Reference at Newman Library

Tag: ABI/INFORM Global

Full Text Options for Harvard Business Review

For years, the only access to current issues of Harvard Business Review was in Business Source Complete, which offers articles from 1922 to the present. Now, ABI/INFORM Global indicates that it too has full text access to this publication from November 2015 to the present. It’s best to just ignore this claim from ABI/INFORM Global. Here’s why.

The articles that ABI/INFORM Global claims it has full text access to are in reality just records that link out to the subset of articles that are freely available from Harvard Business Review on the magazine’s website. Here’s a sample record in ABI/INFORM Global:

ABI INFORM Global-HBR article record

Like other periodicals on the open web, Harvard Business Review has set up a monthly limit of free articles that you can access. You can view four articles for free; if you try to view a fifth one, you get a web page on the HBR website blocking you and suggesting that you register on the site (a free proess that gives you access to eight free articles a month). This is all needlessly confusing given that we’ve got full text coverage within another database (albeit, that coverage from Business Source Complete has its own set of headaches regarding download restrictions and direct linking/course reserves restrictions).

We’ve contacted ProQuest to complain about this stretching of the concept of “full text” and have added a note to the A-Z journals lookup in Serials Solutions for the journal that indicate the the ABI/INFORM Global option is not the preferred one.

 

 

 

 

Planned Downtime for ProQuest Databases on 28 February

Beginning at 10 pm Eastern time on Saturday, February 28, and continuing for up to five hours, ProQuest databases and services will be down for planned site maintenance. This affects:

  • ABI/INFORM Global
  • Alt-PressWatch
  • American Periodicals
  • Books in Print
  • ebrary
  • Ethnic NewsWatch
  • Gannett Newsstand
  • GenderWatch
  • New York Times (1851-2010)
  • PAIS International
  • RefWorks
  • Wall Street Journal (1889-1997)

It may also affect the display of book jacket art in the catalog and OneSearch, as ProQuest also owns the Syndetics service that provides that art.

All ProQuest Databases Down on February 15

On Saturday, February 15, beginning at 10 pm and continuing for up to eight hours, all ProQuest databases will be offline for scheduled maintenance. Affected databases and services include:

  • ABI/INFORM Global
  • Alt-PressWatch
  • American Periodicals
  • EthnicNewsWatch
  • Gannett Newsstand
  • GenderWatch
  • New York Times (1851-2010)
  • PAIS International
  • ProQuest Digital Microfilm
  • RefWorks
  • Wall Street Journal (1889-1996)

This will not affect ebrary (it will be available during the maintenance work).

More details from ProQuest.

Find It Links in Business Source Complete for WSJ Don’t Work

If you find a record for a Wall Street Journal article in Business Source Complete and try to click the “Find it” button to get to the full text, the link on the SFX menu that opens up will offer a link to the full text in ABI/INFORM Global. That link, though, will fail once you are taken into ABI/INFORM Global. The full text of the Wall Street Journal is actually there in ABI/INFORM Global and can still be found by searching within the ABI/INFORM Global interface for the article; the problem is that EBSCO and ProQuest have different ways of indexing articles from the WSJ. That difference makes the Find It service from SFX fail, as the metadata that EBSCO has doesn’t match up with what ProQuest has.

EBSCO support told me that they are aware of this problem and are working to resolve it. It’s not clear how long it may be before it is fixed.

Here are some screenshots to illustrate the problem we are currently seeing:

A Wall Street Journal article record in Business Source Complete…

WSJ article in BSC

…clicking the “Find it” button opens up a SFX menu window that looks like this…

SFX menu

 

…clicking the “Full Text Online” link in the SFX menu window takes you into ABI/INFORM Global but fails to find the article…

ABI INFORM Global error message

 

…even though the article is really findable in ABI/INFORM Global if you search for it:

WSJ article in ABI

ProQuest Databases Down This Saturday Night

I just got an email from ProQuest alerting customers that all ProQuest databases will be down for six hours, beginning at 10 pm this Saturday night:

On Saturday, March 9, 2013 ProQuest will install new enhancements, features, and databases, to improve the research experience. Highlights from this release include:

  • Publication search & discover enhancements
  • Thesaurus search & discover enhancements
  • Athens authentication software upgrade to the Shibboleth® based OpenAthens Federation

A six (6) hour maintenance window is needed to install these enhancements. The window will take place from Saturday, March 9, 2012, at 22:00 ET to Sunday, March 10, 2013 at 4:00 ET.

The databases affected are:

  • ABI/INFORM Global‎
  • Alt-PressWatch‎
  • American Periodicals‎
  • Ethnic NewsWatch‎
  • GenderWatch‎
  • PAIS International‎ (1914 – current)
  • The New York Times (1851-2009)‎
  • The Wall Street Journal (1889-1995)‎

 

 

Chat Widget Now in ProQuest Databases

If you are covering chat reference, you may notice Baruch students coming into the chat service now via the chat reference widget (AKA qwidget) that is now embedded in the search results pages for all ProQuest databases (e.g., ABI/INFORM Global). As you can see from this screenshot, the widget is way down on the right side of the page (as it is the case with the widget in EBSCOhost search results pages).

