Bloomberg at the Frank Lowy Library

Bloomberg is one of the world’s premier financial databases. Bloomberg collects data for 3.7 million securities across all markets worldwide. Use Bloomberg to find nearly any type of financial and historical data.

The markets covered include: government and corporate bonds, mortgage, money-market, stock market indices, currency (spots, futures, options on over 100 currencies), commodities and equities.

Current students, faculty and staff may use Bloomberg at The Frank Lowy Library.

Leading online tool for company & industry information

The OneSource Global Business Browser is on trial again until at least the end of August. This online database is a leading company and industry research tool for universities and libraries. OneSource integrates business information on companies around the world, covering 17 million global companies. The content is packaged into a web-based research tool and links together company and industry profiles allowing users to quickly conduct their research.

If you find this database useful, and think the University should subscribe to it, please let the Library know.

Here is a snapshot of what this database can do for you:

OneSource's business information includes:
* In-depth company profiles covering 17 million companies worldwide
* 21,000 Australian/NZ private and public companies with more added weekly.
* Get in-depth profiles of companies, including: financials, annual reports, corporate affiliations.
* Query for companies by industry, size, location and more
* Industry overviews, trends and market research
* Find information about executives and board members
* Up to date News wires, trade and business press
* Much of the data is exportable to Excel

Over 100 search variables are available for screening against global companies. These include:
* Business Description
* Corporate financials
* Financial Values and Ratios
* Parents and subsidiaries
* Industry codes including US and ANZ SIC
* Geographic variables ranging from international regions to postal codes
* Analyst company & Industry reports (up to eight long brokerage house reports provided)
* Rank Screening (e.g. Top 50 by Sales)
* Users can perform full text searches against the analyst report archive, allowing them to search for specific subjects such as new technologies.

OneStop Report
The OneStop report provides a unified, customisable report, which may be saved to PDF, allowing users to store detailed company profiles for later review. Users may include significant developments, executives and biographies, five years of financials, Company Insights and SWOT reports.

Industry Research – OneSource provides an industry module with market research and other industry content:
* Datamonitor (2,500 global market research reports by SIC) including 554 Asia Pac reports:
* Industry Sector Analyses (1,500 industry profiles) from the US Intl. Trade Administration
* US Private Company Industry Norms from RMA by NAICS and company size
* Current Industry reports from the US Census Bureau Government and association links from OneSource.
* Top Competitors by geography, industry, and size variable (e.g. Assets, Sales, etc.)
* Industry news by topic from Gale Business & Industry.

IBISWorld industry market research reports at the Frank Lowy Library

One of the special resources which the Frank Lowy Library provides to MBA, Executive MBA and PhD students at the Australian School of Business (this is the new name of the AGSM since its merger with the UNSW Faculty and Commerce and Economics) is access to IBISWorld Industry Reports.

IBISWorld Industry reports are popular because they're viewed as authoritative, comprehensive and time-saving. IBISWorld Industry reports are a premium resource (if you were wanting buy one of these reports for yourself or your company, the whole thing would set you back upwards of $A 700), and so the Library has needed to limit access. This is the reason why a librarian needs to approve requests to open IBISWorld reports. It is always difficult for Library staff to say no to students, but we believe our practices to be as fair as possible, ensuring that the greatest number of students have the opportunity to benefit from IBISWorld Industry reports when needed.

1. Only IBISWorld Australian industry market research reports are opened. Yes, IBISWorld offers many products, including US industry market research reports, and company research reports, but the Library has access to other resources which serve these areas at least as well as the IBISWorld reports.
2. There will be instances when alternative resources answer the question better than the IBISWorld industry report. When this happens, the IBISWorld industry report will not be opened, but Library will help you locate these other resources.
3. Generally no more than one IBISWorld industry report can be opened per student in a financial year.

One thing worth noting is that once an IBISWorld report has been opened for one student, it can be viewed an unlimited number of times during that financial year. Because we're approaching the end of the 2006-2007 financial year, there is a large number of reports which are already opened and can be viewed easily by Frank Lowy Library users. But come July 1, all of these opened reports will be closed again - except for the ten most popular reports.

