docValuable Assets Books No Holes In This Mint
download 
Report Transcription
Valuable Assets Books No Holes In This Mint
Vol.16 2006 No. Editorial - Valuable Assets 2 Books 3 No Holes In This Mint BVD’s Mint 4 Investing in Eastern Europe 11 Focus on Assets, Ownership and Governance - Overview of Free Resources News Desk 17 CrossEngine LLRX.com: Another Tool in your Arsenal Market Research on the Web - Special Offer The UK Statute Law Database UK Government to Close Down Websites Press 18 Backfiles unlimited Emerald Selects ScholarOne's® Manuscript CentralT for Online Peer Review BvDEP continues to expand Three continents see new offices Facet Publishing announce a major new programme of books for 2007 editorial 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. 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 Annual subscription price 2007 (published 4 times/year) Print + PDF Files: £95.00 (+ £10 airmail), PDF Files only (email): £75.00 Advertisement rates Mono: full page £195.00, half page £125.00, quarter page £75.00 Full Colour: full page £295.00, half page £165.00, quarter page £95.00 Copy deadline 10th day of month of issue. VAT at 17.5% to be added to advertisement charges in UK. This publication is protected by international copyright law. Copying in any form is expressly forbidden without the written consent of the publishers, Effective Technology Marketing Ltd. Whilst every reasonable care is taken to ensure the accuracy of the information presented in this publication, the publishers disclaim any responsibility for any claim for damages, consequential loss or loss of profit arising from the use of the information contained herein. Copyright © 1991-2006 Effective Technology Marketing Ltd The views expressed by each author are not necessarily those held by the publishers, Effective Technology Marketing Ltd. Valuable Assets Anthony Wood My oldest friend is my optician. We met on our first day in school at the age of five and 55 years later we use my bi-annual eye examinations to catch up on family news and put the world to rights. Our school friends, myself included, thought he was barmy to want from a very early age to follow his father, uncle, two brothers and two of his three sisters into the family opticians business. We all had bigger plans that generally involved making pots of money. Opticians, in our minds, were slightly less boring than accountants. We were wrong. He is a very wealthy man with a large house in his home University town and a mini-Palace of Versailles in the Algarve. Whilst we have had to grind away in someone else’s enterprise for a pittance in retirement he can look forward to a well-cushioned retirement and the option to “keep his hand in” for as long as he wishes. When he bought his present 4-story, 6-bedroom Victorian house many years ago it was in great need of updating. The woodwork and walls were covered with many layers of paint and wallpaper from the generations of previous occupants. As with previous houses he set to to do as much of the work himself. It took him two weeks to make a dent on only one room and with Christmas guests looming he took more and more time off work to complete the job. One day, totally exhausted and dispirited, he worked out how much on average he could earn in an hour and found out how much the most expensive painters and decorators charged. The ratio was 4:1. He abandoned his DIY principles immediately, hired a small army of tradesmen and watched as they stormed their way though the house doing a far better job than he could have possibly achieved – in a fraction of the time. How often do we, as information professionals, see end users falling into the same “free” DIY trap? I have quoted the following two examples before but it they are worth repeating. A very well-paid colleague tried to “cheat the system” by searching a commercial pay-as-yougo news service for free headlines then cutting and pasting them into Google, MSN and Yahoo. The articles would have cost £2 each and it took him an average of 3 minutes per article to find out if they were available via any of the “Big Three” search engines. His average success rate was 1 in 4. Summarising it took him an hour to search for 20 articles and retrieve 5 of them for free. The alternative “costs” were £40 and 5 minutes. His time cost his employer at least £200 / hour. In hard cash he spent over £40 / article to save £2 / article. The other example is a personal one from when I was a salesman of financial services. In those ancient pre-Internet days I had to do my own analyses of company accounts prior to submitting a funding proposal. It was tedious, often complex and a single company set could take all day. Now I would dip into the most relevant Bureau van Dijk database, probably FAME, and get the answers in minutes. Books A selection of recent business information related titles are listed here to alert readers to them. Links (click cover image in pdf file) are provided for further information and ordering. These cost benefits, however, are only part of the equation and possibly only a small part. Change Management in Information Services, Second Edition Lyndon Pugh, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK January 2007, 242 pages