or updated on COBRA this month

BOP = Business Opportunity Profile
BIF = Business Information Factsheet

BOPs
Gas Fitter and Central Heating Engineer
Fashion Designer
Window Cleaner
Translator
Aromatherapist
Tattoo Artist
Travel Agent
Aquatic Retailer
Computer Shop
Freelance Editorial Services
Book Publisher

BIFs
An Introduction to Understanding Financial Ratios
A Guide to Renting Premises for your Business
An Introduction to Tax, National Insurance and VAT
Choosing and Using an Insurance Broker
A Guide to Completing a VAT Return and Making Payments
A Guide to Costing and Pricing a Product or Service
20 Tips to Help You Choose a Business Idea
A Guide to Business Rates
A Guide to Fire Safety Measures
An Introduction to Value Added Tax (VAT)
A Guide to National Insurance
A Guide to Corporation Tax
A Guide to Tax Self-assessment for the Self-employed
An Introduction to Consumer Legislation
An Introduction to Applying for a Consumer Credit Licence
An Introduction to Business Regulations When Starting Up
A Guide to Flexible Working Regulations
A Guide to Meeting Tax Deadlines in 2008
A Guide to the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006

Market Synopses
Advertising and Promotional Services
Complementary Therapy

Mini BOPs
Kite Retailer
Mystery Shopper
Perfumer
Haggle Website
Lap Dancing Club
Log Cabin Holiday Organiser
Pet Taxi Service
Second-hand Book Website
Wigmaker
Stonemason
Kitchen Designer

Mintel now contains Snapshots

Mintel has acquired Snapshots International, so you can now access Snapshots market research reports through the Mintel interface.

New things

Long time no blog entry. Not because I've been on holiday all the summertime, but because the summer is busy in it's own different way from term time and because I'm even more sure than usual that nobody would be reading this!

So what's new in business information? Well, we have a new online information source for marketing - TGI (Target Group Index) providing data from consumer surveys. We have a new library catalogue which will be getting a lot of new features added in the next few months. We hope that by Christmas you will be able to search it for journal articles as well as books, which I think will be a big step forward.

There are also quite a few more new things being planned but not quite ready for general release yet. As with so much of life the theme is 'constant change'.

Citation tracking coming to Proquest databases

Proquest databases ABI Inform and European Newsstand will be unavailable on Sunday, July 27, 2008 at 3:00am for twelve (12) hours.

This is to add a feature showing 'cited' references and 'cited by' references which will allow users to track and view documents which have been cited by other researchers.

This feature was previously only available in specialist citation indexes.

WARC - digital

The World Advertising Research Centre database has added a new 'digital' section looking at things like top viral campaigns, digital consumers, how people use the internet, and impact on agencies.

Proquest downtime on Sunday

The Proquest databases ABI Inform and European Newsstand will be down from the early hours of this Sunday morning until the afternoon. If you were thinking of getting up early on Sunday morning and doing research I can only apologise and suggest a lie in.

The reason for the downtime is so they can add supplementary digital materials - audio, video, spreadsheets, etc - to the dissertations that are on there.

For some reason the idea of digital appendices reminds me of this blog entry I chanced upon recently.

New look for XpertHR

The XpertHR information database for human resource management has got a very nice new interface design.

Sadly the Athens Users link that HE staff and students need to find is still very, very tiny indeed and hardly stands out in it's subtle grey-on-grey colour scheme.

New look coming for business databases

Keep an eye on market research database Mintel and human resource management database XpertHR: they're both going to be getting a new look soon, with some new features.

ABI Inform - new feature

That excellent database ABI Inform has a rather nice new feature.

When you look at your search results you may notice that some of the articles have a little 'link to full text' option under them. This takes you to other databases that have full text when ABI itself doesn't. It only appears where it knows that there is full text available somewhere else.


[Note! This has only been set up in the last couple of days and some of the links don't seem to be working yet, but most do and we're working on the rest.]

X-rated database

Library resources are not always on their best behaviour during training sessions. They have been known to crash in the middle of being demonstrated, mysteriously change their interfaces between one session and the next, and sometimes turn up some rather unexpected results.

Xreferplus turned up a very odd result during training this week. This database includes a concept map option, a nice little feature where you can type in a word and get a diagram of related terminology, based on the dictionary and encyclopedia entries it contains. Once they'd been shown how it worked students had an opportunity to try it out for themselves. What I hadn't realised was that one of the reference books it contains is a dictionary of euphemisms. It seems that there is more to 'business' than is included on the syllabus!

Don't wait...

Two things happened today that made me do this. I spoke to the first student this year who said what many have said in previous years: "I'm in my 3rd year, and I never knew you had all this before!" and I wanted an excuse to play with SlideShare. So, let's see if this works...

Missing out?

I've been running a lot of training sessions for students lately on making the most of library resources. While it's well known that we provide access to the internet and free information - through services like Google - the fact that we also give access to online information that we pay for (like Mintel) is much less widely appreciated. Which is a shame because it looks like people may be missing out on a lot of high quality information that's available to them.

Starting a business in Portsmouth?

The COBRA database now provides local area profiles for those thinking of starting a business in a particular part of the country. There is a profile of the Portsmouth area, but not yet one for Southampton* - more areas are going to be added in future months updates.

* UPDATE! There is now.

ABI Inform - new features for researchers

ABI Inform have recently added some new and improved options for business researchers including:

• Full text US masters and doctoral dissertations
• A new improved 'My Research' area for organising your references
• Automated email alerts on your research topic
• The option to export Harvard format references

New resources - The IDS HR Case Study Library

We now have access to a new service - The IDS HR Case Study Library. It can be accessed using the same password as for our other IDS resources.