Effective October 22, 2013, Factiva has revised the industry code hierarchy from 30 to 17 headings. While some of the former Source Groups will be moved into a new Source Group (i.e. “Computers/Electronics” will now be under “Technology” in the hierarchy), others will be eliminated altogether. The following is a list of the Source Groups removed and whether they have been moved into new ones:
Accounting and Consulting
Advertising and Public Relations
Aerospace and Defense
Airlines
Banking and Credit (Now use new Business/Consumer Services and/or new Financial Services)
Chemicals
Clothing and Textiles (Now use new Retail/Wholesale)
Computers and Electronics (Now use new Technology and/or new Consumer Goods and/or new Industrial Goods)
Environment and Waste Management
Food, Beverage and Tobacco (Now use Consumer Goods)
Hotels, Restaurants and Casinos (Now use new Leisure/Arts/Hospitality)
Insurance (Now use new Financial Services)
Internet and Online Services
Investing/Securities (Now use new Financial Services)
Machinery and Industrial Goods (Now use new Industrial Goods)
Metals and Mining (For Metal Products, use new Industrial Goods)
Paper and Packaging
Pharmaceuticals (Now use new Health Care/Life Sciences)
These changes will significantly alter our student’s ability to conduct trade journal searches since many source groups have either been removed or changed in order to make it less explicit what new source group to search.
Look for additional changes to Sources by Industry which will take place on December 10.
Wow, I wonder what their motivation was? That’s too bad that they’ve done this, as means less granularity in our search options.
We will not know the true significance till December 10, the date more changes are expected. While I may still be able to search some publications in a subject area like “advertising” or “accounting” by selecting these under “subject”, it appears the number of available publications under these certain subject areas has been reduced.
Overall, this source group restructuring which aims to “make it easier to understand and navigate”, is really an elimiation of titles. No matter how Factiva elects to pitch this news, there is nothing to be gained in the loss of titles.
On the page in the Library Services Wiki for Factiva, I uploaded the PDF of a document from Dow Jones that offers a FAQ about the new codes.