Hardback * 0 7546 4665 3 / 978-0-7546-46655, £55.00 Information services are currently going through what is probably the most significant period of change in their history. At the same time, thinking about organisational change in general management has continued to develop, and many of the emerging ideas, strategies and processes are increasingly relevant to information services. Whilst my well paid colleague and my financial services successors are indulging in a little timeconsuming DIY they are not using their talents and expertise doing what they were recruited to do and for which they may be uniquely qualified. We all have about 1,600 hours a year to offer the hirers of our intellectual prowess. Not all of that time can be used productively – we need breaks, we need to communicate with others that may or may not involve travel and we need time to deal with necessary but non-core activities. If we are really focused we might get 600 hours a year to do what we are uniquely qualified by training and experience to do. Since the first edition of this highly regarded book was published in 2000 the pace of change has accelerated because of the influence of digitisation and technological developments in general, the emergence of what might be called a business culture, changes in skills and knowledge requirements, and changes in user and personnel attitudes. Despite these rapid developments the current literature tends to reflect a preoccupation with technological developments at the expense of consideration for the broader managerial base. This second edition fills the gap in the literature and is fully updated with the inclusion of a number of new chapters and new case studies. Some of those core hours will be spent gathering and assimilating information from inside and / or outside the enterprise. Few of us work in a vacuum. If we waste half of the time in “freebie” DIY information retrieval we greatly limit the time needed to add value to our findings. If we invest the time needed to understand the value of the wealth of great commercial services, we could squeeze out an extra 200 hours of core time. That way we improve our productivity by 67%. Core hours that fully exploit our unique attributes are the most valuable assets that we have to offer. Essential Law for Information Professionals, 2nd Edition Paul Pedley, 2nd Edition 2006 paperback 978-1-85604-552-0 304pp £34.95 Also it is so much better to have your eyes examined by someone who does not constantly smell of turpentine! This classic text offers both a complete picture of the law as it affects information management and an exploration of the fundamental principles that underlie practice. It uses individual cases to illustrate legal principles and contextualize specific regulations. Legal information often appears dense and impenetrable, but this approachable text cuts through the legalese to present the reader with exactly the information they need in a digestible form. This completely updated edition includes new chapters on the Re-use of Public Sector Information, Human Rights, and Legal Deposit. A helpful glossary of terms is now included, and the chapter on Cybercrime and Computer Misuse has been substantially expanded. 3 Business Information Searcher Vol.16 No.3/4 No Holes In This Mint – BvD’s Mint Anthony Wood Many years ago I sold financial services for one of the “Big Four” banking groups. I visited one small company whose managing director had an ego that was inversely proportional to the size of his enterprise. Despite having fewer than 20 employees he considered himself and his company to be key components of the UK economy. I asked him, as was usual, for copies of his accounts. “Dear boy, we do not disclose our financial secrets to any Tom, Dick or Harry” was his response. He suggested I view the factory with his right-hand man, a “jolly good chap” and make my decision based on what I saw. We agreed to meet up again in a week. I went to Companies House, obtained three years worth of accounts and analysed them. Accounts analysis is an exacting science. A set of accounts is the closest an auditor comes to producing a work of art. In rare instances they are, as in the case of Enron, a work of fiction. However in general auditors, working within increasingly strict guidelines, produce a representative financial picture of an enterprise on a specific date (the Balance Sheet) and a summary of the financial transactions in the period, usually the year, leading up to that date (the Profit and Loss Account). These are accompanied by notes that can, for a large enterprise, run to many pages. On my return to the original company I presented the managing director with copies of his “secret” accounts, my analysis and a set of questions that needed answers. He rapidly went purple with rage despite my attempts to assure him that disclosure was mandatory. He rang his accountant in high dudgeon and visibly deflated when my assurances were confirmed. We had a very constructive meeting after that and we eventually did the business. The analysis of company accounts is Bureau van Dijk’s “bread and butter”. No other company financial information provider comes even close to the breadth of data and number of companies covered by BvD’s many services. The “Big Daddy” of BvD’s suite is Orbis covering, at the time of writing, 21,003,626 companies based in 201 worldwide countries. The data is provided by more than 40 local providers. BvD transform the data for each company into standardised formats that enable users to make like-for-like comparisons. Below is a distribution of numbers of companies for the G8 countries. 