2003 Vol.1 - dataresources

Transcription

Vol.13 2003 No.
Editorial -
No Brainers, Half-Brainers and
( At Last ) Whole Bariners
Key Business Resources
Kart00- a new dimension in
searching?
Alerting Services: how to
monitor news, companies and
markets
East European Information
Sources
Marketing the Internal Library
and Information Service: Part 2
How to do A “Quick and Dirty”
Industry Analysis Using BvD’s Osiris
Factiva’s “Standard” Search
Screen – Something to Shout About
Information Clinic
News Desk
· Information providers link up with Microsoft
· Independent charges for content
· Who Owns Whom in the UK Electricity
Industry
· SkillsBuilder - practical guides for business
· e-Business Search Tool Launched
· World Chambers launches pay-as-you-go
business information
· "Best for Business" for West Midlands
companies
· CAROL launches new credit report facility
· Sixty fold increase in company coverage on
BvD's AMADEUS in ten years
· Projected global deal activity for 2003
could surpass 2000 levels
· FIZ Karlsruhe launches new defensive
publication database RDISCLOSURE on STN
International
·
Price's List of Lists Moves to
Specialissues.com
EMO’s Company Monitor
Training/Events Diary
Books
BUSINESS
INFORMATION
SEARCHER provides
quarterly
coverage and critical review and
comparison of key initiatives, products and
services of interest to all those who seek,
use and develop business information
services. From No.1 2003 we shall be
including more extensive coverage of
information resources addressing Europe,
eastern Europe and emerging markets.
The editor and publisher are always
pleased to receive news of new products,
software and service offerings, and to hear
from readers with ideas for articles.
Publisher: Alan Baldwin
Editor: Anthony Wood
Please address all editorial
correspondence, subscription and
advertising enquiries to the publisher at
the following address Business Information Searcher
Effective Technology Marketing Ltd
PO Box 171, Grimsby, UK DN35 OTP
Tel/Fax +44 (0)1472 816660
[email protected]
www.dataresources.co.uk
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Effective Technology Marketing Ltd.
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Copyright © 1991-2003 Effective
Technology Marketing Ltd
The views expressed by each author are not
necessarily those held by the publishers,
Effective Technology Marketing Ltd.
No-Brainers, HalfBrainers and (At Last)
Whole-Brainers
Anthony Wood
A
part from the obvious differences, men and women differ
strongly in the way their brains are wired up. For men the
links between the left-hand (logical) and right-hand
(creative) side of their brains are far fewer than for women. This
has the effect of causing most men to think with only half a brain
– a conclusion that for most wives is a no-brainer! To level things
up slightly, men favour the logical side rather than the creative
side. It is the old “Mars” (wading in) versus “Venus” (discussing all
aspects) thing.
This lack of adequate wiring in men can be made to account for
many of the good and bad things in life. Logical males invented
the 9 to 5 working day that takes no account of the fact that our
brains can be more active outside those strict limits. Bob
Buckman of Buckman Laboratories, the most convincing
knowledge management / sharing guru I have ever met, issued all
his staff with laptops with full Internet access from anywhere and
abolished the 9 to 5 day. His argument was that it represented
only about one quarter of life and good ideas can occur at any
time!
As a manager in a company that is very keen on work-life balance
I still find it hard to let go of the ridiculous notion that hours put in
are more important than value put out. In one company I worked
for we had flexitime. You could only carry over 20 hours / month
of additional attendance over and above the 35 hour week. Any
additional time was printed in what became known as the “good
boys’ column”. Senior managers and creepy employees vied with
one another to pile up additional “lost” time. My own manager
was regularly top!
He constantly encouraged me to stay on as he did his best work
after five o’clock. As he spent most of his time politicking with the
other managers and jockeying for position on the greasy pole of
promotion, the only time he got any work done was when there
was no-one to curry favour with! It did not stop him from being
culled in one of the inevitable “right-sizing” exercises that are a
part of working life.
The workplace is gradually being civilised away from the blackand-white logic of our Victorian, protestant, male forbears. This is
a very good thing. The accountants are making a last stand – they
have the ultimate “logic” of the need to make money on their
side. But even they may one day recognise that the creation of
wealth is not solely limited to figures on a balance sheet.
Some years ago I was introduced to the technique of Mind
Mapping. It uses maps or “spider” diagrams as a way of getting
both sides of the brain onto the case. It is brilliant and I
recommend any reader to buy the software version (see
www.mindjet.co.uk). I use it for all my personal brainstorming
needs both at work and at home.
January 2003 will go down in “search” history as the landmark
when mapping was first used to search the Internet. In this issue
we are departing from our usual evaluation of an information
service to evaluate Kart00. This search engine is the first to make
use of both sides of the brain to surf the Net.
Corporate Information
Key Business
Resources
http://www.corporateinformation.com/
Compiled by Wright Investors’ Service, Corporate
Information is an excellent starting point for news
sources, company financials, stock exchanges, market
and industry information, and directories. Coverage is
world-wide and resources are arranged by country. You
can further limit the selection to a specific industry within
a country. At the top of each selection you are given a
list of the major companies in that country or sector. The
annotations for each entry include details of content,
language and cost.
Karen Blakeman
General Starting Points
With so much business information on the Internet, it is
impossible to keep up with who is doing what and which
are the reliable, quality services. Search engines can
sometimes help you locate relevant sites but a large
proportion of valuable resources are "invisible" to the
standard search tools. They may be databases such as
telephone directories, password protected services, or
sites that are designed in such a way that the search
engines are not able to index them. Even if they are
picked up by the likes of Google, they are all too often
buried near the bottom of your search results.
Many experienced business information specialists know
and respect this service. However, access is extremely
erratic and often slow with “server busy” messages
becoming worryingly common. On some days the service
may be totally inaccessible, highlighting the importance
of not becoming totally dependant on one listing.
FITA
http://www.fita.org/
Evaluated listings and annotated directories that have
been compiled by human beings are, more often than
not, a better way of locating relevant, quality business
information. Sometimes referred to as "portals" or
“gateways”, evaluated listings are usually set up and
maintained by experts, and many include brief comments
and annotations on the coverage and usefulness of the
sites. Most fall into one of two categories. General
listings cover a wide range of industry sectors and types
of information for example news, company information,
statistics, market research. Specialist listings deal with
just one sector or type of information.
Another international listing is FITA - Federation of
International Trade Associations. Founded in 1984, FITA
"fosters international trade by strengthening the role of
local, regional, and national associations throughout the
United States, Mexico and Canada that have an
international mission."
In addition to services for members, there is a very useful
collection of Web resources for International trade with
over 4000 annotated links. Categories include country or
region, legal resources, language and translation,
International market research and business directories.
The business directories, for example, are further
subdivided into industry specific, global and country
directories. To keep you up to date, there is a free, biweekly newsletter called Really Useful Sites for
International Trade Professionals.
None of the listings are comprehensive: geographical
coverage varies and there is an inevitable bias towards
the interests of the people and organisations who have
compiled them. The frequency with which the listing is
updated is another important factor. Many are a byproduct of the organisation’s main activities and their
maintenance is not always given high priority. In fact few
survive or are updated for more than a year. It is vital,
therefore, that you have several general starting points in
your bookmarks or favorites: if one site goes down or
disappears you always have another to which you can
refer.
With access to Corporate Information becoming
increasingly unreliable, FITA is now my own main port of
call for locating International resources.
Exportall
www.exportall.com/
The rest of this article looks at some examples of general,
broad based site listings that are good starting points for
business information. More specialised listings will be
covered in subsequent issues of Business Information
Searcher.
Yahoo!
www.yahoo.co.uk/ or www.yahoo.com/
As well as being a general directory of Web sites, a
significant proportion of which are business orientated,
Yahoo! also carries a significant amount of third party
content such as news, share prices and company financial
information. Some of the more detailed company
information is priced.
Although an excellent starting point for information on
larger companies and the major stock exchanges, there is
little coverage of smaller companies or emerging markets
in central and eastern Europe, and Asia. Another problem
that I have encountered with Yahoo is that it does not
regularly monitor the sites in its directory. Links to pages
do not always work and the content is sometimes
significantly different from that indicated by the
description.
Exportall concentrates on European countries (EU,
Central and Eastern Europe) and the US and Canada. For
each country there are separate pages for export and
import information, company and telephone directories,
country data, government and politics, and newspapers.
There are good listings of resources for some of the
former states of the Soviet Union that are in Europe, for
example Belarus, Ukraine, Russia.
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Business Information Searcher Vol.13 No.1
coverage and when the page was last checked. Although
the BUBL Link home page emphasises the higher
education aspect of the site it is a valuable resource for
anyone working in the private and commercial sectors.
Big Wales
www.bigwales.com/
Resource Discovery Network
www.rdn.ac.uk/
Primarily set up to offer help and information to
businesses in Wales, Big Wales also has an extensive
annotated list of links to information that is of use to
businesses in general.
The Small Businesses section takes you to key
information on starting and running your own business,
finance, sales and marketing. "Essentials" has links to
other resources such as directories, phone books, news
sources and World facts. "Digging Deeper" has yet more
resources covering company information, government,
standards and patents.
The Resource Discovery Network or RDN is a collaboration
of over sixty educational and research organisations.
RDN gathers resources that are carefully selected,
indexed and described by information specialists who are
experts in the subject area concerned. As well as the
subject and industry sector listings (biomedical,
engineering, architecture etc) there is a general business
section provided by http://www.sosig.ac.uk/business/
This is a well-designed, easy to navigate site with good
content and is another of my personal favourites.
Alacra
www.alacra.com/
RBA Business Sources on the Net
www.rba.co.uk/sources/
The final site in this article is a priced service. Alacra has
a database of more than 40,000 Web sites with abstracts
selected and indexed by business information
professionals. The sites are grouped into directories by
industry, geography, organization type and business
topics. There are 29 speciality directories for example lists
of law firms, business school white papers, financial
calculators, and you can create your own personalised
directory of Web sites.
This is a blatant plug for my own listing. It is heavily
European biased with some resources from North
America, Asia and the Pacific Rim. The emphasis is on
company information (share prices, financials,
directories), statistics and market research. For each
type of resource there are links to specialised evaluated
listings and to Web sites that provide direct access to
data and information.
Such an extensive and well-organised database of sites
requires a significant amount of effort to maintain and is
available only by annual subscription. Subscribers can
also access over 80 premium databases such as ICC,
Moodys, DataMonitor and Investext.
Biz/ed
www.bized.ac.uk/
If you are looking for in depth papers and analyses on
business procedures and practices then have a look at
Biz/ed. Described as a “unique service for students,
teachers and lecturers of business, economics,
accounting…” Biz/ed is also an excellent guide for anyone
setting up or expanding their own business.