Watch this blog for more hints and tips about using IBISWorld reports effectively.

presentations for MBA (Executive) EY residentials

During the month of February, staff from the Frank Lowy Library have been spending some time with EY students at their Ingleside residential to show how the library's resources can save their time and help in the research process.

As promised, here is a pdf version of the PowerPoint slides from one of the presentations.

For those who would like more information, this presentation has some extra details about using library databases.

A few things about Factiva

Factiva provides access to unmatched global content that’s not available on the free Web, to research and monitor companies, industries, or any news.

Use this database for the most up-to-date information on company activities, issues and financials. It is also useful for the latest management topics being debated in the media.

Tips: Use the Source menu to select a particular publication or group of publications. Restrict the terms to appear in the Headline and Lead Paragraph.

Business Source Premier

The database covers reputable international business publications including the world’s top management and marketing journals, as well as magazines in the fields of management, economics, banking, finance, accounting, international business, and other related disciplines.

Full-text access has steadily increased the number of titles indexed and abstracted, with over 8,000 journal titles now accessible. Additional non-journal full-text content includes: market research reports, industry profiles, country economic reports & surveys, detailed company profiles for the world’s 5,000 largest companies, and SWOT analyses.
The database is easy to use and the content is being updated constantly.

Searching
If you stay in the Basic default search (using subject terms, random keywords), BSP provides a useful display that allows you to filter your results quickly and easily by type.

For example, a keyword search on , will bring up results listed in date order, which you can scroll through. If you have more than 50 hits on your search, you can refine your search with more keywords, or use the hyperlinks that appear on the left-hand side of the screen. The screen shot below shows the associated subjects that were returned for the ‘transport’ query

The database also clusters results into categories for you. The search on sorted the results into the following categories, all hyperlinked to a treasure-trove of content.

Academic Journals Trade Publications Magazines Company Profiles SWOT Analyses Country Reports
Industry Profiles Market Research Reports Product Reviews


Personalise feature
To save searches and results for future sessions, it’s worth taking a few minutes to create a personalised sign-in, which gives you access to a personal area you can use to collect your search strategies and search results into your own personal folder, called My Folder.

Once you’ve done this, saving your search results is easy. Just click on the button appearing just to the right of your search results, and the items are automatically added to your personalised folder only you can access.

[This post was adapted from issue 3 of Franklly: Newsletter of the Frank Lowy Library]

What is a database?

The library subscribes to more than 40 databases and they are extensively used resources in the library. Databases provide access to the selected, authoritative information sources and data which are targeted to particular research topics. They offer extensive archives and they develop powerful search tools to retrieve relevant information more precisely. The ability to search hundreds of sources simultaneously is an exceptional advantage.

Tips: Databases, defined as value-added information services, provide comprehensive, authoritative, reviewed information that can be searched and retrieved effectively.

Access to databases is provided via the links in the Library's Research & Article Databases page in the Frank Lowy Library's research site.

Vault Library Troubleshooting

The Vault Online Library uses Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology to ensure that only authorized users can use the Vault guides.

Here are some pointers on accessing the Vault guides with minimal DRM hassles:

• The DRM is facilitating just one operation: downloading a Vault guide onto one computer, so that it can be viewed or printed on that computer. If you download a Vault guide onto your work computer and then email it to your home computer, the guide will not open.
• Version 7 of the Adobe Acrobat Reader gives you the best results.
• Sometimes a strong corporate or personal firewall can interfere with the transmission of data necessary to unlock a document. Temporarily deactivate your firewall before downloading
  

If you’re still having difficulties, take a look at Vault’s detailed download FAQs or contact the Library.

Career research - finding company and industry information

Do your homework before you contact a company.
Gather as much information as you can. The online databases provide a wealth of detail on companies and industries.

Proquest
Start here by checking the thesaurus for industry terms to search as a subject term combined with a geographical area or other relevant terms.

Business Source Premier
Great for industry profiles. Search the industry as a subject term, then click on Industry profiles. Also contains Datamonitor company profiles.

Mergent and Reuters Business Insight
Contains industry reports on technology, energy, finance,
health care and consumer goods.

GMID Euromonitor
Look here for statistical information and market reports.