3,500,000 3,000,000 Can ad a 2,500,000 Opposite is the full listing illustrating BvD’s comprehensive cover of financial data on the world’s enterprises. Fran ce From the bar chart (left), the UK does Italy very well in this Japan 1,500,000 comparison. This comparison was Russia arrived at by selecting 1,000,000 UK all companies with a USA registered start date 500,000 greater than 1800 or no start date. I fear 0 there may be a few Number inactive UK entries in there! Orbis1 as the name implies is BvD’s most comprehensive collection of company financial records. BvD provide the same data in one of their less daunting “Mint” versions entitled Mint Global. Mint versions of BvD databases are aimed at the end user. The designs are very clean and simple – you could say minty fresh. Germany 2,000,000 1 Orbis iis Latin for “of the world”. I knew my O level in Latin was good for something! Business Information Searcher Vol.16 No.3/4 4 Country Hits Country Hits Country Hits Country Hits Country Hits Afghanistan 2 Comoros 23 Indonesia 463 Montenegro 2,990 Slovenia 36,261 Albania 15 Congo 119 Iran (Islamic R) 16 Morocco 4,734 Solomon Isl 2 Algeria 2,502 Congo (DR) 154 Iraq 7 Mozambique 407 Somalia 10 Andorra 8 Costa Rica 2,694 Ireland 205,402 Myanmar 4 South Africa 7,360 Angola 499 Cote d'Ivoire 624 Israel 254 Namibia 16 Spain 1,000,665 Anguilla 44 Croatia 21,758 Italy 642,422 Nauru 1 Sri Lanka 198 Antigua / Barb 116 Cuba 9 Jamaica 693 Nepal 17 Sudan 453 Argentina 1,030,872 Cyprus 305 Japan 1,294,189 Netherlands 1,944,787 Suriname 205 Armenia 17 Czech Rep 78,456 Jordan 184 Netherlands (Ant) 460 Swaziland 11 Aruba 269 Denmark 176,880 Kazakhstan 39 New Zealand 456 Sweden 281,527 Australia 3,492 Djibouti 75 Kenya 1,686 Nicaragua 458 Switzerland 36,315 Austria 188,737 Dominica 1,729 Kiribati 1 Niger 66 Syrian A Rep 7 Azerbaijan 29 Dominica 51 Korea, DPR 1 Nigeria 2,943 Taiwan 2,830 Bahamas 482 Ecuador 2,121 Korea, Rep 18,081 Norway 203,701 Tajikistan 3 Bahrain 73 Egypt 4,879 Kuwait 161 Oman 139 Tanzania, UR 543 Bangladesh 128 El Salvador 1,153 Kyrgyzstan 146 Pakistan 180 Thailand 2,661 Barbados 335 Eq Guinea 47 3 Palestinian Ter 14 Togo 130 Belarus 1,045 Eritrea 42 Latvia 7,172 Panama 1,821 Tonga 3 Belgium 662,662 Estonia 62,566 Lebanon 84 Papua New Guin 16 Trinidad & Tob 899 Belize 96 Ethiopia 325 Lesotho 6 Paraguay 700 Tunisia 4,243 Benin 168 Fiji 5 Liberia 11 Peru 7,050 Turkey 376 14 Philippines 1,510 Turkmenistan 1 Lao People’s. DR Libyan Arab Bermuda 1,069 Finland 106,384 Bhutan 2 France 1,133,931 Liechtenstein 250 Poland 35,076 Tuvalu 1 Bolivia 1,041 Gabon 207 Lithuania 8,517 Portugal 125,951 Uganda 387 4,239 Gambia 79 Luxembourg 16,509 Qatar 36 Ukraine 347,968 Botswana 26 Georgia 13 Macau 11 Romania 649,381 Brazil 2,104,872 Germany 1,054,897 5 Ghana 928 Madagascar 337 Bulgaria 116,151 Gibraltar 9 Malawi 45 Burkina Faso 199 Greece 33,563 Malaysia 1,269 Bosnia & Herzegovina Brunei Darussalam Jamahiriya Macedonia 1,548 (FROM) Russian 854,428 Federation Rwanda Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Vincent and United Arab Emirates United Kingdom 92 3,430,584 69 United States 1,867,272 43 Uruguay 1,391 117 Uzbekistan 19 67 Vanuatu 5 Burundi 43 Grenada 68 Maldives 2 Cambodia 10 Guatemala 1,957 Mali 191 Samoa 4 Venezuela 3,377 Cameroon 358 Guinea 112 Malta 2,828 San Morino 5 Vietnam 87 Marshall Sao Tome and 299,732 Guinea-Bissau 16 Cape Verde 293 Guyana 155 Mauritania 139 Saudi Arabia 97 Yemen 13 Cayman Islands 638 Haiti 225 Mauritius 738 Senegal 583 Zambia 376 20 Honduras 913 Mexico 383,242 Serbia 59,086 Zimbabwe 312 Chad 32 Hong Kong 1,393 1 Seychelles 116 Chile 18,172 Hungary 202,741 Moldova 1,081 Sierra Leone 70 China 24,182 Iceland 20,555 Monaco 41 Singapore 2,867 Colombia 97,988 India 7,882 Mongolia 10 Slovakia 7,891 Republic Islands Micronesia, (Fed States of) 5 Principe 31 Virgin Islands Canada Central African 3 the Grenadines (British) 110 Business Information Searcher Vol.16 No.3/4 Orbis and Mint Global, however, are more than a collection of company financial records. As the opening screen shows they also include other relevant company and industry information. The News module combines news articles from a variety of commercial and free sources. Reuters, Dow Jones and the FT are contributors. Mergers and Acquisitions news comes from BvD’s Zephyr database. Moreover, the RSS news aggregator, provides articles as-they-appear from 25,000 selected Internet-based news sources. Up to 2 years’ worth of back information is available and new data is added as it is published. Datamonitor provide over 2,500 company profiles and a similar number of industry profiles. These profiles are high added value analyses that provide depth and perspective to the core financial data for companies and sectors. Scanned Reports provide the purist watchers of quoted companies with the as-published Reports