Sites mentioned in this article
Alacra - www.alacra.com/
Big Wales www.bigwales.com/
Biz/ed www.bized.ac.uk/
BUBL Link http://bubl.ac.uk/link/
Corporate Information www.corporateinformation.com/
Exportall www.exportall.com/
FITA www.fita.org/
RBA Business Information on the Net www.rba.co.uk/
sources/
Resource Discovery Network www.rdn.ac.uk/
SOSIG - Business www.sosig.ac.uk/business/
Yahoo! www.yahoo.com/ or www.yahoo.co.uk/
The Internet Resources section is a catalogue of selected
Web covering business, management and economics. The
catalogue has over 3500 resources and is regularly
updated. There are links to free papers written by
established experts on a whole range of business
activities.
BUBL Link
http://bubl.ac.uk/link/
Karen Blakeman is a consultant in business information
and electronic information and can be contacted at
RBA Information Services
88 Star Road, Caversham, Berks RG4 5BE.
Tel:+44 118 947 2256
Fax: +44 870 056 8547
[email protected]
www.rba.co.uk
Another academic site providing a good starting point for
quality sites is BUBL Link, which gives links to sites via
subject trees. Each entry has a description together with
details of “author”, subject, resource type, geographical
4
Kart00 – a new
dimension in searching?
Anthony Wood
I
n a cave at the foot of a cliff in the Ardeches Gorges in
South West France in December 1994, three French
potholers discovered the oldest known example of
prehistoric art i.e. the use of images to illustrate the
world of the painters. The cave named after the leader of
the expedition, Jean-Marie Chauvet, contained paintings
estimated to be 31,000 years old.
Choosing the hot topic of fuel cells, a technology that will
revolutionise the world over the next 30 years, produced
the following Kart00 “map”.
There is an awful (and awesome) amount of information
in this image-based search result.
Taking the main map, there is one main “peak” for
technology and two minor peaks for work and history.
This reflects the relative make-up of the topics contained
in the retrieved set of sites. On the “slopes” there are
other lesser topics such as news, books, benefits and
companies. The sizes of the main sites listed are an
indication of the amount and relevance of the information
they contain and their proximity to topics is an indication
of their content. The mapped sites and topics are also
listed in the navigation bar on the left-hand side of the
screen. Highlighting a listed site in this navigation bar
displays a brief description of the page and the search
engine(s) used to retrieve it.
In the same area of France at Cleremont-Ferrand, two
modern day “painters” (Laurent and Nicolas Baleydier)
have set up a company to search the Internet using
visual images in the form of maps. They term this
cartographic visualisation. Their company, Kart00, is the
first of a new breed of search engines that use pictures
rather than text to draw out the relationships between
retrieved Internet sites (see www.kartoo.com).
Anyone who has learnt to read an Ordinance Survey map
will have no difficulty interpreting the search results that
Kart00 produces. Contour lines turn what with other
search engines is a flat listing of words into a “mountain
range” of interlinked concepts dotted with settlements i.e.
retrieved websites whose size or position up the mountain
indicates their comparative relevance.
If you mouseover a site,
lines appear connecting it
to the main topics covered
in its content (see
picture). A red triangular
marker also appears.
Clicking on this provides
the options to
Kart00 must be good. They already have competition
from Anacubis who have developed a Google-enabled
visual search engine (see www.anacubis.com).
As well as providing individual searchers with a very
interesting freebie Internet search engine, both
companies will be marketing their software to
organisations with huge stores of legacy data that, like
Sleeping Beauty, needs a Prince Charming to wake it up
and make it useful.
·
·
·
·
·
Pull up related sites,
Search more pages on this site,
Search on this site,
Add the site to favourites or
Open this page.
Mousing over (is there such a verb!) a topic produces not
only similar connecting lines but also the option, via a +
or – button, to include or
exclude the specific topic,
respectively. The set of 5 bars
on the right of the image
indicate the total number of
sites available. No bars mean 10
or fewer sites and 5 bars mean
between 100,000 and 1 million
sites. The fuel cell is obviously a
very hot topic!
There are some other relevant
icons at the head of the search
screen (see picture). The
geographic search options, the
first two icons, refer to UK sites
only or the world. The two
remaining icons refer to Basic
and Expert versions of the
software.
5
icons enable the user to home in or home out on a map.
Expert Version
At the foot of the side bar for both the Basic and Expert
search options is an arrow icon. This effectively drills
down through the mountain displaying the next best set
of retrieved websites.
Clicking on the Expert version icon opens up a whole new
list of options for the user. As well as the 4 Basic icons at
the top of the screen (see above) there are 11 more (see
figure). Applied choices are highlighted in white. In the
example below those six choices are – the whole Internet
(one of 2 options), Expert version (2), unrestricted (2),
relief cartographic representation (3), one page / site
display (3) and using the “best” sites only (3).
Conclusion
Mapping, or cartographic visualisation, is not new. Tony
Buzan has been an ardent protagonist of the use of “mind
mapping” to combine the power of the left (logical) and
right-hand (creative) sides of the brain. The application of
mapping to information search and retrieval is both a
logical and creative next step forward. It will, I am sure,
be copied by every major search engine company.
For the first two choices the search could have been
restricted to the UK using the Basic version as described
in the first part of this evaluation.
The alternative to unrestricted use is the lock icon that
applies a “parental filter” to searches. The two other
options to a “relief” map are a map with links rather than
contours or a conventional textual listing of retrieved
sites. I have to say that this looks very boring after the
excitement of a map! Judge for yourself in the figure
below.
The links map looks like a London Underground
map with concepts connected to the relevant
websites with colour-coded lines.
The two other options to one page / site display
are multiple pages either clustered like moons
around a “mother” planet or displayed in their own
right. The final 3-part choice relates to the search
engines used. Searchers can rely on Kart00,
choose their own from a list or search the lot.
As well as a screen-top option bar, Kart00 also has
an option bar on the right of the Expert screen
(see figure). The flags refer to the various country
/ language options – US / English, UK / English,
French, German etc. The “bar meter” is common
to both the Basic and Expert Search options.
The clock icon lists searches to date. The top 4
icons enable users to recall, email, store and print
maps. The + and – icons are used to increase and
decrease the number of retrieved websites (14 in
the figure). This is a very effective way of
manipulating a search.
This last feature can be used with the multiple
pages / site feature (see above). Clustering pages
does not change the map but having more than
one page / site displayed in their own right
redraws the map. The + and – magnifying glass
6
Alerting services: how to
monitor news, companies
and markets
Karen Blakeman
may be non-existent or subscription only. If you are
having problems locating a title on the Web there are
several lists of news sources: ABYZ News Links
(www.abyznewslinks.com) and Online Newspapers
(www.onlinenewspapers.com) are two widely used
resources.
Finding information on companies and products via the
Web is challenging. Keeping up to date with new
developments and announcements can be even more
difficult. It is easy enough to run daily checks for changes
on a handful of pages by simply visiting the Web sites.
That approach is impractical, though, when you have
more than twenty and impossible with a hundred or
more. Rather than connect to each page one by one,
there are a range of alerting and monitoring services that
you can use to automate the process.
Once you have located the publication, look for links to
“Alerts”, “headlines” or “newsletter”. After you have
signed up, you receive a summary of the articles or a list
of headlines by email on a daily or weekly basis.
The methods employed vary depending on the type of
information required - news, industry sector, companies,
products - and the size and type of the companies that
you wish to monitor.
Multi-source services that cover a wide range of
publications are usually subscription only, for example
Factiva (www.factiva.com), Lexis-Nexis
(www.lexisnexis.com), ISI and BBC World Monitoring.
Stock exchange listed companies
ISI Emerging Markets
Most large stock exchange listed companies have their
own Web site where they publish their annual reports,
accounts and press releases on significant company
events. A few offer free “What’s new” alerting services
that send new information direct to your mailbox, but for
most you will probably have to use one of the Web page
monitoring services described later in this article.
An alternative approach is to find the Web site of the
relevant stock exchange. There is a list, including eastern
and central Europe exchanges, at www.rba.co.uk/
sources/stocks.htm. Many of these sites are free but
options for customisation and news alerts vary.
Yahoo! Finance (uk.finance.yahoo.com) covers the major
western European exchanges and you can use the free
My Yahoo! option to sent up your own “portfolio” for
monitoring companies. As well as share prices, Yahoo!
provides news and press releases on your selected
companies.
ISI (www.securities.com) concentrates on the emerging
markets across the world. It has excellent multi-source
coverage and you can set up customised alerts. ISI
supplies current news, company financial statements and
profiles, industry, closing price quotes, macroeconomic
statistics and legal and political information. Most
information is published in English as well as the local
language. Subscriptions vary depending on whether you
require global or regional packages and on the number of
users. Free trials are available.
For more comprehensive information and sophisticated
alert options, there are several priced services available.
Three of the more well known are Datastream - now part
of Thomson Financial - at www.datastream.com, Reuters
(www.reuters.com) and Bloomberg
(www.bloomberg.com). These are subscription based
services, the exact amount depending on the range and
type of data required, and the method of delivery to the
user.
BBC World Monitoring
Other forms of companies - for example small, privately
owned organizations - do often publish general
information and news about themselves on their Web
sites, but few disclose financial information. You can keep
up to date with these by monitoring news sources or
using one of the Web page monitoring services.
News sources
Almost all newspapers, magazines and journals have a
presence on the Web. Some give only a few key articles
whilst others provide access to the full publication.
Current news is often free but archives of older stories
7
selected search on an hourly, daily, weekly or monthly
basis while the latter does the same for individual pages.
Web Page Monitoring Services
There are several Web based services, some of which are
free, that monitor individual Web pages and send you
email notifications when they change. A few also include
the changed text in the notification. Options vary
depending on the service and whether you are using the
free or priced versions.
Managing your alerts
Having set up your alerts, it is essential to manage and
organize the incoming emails effectively. Otherwise, you
will find yourself overloaded with information that you
never read.
Some of the more popular services include:
Watch That Page www.watchthatpage.com
Infominder www.infominder.com
Change Detection www.changedetection.com
Track Engine www.trackengine.com
None of these monitor entire Web sites, only individual
pages. There is a comparison of their main features and
costs at www.rba.co.uk/sources/monitor.htm.
Make use of your email program’s rules or filtering
options, usually under “Tools”, “Options” or “Properties”.
These enable you to set up folders into which you can
redirect messages based on the subject line, content or
the “from” field. It is entirely up to you how you label the
folders: by source, the company that is the subject of the
alert, industry sector or project. In this way you can
separate your main correspondence from the alerts and
prioritize your reading.
And finally, If an alert is no longer needed, for example
because a project has finished, then unsubscribe or
remove it from your “profile”. Alerts usually contain
information on how to do this at the end of each email.
There is no point whatsoever in clogging up your mailbox
with unwanted messages. We all receive enough of those
already without volunteering for them!
Website Watcher
Another approach is to install monitoring software locally
on your own PC. Website Watcher (aignes.com) has a
wide range of options. These include ignore HTML tags,
images, banners, numbers and dates. You can even enter
IDs and passwords for password protected pages and, it
is claimed, monitor whole Web sites. Pages can be
checked once a day, once a week or on a specified day or
days of the week. The price varies depending on the type
and number of users, but there is a 30 day free trial.
