Keeping Up With the Librarians

Business Insights: Global has undergone a transformation and is now Gale Business: Insights! It still contains the same content you know and love but aligns with the other Gale databases in terms of look and feel. We're working on updating our site to reflect this change, so you'll see our content reflect this update over the coming weeks.

If you're unfamiliar with Gale Business: Insights, it can help you locate company and industry information. It's beneficial for researching:

• SWOT analyses
• Company reports
• Business intelligence

Check it out today!

I have a rep in my house. Actually, I have two reps in my house. The first is that the bath towels need to be folded in a specific way, or I may become slightly unhinged when someone deviates from my autocratic folding rule. The second is that I can find stuff. We are going to focus on the latter as I don't think there is enough time or interest in unpacking the psychological roots and implications of the former.

I'm really good at finding things. Car keys. Wallets. Cat toys inexplicably dropped into bathtubs. It's a gift that, unlike the bath towel improvement strategy, is truly appreciated by my family. Looking back, I think I was predisposed to become a librarian. There are all kinds of librarians that do all types of work. But at the core of all of us is the desire and ability to find information. I am proud to say that the UOPX library staff shares this quality. In short, I've found my people.

The internet has changed the game for librarians. Face-to-face reference services during established business hours are giving way to on-demand research assistance. We live in a time whose motto might be "I want it now, and I want to get it myself." This applies to information. We know that most people want the easiest path to finding information without having to track down someone to ask. To support this need, we have updated three more on-demand learning tools (guides to help you find stuff).

Mergent Toolkits. We recently added five databases from Mergent to our toolkits page. Mergent provides financial data, company and industry reports, and comparison analysis tools. These databases are powerful tools for doing company and industry research, but at times can be overwhelming. Toolkits pull together videos and help guides that are unique to each database. In addition, we have added some useful but buried "treasures" and special tips to make searching the Mergent databases easier.

Get Started with Company Research. This How Do I guide provides you with a jumping-off point for company research. Sometimes, the hardest part of the research process is knowing where to start. In addition to breaking down the types of available company information, we've added a list of things to consider before you begin researching a company. Forewarned is forearmed. Understanding how the specific characteristics of a company can impact the type and amount of information available can save you frustration later in the research process.

Find a Specific Article or Book. We've streamlined this guide to provide the most effective ways to locate an article or book in the library. Not only do we break down the steps, but we also have a new video that will walk you through them and give insider search tips.

As good as these guides are (and they are good), we are always here to answer your questions via the Ask Us! service. That's what we do. We find things. And some of us fold a mean towel.

Do you ever find yourself needing all the nitty-gritty details on a company, like its financial data and the names, ages, and salaries of its top executives? Well, we have three new business databases to help you go into super-spy mode and find all this information and more!

Mergent Online

Mergent Online is where you can really go into spy mode! Besides financial data, it also has company reports and information about the company's history, structure, and executives. If you've ever been curious about how much top companies' CEOs earn, you can look it up here!  

Mergent Intellect

Besides having extremely detailed company information, Mergent Intellect also helps you dig into demographic information about the population. You can find U.S. census data and learn more about the demographics of any population in the U.S., which could be helpful for marketing professionals. You can even do a residential search and look up individuals by name, address, or phone number. To top it all off, it even has a great Learning Center to help you learn how to do all of this. 

Dun & Bradstreet Key Business Ratios  

You can use Dun & Bradstreet Key Business Ratios to find financial data on public and private companies and different industries, including benchmarking data. Are you a number-cruncher who loves data tables that are a mystery to most people? Then this database is for you!  

Updated and new guide alert!

Do you need help researching a private company or nonprofit organization? We've updated Research a Private Company and Research a Nonprofit Organization guides to provide more detailed steps on how to find information on these tricky-to-research entities. 

We also have a brand-new toolkit for RefWorks to help you navigate this great, time-saving resource.

Research a Private Company

Ever run into trouble when researching a private company? We're guessing the answer is probably yes. Private companies can be notoriously difficult to research since they don't have to disclose as much information as public companies. So our Research a Private Company guide has been updated to make the impossible a bit more possible (or, at least, a bit less impossible). It provides a walk-through approach to researching these companies and tips and things to consider as you tackle your research.

Research a Nonprofit Organization

Next on the list of hard-to-research entities is nonprofit organizations. We've rewritten our Research a Nonprofit Organization guide to also be more of a walk-through with tips and tricks along the way to help you uncover as much information as you can.

RefWorks Toolkit

We've transitioned our RefWorks How Do I guide to a new RefWorks Toolkit. It highlights how RefWorks can save time by managing your citations more easily and efficiently and includes tips and tutorials. As a bonus, we've pointed out their awesome add-on tools, which can help you format your citations in APA.

Sometimes the hardest part of a research project is getting started.