and Accounts of major companies in their original full colour PDF format. BvD will be adding a further module in 2007 covering Directors. BvD Mint databases are aimed at the end user. As end users are highly likely to have used Google, BvD have designed the first page of their Companies section accordingly (see figure). BvD and Factiva are the two most innovative online information providers. They have both recognised the reality of the Internet and Google’s search dominance. BvD have created Mint and, in a similar vein, Factiva have created Factiva Salesworks. However, the meeting of like minds goes beyond this. Just as Mint is more than just the company financial data (BvD’s trump card), Factiva’s Salesworks is much more than news – Factiva’s trump card. Both have created “one-stop shops” for company and industry information. The great joy for users is that they are sufficiently different to make it worthwhile to have both! Business Information Searcher Vol.16 No.3/4 6 Their thinking cannot be faulted. The core purpose of all information systems and services is to save time – valuable executive time that is both limited and expensive. To analyse the accounts of a single company for just one year takes a long time – I know I used to do it. To do this for 20 million for up to 10 years and to ensure that they all conform to a set of standards that facilitate comparison is a huge time-saving benefit for vast numbers of company analysts of many disciplines – for example, bankers, lawyers, credit analysts, competitor analysts and consultants. By adding other sources of company and industry data BvD are “adding the icing to the cake” i.e. saving further time. Audited financial data for most companies appear once a year and refer to a time that can be up to two years in the past depending on the speed with which directors agree the figures and auditors file accounts with statutory bodies. These figures are, however, the best available. Adding up-to-date news and contemporary company and industry analysis adds greatly to the numerical data as does the availability of additional comment on quoted companies from the original full-colour Annual Reports. The figure below is the result of the search on the character string “johnson matthey”. This simple result is highly informative. Johnson Matthey PLC is a FTSE 100 company. It is a very major player in the precious metals industry i.e. platinum and its associated metals. This listing contains a wealth of data. The first 15 of 61 companies with the phrase Johnson Matthey in their name are listed. Data for each can be displayed by clicking on these names (see later). Their Global Ultimate Owner (GUO) is also listed as well as key data such as employee numbers, turnover and book value (Shareholder’s Funds). These listings can be altered by users to include additional parameters and exclude the ones listed. Listings can also be re-ranked by specific parameters such as employee numbers. Favourite listings can then be saved and retrieved during subsequent searches. The “treasure” does not end there. In the side panel the location and industry sectors for the 61 “Johnson Matthey” companies are listed. Already a picture of the Johnson Matthey Group is beginning to emerge. Clicking on the parent company name – PLC or the one that does not have a GUO because it is the GUO – triggers the following Report Builder screen. 7 Business Information Searcher Vol.16 No.3/4 Some of the boxes are already checked. These represent the Standard format. Users can, as with listings include other data by checking the relevant boxes and exclude standard format data by unchecking boxes. Favourite person-alised formats can be saved and retrieved. The standard data for a publicly quoted company such as Johnson Matthey PLC is extensive. When exported to Excel – in my opinion the cleanest format – it extends to over 360 lines or 7 printed pages. The core financial data is contained in four sections covering the Balance Sheet, Profit and Loss Account, Cash Flow and Ratios. There are two very useful graphics sections (see below) covering Key Financials and Employees and the Share Price. The Share Price (Stock Data) graph is an optional extra to the standard format and obviously applies to quoted companies only. Analysing individual companies is only one use of BvD company financial databases. Of equal, and possibly greater, importance is the creation of company lists. In this there are four main distinct criteria – location, sector, size and performance. An example comprising all four might be EU-based banks with total assets of greater than €1 billion and returns of between 5 and 10%. To create a list users start by clicking on the Other Search Criteria command next to the Google-like opening dialogue box for Companies searches. The following screen is the result. Business Information Searcher Vol.16 No.3/4 8 This is one of 6 choices screens represented by the blue tabs at the top of the main section. This is the General Information screen. I used this screen to create my country master list by inserting 1800 in the On or after box for Year of incorporation and ticking the “Include all …” check box. This resulted in the 21,003,066 total number (see below). With this