Copernic
Copernic (www.copernic.com) is well known as a metasearch tool. Once you have downloaded the software onto
your PC, you can search numerous search engines and
databases across the world with one query, or focus on
specific types of information such as news, books,
patents. What is less well known is that the full priced
professional version (US$ 79.95) includes a search
tracker and page trackers. The former re-runs your
8
is not available on the web names and contact details
(phone, email) enable one to determine whether the
information has been collected and is obtainable.
East European
Information Sources
· The Websites of individual ministries can be very
helpful in finding industry information, and often
provide useful reports, even in English. Agricultural
Reinhild Balcke
ministries are often a good source of information, but
other ministries can also be a valuable source e.g. the
'Hungarian Communication Authority' has extensive
Commercial Databases
up-to-date reports on the Hungarian
telecommunications industry like this one on the
Information on central and eastern Europe has become
ownership structure of the Hungarian
more readily available, since commercial databases
telecommunications market.
started to include data on the region.
www.hif.hu/english/menu3/m3_1
ownership_20020723.pdf
The most important of these is ISI Emerging Markets,
which in its Eastern European section includes news,
· Information on Russian regions can be found on the
company data, industry and analysts' reports, statistics
ever expanding websites of the Russian regional
and legal databases, quite a lot in the language of the
governments.
countries. www.securities.com
Investment Promotion Agencies should by
News about the region is included in a database like
Factiva, also in English and the language of the country.
www.factiva.com
definition provide information helpful to investors and
many do, their websites usually include statistics,
relevant laws and also some industry sector overviews.
Although investment agencies are included in the
governments on the www portal I personally prefer the
following portal where they are easier to find:
Reports on companies in most CEE countries are included
in the Amadeus database. www.amadeus.bvdep.com
Country reports, economic analysis and forecasts can be
found in EIU, World Analysis (WMRC) and Emerging
Markets Online.
www.eiu.com,
www.worldmarketsanalysis.com
www.businessmonitor.com
Investment Promotion Network www.ipanet.net.
It not only includes the addresses of investment agencies
worldwide but also papers by other organisations and
institutes about foreign direct investment and investment
issues. The site has been set up and developed by the
Worldbank (MIGA - Multilateral Investment Guarantee
Agency).
For industry news and reports in the CIS countries I find
the weekly Interfax reports invaluable. www.interfax.ru
And data on companies, commodities and country
statistics are covered by Bloomberg. www.bloomberg.com
Central Banks are responsible for the stability of the
currency, setting of interest rates and supervision of the
banking sector. Their websites nearly always include
exchange rates, monetary statistics and special reports
e.g. inflation reports. Some also publish reports on their
country's banking sector. The portal provided by the
Bank for International Settlements www.bis.org/
cbanks.htm is the most useful and also an address that is
easy to remember.
Information from national governments
in the region
One should never underestimate the importance of
information on the websites of national governments. As
a rule, information about a country is generated by
government agencies in the country itself - so why not go
to the source? However the willingness of governments
to provide information varies. On occasion additional
information will be available on payment of a fee. As a
rule the smaller the country the more helpful the officials
in answering your questions.
Chambers of Commerce are a good source of
information on the business environment, companies,
business opportunities (tenders),trade fairs and provide
links to local sources. Eurochambers
www.eurochambres.be/ the Association of European
Chambers of Commerce and Industry represents 40
national associations of Chambers of Commerce and
Industry, a European network of 1,600 regional and local
Chambers. This network includes chambers in the
countries of central and east Europe.
In some extreme cases everyday information is classified
as secret and is impossible to obtain. But CEE countries
generally have very good websites, which are in English
as well as in the national language. To find these websites
I prefer to use a portal, the address is usually easy to
remember and I avoid having to bookmark a large
number of websites. It also allows me to find sites when I
am not at my own computer.
Information from governments
outside the region
Governments on the WWW
www.gksoft.com/govt/en
This site is updated regularly, is very clear, and despite
the .com address the work of just one person, Gunnar
Anzinger, who will I hope keep it up. The last update was
in May 2002. This portal is an absolute lifeline for me. I
find it particularly helpful for the following:
· Government and/or presidential sites provide
information about the head of government and
ministers.
· The statistical office in each country gives the basic
economic indicators, usually more. Where information
9
Country data is not only provided by the countries
themselves, but also by countries outside the region that
put extensive reports and data on their websites. Canada,
the UK and Germany are good but the US is by far the
best and most comprehensive source.
US government sites
The OECD www.oecd.org provides a wealth of
information not only on its member countries but also on
other countries in subjects as diverse as transport,
corporate governance, agriculture, energy etc. An
example is SPAI at www1.oecd.org/daf/SPAIcom/
index.htm, an initiative to fight corruption in South
Eastern Europe, with country reports, strategy reports,
laws and useful links to other sources.
CEEBIC, BISNIS
www.mac.doc.gov
Country and industry reports, link pages
Foreign Agricultural Service
www.fas.usda.gov
Reports and statistics on agricultural commodities in
different countries
Energy Information Administration
www.eia.doe.gov
Country profiles and statistics on different sources of
energy
Country studies (Library of Congress)
lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/cshome.html
Information from international
organisations
International organisations also collect data about
countries and publish extensive reports on their websites.
They publish data about all their member countries. This
is ideal if one needs to compare countries on a common
basis. For some countries it might also be more useful to
get a more impartial view from an outside source. The
portal for international agencies is also www.gksoft.com/
govt/en (Governments on the WWW). Here are a few
examples:
The European Union publishes annual reports on the
accession countries which chart their path towards the
'acquis communautaire' in all sectors. These reports are
provided by the Directorate General for Enlargement at
www.europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/index.htm
The United Nations Economic Commission for
Europe (UN/ECE) www.unece.org,
Includes in among other useful data an absolutely
wonderful timber database, containing country profiles, a
Forest Products Annual Market Review with statistics,
prices etc
Grida Arendahl www.grida.no is part of the United
Nations Environment Program with reports on the state of
the environment in different countries (includes many
useful statistics about transport, fisheries, forestry)and
also City environment reports at www.ceroi.net/ e.g. the
environmental report for Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan) has been
launched in October 2002.
The World Health Organization (Regional Office
for Europe)
www.euro.who.int/eprise/main/WHO/
CountryInformation/TopPage
Publishes basic statistics and reports on health care
systems in most of the CEE/CIS countries. Its European
Public Health Information Network for Eastern Europe,
www.euphin.dk/hfa/Phfa.asp contains a database with
detailed data on population, environment, lifestyle, health
care and health issues.
Development Banks
The countries of the former Eastern Block fall into the
remit of several development banks -
The TACIS Programme was launched by the EC in 1991,
it provides grant-financed technical assistance to 13
countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia and mainly
aims at enhancing the transition process in these
countries. TACIS at www.europa.eu.int/comm/
external_relations/ceeca/tacis/publications.htm is part of
the EU directorate general: External Relations - it
provides papers, statistics and also used to finance a
series of publications 'Economic Trends' in several CIS
countrie, which unfortunately have not been updated.
World Bank
www.worldbank.org
Publishes statistics (world development indicators),
country profiles (main economic indicators) and working
papers on development issues.
Asian Development Bank
www.adb.org
Is also responsible for the countries of Central Asia and
Azerbaijan, for which it provides detailed statistics (key
indicators, country reports and economic trends)
EBRD
Subscribers receive customised e-mail updates featuring
country analysis and investment opportunities in
emerging markets. The service is free, and provides great
opportunities to discover out of the way reports when and
as they are published by institutions one would never
have found about otherwise.
www.ebrd.com
Publishes the 'Transition Report'. This is unfortunately not
available on their Internet site, only country strategy and
project information are available.
Information in papers published by
research institutes
Reinhild Balcke
Working papers and reports from Research Institutes are
a valuable source of information for CEE/CIS countries
Reinhild Balcke is a research consultant at the EBRD, where
she has worked for the past 8 years. Prior to that she
worked at Merrill Lynch in London and the University of
Bremen in her native Germany.
[email protected]
REPEC
The ideal site for locating research institutes, economics
departments worldwide, but also in CEE/CIS countries is
www.repec.org/
RePEc (Research Papers in Economics) is a collaborative
effort of over 100 volunteers in 30 countries to enhance
the dissemination of research in economics. The heart of
the project is a decentralized database of working papers,
journal articles and software components. All RePEc
material is freely available
For CIS countries the Economics Education and
Research Consortium (EERC) provides a list of useful
links to other institutes publishing data about the
countries of the former Soviet Union www.eerc.ru/links/
research.htm
The institute was created in 1995 to strengthen
economics education and research capabilities in the CIS.
EERC Russian program activities have been extended to
other countries of the Former Soviet Union, leading to the
creation of a CIS-wide research network.
Alert service
The best way to keep up-to-date with developments in
and reports about central and east European countries is
a relatively new alert service from the Investment
Promotion Network
FDI xchange
www.fdixchange.com
Developed by the World Bank Group’s Multilateral
Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) this e-mail alert
service builds upon MIGA’s existing online information
services, the Investment Promotion Network and
PrivatizationLink.
FDIxchange resources are organized into five major topic
categories – investment opportunities, legal information,
market and FDI research, business guides and statistics,
as well as investment-related events.
11
Marketing the Internal
Library and Information
Service - Part Two
Sheila O’Sullivan
invaluable quantitative
and qualitative data for
the project, as did
informal observation of
the workings of the LIS
over a period of 6
months.
The Results
Transcripts of the
interviews with with the
Banking Department staff
were, first of all,
discussed at great length
with the LIS team
members, and then
analysed in the context
of a SWOT analysis.
Some of the most
interesting findings are
discussed below.
Figure 1
Strengths
Introduction
Part One (Vol. 13.2) of this two part series looked at the
theoretical aspects of marketing, including PEST (political,
environmental, sociological, technological), SWOT
(strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) and
customer needs analysis, service and market strategies
and the marketing mix. Based on the results of a case
study undertaken in a large investment bank in the City
of London, this second part focuses on a particularly
successful marketing initiative, namely the development,
implementation and maintenance of an Intranet site
created using IBM Lotus Team Workplace™ (formerly
known as IBM Lotus Quickplace™).
In short, this is a success story which describes how a
small internal information centre, which has in recent
times lost 2 full-time members of it’s team of 7
information professionals, and has been under-funded for
several years, managed to implement a highly effective
marketing initiative – on a shoestring!
The Research
To being with, a comprehensive review of the literature in
the area of marketing internal library and information
services (LIS) was conducted. Some of the principal
marketing concepts were discussed in Part One (Vol 12:3/
4). A SWOT analysis was then undertaken, partly in the
form of a series of 25 semi-structured interviews with,
primarily, Principal and Associate Bankers, but also
Banking Team Directors, Portfolio Managers, Analysts and
Executive Assistants (for ease of reference referred to in
this article as “the Bankers”. A series of meetings/
interviews with members of the LIS team also provided
12
There was a consensus
amongst the interviewees
that the LIS team
remains professional, efficient and friendly at all times.
Staff members were highly commended for their speed
and accuracy in fulfilling information requests.
It became apparent during the period of observation and
the interviews that the LIS is in a particularly powerful
position in the Bank since bankers are obliged to liaise
with the LIS in order to access a wide variety of external
information sources necessary for their work. This
dependency upon the LIS may be direct or indirect. For
example, the vast majority of bankers do not have
access to Bloomberg Professional™ on their desktop.
