Reference at Newman Library

Tag: Business Insights: Global

Business Insights: Global Is Now Gale Business: Insights

Gale has rebranded “Business Insights: Global” to “Gale Business: Insights.” With the new name also comes a whole new design that follows the style of most of the other Gale databases we have.

The design is a big improvement. To orient yourself to the new way of navigating to content in the database, you’ll want to look at this overview from Gale about the new layout.

Through the spring 2023 semester, the A-Z databases page will feature a link in the Bs that is labeled with the old name as well as a link in the Gs for the new name; both links will take you to the new interface. At the end of spring, that old link in the Bs will be removed.

If you have a database link to “Business Insights: Global” on one of your research guides, you’ll find that the has been already renamed for you today (the same goes for links to the database on various subject databases pages).

Business Insights: Essentials Is Upgraded to Business Insights: Global

Thanks to recent deal between Gale and CUNY, we’ve expanded CUNY-wide access to a number of Gale products at a very reasonable cost. We’re now have access (again) to Business Insights: Global, which offers more content than the Business Insights: Essentials product we have had for the past few years. The URL and product name have been updated on the database lists.

Look soon for more announcements on the blog about Gale products.

Changes to Some Gale Databases

We’ve recently lost access to Twayne’s Author Series and to the current contents on World Scholar: Latin American and the Caribbean (we’ve retained access to the archives).

Our subscription to Business Insights: Global has changed to Business Insights: Essentials.

All changes have been reflected on our A-Z database pages and subject database pages.

Old Databases Page Listing for Business and Company Resource Center to Be Dropped

In September 2012, Gale relaunched Business and Company Resource Center with a totally redesigned interface and a new name, Business Insights: Essentials (as noted in this post on the reference blog). Since that launch, we’ve been offering a link to Business Insights: Essentials on the databases page under two separate listings (one for the current name and one for the old name).

After the Summer semester is over, we will finally remove the listing under the old name and keep just the listing using the current name.

SIC Codes Not in Business Insights: Essentials

Before Gale relaunched Business & Company Resource Center as Business Insights: Essentials last year, you could look up a company and see the company’s lines of business classified by SIC and NAICS. It looks like the new Business Insights: Essentials Platform now only features NAICS classification:

Business Insights Essentials--no SIC codes

 

I noticed this when a student was in chat yesterday asking for “Business & Company Resource Center” (as directed by the student’s professor) to look up SIC codes for a company. I mentioned the change to NAICS only classification and also pointed the student to Mergent Online, where you companies are classified with both NAICS and SIC:

Mergent Online--SIC and NAICS

New Name and Look for Business and Company Resource Center

This month, Gale switched all customers of Business & Company Resource Center over to the new platform, Business Insights: Essentials. If you go to the Databases page now, you’ll see that the listing there for Business & Company Resource Center has a note indicating the name change. There is also now a separate listing for Business Insights: Essentials. We’ll keep this dual listing for the rest of the year to help users who are accustomed to the former name transition to the new one.

If you have added Business & Company Resource Center to a LibGuide, you’ll want to delete the link and use the new link to Business Insights: Essentials that I’ve added to the LibGuides–Reusable Links page. Instructions for how to reuse an existing link in LibGuides are available here.

Also useful:

Comments on Gale Business Insights

I don’t think I have much more to add to the insightful comments sent out on the library’s mailing list yesterday by one of our colleagues. I too think we should take a pass on this database, as it doesn’t seem to have unique content. It’s worth noting that I do really like the database’s modern look and feel (by the way, Gale really needs to bring Business & Company Resource Center out of its early 2000s era design).

As part of my poking around in the database, I did a company search for Google and found myself looking at the SWOT analysis (which happens to be the same SWOT analysis you’d find in Business & Company Resource Center). The SWOT analysis is produced by a company called GlobalData. I’m not qualified to just the quality of the analysis but I do think I can say that it is troublesome that the report featured some grammar problems and incorrect info. For example, the company snapshot section of the report says that Google’s web address is at www.google.co.in (that address is actually for the Indian subsidiary); this mistake may suggest where the SWOT analysis was created.

Replacements for Hoover’s

Now that we no longer subscribe to Hoover’s, we’re seeing a number of students asking where it is and how to access it. Many of those students looking for Hoover’s are in BUS 1000 and have been using the Beginner’s Guide to Business Research tutorial, which points them to that database as a way to get basic company info.

Louise says that we’ll get that tutorial updated so it no longer mentions Hoover’s. In the meanwhile, she recommended to me that we steer students to Mergent Online, which will give them the basic info they need (including the ability to generate a stock price chart for a company to which you can add data for up to four other companies). She also suggested we send students to Business & Company Resource Center.

I’d also like to note that with the redesign of the EBSCOhost interface, there is a slightly less circuitous route to get to the thorough company profiles in Business Source Complete that are published by Datamonitor. Here’s the fastest way to find a Datamonitor company profile in BSC:

  1. From the main search screen, click “More” in the top navigation bar (up where it says “New Search | Publications | Thesaurus | Author Profiles”
  2. When you click “More,” select “Company Profiles” from the drop down list of options
  3. On the Company Profiles page that opens, search by company name and then click the corresponding PDF icon for the company in the search results list.