result I not only achieved my desired result but I also was presented with a ranked list of locations (left above) and a ranked list of named companies (above right). I now know that four of the top five companies by turnover are oil companies and, as well as coffee, there is also a lot of company activity in Brazil! These touches by Mint’s designers are brilliant. I love surprises and to be informed in this way whilst pursuing mainstream searching is a delight. The innovation, coding and sheer computer power to manipulate this vast amount of data will keep BvD in pole position for many years to come. Who could even come close to touching them? The other choices screens deal with the following selection options Quoted Companies Market Capitalisation Stock Markets Stock Market Indices Industry (these choices can be searched together or separately) Trade Descriptions National Activity Codes Descriptions Financials and Employees (Maximum and minimum options are available for either actual data or percentage growth / decrease) Operating Revenue / Turnover P/L for Period / Net Income Total Assets Shareholders Funds Employees Top Range companies, e.g. top 100, based on any of the above Option to include estimates of operation revenue and employees Management and Ownership Director Name Shareholder Name Global Ultimate Owner Country Subsidiary Name Subsidiary Country Independent companies only Option to exclude designated subsidiaries of the companies retrieved Miscellaneous Auditor or Adviser Name Top 4 million / 750,000 / 150,000 9 Business Information Searcher Vol.16 No.3/4 Template Type – Industrial / Bank / Insurance Company Street Address Legal Form Status – Active / Inactive / Unknown Consolidation Code – Amount of financial data available Telephone Number Country of Location All of these option have look-up text to explain in detail how the user will restrict their search by exercising the subject choice. As can be seen the choices are mind-blowing and will have been designed from specific user feedback. Conclusion Whenever I evaluate an information service I inevitably develop a very “warm feeling” about it – if I do not it does not get evaluated! After all I have to spend long hours digging into every nook and crannie looking for consistency of design and cover. This is one of many BvD offerings that I have put under the microscope and yet again I am very impressed. BvD have a virtual monopoly on published financial data on companies. They have no need to innovate but they do and they do it very well. The information industry consists of providers who are essentially monopolies with unique products. Their uniqueness arises from one or both of two attributes – content and design. BvD has both in Spades! Information providers sell “time saved” directly or indirectly to end users i.e. those who need to integrate information from within their enterprises with externally sourced information ultimately to make sound decisions that reap benefits or avoid pitfalls. Successful information companies provide easy-to-use products with content and design whose time-saving attributes are so obvious that users must have access. BvD are past masters at providing very high time-saving information services and using innovative design to increase continually their time-saved value for users. Mint Global could be the basis of many reports on the economic activity of countries, regions and the world. It is based on nitty-gritty numerical data collected by impartial third parties, analysed by experts and normalised with integrity for ease of comparison. The number of registered companies in a country is a strong indication of the level of economic activity and I am sure that year-by-year comparisons would give a clear indication of the relative positions of countries on the global economic scale. Mint Global is well designed, very comprehensive in its cover of company data, both descriptive and numerical and an invaluable tool for a vast army of end users whose activities require them to keep a watching brief on worldwide companies of all shapes and sizes. Business Information Searcher Vol.16 No.3/4 10 Investing in Eastern Europe Focus on Assets, Ownership and Governance Overview of Free Resources Conference presentation given at the Strand Palace Hotel, London 19th October 2006. Karen Blakeman, Consultant, Rhodes-Blakeman Associates As the title suggests, this presentation concentrates on free resources. There are many free sites that provide information on legislation, companies and filing requirements but the level of detail varies and good quality is not always guaranteed. There is the additional problem for many users that some key resources, for example official company registries, may be in the language of the country concerned. These factors combined with the amount of time that is required to locate and collate free information often make priced services a far more cost-effective and reliable option. There are, though, some areas such as current news where going direct to the original resource, many of which are free if only for a limited time, can deliver information to the user far more quickly. With so many sites covering Eastern Europe it is impossible to remember every single source