Accordingly, they must consult the dedicated terminal
located in the LIS. Alternatively, they may prefer to
email their request for market information to one of the
researchers. Other services, such as Factiva™,
LexisNexis™, ISI Emerging Markets™ and the Economist
Intelligence Unit™, to name a few, are available to
bankers on their desktop1. Despite the availability of
desktop access to some of these major services, many
bankers prefer to save time and energy by asking the
LIS to conduct research on their behalf. The choice lies
with the banker and the LIS staff remains flexible at all
times.
Negotiating sensible contracts with the external
information providers and then persuading the Bank’s
decision makers, such as the Finance Department and
Banking Group Directors, to accept them is a Herculean
task for the LIS manager, but one which he copes with
effectively and cheerfully.
1
Subscription or download charges are, in some cases, covered
by the LIS, and in other cases, charged back to the costs centre
concerned in accordance with usage
communications, marketing, finance, etc.) in the form of
hard copy publications and audio-visual material. Some
Bankers had seen the list of current awareness bulletins
or periodicals when they first started working at the Bank
and had asked to be put on the appropriate distribution
lists – but many had not reviewed what they were
receiving since, and had not seen updated lists of LIS
subscriptions. Potentially, therefore, they could be
receiving news alerts or periodicals that were no longer of
interest to them in their work (many Bankers are too
busy to ask to be removed from such lists), or even
worse, are missing out on publications which are highly
relevant to their current role in the Bank.
Weaknesses
The period of research revealed that there is an
overwhelming frustration amongst bankers due to the
absence of key information resources such as brokers’
reports, market reports and reports from credit rating
agencies. One senior Banker felt that the problem
needed to be addressed at Board Level; another Banker
proposed that the LIS manager liaise with key Bankers in
order to discuss dividing the costs between the LIS and
other teams that would most benefit from access to such
data.
Equally disconcerting was the revelation that LIS’ profile
was in doubt, and that there appeared to be a general
lack of awareness with regard to the vast array of
services offered by the LIS. By way of example, one
Banker remarked that the LIS was “possibly not taken as
seriously as it should be within the institution…. “. He
continued by commenting that within the LIS “… there are
personalities who are not given the opportunity to
develop their creativity….. or at least implement their
creativity”.
Threats
There is an abundance of information available to
Bankers. Evidently, not all of it is provided directly or
even indirectly by the LIS. In fact, Bankers are faced
with the following choices when meeting their information
needs:
· Acquire the information directly from the LIS (e.g..
email their request to one of the researchers)
· Acquire the information from their own desktop using
subscription-based services provided via the LIS
Others views the LIS as a place for academic study or
simply an area of reading the newspapers – rather than a
business research service. It was clear from some of the
interviewees that the LIS needed a slight change of
image. One Banker remarked that “It’s a lot more
business oriented than people realise”.
·
The Internet has changed the information seeking
behaviour of most of the Bankers. As one Banker
commented, “I can do it myself as opposed to asking
others to do it”.
So, how do Bankers learn about the LIS and the services
on offer? Firstly, new recruits arriving at the Bank are
assigned “mentors” who should encourage them to visit
the LIS. Secondly, the LIS manager gives a presentation
during the 3-day “orientation programme” organised by
the Human Resources Department every 3 months.
Unfortunately, though, an employee could be working at
the Bank for several months or even years (as a
temporary worker or consultant) before attending the
programme, if at all. There is of course, the corporate
Intranet site, but the 2 short descriptive paragraphs do
not do the LIS any justice at all. Bankers must,
therefore, learn about the BIC by word of mouth. It was
not surprising, therefore, that Bankers appeared to be in
the dark with regard to the wide range of external
information services available to them on their doorstop –
or desktop to be precise!
Despite the threat of the Internet/Intranet, the LIS
encourages end-user access to online sources, and
through its informal training courses strives to increase
information literacy amongst its users. To a certain
extent this has been successful, although, surprisingly,
there are still those Bankers who make comments such
as “Why do we have to pay such costs for this
information? Isn’t it all available free on the Internet
now?
Opportunities
Many golden opportunities for the LIS came to mind
during the interviews, such as the introduction of formal
training in information literacy, expansion of the Open
Learning Centre, branding, increased co-ordination with
other departments. However, a glance at the LIS’ page
on the corporate Intranet was sufficient to demonstrate
the urgent need for creating a new site for the LIS. The
lack of awareness that manifested itself amongst Bankers
whilst being interviewed confirmed this need. What the
LIS lacked, in fact, was a “shop window” that would be
updated on a daily or, at the very least, weekly basis.
For this to happen it was vital that a member of staff
within the LIS manage the site himself, rather than the
Communications Department which currently manages
the corporate Intranet. The solution staring everyone in
the face was to create a new and independent website
(with a link to it from the existing corporate Intranet site
of course).
Of course, those Bankers interviewed were, on the whole,
fairly regular users of the LIS – or at least had been when
they offered to participate in the interviews. They
appeared to use the LIS for one of 3 main reasons:
· Submit research requests
· Request desktop access to online databases
·
Meet the information need via a variety of their own
sources, such as the Internet, colleagues within the
Bank and contacts outside the Bank).
Request book acquisitions (often from the British
Library Inter-Library Loan Service)
But regular books readers were not always aware that
they could also access online databases through the LIS.
Similarly, those Bankers who could even be described
“power searches” and who have benefited from a variety
of subscription-based databases did not know that the
BIC could get hold of any book under the sun (well
almost) on their behalf. Naturally, many Bankers said
that they needed current market information and that
information in books was, more often than not, out-ofdate as soon as it was published. Although they readily
dismissed the LIS’ book collection as invaluable, they
seemed pleasantly surprised to hear of the wide collection
of Lonely Planet travel guides – essential reading for
Bankers visiting the Bank’s countries of operations.
IBM Lotus Team Workplace™
http://lotus.com/products/qplace.nsf
An off-the-shelf software solution was chosen, namely
IBM Lotus Team Workplace™ (Team Workplace), formerly
known as IBM Lotus Quickplace™. Team Workplace lets
users create an instant shared workspace on the Internet
or corporate Intranet. Team members can communicate,
In a similar vein, many Bankers were ignorant about the
Open Learning Centre – a joint HR/LIS initiative which
consists of self-study training material (languages,
13
share and manage information and knowledge in a
central place. Various levels of access can be assigned to
users:
· Reader – can only read pages
· Author – can read and add pages
·
Manager – can read, add pages and add/remove
members and customize.
When “anonymous” access is granted, the manager
potentially allows anyone within the organisation to view
the site - users are not required to sign in with a name
and password. The joy of Team Workplace™ is that
documents can be quickly created and published onto the
Web without any knowledge of HTML, scripting or even
web editors such as Microsoft Frontpage™ or
Dreamwaver™. The benefits are obvious. Firstly, the
product, which is secure, can eliminate technical and
financial barriers to team collaboration, and can improve
communication by providing essential information to a
team at a moment’s notice.
The LIS had, in fact, been using this product for a
number of years to manage and share internal
information amongst its team members. The site was not
made available to staff outside the LIS, and the LIS team
members entered the site using a password. The
creation of a new Team Workplace™ site, with access
given to the entire Bank, seemed to be the most logical
step to take.
First of all, it was necessary to assemble a portfolio of the
LIS’ services. This entailed the gathering together of
various lists of services (periodicals, current awareness
bulletins, databases, etc.) and ensuring that they were
up-to-date. Once this information had been collated and
checked it was time to plan the overall structure of the
site. This was done in close consultation with each
member of the LIS team, and with the help of the mind
mapping software MindManager™ (www.mindjet.com/).
Once the basic structure had been agreed upon, the
Bank’s Team Workplace™ administrator was asked to
create a new Team Workplace™ and call it “Planet BIC”.
What this means, in effect, is that a skeleton website is
produced consisting of one “Room”. The manager of the
site can then choose to add additional Rooms and Inner
Rooms, increase or restrict membership to these rooms
or spaces, create folders with pages inside. Varying
levels of access can be assigned, as mentioned earlier:
Read only, Author or Manager.
Figure 2
The entire site took less than a month to design, create
and populate. Because “anonymous” access to the site
was granted, the entire Bank could benefit from it from
day one, at least potentially. In reality, the site was
promoted, in particular, to those who had participated in
the interviews. Once some initial feedback from the
participants had been taken into account (a month or so
later) a slightly revamped site was promoted rather more
aggressively. Planet BIC was officially launched during
the very first LIS Open Day; LIS team members were
asked to add the URL to their email signatures; posters
and leaflets were printed and placed in strategic areas of
the LIS; a link to Planet BIC was also added to the LIS
page and the Home Page of the corporate Intranet site;
new recruits are now invited, without fail and whether
their job title is that of “secretary” or “secretary general”,
to visit the LIS during the very first week that they start
working at the Bank. They are treated to a physical and
virtual tour of the LIS, and leave equipped with the
knowledge that they have access to one of the most
important information gateways in the Bank.
This case study shows how a small and under-funded
information centre successfully managed to promote its
services in a simple but cost effective but highly
The project in hand was to
raise awareness, it was
important that as many staff
members as possible be given
access to the site.
Accordingly, the site was made
“anonymous” so that users
could access it easily by
clicking on a URL, and without
the need to login. It was also
decided to avoid designing a
site that was too deep – i.e.
that required the user to drill
through too many links in
order to find the required
information.
Logically, the first page to be
created was the Home Page
(see Figure 1). This page
provides a short description of
the LIS and explains its
philosophy. Links to various
aspects of the service have
been positioned on the sidebar
to the left of the screen. The
collection of online databases is divided into 5 principal
categories, and a folder for each category has been
created. Further links to the databases in that category
can be seen by clicking on the Folder link, and
information on how to gain access to it, and whether the
service is available on the desktop or via the LIS only is
also available (see Figure 2). On the Periodicals page,
users can access the most current list of Periodicals to
which the LIS subscribes, as well as discover which
publications are available online, and whether a password
is required (see Figure 3). Users can download recent
Tables of Contents which have been scanned or received
by email, and can request that their name be added to
the distribution list in order to receive a Table of Contents
on a regular basis. Similarly, the Current Awareness
Bulletins page lists all the news alerts to which the BIC
subscribes, together with a short description of the
bulletin, including key details such as frequency and
language, and a sample bulletin (see Figure 4). Once
again, users can send a request directly from the site
asking that their name be added to a distribution list in
order to receive the bulletin on a regular basis.
MindManager™ proved to be a useful tool in creating a
visually effective list of useful websites (see Figure 5).
14
innovative way. No negative feedback has
been received from the Bankers. On the
contrary, its navigability, content and
presentation is positively compared with the
Bank’s corporate Intranet site. One could
argue that the LIS team members should not
shout out too loudly that they do not possess
any HTML or scripting skills. But they do! And
the end result? Thanks to IBM Lotus Team
Workplace™ Bankers and their team members
have finally being empowered. By sharing
information and knowledge relevant to their
projects they are able to find information
faster, enhance team collaboration, retain
collective knowledge and much more. There
are now over 20 active Team Workplace™ sites
in the Bank. A Team Workplace™ User Group
has been created with the following objectives
in mind:
Figure 3
· To ensure that Team Workplace™ is used in
accordance with the business objectives of
the Bank and that its use does not conflict
with, or duplicate, that of other systems.