I hope that more of our vendors set aside space for us to embed qwidget, as it has been getting a fair amount of use already from students who’ve found it while searching in EBSCOhost databases.

 

Accounting assignment involving revenue recognition

I’ve learned that there have been several inquiries at the reference desk relating to a revenue recognition assignment (2 pages) for an accounting class.  Apparently they need to locate three companies in the same industry and make some comparisons.

Based on this limited information, and a student’s comment that he had an hour to locate the information, I would make the following suggestions:

Revenue recognition is a very broad topic.

The SEC has a topical index of revenue recognition issues at:

http://www.sec.gov/interps/account/sabcodet13.htm

To quickly identify three companies in the same industry with some revenue recognition problems (which would likely provide something to write about), I would suggest:

Go to the Audit Analytics Database

Select restatements in the right column and a text search.

Then, select an industry from choices available in the Industry box.

(If a company has had to restate their earnings, it’s usually a news making event.)

Restatements can occur for many reasons.  All four of these options in Audit Analytics

include revenue recognition as a choice, so the student can select the choice(s) the student wants.  The results can be downloaded and the three companies selected.

Databases such as Factiva, Business Source Complete, ABI Inform Global may have specific articles about the companies identified.  Edgar Online I-Metrix, Metrix, and other resources can be selected for keyword searching of SEC filings relating to revenue recognition by the companies.

Another possible search is on Factiva, limiting the search to specific industries, geographically to the the U.S. and the subject Commodities, Financial Market news, and a specific time period and doing a keyword search like (revenue recognition) and (FASB or SEC), and news articles for companies in the same industry will be retrieved.

The “gift card” assignment that some students have had in the past would be an example of a revenue recognition issue.  Searching ABI Inform Global for “gift cards” and “revenue recognition” brings up 14 articles, some which mention specific companies.

Since most retail companies have some form of gift cards, or customer loyalty programs, it would be easy to identify three retail companies and search their SEC filings as to how they account for them.

I hope that this information is helpful.

New Interface for ProQuest Databases

Today we switched over to the new ProQuest interface. The look of this new interface is a lot cleaner and lightweight (this seems to be a mini-trend, as the new Factiva and Passport GMID interfaces feel lighter, too).

What’s New Here?

  • PAIS International is now in ProQuest instead in CSA
  • Links to SFX now include the “Find It” icon instead of just text
  • A “Figures & Tables” search in some databases
  • A “Data & Reports” search in ABI/INFORM Global
  • Historical and non-historical databases can be searched together

Bugs/Quirks

  • If you are looking at the item record for an article where there is no full text, you’ll see two “Find It” icons (see this example). ProQuest told me that they are working on this problem.
  • The link to our Ask a Librarian service went from the top right of the page in the old interface to the bottom right of the new one (but we now can have an icon instead of just a text link).
  • Please contact Mike or me with any problems you find in the new interface.

Fixing Links in LibGuides

The new interface has a new base URL (search.proquest.com). Using a find and replace feature in LibGuides, I was able to update some but not all of the links in LibGuides that went to the old interface (the search and find only works in certain kinds of boxes in the LibGuides system). Please check any links in your guides now to make sure they point to the new URLs.

Report that Prof. Carmichael’s students need

Accounting students of Prof. Carmichael need the Missal Final Report regarding the New Century Financial Bankruptcy Investigation.  The report, more than 500 pages, is posted on the website of the law firm in which Missal is a partner. I located it with a Google search, missal final report new century.  There are articles on ABI/Inform, Business Source Complete and Factiva relating to the report and its impact.

New Century Financial restated some financial statements, filed for bankruptcy and emerged from it.  Audit Analytics has some information and the SEC filings may be located on the SEC website.  (Some databases remove filings of bankrupt companies and also remove the original filing after a restatement.)

Accounting assignment on “push down accounting”

I helped a student in Acc 4100 who is part of a team doing research and a presentation on “push down accounting.”  They are to include references to companies using push down accounting.  Here are some possible sources:

Books 24×7 -search FinancePro collection for phrase “push down accounting”.  There are some books with chapters explaining this phrase.

ABI Inform and Business Source Premier can be searched for articles in accounting journals.  These can help explain push down accounting, which results in a new basis (from what I read quickly–I really didn’t study it).

CCH Accounting Research Manager–offers the FASB Codification and interpretations and explanations.  The FASB Codification relating to push down accounting is 805-50-15-7 through 15-9.   Among the results I looked at were some AICPA issues papers including pushdown accounting in practice with examples from the 1970s and 1980s mentioned.

For current/recent examples, I suggested to the student to try Factiva as we found some earnings releases (from Business Wire and other wire services) and also earnings conference calls in which a specific company’s  officers explained  how push down accounting affected their earnings.

Doing phrase searches for push down accounting in SEC filings on Mergent and Edgar Online I-Metrix also provided some recent examples.

The student was pleased with these suggestions.  I neglected to ask if they were to consider non-US companies.  I hope these suggestions are helpful in case the question comes up again.