that may be relevant. Identifying good quality starting points, portals and evaluated listings rather than individual sites is the key to building an effective search strategy. Key Starting Points Many of the free key starting points on the region are Western government sites designed to assist companies in their own country to develop trade links with Eastern Europe. BISNIS (Facilitating US Exports and Investment) at http://www.bisnis.doc.gov/ is the US Government's primary market information centre for US companies exploring export and investment opportunities in Russia and Eurasia. Despite the bias, much of the information is applicable to those of us outside of the US. The countries currently covered are Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. The country and industry reports, and news are the most relevant to non-US users. Bear in mind that the industry reports do not cover every possible sector but focus on those that offer US companies investment and trade opportunities. 11 Business Information Searcher Vol.16 No.3/4 Export.Gov (http://www.export.gov/), another service maintained by the US government, is worldwide in coverage and has information on countries and markets not covered by BISNIS. Both Export.gov and BISNIS include links to resources authored and maintained by official and commercial organisations based in the countries concerned. Rather than follow the menus, it can be easier to use the search box to track down reports. This uses the Google Appliance to search the sites that make up Export.gov, so do not be surprised when an obviously Google branded results list appears. Many of the Export.gov market research reports are available only to US companies registered with the site. One can sometimes access the same information via FITA (Import Export Business & International Trade Leads) at http://www.fita.org/ under the Really Useful Links section. FITA is itself a useful starting point for business and company information, and in particular for country and industry directories. UK Trade and Investment (http://www.tradeinvest.gov.uk/) provides a similar investment opportunities service to UK companies covering both countries and industry sectors. Registration is required for the Sector in Country reports. Although it may initially appear that you must be a UK company registered at Companies House to gain access you can in fact apply for individual access, which includes options for setting up email alerts. Business Information Searcher Vol.16 No.3/4 12 Central banks often have overviews of a country’s economy and sometimes highlight high performance industry sectors. Look in particular for newsletters and bulletins as well as the obvious statistics pages. There is a list of central bank web sites at http://www.bis.org/cbanks.htm. The EBRD Directory (http://www.dataresources.co.uk/) is not itself free but is an excellent starting point for information on Eastern Europe and covers both free and priced services. The sources included in this publication are those that have been evaluated and used by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Business Information Centre, so you can be assured of the quality. As well as the hardcopy, purchasers have access to the Internet version. If you happen to be interested in the Czech Republic there is a free sample of some business sources for that country. Company information The availability of information on companies such as ownership, financials, products, imports and exports depends on a company’s legal form, size and country and sometimes on the state or region within a country. Legal filing and disclosure requirements vary and an additional complication is that compliance with the regulations is not always enforced. For companies listed on stock exchanges, try the stock exchange web site for company information that they are legally required to disclose. The site may also have information on legislation, legal forms, filing requirements etc. for the country. Listed companies often place their accounts, annual reports and product information on their own web sites. Lists of stock exchanges and share price information services are available at: Stock Markets and Share Price Information http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/stocks.htm FEAS - Federation of Euro-Asian Stock Exchanges http://www.feas.org/ Federation of European Securities Exchanges http://www.fese.be/en/ Official company registries may provide information on legal forms, ownership and filing requirements, and have searchable databases of registered companies. The amount of information that is given away free may be limited and although the search interface is often in both the local language and English be prepared for the data be in only the local language. A list of company registries by country can be found at http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/registers.htm. The D&B Emerging Markets Center at http://dbemc.dnb.com/reportguides/reportl.htm covers Central and Eastern Europe and Mediterranean Europe, and although information on companies is priced there are free Country Reports Guides at http://dbemc.dnb.com/reportguides/reportm.htm with summaries of filing requirements and legal forms. When looking for information on small and medium sized companies, as well as official registries try the many free directories that are available. These can be a simple alphabetical list of links to company web sites, searchable databases, industry specific, or country/region specific. For industry specific directories a search in any of the major search engines and including the country and industry sector combined with the terms directory or directories generally works well. FITA (http://www.fita.org/) has a section on business directories under Really Useful Links that can be browsed by country or sector. 