· To evaluate new applications proposed by
Bank staff for new Team Workplaces™.
· To act as a focus for the exchange of
information and knowledge for new and
existing Team Workplaces™ users.
· To create a Registry of Team
Workplace™applications currently in the
Bank.
Sheila O'Sullivan has recently completed
an MSc in Information Science at City
University. The title of her MSc
dissertation is "The Practical Application
of Marketing Principles to Internal
Information Centres”.
Figure 4
Figure 5
15
How to do A “Quick and Dirty” Industry Analysis Using BvD’s Osiris
For the thousands of OSIRIS users out there, Anthony Wood suggests a search strategy for a speedy analysis of
any industry. If you don’t have access to Osiris, contact BvD for a free trial.
Market research reports can cost the earth, from £200 to over £25,000, and in general the more you pay
the better the value. If cost is a problem and you need quick answers based on some hard numbers the
method described here is a possibility. It is not elegant and some of the conclusions are, to say the least,
questionable but its quick and, assuming you have access to Bureau van Dijk’s Osiris database, it costs only
time.
Osiris essentially provides financial data on the world’s largest companies. Most are quoted companies with
very strict rules on disclosure so the base data should be as accurate as the auditors’ reputations dictate.
BvD’s contribution is to take the data from Annual Reports and to analyse and reformat it into standard data
sets. That way at least users are comparing like-for-like.
The task was to analyse the Pharmaceutical industry in the EU. Fortunately there is a geographical option
for the EU that saves remembering 15 country names. For industry sectors, however, there are numerous
options. Dow Jones Global Indices are a good choice. After all if the publishers of the Wall Street Journal
cannot categorise industry sectors who can?
These two criteria
generated a list of 66
companies (see above)
with the comfort of the
“usual suspects” –
Glaxo, AstroZeneca,
Merck etc. – included
(see below). Osiris
allows the user to
create any number of
formats. The elements
chosen for this exercise
were ·
·
·
·
Company name
· No of employees Last Year
Operating Revenue / Turnover Last Year (mil. USD) · Primary US SIC code
Current Market Cap. (mil. USD)
· Country code
· Last available year
Net Income Last Year (mil. USD)
A great feature of BvD databases is the ability to export the results to Excel. Once exported, they can be
“sliced and diced” at will. Here are some conclusions. It should be noted that not all companies had entries
for all of the criteria.
·
·
·
The combined
turnover,
market
capitalisation
and income
were $130.3bn,
$308.2bn and
$14.6bn.
They employed
over 353,000
people.
The above figures for the top 5 were $86.5bn (66% of the total), $227.5bn (74%), $11.3bn (88%),
156,093 (44%)
From the above and other figures that can be extracted a picture of the EU pharmaceutical industry begins
to emerge that at the very least can be used to check the conclusions of more expensive analyses.
For the record, this whole exercise took about 15 minutes.
16
Factiva’s “Standard” Search Screen –
Something to Shout About
Anthony
In our evaluation of Factiva in 2002 (BIS Vol.11:3/4). we
pointed out an issue regarding the use of the OR
operator in searches using index terms.
“mousing over” it (see full screen). This feature first
appeared in the Lexis-Nexis Professional search screen.
Our comment then was …
Users can currently create only one OR option (see
figure) using the Factiva Intelligent Indexing
feature. The following search statement with two
OR options cannot at present be created in this way.
I have never seen this feature before. It is only possible
with the Internet. I am sure it will be copied. It is just too
good a feature to ignore.
We were right!
(France or Germany) and (Banking or Insurance)
By chance we were recently alerted to Factiva’s Standard
Search Screen (see below). To turn it on users need to
go to the Search / Track preferences options page.
This innovation has very neatly solved the OR problem.
Why did Factiva not shout about it “from the rooftops”?
It not only removed the specific problem that we pointed
out but also removed one of the main gripes that RBBophiles have. Although it is not the 4-column RBB
screen, it works in a similar way. It is the most elegant
search screen in the online information industry today!
Perhaps this might explain Factiva’s reticence to trumpet
this new search interface.
Personally, I have never had any qualms of conscience
in copying the good ideas of others. All’s fair in love, war
and the online information industry.
Users
can
create
multiple
OR
statements, the default option, from the
4 available categories – Industry,
Region, Subject and Company. The AND
radio button at the top right-hand of the
screen can be used to invoke this
Boolean operator and the rarely used
NOT operator requires a double-click on
the excluded term (see below) which is
then colour-coded in red – very neat
“green for go” and “red for stop”. Maybe
there should be a yellow option for nonmandatory search terms that add weight
to rankings if present in an article – it
could be the MAYBE operator!
Note also that users can get an idea of
the content of an index term by
17
Answer: Yes, there is. There are several Web based
services, some of which are free, that will monitor Web
pages for changes and send you email notifications. A few
will also include the changed text in the notification.
Options vary depending on the service and whether you
are using the free or subscription based versions. Most of
the free ones provide daily checks. Have a look at Watch
That Page (www.watchthatpage.com/) and see if it meets
your needs. If it does not, there is a comparison of the
more well known services on my Web site at
www.rba.co.uk/sources/monitor.htm. None of these,
though, monitor entire Web sites. You can only specify
individual pages.
Information Clinic
Karen Blakeman
The Information Clinic is here to help you locate
resources for information requests. Everything is fair
game from top selling brands of car to local sausage
manufacturers. If you have a particularly difficult
question, or one that is just plain odd, we will be
delighted to hear from you. Email your questions to
[email protected].
Another approach is to install monitoring software locally
on your system. Website Watcher (http://aignes.com/
has a wide range of options. These include ignore HTML
tags, images, banners, numbers and dates. You can even
enter IDs and passwords for password protected pages
and, it is claimed, monitor complete Web sites. Pages can
be checked once a day, once a week or on a specified day
or days of the week. There is an option that allows you to
specify the checking frequency during a day in hours or
minutes, but do not be tempted to check a page every
minute. The target Web site may regard your activities as
an attempted Denial of Service (DoS) attack and you
could find yourself in trouble with your ISP. There is a 30
day free trial and the prices vary depending on the type
and number of users.
Question: Where might I find historical daily stock prices, in
particular going back to the 1980’s for the London Stock
Exchange? I need actual prices rather than the historical
graphs that most share price services provide. Oh, and the
enquirer does not want to pay for the information!
Answer: The Finance section of Yahoo UK (http://
uk.finance.yahoo.com/) gives historical daily prices for
some of the major markets and for the London Stock
Exchange going back to 1986. Type in the symbol or
name of the company in which you are interested. This
will take you to a table giving a summary for the
company. In the lower right hand corner of the table you
will see a link to historical prices. The data includes daily
opening and closing prices, high and low prices for each
day, and volume. You can also download the data in
spreadsheet format.
An alternative is BigCharts (http://www.bigcharts.com/)
who provide historical prices for the major markets but
only for the past decade. If you have a specific date in
mind, simply type in the symbol of the company (there is
a symbol lookup box if you do not know it) and the date.
Alternatively, use the Java chart option to display a graph
of the last 10 years of prices. Move your mouse cursor
along the graph and the price on that day is displayed.
Question: How can I stop those irritating pop-ups that
litter my Desktop after every online session? I sometimes
end up with a couple of dozen of the wretched things.
Answer: There are two ways to tackle this problem. The
first is to use a browser such as Mozilla (www.mozilla.org/
) or Opera (www.opera.com/), both of which have options
for refusing pop-ups. The second is to install a pop-up
zapping program. My own personal favourite is
Webwasher (www.webwasher.com/), which has the
added advantage of allowing you to block banner
advertisements. There are many other similar programs,
though. Simply search Google for popup killers. Some are
free for personal use and most are shareware that you
can try before you buy. An important feature to look for
in these utilities is the ability to toggle the filter on and
off, either via a right click of the mouse or by clicking an
icon in your system tray. Some Web sites use pop-ups for
displaying information and help files so you will need to
temporarily disable the program for these.
Both of these services only provide information on
companies that are currently trading. If you need
information on a company that has merged with another
or has ceased trading you will have to resort to priced
services such as DataStream
(http://www.datastream.com/)
Question: I sometimes find Web pages that appear to have
exactly what I am looking for but do not give any
information about the author, source or even contact details
so that I can verify the data. Where can I find out who owns
a page?
Question: Do you know of any sources that forecast TV
advertising spend? Ideally, we would like to look at spend
across most of the world's major markets -Europe, US and
Japan - over the next 10 years. We have looked at Zenith but
wondered if there are other sources?
Answer: You can usually find who owns a Web site by
searching the official domain name registries.
Checkdomain at http://www.checkdomain.com/ for
example is a service that checks whether or not a domain
name - the bit immediately after the www part of a Web
address - has already been registered. For most
countries and types of domains it will display details of
the person who registered the domain name including
name, address and sometimes telephone and fax
numbers. The registered owner of the Web site may not
always be the person who is responsible for the content,
but it is at least a starting point.
Answer: I, too, would have first gone to Zenith
(www.zenithmedia.com) as it specialises in providing data
on this sector. My second approach would be to see if
there is a relevant trade or industry association that may
have the information. Either do a Google search for
possible organisations or search the Trade Association
Forum (www.taforum.com). This lists only UK
associations but many UK bodies provide data or sell
publications that cover International markets.
The Advertising Association (www.adassoc.org.uk) does
not appear to have any free forecasts on its Web site, but
does have information on some useful publications. The
most promising are those that it publishes in conjunction
with the World Advertising Research Center
Question: I have identified nearly a hundred Web pages that
I ought to be checking on a daily basis for changes and new
information. Is there any way I can do this without manually
looking up each site?
18
(www.warc.com). The reports are rather expensive and,
from the table of contents, it looks as though only a
handful of pages would be relevant to your search. In this
type of situation, it is always worth contacting the
publisher to see if you can purchase information by the
page or "table".
including English. BBC World Monitoring may cover some
of the articles you are interested in. The articles are
translated into English and indexed by World Monitoring
staff. The service at www.monitor.bbc.co.uk is
subscription only but there is a “pay-as-you-go” service
at www.newsbaseworldmonitoring.com.
A Google search on TV advertising forecast OR forecasts
spend OR expenditure came up with Zenith, WARC, the
Advertising Association, and a plethora of news releases
and magazine articles. Many of them were merely
reporting figures from press releases issued by Zenith and
the Advertising Association, so nothing new there. London
based Screen Digest (www.screendigest.com) looked
more promising with forecasts for Europe but, again, the
reports are expensive and you would probably only want
to purchase a few tables.
There are several free translation services on the Web.
