GMID and BSC for country information

On my previous posting I mentioned that both GMID and BSC were good places to obtain country information. I just wanted to say a bit more about both.

The reports found on BSC cover things like economic conditions, history, social and political conditions, trade, industry and geographical information. Some of the reports are from Datamonitor and hve PESTLE analysis, (Political, economic, social, technical, legal and environment). You can see older reports as well as the latest one.

There are two ways of searching for country information on GMID. If you just want general background information the easiest way to get this is to put the name of the country and 'factfile' in the searchbox in the top left-hand corner. The report contains information about the country's politics, industry, economy, energy and a statistical summary. You can also search for specific information such as a country's GDP or exports by selecting from the 'countries and consumers menu, e.g. economy, trade and finance, select the category, then 'go', from the category tree you can select more if you wish, now choose geographies, select the area, then the country and run the search. This way is a little more complicated and you can probably also get more specific information from the country factfile, so I would probably try that method first.

Country information on both BSC and GMID is up to date and comes from reliable sources.

Business Source Complete - enhanced business searching interface

The Enhanced Business Searching interface of BSC has changed. It no longer shows the options to browse the Business videos, company profiles, industry profiles and market research reports at the top of the screen. You now have to scroll down to see these.

This prompted me to run a couple searches in the main part of BSC to see how they compared and whether you could get the same information by placing limits on your search in the main part of BSC. I found limiting to company report under document type didn't give you the latest report that searching in company profiles did. For example a search for John Lewis in the main BSC interface, but limited to document type found only reports for 2007, whereas a search on the enhanced business searching interface (EBSI) found a report from 2011. Why this should be, I don't know.

The company profiles are an excellent source of information about companies. They are produced by Datamonitor and are usually very up-to-date. I haven't come across many that are older than one or two years. They contain a lot of background information, history and a SWOT analysis.

I did also find that you could obtain very useful and current country information by limiting the search to country report under publication type. Many of these are Datamonitor reports, but they also have reports form EIU and Political Risk Yearbook. The information given is very detailed, giving information such as economic indicators and sociological and political information. You used to be able to search in the EBSI for country reports, but the link was taken away some time ago, but at least they are still there. It was swapped for the link to business videos (many of which look really useful).

The industry reports are also very useful and you can often find reports on industries in specific countries; a useful alternative to GMID.

Bankscope

We now have access to Bankscope via Subject Databases on Locate. The interface is the same as FAME, so it can be searched in the same way and displays results in the same way. It contains global banking information and has details for 30,000 banks worldwide. For some banks there is up to 16 years of accounts. The type of information given includes financial statements, ratings and rating reports from Fitch ratings, Moody's, Standard & Poors and Capital Intelligence, stock data, directors details, bank structures, economic profiles and outlooks and mergers & acquisitions deals and rumours. In addition there are brief country profiles given for the country in which the bank is located, from EIU. These include GDP, inflation, unemployment and trade balance for 5 years.

Overall a very useful database for those doing research or assignments in banking. It is especially useful because of it's global coverage and it is possible to compare financial details of banks within a specified criteria and create reports.

British Library Management and Business Studies Portal

The BL Management and Business Studies Portal contains the findings of management research in the form of research reports, summaries, briefings, working papers and conference papers. It doesn't contain any journal articles (as far as I can tell) but is a good source of information that is freely available. You will need to register and put in your subject interest to receive email alerts; a great way to keep up to date with research.

It covers a wide range of business and management subject areas including accounting, finance, economics, international business, marketing, small business and entrepreneurship.

A link to this is also available on Subject Databases (Business and Economics- management websites) on Locate

To introduce this blog...

Hello
This blog is for the benefit of academic staff and students that I support at Coventry University, (business, economics and engineering management). It will contain postings about new developments in the library, resources, useful websites, hints and tips about searching and anything else I think might be useful to you.

I welcome your feedback and comments.