13 Business Information Searcher Vol.16 No.3/4 Export-import directories often have more information about small companies than do official company registers. For example they may include: size; number of employees and turnover; contact names e.g. marketing director, sales director, export director; export markets; sectors/products exported. Some of the data will be taken from official sources and additional information is provided by the companies themselves. These directories sometimes have links to essential legislation, tax regulations and “doing business in”. You can track them down by searching on ‘export directory’ combined with the country or industry sector. Trade Associations and Chambers of Commerce are another good starting point for information on smaller companies. The exact name of the chamber may vary, for example chamber of commerce, trade, industry, or economics but it is worth persevering with your search as some of the web sites include information and statistics on local industry, and membership lists. The World Chambers directory at http://www.worldchambers.com/ lists the main chambers by country. News sources and RSS News is the one type of resource where free services can deliver information more quickly than the priced services. The disadvantages are that free sources may only be in the local language and they are not indexed in depth as are many of the priced services. The latter means that searches and alerts will not be as focussed as with subscription databases. Some effort is required to identify relevant sites, and to get the best out of them one really needs to look at using RSS feeds wherever possible. These alert you to vital new stories as they arise. Most newspapers and magazines are on the web, and there are also Internet only news services and regional portals. The free electronic versions of conventional newspapers may not always carry every story that appears in print and they do not always provide archives of older material. Keep an eye open for possible sources to add to your list while you are browsing the web, or use one of the multi-source services such as Google News, Yahoo News or Accoona to help you identify them. There are many lists of newspapers on the web that can help you track down publications by country. One of the most comprehensive is ABYZ News Links (http://www.abyznewslinks.com/). It is simple and straightforward to use and lists any alternative language versions that are available along with the main home pages. Business Information Searcher Vol.16 No.3/4 14 Both Google (http://news.google.co.uk/) and Yahoo (http://uk.news.yahoo.com/) provide access to a selection of the last thirty days of free news from around the world. Neither have a source list so you cannot see which publications they cover but they both offer options for setting up automatic alerts that you can receive by email or RSS. Accoona (http://www.accoona.com/) also offers a free current news service but no alerts at present. It does, though, have a very useful feature called “SuperTraget”, which enables you to refine your search by country, publisher, date, companies and people mentioned in the articles found by your initial search. Making RSS work for you News alerts and in particular RSS feeds are an easy way to keep up with events relating to a region, industry, company, person or any topic in which you are interested. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a means of delivering headlines and stories. They can be general feeds from a newspaper that give you all the headlines of the day, or you can have feeds for specific searches set up on services such as Google and Yahoo News. Both free and priced services have now started offering RSS as an alternative to email alerts. The advantages over email are that: ny names 15 Business Information Searcher Vol.16 No.3/4 Although many RSS feeds can now be read in a browser the best way to use them is through an RSS reader or aggregator. There are both web based readers and desktop applications for your PC. If you are new to RSS, you may want to first try one of the free web based services such as Google Reader (http://www.google.com/reader), Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com/), or Newsgator (http://www.newsgator.com/). Web based readers do not have all of the functionality of desktop programs, for example the ability to filter incoming feeds for keywords, but that may not be essential for your purposes. If you decide to progress to a desktop application the RSS Compendium (http://allrss.com/) has an extensive list. Two of the better ones are Omea (http://www.jetbrains.com/omea/reader/), which is free, and Newsgator’s FeedDemon (http://www.newsgator.com/) which costs USD 29.95. Newsgator also has an RSS plugin for Outlook. For information on how to get started with a feed reader there my own web site has guides to two of them: Getting Started with Omea Reader http://www.rba.co.uk/rss/omea.pdf Getting Started with Newsgator http://www.rba.co.uk/rss/newsgator.pdf Omea and Newsgator support user authentication so you can view both free and subscription services within the same program. 