AltaVista’s Babelfish at www.babelfish.altavista.com is
limited in the translation pairs it supports but does
include Russian to English. InterTran (www.tranexp.com/
InterTran.cgi) includes Russian, Croatian, Hungarian,
Polish, Czech and Slovenian in its range of translation
options and there is a list of other services at Online
Dictionaries and Translators (www.word2word.com/
dictionary.html). Do remember that these use machine
translation so the results are sometimes very odd. They
do give you a rough idea of the content of a page, but if
the information is critical you really should find a human
translator.
I then narrowed my Google search to PDF files (Advanced
Search screen), on the assumption that a lot of market
data is buried in formatted files. This came up with a
2000 report from the UK Competition Commission
(www.competition-commission.org.uk) on an inquiry into
the proposed merger of Carlton Communications and
Granada. There are some tables showing forecasts for
advertising spend in the UK up to 2005. The data came
from Zenith (back to them again!) but Granada and the
ITC are also mentioned as sources.
Question: We subscribe to several services that provide
excellent country specific information, but sometimes we
need to extend our searching to free Web resources. Our
problem is that simply typing a few keywords and the name
of the country into Google does not always narrow down the
search enough.
A search on market research report aggregators
MarketResearch.com and Mindbranch.com came up with
the publishers and reports that we had already identified.
Another strategy might be to identify newsletters or
online trade magazines in this area and plough through
them extracting pieces of data. Unless you strike lucky
early on, though, this can be an extremely tedious and
time-consuming task.
Follow up: A few days after we had answered this
question, the enquirer came back with a document that
they had stumbled across by chance. It was a free sample
chapter from a PriceWaterhouseCoopers report entitled
"Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 20022006”(www.pwcglobal.com). It just happened to cover TV
broadcast media and included tables on projected TV
advertising spends for the main regions of the world up to
2006.
I went back and reviewed my Google advanced PDF
strategy and found the report at number 178 in the list of
results! Very few of us have the patience to go beyond
the top 50 hits and most searchers never go further than
the first or second page of results. Consultancies do
sometimes publish free samples or, on rare occasions,
whole reports. So, when searching for market data, it
can be worthwhile having a series of strategies including
the names of the major firms such as
PriceWaterhouseCoopers, McKinsey, KPMG, Ernst &
Young.
Answer: Google (www.google.com) has several country
versions of its service. On the home page, click on the
Language Tools option. Towards the bottom of the page
there is a list of Googles in “your country”. It is not
comprehensive but does include, for example, Hungary,
Latvia, Lithuania and Kazakhstan. All give you the option
to search only sites in the country covered. It is not
foolproof, though, because Google selects the sites by
looking at the country code in the domain name and
those that it “knows” are based on servers in that
country. If your country is not listed go to Advanced
Search, type in your keywords in the boxes at the top of
the screen. Then enter the two letter country code
preceded by a dot in the domain box, for example .kz for
Kazakhstan.
For other search tools, Internet consultant Phil Bradley
has a useful collection of links to country specific and
regional search engines at www.philb.com/countryse.htm
as does Search Engine Colossus
(www.searchenginecolossus.com/). The European Search
Engines, Directories and Lists at www.netmasters.co.uk/
european_search_engines/, as the name suggests, covers
European countries.
Question: We access a large number of foreign newspapers
directly via the publishers’ own web sites as many sources
are not covered by Factiva or LexisNexis. Some are only
available in the language of that country and we do not
always have a member of staff who can translate them. Are
there any free or reasonably priced translation services that
we could use?
Answer: I would first double check that the newspaper
site really does not have English pages. These are not
always clearly signposted. ABYZ News Links
(www.abyznewslinks.com) lists newspapers by country
and includes links to any alternative language versions,
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Independent charges for content
News Desk
Karen Blakeman
Information providers link up with Microsoft
Major information providers are queuing up to link into
Microsoft Office 2003. Gale, Factiva and Alacritude are all
part of the new Research Task pane in Office 2003, which
is currently in beta. By highlighting a company name in a
document, Microsoft Office users will be able to receive
Gale published company profiles or Factiva news directly
into the application. Users who want access to these
services can subscribe online immediately.
The Independent (http://www.independent.co.uk/) is the
latest UK broadsheet to start charging for news archives
and some current Web content. This leaves only the
Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/) and the Telegraph
(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/) providing free access to
both current and archive news.
The priced "Independent Portfolio" covers all articles by
regular columnists and commentators, leading articles
from The Independent and Independent on Sunday, all
articles by Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk, articles
more than seven days old and the Cryptic Crossword. You
can search all of the content free of charge but articles
that are part of the Portfolio service are clearly marked in
the results list.
Gale offers over 450,000 company profiles, available for
purchase individually or through subscriptions.
Throughout the beta test period, individual profiles will
cost $35. A six month subscription will be $249 and an
annual subscription $399. Each profile provides an
overview of the company’s businesses, executive names,
financial data, recent news and announcements. (A
preview of the service is available at www.gale.com/
bizdev.)
There are several pricing schemes:
£1/item pay as you go access for 24 hours
£5 monthly subscription per section
£30 annual subscription per section
£60 annual subscription to all Portfolio content
The Factiva News Search option covers 8,000 sources and
the charges for access are the same as on the Factiva
Web site itself. Individuals pay an annual subscription of
$79.95 plus $2.95 per document. Enterprises have to
negotiate their own subscription agreements.
Alacritude offers access to the eLibrary service of
newspapers, newswires, magazines, journals, transcripts,
maps, photographs, and reference sources. The service
has 13 million documents from over 1,000 sources. With
eLibrary, article abstracts are free but full document
access requires a subscription. Charges are $14.95 a
month or $79.95 a year.
Although there has been initial enthusiasm in some
quarters, early beta testers have reported that users are
subscribing to services for which the enterprise already
has contracts. Customisation of the Research Task Pane
does not appear to be easy although there are Microsoft
tools available to do this. IT experts have suggested the
technology may only work on all-Microsoft operations. It
is interesting that Microsoft are rolling this out just as
some major public and private sector organisations are
seriously considering switching to open source operating
systems and applications.
These compare favourably with the rates charged by
FT.com (between £70 and £195). Payment has to be
made using a BT Click&Buy account, which you set up
separately from your Independent access.
Meanwhile FT.com, who introduced charges in May 2002,
says that it broke even for the first time in the final
quarter of last year. It currently has 53,000 subscribers.
Who Owns Whom in the UK Electricity
Industry
The Electricity Association Web site at
www.electricity.org.uk/ has been re-designed and relaunched. New features include a current vacancies
section, an interactive map of the UK electricity system,
and news of publications and events. The Industry Facts
section provides statistics on generation capacity, market
shares, supply and demand by sector. For industry
researchers, though, the meatiest and most interesting
part of the revamped site is the section on Who Owns
Whom in the UK Electricity Industry. There is a summary
table outlining ownerships as well as detailed histories of
20
mergers and acquisitions for each company, all free of
charge.
e-Business Search Tool Launched
www.ebizsearch.org
The eBusiness Research Center (eBRC) at Penn State
University has launched eBizSearch, a new specialised
search tool that finds and indexes documents about ebusiness, e-commerce and related topics. eBizSearch
crawls the Web sites of universities, companies,
consultancies, research institutes, and government
departments for articles, working papers, consulting
reports, magazine articles, and published statistical facts.
SkillsBuilder - practical guides for business
Users can search by keyword or by citation, so that one
can see where an author or document has been cited.
eBizSearch performs a citation analysis of all the articles
found and lists them in order of their citation rates (the
most cited articles are listed first). For some documents,
the database only stores the hyperlinks to those
documents.
Articles available through the eBizSearch engine can be
downloaded free of charge. However, some articles may
have only the abstracts listed, and have to be purchased
direct from the original source or via a document delivery
service.
Active Information, publishers of the magazine Better
Business, have launched a service called SkillsBuilder
(www.skillsbuilder.co.uk/). SkillsBuilder is a library of over
150 practical guides to help people in organizations top up
their skills across a wide range of topics, as and when
required. It designed to be accessed from corporate
Intranets and is sold by annual subscription that is
dependent on the size of the organization.
World Chambers launches pay-as-you-go
business information
www.worldchambers.com
SkillsBuilder is mainly intended for use in England and
Wales, since some legal or tax issues apply only in the
UK. Nevertheless, much of the content is generic and is
applicable to any organisation around the world. The
guides include:
·
·
·
·
·
How to make your staff think for themselves
Avoid the classic mistakes of sales letters
How to delegate more effectively
Eight ways to get better deals from suppliers
Simple strategies to balance work and home life
For a free trial email [email protected].
21
The World Chambers Network (WCN) has agreed a deal
with information provider Dialog to give pay-as-you-go
access to business and industry information. The WCN
Web site has a customized search form enabling users to
search for articles by title, the full text of articles, industry
sector, company name, country and date. The initial
Dialog content available via WCN includes global news
and industry and business news. Company profiles,
market research and other categories of content will be
added soon.
CAROL launches new credit report facility
CAROL - Company Annual Reports On-line
(www.carol.co.uk) has revamped its Web site and, in
addition to links to company annual reports, is now
offering credit reports.
It is tempting to carry out a very specific search but, for
example, I found that searching for information on the
Australian company PaperlinX and the country Australia
did not find anything more recent than December 4th,
2002. Leaving the country search box as “any country”
gave me several Australian news articles from February
2003. Experienced users of Dialog databases will be able
to work out why that happens but it will confuse endusers who do not know how the information is organised
and indexed.
Searching is free and users may purchase the full text of
articles using credit cards. In the test searches that I
conducted, prices varied from US$ 2.90 to US$ 4.70 per
article.
CAROL provides direct links to the financial pages of
European and North American listed companies' Web
sites. Where available, you can access balance sheets,
profit & loss statements, financial highlights etc. on the
companies' own Web sites. For some UK companies, you
are linked to information on the highly regarded
Hemmington Scott Web site. Access to this information is
free of charge but you do have to register.
"Best for Business" for West Midlands
companies
A new business portal, aimed at supporting companies in
the West Midlands, has been launched. Best for Business
(www.bestforbusiness.com) has been created by the staff
at Business Insight, Central Library, Birmingham. It
provides free business information covering all topics,
with a West Midlands bias for more specific services such
as grants and tenders.
For UK registered ltd companies you can now purchase
credit reports and document images, which are available
for immediate download. The reports that are available
include:
Corporate Analysis Level 3 - £40+VAT. This is the most
comprehensive report "drawing on up to 8 different
sources of information to compile itself".
Credit Profile - £18+VAT. A four year financial overview
as well as credit information.
Images of Accounts or Annual Returns - £14 + VAT. The
full imaged documents as filed at Companies House.
The new site is very slick, but there is a potential problem
in that the links to company Web sites open in a frame
within CAROL. Furthermore, it is not possible to open the
pages within a new window by right- clicking with the
mouse. The result is that if you want to explore the rest
of the company site and beyond you are stuck with the
CAROL banners at the top of the page.
Apart from making navigation difficult, this raises serious
legal issues. The companies included in the CAROL index
may well have given permission for their pages to be
loaded into CAROL branded frames, but what about the
sites that are linked to by these companies? It is difficult
to see how permission could have been sought from all of
them and they may take a very dim view of appearing to
be part of the CAROL site.