Our How Do I guides break down our most common research questions and walk you through the process of finding the information you need. Specifically, our company guides start by identifying key resources and drill down to find the type of information best suited to analyzing your company. Below are a few of our updated How Do I company guides.

Find a Company Report

Not sure where to start? Company reports come in many types and sizes. Our updated Find a Company Report breaks down the various types of reports available and provides links to guides that drill down to the databases that contain them as well as tips on retrieving your company information.

Find Company Financial Information

All the President's Men told us to follow the money. Use our Finding Company Financial Information to find that money. This guide covers the various sources that contain your company's financials and provides database links and search tips to get you started in the right place.

NEW! – Find a Company Profile

Sometimes you don't know what you don't know. Our newest guide, Find a Company Profile, helps you locate overviews of a company, which gives you a broad understanding of the organization and can provide insight on the next steps you need to take in your research. It's a great place to start if you know little about your company or want to browse through a handful of companies within an industry.

Ever struggle to use the library? Then, our new Toolkits are for you!

The toolkits offer a central location where you can find the "tools" you may need to help you research a topic or use a resource.

For this launch, we've focused on providing Database Toolkits, which offer tips on how to use our largest, and most popular, databases more effectively. Additionally, there are tutorials if you're new to the database and other insights that might be useful to you. For example, one of our featured databases is Business Source Complete. This toolkit offers links to the database (and in this case, a specialized collection within Business Source Complete: SWOT Analysis), videos on how to search Business Source Complete, and tips and resources that align with research that you may be doing in your courses.

We currently have four toolkits available, with more coming soon! If there's something, in particular, you'd like to see, let us know in the comments or reach out to us through Ask Us!

Happy Monday! I thought we’d start off this week on a high note by announcing our updated Find an Annual Report guide.

Some highlights of the new guide include:

• An overview of the different types of annual reports
• The resources you’ll need to research annual reports
• Tips for reading an annual report
• Things to consider beyond an annual report when researching a company

Check out the new Find an Annual Report guide today!

We promised you new stuff, and new stuff we have!

We’ve been hard at work laying the groundwork for updating some of our content, and we’re pleased to finally be able to share the first fruits of our labor with you, a new SWOT analysis guide!

Find or Conduct a SWOT Analysis

We’ve refocused our previous SWOT analysis guide to align better with your coursework and offer more support for you in your career.

• Provides a better overview of what a SWOT analysis is
• Details how to find SWOT reports in the library
• Offers tips on how to get started conducting a SWOT analysis

Let us know what you think in the comments!

Have you ever found yourself in a place of business, looked around at the money changing hands, and thought, "Someone is buying themselves a boat for Christmas this year?" I found myself thinking this the other day at the crack of dawn while sitting in line at Dutch Bros. with at least a dozen other cars ahead of me.

The Dutch Bros. business model has tapped into a societal hunger for drive-through coffee served by perennially happy Gen Zers making small talk to the background of alternative music. But life is short and well, at my age, I can't afford to spend too much of what I have left in coffee lines. And to be quite honest, my middle-aged hips just can't take regular doses of their caffeinated dessert in a cup. I try to replicate the magic of their products by occasionally squirting a generous dose of Hershey's chocolate syrup into my Costco bulk home-brewed java. It's just not the same.

But I digress. While waiting to pick up a multi-colored frost for my daughter and a chocolate-dipped coffee for myself, I found myself wondering about the details behind this drive-thru phenom. Fortunately, as a librarian, I have the skills and the library resources to dig out these details (skills that, my teenagers have told me, will do me no good in a zombie apocalypse, should I ever get a big head).

Company research is easy with resources from the University Library. Don't know where to start? We have a whole set of How Do I guides that are tailored to walk you through company, industry, and marketing research. For example, in How Do I Get Started with Company Research, I'm prompted to ask questions about my company that will guide how and where I search for information. Is Dutch Bros. a public company? A quick article search in the database ABI/Inform tells me that it just went public in September of this year. Public companies are required to disclose financial information, which makes finding information about them easier. Its recent conversion to a public company tells me finding historical financial data may be difficult if it's available at all.

Why are these points important? If you need to choose a company to research and are hoping to use the same company across all weeks of a course, or even across multiple courses, you will want to choose one that has a significant amount of information published about it. Since Dutch Bros. is a rising star (Morningstar tells me the company posted a 62% jump in its third-quarter 2021 revenue), there is a good chance a researcher will be well supplied in articles, financial data, and research reports.

The How Do I guides offer links to databases that are best used for specific types of information. If you want a listing of specific databases by subject or type, check out the databases listed under the company research subject our Research Databases page. The library offers multiple ways to access the information you need and guides to walk you through some of it.

As a way to celebrate company research (and the holiday season), here are some links to the secret menu drinks at Starbucks, Dutch Bros., and Dunkin Donuts (make them work for that boat!). Or, if you prefer, a link to copycat coffee recipes to use with that Hershey's chocolate syrup.

Have a safe and happy holiday!