Reference at Newman Library

Tag: Business Monitor International

BMI Research Is Now Called FitchConnect

As of today, BMI Research (previously known as Business Monitor Online), is now called FitchConnect and at a new web address. The look and feel is updated from BMI Research but not radically so. There are two notable changes about access, though:

  1. You will be asked to login even when you are on-campus
  2. The login screen is not the usual one at https://remote.baruch.cuny.edu but instead one that looks like this:

FitchConnect log on screen

Members of the Baruch and CUNY SPS communities should be able to log in using the same set of credentials they’d use for off campus access to any other database.

If you’ve added a BMI Research database link to a research guide, you’ll see that the link has been automatically relabeled to “FitchConnect (formerly BMI Research).” By the end of the academic year, we’ll drop the “(formerly BMI Research)” bit from the database label. There is also a temporary pointer link in the A-Z database list that’s labeled “BMI Research (now called FitchConnect)” that will remain on the list until the end of the academic year; that link redirects to the new FitchConnect platform.

If you’ve manually typed into your guide the phrase “Business Monitor International” or “BMI” you may want to click through these search links to find what guide pages have that wording and update it (you can ignore the automatically updated database links that say “FitchConnect (formerly BMI Research).”

Business Monitor Online Is Now Called BMI Research

The company behind Business Monitor Online decided to rebrand their database to “BMI Research.” As you can see in this screenshot I just took, they’ve already updated the interface with that new name:

BMI Research

If you go to the databases page, you’ll see that the listing there now says “Business Monitor Online is now called BMI Research.” At the end of the summer, we’ll just relabel that link one more time to just “BMI Research.”

Shale Gas Industry

Students in MGT4880 will be researching the shale gas industry again this semester. The teams will focus on shale gas development in countries outside the United States. Outside the U.S., shale gas is often called unconventional gas and some databases like Business Monitor use that industry name.  I met with this class on Wednesday to introduce them to our databases and  I have posted a Shale Gas Industry guide on the Library Guides page.

South Africa resources re shale gas

I have helped several students who are working on a project dealing with South Africa and shale gas. Sometimes this is referred to as shale oil.    They need information on legal requirements, including South African laws, and  economic aspects, and environmental concerns. Shale gas, shale oil, fracking or fracturing, natural gas liquid extraction, or natural  gas extraction are among the keywords that can be searched.  “Environmental concerns” might be described in other terms–water safety, water pollution, water quality, air pollution, etc.

Our legal databases, Lexis Nexis Academic, Westlaw Campus and Westlaw Next, do not have the South African statutes or regulations.  Lexis-Nexis Academic can be searched for news articles about this issue.

South African government websites that have some policy information, as well as pending legislation, can be found at these sites:

Pending bills: http://www.parliament.gov.za/live/content.php?Item_ID=128

Department of Mineral Resources: http://www.dmr.gov.za/  (has information on policies and regulations)

Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs http://www.environment.gov.za/?q=search/node/fracking (report on fracking.)

Some databases that can be helpful, providing news, industry outlooks, include:

ABI Inform Global

Business Monitor International–search shale oil and limit to South Africa

CIAO

Factiva

ISI Emerging Markets–has many news articles and company reports.  Limit search to South Africa.

From looking at some results, I learned that there was moratorium on development late last year, and there are recent articles about what is now being considered.

Areas of South Africa with promising shale gas deposits are in Great Karoo and Little Karoo, also called Wet Karoo.

South African publications can be located by searching Journals/Magazines.  The Economist and The Financial Times can be searched for news articles.

The South African Institute of Mines and Metallurgy is available as an open access journal.  There is an article about fracturing in the most recent issue: http://www.saimm.co.za/journal-papers

The Energy Information Administration for the U.S. has this report re South Africa: http://www.eia.gov/cabs/South_Africa/pdf.pdf

Link to special report on economic aspects: http://www-static.shell.com/static/zaf/downloads/aboutshell/econometrix/econometrix_report.pdf

Other resources may be found by doing a Google search.

I hope these resources are helpful.

Forex Policy

While I was at the reference desk this week, a student asked for information about foreign exchange in VietNam.  She had already used Factiva and ISI Emerging Markets.  One other database that covers these financial policy issues very well is Business Monitor Online.  Pick a country from the tabs at the top of the home page and then click on “Country Risk” from the menu at the left.  Exchange rate policy is one of the subdivisions of  their Country Risk coverage.

What I Learned at the SLA Exhibits

Mergent Online will be introducing a new interface before September and before year end expects to have its Municipal and Government Manuals in an online format. This will complete the historical archive of the former Moody’s Manuals that we subscribe to in Mergent WebReports.

RefWorks will be at CUNY sometime in August or September to offer training sessions for librarians. The location has not yet been decided but it could be Baruch.

The Copyright Clearance Center now offers an annual licensing service specifically for academic libraries.

Euromonitor has added a new print title Emerging Consumer Markets which covers the BRIC economies –Brazil, Russia, China and India- along with Mexico and South Africa. A table of contents for this title is here.

Business Monitor has added coverage of several more industries including freight transport, water, power, mining and shipping.Reports in these sectors focus on emerging market countries rather than North America.

S&P NetAdvantage is featuring links to its Compustat data more prominently.