There are over 500 fact sheets on the site under the
Business Advice heading, as well as Know How guides.
The "How to run a business" section includes business
start-up, e-commerce, employment issues, finance,
grants, sales and marketing, and trading overseas. The
research section has an excellent collection of annotated
links to a variety of business information resources on the
Web.
The site is maintained by experienced staff who deal with
20,000 visitors each month and 2,500 business enquiries
a week. So it is based on practical hands-on knowledge of
what companies need, ranging from initial start up
information to multi-nationals and senior management
topics.
Sixty fold increase in company coverage on
BvD's AMADEUS in ten years
Consistent European coverage now extends to six million
companies
Best for Business says that although it has officially
launched, there will be major additions and enhancements
over the next 6 months.
22
AMADEUS, the European company information database
from Bureau van Dijk, Europe's leading electronic
publisher of business information, celebrates its tenth
anniversary this May. The contemporary version of
AMADEUS remains true to BvD’s original concepts of
standardised reports, unified activity searching and data
sourced from leading local information providers. Over
the last ten years AMADEUS has been continually
enhanced both in terms of coverage and software
features.
At its launch AMADEUS contained detailed information on
a hundred thousand European companies from sixteen
countries. Currently, records for six million companies
spanning thirty-four countries and two principalities are
available. Even with the significant increase in company
numbers strict inclusion criteria are still applied to ensure
even coverage across Europe, eliminating any bias
towards countries where company information is more
prevalent. BvD’s financial template consistently reflects
European accounting formats to facilitate cross-border
searching and analysis.
Leading information suppliers are sourced for each
country - rather than relying on one source with potential
weak areas. Thirty providers are now involved in the
production of AMADEUS, including BvD. Finding there was
no comprehensive source of pan-European ownership
information BvD set out to research its own. This
exclusive data set now includes four and a half million
ownership links for AMADEUS alone and has been
extended across BvD's global product range.
"Our philosophy is one of continual product enhancement
and avoidance of complacency," said Tony Pringle,
manager of BvD's UK office, adding, "Existing plans for
AMADEUS include increasing the number of countries
covered - an information provider has been sourced for
Cyprus - and we are looking to add some more countries
including Malta and the states that are missing from the
former CIS. Software enhancements are also on our
agenda. AMADEUS has evolved from a DOS CD-ROM to a
progressive internet product that includes two search
methods to suit different user experience with
sophisticated analysis options that utilise integral
graphics, maps and tree diagrams.”
AMADEUS is available on CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, on the
internet and as an intranet feed. Users can subscribe to
the top 200,000 companies, top 1 million companies or
all companies. Free trials can be arranged by contacting
020 7549 5000 or e-mailing [email protected]. More
information on BvD’s product range can be found at
www.bvdep.com.
Contact Louise Green
Direct line 020 7549 5012
[email protected]
Projected global deal activity for 2003 could
surpass 2000 levels
Bureau van Dijk’s ZEPHYR shows high levels of deal activity
in quarter one. Current levels of coverage so extensive
comparison maybe distorted
The M&A database, ZEPHYR, shows that all deal activity
for the first quarter of 2003 is significantly higher than
forecasters anticipated. If deals continue to be announced
at the same rate, around 38,000 deals could be
announced by the end of 2003. This compares favourably
to the officially accepted figure of 36,700 deals
announced in 2000. ZEPHYR covers M&A, IPO, private
equity and venture capital deals. It is published by
Bureau van Dijk (BvD), the leading European electronic
publisher of business information.
Looking at announced deals globally ZEPHYR shows 9,432
deals totalling EUR 527,570,000 in Q1 2003, which
breakdown as follows:
- 4,425 (EUR 229,586,000) involved a European target,
- 2,785 (EUR 194,417,000) involved a North American
target
- 2,222 (EUR 103,567,000) involved targets from the rest
of the world.
A further 3,425 deals are still considered rumoured with a
total potential value of EUR 196,217,000.
“Some of the surprise in these high deal numbers,
identified using ZEPHYR, could be explained by the fact
that ZEPHYR has very extensive coverage, that
encompasses all aspects of the M&A marketplace, and
this has now been applied to cover global deals. This is
the first time we have been able to produce global deal
figures, and alternative products don’t have the same
depth of coverage as ZEPHYR,” said Lisa Wright, head of
Zephus, adding, “A promising start to 2003 may not be
what it seems: the reality could be that deal information
is now much more comprehensive.”
ZEPHYR contains information on approaching 120,000
deals. Since January 2003 the deal coverage on ZEPHYR
has been global. Prior to 2003 ZEPHYR primarily covered
deals in Europe and North America: historical global deals
are currently being added to the database. ZEPHYR is
available on free trial by calling 020 7549 5000 or visiting
www.zephyr.bvdep.com
Contact Louise Green
Direct line 020 7549 5012
[email protected]
FIZ Karlsruhe launches new defensive
publication database RDISCLOSURE on STN
International
Unrivalled source of prior art disclosures with over 27,000
records/ Full text and images / user-friendly search features
FIZ Karlsruhe, one of Europe's leading providers of
information services, and European partner of premier
science and technology online service STN International,
has launched RDISCLOSURE, the most significant nonpatent prior art database in the world, containing
cutting edge disclosures going back decades. Industrial
patent searchers, legal firms and individual inventors
wishing to locate prior art, check for patentability or
undertake validity or opposition searches, will all find
RDISCLOSURE on STN a convenient and powerful
information access.
Produced by Kenneth Mason Publications Ltd.,
Westbourne, Hants, United Kingdom, RDISCLOSURE
provides the full text including images of technical
disclosure records from the defensive publication journal
Research Disclosure. For over 40 years Research
Disclosure has held an unrivalled place as the primary
rapid-disclosure mechanism for companies and individual
inventors wishing to place their research findings in the
public domain. Research Disclosure is the only dedicated
rapid disclosure journal included in the PCT Minimum
Documentation, ensuring its use during search
examination by all leading patent offices or national IP
authorities around the world.
The Database RDISCLOSURE covers descriptions of
inventions from all areas of science and technology, i.e.
all classes of the IPC, and contains records from 1960 to
23
the present. It is updated monthly. Current-awareness
alerts (SDIs) are also available monthly. The records
comprise the title, a detailed description and illustrations
of the invention, as well as a statement as to whether the
invention is disclosed anonymously or by company name.
The full text is loaded in ASCII for search and display.
Page images of the complete records including all
illustrations can be displayed in TIFF format.
EMO’s Company Monitor
In order to pinpoint relevant information quickly and
effectively in RDISCLOSURE, STN users can utilise a range
of powerful proprietary full-text retrieval tools. The SLART
(Simultaneous Left and Right Truncation) feature,
for example, allows wildcards and truncation to be used
on both sides of a search term, enabling users to locate
multiple variations of a word or phrase, and so achieve a
greater degree of precision in their searches.
STN International can be accessed by dialling into STN's
online service using its user-friendly client software STN
Express with Discover! Alternatively, it can be accessed
directly over the Internet using a standard web browser
(http://stnweb.fiz-karlsruhe.de or secure server:
https://stnweb.fiz-karlsruhe.de). At a later time,
RDISCLOSURE may also be available in STN Easy®, the
point-and-click interface for occasional searchers
unfamiliar with the STN command language.
Contact:
FIZ Karlsruhe, STN Europe, P.O. Box 2465,
76012 Karlsruhe, Germany
Phone: +49-7247-808-555
Fax +49-7247-808-259
E-mail: [email protected]
http://www.stn-international.de
Price's List of Lists Moves to
Specialissues.com
As many information professionals will know there is a
sharp division between information retrieval and analysis.
End users, however, often mistake the one for the other.
A common example of this is a request for the names of
companies involved in specific markets. Often the only
way to generate such a list is by extracting the names
from news articles – a lengthy process that neither an
information professional nor an end user relishes. A new
service from Business Monitor International (BMI) has just
short-circuited the process for emerging markets.
Company Monitor is part of BMI’s Emerging Markets
Online (EMO) service. As the name implies EMO focuses
on the emerging economies of Asia, Latin America /
Caribbean, Europe and the Middle East / Africa. Company
Monitor homes in on the activities of major multinational
companies in those regions – offices, competitors,
investments, projects, officers etc. The Front screen gives
an insight to the breadth of the service.
The service is divided into three components – all of
which are interlinked. If the entry point is a specific
company then the way in is via the TOP MULTINATIONAL
NETWORKS option. Clicking on the first letter of a desired
company name lists all the major companies covered by
the service whose names start with that letter. The user
can go on from there to find details of specific offices and
officers in specific emerging markets or similar details of
competitors.
The COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE module enables the
user to extract and export information by one or more of
the following criteria - company name, size of investment,
country and sector. The final – COMPANY NEWS &
ANALYSIS - component provides access to an increasing
database of company-specific stories. These stories are
categorised by subjects such as FDI Alert (for Foreign
Direct Investments), People Moves, Project News, Product
Launch an Company Finance Alert.
The search for multinational company activities in
emerging markets just got much easier!
Gary Price's List of Lists (LOL) is now being maintained
and updated by Specialissues.com
(www.specialissues.com/lol/). The LOL, started in 1998, is
a database of ranked listings of companies, people and
resources freely available on the Internet.
The LOL is organized by subject headings based on the
two-digit 1997 U.S. NAICS Codes. There is no formal
search function but you can search for content within each
of the subject headings using your browser's "Find"
option. The subject of the rankings can be anything and
range from the top 100 European banks to the top 25 ice
cream flavours. There are some European and
International rankings, but there is a heavy US bias.
Anthony Wood
24
Training/Events Diary
Presents a summary of business information/KM
related courses and events, May - July 2003.
Courses and events are listed in date order by title,
organiser and venue (if different from that of the
organiser’s offices). Contact details for the leading course
organisers are Aslib, The Association for Information Management,
Temple Chambers, 3-7 Temple Ave, London EC4Y 0HP,
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7583 8900
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7583 8401
[email protected] www.aslib.co.uk
Manchester Business School
Booth Street West, Manchester
M15 6PB, UK
Tel : +44 (0)161- 275 6333
Fax : +44 (0)161- 275 6489
www.mbs.ac.uk
RBA Information Services
88 Star Road, Caversham, Berks UK, RG4 5BE
Tel: +44 (0) 118 947 2256
Fax: +44 (0) 870 056 8547
[email protected]
www.rba.co.uk
TFPL Ltd,
17-18 Britton St, London EC1M 5TL
tel: +44 (0)20 7251 5522
fax: +44 (0)20 7490 4984
[email protected] www.tfpl.com
May
13 May, 23 September, 1 December
the City: understanding the financial institutions of
the City of London, TFPL
www.tfpl.com/skills_development/courses/
coursedisplay.cfm?linkid=tr298
14 May, 19 November
introduction to UK company law, TFPL
coursedisplay.cfm?linkid=TR502
16 May
Statistics for Business, Aslib
www.aslib.com/training/1/11.html
19 May, 14 November
Introduction to Database Design
& Construction, Aslib
19-20 May, 13-14 October
thesauri for the electronic age, TFPL
cd.cfm?linkid=tr345
20 May
Benchmarking & Performance Measurement, Aslib
www.aslib.co.uk/training/2/01.html
21 May
valuing companies for mergers
and acquisitions, TFPL
22 May
Key Business Resources on the Net, MBS
Manchester Business School, Manchester
www.rba.co.uk/training/bii.htm
22 May, 17 September
influencing your stakeholders, TFPL
cd.cfm?linkid=tr529
30 May, 12 September
Successful Website Management, Aslib
June
2 June, 24 October
News and Media Information on the Internet, Aslib
www.aslib.co.uk/training/1/media.html
3 June, 10 September, 10 December
Is it Legal? Aslib
3 June
Raise the Profile of Your Information Service!
