Case studies – Reference at Newman Library

New Listing for Harvard Business Review on A-Z Databases

The A-Z database list now features a link for Harvard Business Review. The URL takes you to a new Harvard Business Review LibGuide page that explains all the complicating factors in accessing articles from Harvard Business Review (which we have full text access for the magazine articles going back to 1922 in the Business Source Complete database), including:

restrictions on direct linking for all HBR magazine articles
restrictions on printing and downloading for selected articles
web-only content on the HBR.org website
case studies, which aren’t in the magazine anyway, and must be directly purchased by students and faculty

I added a search box on this page that has some hidden code that takes the user’s search term and ANDs it with “harvard business review.” This works pretty well in finding both the magazine articles and the web-only content that can be found in Business Source Complete.

Please look over this new guide to familiarize yourself with all the access issues and options. The decision to add this periodical on our list of databases didn’t come easily, as we normally use the A-Z list for things that truly are databases, given the continuing confusion students and faculty have over this resource, it made sense to give it a standalone listing on the databases page much as we do for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

Harvard Business Review Case Studies

Another tip from Rita: records for Harvard Business Review case studies (or things that look like they might be records for them) are turning up in confusing places. We’ve all known for a long time that the only way students or faculty can get full text access to Harvard Business Review case studies is to buy them directly from the publisher. But our students will often see things in our databases that look like they might give access. Here are some examples that Rita recently alerted me to.

Article Records That Are About a Case Study

Here is an example of an article record in Web of Science (that can also be found in OneSearch) has a title that can easily lead some users to think that it contains the full text. Note that it includes a “Find It @ CUNY” button. If the user were to click that, they’d get a window suggesting that full text is not available but that the item could be requested via ILL, which in fact would not be possible.

This situation is not unlike those articles that turn up in Factiva announcing the publication of some marketing report that leads users to think we must have access to it somewhere.

Records in Business Source Complete for Case Studies

Until today, I didn’t know that EBSCO has indexed all of the Harvard Business School case studies. If you go to this publications listing for “Harvard Business School Cases” in Business Source Complete, you can browse all the records that are included. Here’s a sample record for one of these indexed case studies:

Note that this record, too, also features a “Find It @ CUNY” button. Clicking that button will also lead you to a window that mistakenly gives the impression that the item can be ILLed.

What To Do

When users ask about the case studies, there’s not much more we can do than steer them to the publisher’s website to purchase them. We’ll bring these issues up with EBSCO and Ex Libris to see if there’s something to be done about the way link resolvers display for HBR case studies, as this special content breaks the usual patterns and rules we have about ILL, full text access, etc.

Finding Case Studies

I started a new page in the Library Services wiki for “Case Studies” so we can pool our collective wisdom about them. Please share what you know about finding them, access issues, etc. The content of this page doesn’t have to be limited to case studies for business; it could be any kind (although it’s the business ones that give us the most questions from our users).

Harvard Business School Case Studies

To help chip away at the problem of people looking for Harvard Business School case studies in our online collections, I’ve added a trigger in Bearcat Search (what is behind the scenes on the “Articles” search on the library home page) so that if the user searches for them there, they’ll get this canned message at the top of their search results:

Harvard Business Case Studies

Not available in any library or database
Publisher requires each person must purchase their own copies direct from the publisher’s website

Here’s how it looks on the search results page:

In the admin settings for Bearcat Search, we’re able to create these custom messages and make them appear when users enter search terms that match ones we’ve decided will trigger the message. Here are the search terms that are currently set to trigger this message:

harvard business case studies
harvard case studies
harvard case study
case study
case studies

If anyone has suggestions about additional trigger search words we should be using, please add them to the comments section of this post.

Accounting assignment re: New Century Financial Corporation

An accounting class is assigned the Harvard Business School case re New Century Financial Corporation.

As we know, this must be purchased from The Harvard Business School cases, and the link is: http://hbr.org/product/new-century-financial-corporation/an/109034-PDF-ENG?Ntt=%2520new%2520century%2520financial. (Some students mistakenly think the library has the case.)

Students are also asked to read the final report by Missal. This 294-page report can be found at http://pdfserver.amlaw.com/ca/newcentury01_0327.pdf.

If students ask what other resources have information about this company’s failure, ABI Inform Global, Business Source Complete, Lexis-Nexis, Factiva, and SSRN can be recommended for news stories as well as coverage in professional and academic publications. It received a great deal of coverage.

If a student needs more assistance, he/she can contact me for a research consultation. However, I think the above information should be enough for the students. They need not contact me directly to learn that the Harvard Business School case needs to be purchased.

Please let me know if you have any questions.