Exploiting Content to Raise the Profile of your LIS,
UKOLUG, CILIP, London
www.ukolug.org.uk/meetings/raise.htm
4 June, 1 December
Health & Medical Information on the Internet, Aslib
4 June, 4 November
researching company lists and rankings, TFPL
5 June, 12 December
Government & Politics on the Internet, Aslib
6 June
Overcoming Information Overload, Aslib
9 June
British Official Publications, Alsib
9 June, 15 October
knowledge management:
foundation programme, TFPL
10 June
Organising Digital Information, Aslib
11 June
Advanced Internet Search Strategies, MBS
Manchester Business School, Manchester
www.rba.co.uk/training/searching.htm
12 June
Influencing Skills, Aslib
12 June
Introduction to the Internet, Aslib
25
10 July, 10 November
copyright for corporate information professionals,
TFPL
cd.cfm?linkid=tr400
13 June, 4 December
Strategic Approaches to Internet Research, Aslib
16 June
Introduction to Database Design & Construction,
Aslib
10 July
Strategic Planning for Information Services, Aslib
www.aslib.co.uk/training/calendar/july03.html
17 June, 27 November
how the global financial markets work, TFPL
14 July, 25 November
planning an intranet taxonomy, TFPL
cd.cfm?linkid=tr335
17 June, 5 December
Abstracting and Summarising Quickly and
Accurately, Aslib
15 July, 7 November
proving the value of library & information services,
TFPL
cd.cfm?linkid=tr430
18 June
Knowledge Mapping...the Next Step, Aslib
16 July
using corporate documents, TFPL
22-23 July, 29-30 October
cd.cfm?linkid=tr521
19 June
Budget Management, MBS
www.mbs.ac.uk/corporate/bis/html/training.cfm#Budget
Copyright for Information Providers, Aslib
20 June
Time Management for Information Professionals,
Aslib
information audit: identifying your organisation's
information and knowledge assets, TFPL
cd.cfm?linkid=tr369
July
29 July
outsourcing business research - a Hot Topic
seminar, TFPL
cd.cfm?linkid=tr561
1 July
valuing companies for mergers and acquisitions,
TFPL
cd.cfm?linkid=tr498
an introduction to business research, TFPL
cd.cfm?linkid=tr445
2 July
Writing Copy for Marketing Literature, Aslib
2 July, 29 September, 3 December
internet tools for the advanced searcher, TFPL
cd.cfm?linkid=tr299
3 July
Marketing on the Internet, Alsib
3 July
breakthrough thinking in knowledge and
information strategy, TFPL
cd.cfm?linkid=TR547
7 July
an introduction to corporate finance, TFPL
cd.cfm?linkid=tr297
8-9 July, 11-12 November
Constructing a Thesaurus, Aslib
9 July
law firm knowledge management, TFPL
cd.cfm?linkid=tr510
26
Business Intelligence Strategies
Books
J. Devaney, Paperback - 200 pages (1 May,
2002) Microsoft Press International; ISBN:
0735616272, £23.00
Some recent business information related titles are listed
here to alert readers to them.
This book illustrates how organizations can make better,
faster decisions about their customers, partners, and
operations using business intelligence, the process of
turning large amounts of data into valuable information
and making it easily available to decision makers.
Inside Information: Making Sense of
Marketing Data
David Smith, Jonathan Fletcher, 272 pages
(March 2001) John Wiley and Sons Ltd; ISBN:
0471495433, £17.23
Out of the Box: Strategies for
Achieving Profits Today and Growth
Tomorrow Through Web Services
This book arms marketing professionals with powerful
tools to help them meet the challenge of the twenty-first
century information explosion. This extremely practical
guide is packed with easy-to-use checklists, Q&As,
sidebars, vignettes, and actions steps. And the authors'
unique cross-disciplinary approach-featuring soundbytes
from philosophy, psychology, history, art, and the hard
sciences-makes this book as enjoyable a read as it is
instructive
John Hagel III, 256 pages (1 October, 2002)
Harvard Business School Press; ISBN:
1578516803, £17.23
Out of the Box is the first authoritative book to examine
how a company's information technology can help or
hinder its ability to manage short-term costs and achieve
long-term growth. Hagel offers a radical alternative
approach to IT-starting with Web services-that is far
more flexible and less costly than traditional approaches.
Making IT Happen - Critical Issues in
IT Management: Critical Issues in
Managing Information Technology
Building the Knowledge Management
Network: Best Practices, Tools and
Techniques for Putting Conversation
to Work
J. McKeen, Hardcover - 384 pages (1 March,
2003) John Wiley and Sons Ltd; ISBN:
0470850876, £28.76
Figallo, Paperback - 368 pages (13 September,
2002), John Wiley & Sons Inc;
ISBN: 047121549X, £27.95
This book tackles the tough issues of managing in an
environment where IT is everywhere. Based on the real
life experiences of senior IT managers in leading-edge
businesses and incorporating thorough research, "Making
IT Happen" separates fact from fad, shows where
managers can make a real difference, and provides useful
and practical advice for coping in the fast-paced world of
IT.
More organizations than ever before recognize that the
untapped knowledge of its members could be used to
benefit every aspect of its business, from making smarter
and faster decisions to improving products and efficiency.
An organization's ability to locate, capture and catalogue
the knowledge of its members, along with the
technologies and methods it uses to do so, is a
knowledge management system. This book maps out the
use of community, conversation and collaboration in a
knowledge management network.
Corporate Information Management:
The Challenges of Doing Business in
the Internet Age
Applegate, Paperback - 360 pages (1
November, 2002) Irwin; ISBN: 0072456655,
£50.84
The Fast Track to Profit: An Insider's
Guide to Exploiting the World's Best
Internet Technologies
Explains the relevant issues of effective management of
information services activities and highlights the areas of
greatest potential application of the technology. No
assumptions are made concerning the reader's
experience with IT, but it is assumed that the reader has
some course work or work experience in administration
or management.
Lee Caldwell, Paperback - 300 pages (1
September, 2002) Prentice Hall PTR;
ISBN: 0130463477, £19.17
Practical advice and case studies from an expert on how
companies can reap enormous returns on their Internet
technology investments. The text includes a step-by-step
owner's manual, designed to give readers the tools they
need to drive the Net to greater profitability within their
own business.
A Practical Guide to Business, Law and
the Internet
Peter Adediran, Hardcover - 256 pages (21 May,
2002), Kogan Page; ISBN: 0749437340, £25.00
Internet-enabled Business
Intelligence
Provides preliminary legal advice on the issues involved
when using the Internet for business purposes. It seeks
to deal with every aspect of business online, including:
getting a domain name; trademark and copyright;
strategic analysis; business operations; fund-raising;
company law; data protection; contract law and ecommerce; online taxation; and tax incentives for
Internet businesses.
William Giovinazzo, Paperback - 350 pages (1
October, 2002) Prentice Hall PTR;
ISBN: 0130409510, £31.95
William Giovinazzo explains how to build a Web-enabled
data warehouse in this practical guide. The author shows
how to use and take advantage of key enabling
technologies including Java, XML, XSL, LDAP, and WAP.
27
Aslib Directory of Information Sources
in the UK
Business Information: Finding and
Using Data in the Digital Age
Keith Reynard (Editor), Aslib, Europa
publications; Dec 2002, ISBN: 0851424724,
£360.00
Jay L. Zagorsky. McGraw-Hill Education, 288pp
July 2002, ISBN: 0072507705, £34.99
This is one of the very few books currently available that
focuses on doing internet-based, quantitative research.
Provides instant access to listings of over 11,000
associations, clubs, societies, companies, educational
establishments, institutes, commissions, government
bodies and other organisations which provide information
freely or on a fee-paying basis.
The Professional's Guide to Mining the
Internet: Information Gathering and
Research on the Net
Brian Clegg, Kogan Page; 156 pp November,
2001, ISBN: 0749436557, £9.99
Free business and industry information
on the Web
Paul Pedley, 100 pp., Aslib, Europa Publications;
Feb 2001, ISBN: 0851424600, £25.00
Whatever is needed, whether in-depth research material
for a report, the telephone number of a company on the
other side of the world, or merely a good restaurant for a
business meeting, this up-to-the-minute guide will help
you to find the answer, easier, faster and with a
minimum of fuss.
Provides readers with a listing of some of the most useful
business and industry information sources available freely
on the Internet.
World Directory of Trade and Business
Associations
Internet Marketing Intelligence
Edward Forrest, McGraw-Hill Education;224pp.
October 2002) ISBN: 0072821116, £26.99
500pp, Euromonitor, Feb 2003,
ISBN: 184264 2448, £395
This specialized, practically focused, succinct,
flexible, 'how-to' text shows researchers how to
document the resources, delineate the tools, and to
demonstrate the techniques utilized when conducting
marketing research on and through the Internet.
a one-stop summary of the key business research
organizations across 75 countries of the world. The
directory has full contact details for more than 6000
market information providers, together with details of
their activities and publications
Mining the Web: Transforming
Customer Data into Customer Value
Marketing Research That Won't Break
the Bank: A Practical Guide to Getting
the Information You Need
Linhoff, John Wiley & Sons Inc; 368 pp
February 2002 ISBN: 0471416096, £25.10
Alan R Andreasen, 304 pp, Jossey Bass Wiley;
October 2002 ISBN: 0787964190, £19.50
explains how data mining techniques can be applied to
the Web and how the results can lead to more efficient
and successful advertising campaigns, better customer
service, and ultimately increased profit.
The tools and techniques presented will help managers
gain an in-depth understanding of their target market,
competitors, and environment without stretching the
organization's budget.
Find It Online: The Complete Guide to
Online Research
Alan M. Schlein, et al, National Book Network;
520 pp. August 2002, ISBN: 1889150290,
£11.27
The book enables you to get the information you want as
quickly and easily as a professional researcher. It is a
practical, how-to guide written by a non-techno geek and
developed for real people.
The Best Websites for Financial
Professionals, Business Appraisers
and Accountants
Eva M. Lang, Jan Davis Tudor, John Wiley &
Sons Inc., 256 pp. April 2001
ISBN: 0471371572, £27.95
Especially designed for the growing number of
accountants, business appraisers, and financial
professionals who are turning to the Internet business
and financial information, this book helps professionals
evaluate, target, and locate the best financial and
business sites on the Web.
28

2003 Vol.1 - dataresources

Transcription

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