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 Business Information Searcher Vol.16 No.3/4 16 News Desk Market Research on the Web - Special Offer http://www.marketresearchontheweb.com/ Karen Blakeman IRN Research are offering a special introductory annual subscription to their Market Research on the Web (MROW) database. The special offer is £100 and applies to single user corporate subscribers, academic and public library users. A free trial is available covering the food and drink sector. CrossEngine CrossEngine is a search tool similar to Trovando. You type in your search terms just once and then click on each search engine in turn to run the search. The search tools are grouped under tabs by type, for example standard, video, images, news, blogs. Two groupings that CrossEngine has but Trovando does not are Formats, which enables you to search for file types such as PowerPoint or Excel, and Social covering services such as Delicious, Furl and Squidoo. Audio search is included under Formats, which I find a bit odd. It makes more sense to me for that to have its own tab or be included with video as it is in Trovando. Overall, a neat tool if you want to quickly run your search in several different tools one by one. MROW is a searchable database of sources of market data, industry reports, company lists, statistics, industry news, legislation, and links to over 4,500 evaluated UK and European Web sites. The sites are categorised by organisation type for example trade association, professional bodies, market research publishers, market research agencies, magazines/journals, Government sites, gateways/portals. I have subscribed to this service since it was first launched and was a regular user when it was still free of charge. The main advantage of the service for me is that it saves me so much time when I am looking for industry statistics or directories of members/companies on trade and professional association web sites. I pride myself that my search skills can track down relevant sites without the help of MROW, but I then have to visit and navigate each site in turn. All too often I find that the site does not give stats on their sector or does not have a directory. MROW tells me straight away if there are stats or market data, if there is a directory of members/companies, availability of news and press releases, and if there is information on relevant legislation and technical data. MROW finds in a couple of minutes what would normally take me about half an hour to track down the Google et al way. MROW also provides a Guide to Market Data and Statistics - a searchable database of statistical and market research terminologies, classifications, and concepts. This is a great resource for checking on market research jargon. LLRX.com: Another Tool in your Arsenal The UK Statute Law Database (SLD) http://www.llrx.com/features/lawblogarsenal.htm http://www.statutelaw.gov.uk/ This is a very useful article by Janet Peros, legal reference librarian and co-chair of the Law Library Association of Greater New York’s education committee. It outlines the use of blogs and RSS feeds in several US legal firms, and how they have been used to replace newsletters for keeping partners and clients up to date. In some instances the mini case-studies mention the software and services used to publish the blogs and generate feeds. The motivation and reasoning behind the decisions to switch from conventional alerting services that are discussed in this article are relevant to any type of organisation in any country. The article is a good source of ammunition for those of us in the process of persuading colleagues and managers that blogs and RSS are a good idea! 17 Business Information Searcher Vol.16 No.3/4 The UK Statute Law Database (SLD), which is the official revised edition of the primary legislation of the United Kingdom, has been made available free of charge online. The official press release is on the Department of Constitutional Affairs web site (http://tinyurl.com/2o8vuh). Most legislation that is currently in force has been published on the web site with some exceptions. For 2006 they specifically mention The Armed Forces Act 2006 and The Water and Sewerage Services (Northern Ireland) Order 2006 (N.I. 21). I cannot think of two more diverse pieces of information to omit! I am told by colleagues that there are other gaps but the site admits to this and there are details of what is still be added. On the home page you can search for text in the title, by year, number and legislation type. There is also an A-Z index and a chronological index. The Advanced Search has additional options that include date ranges, geographical extent and text search. The earliest legislation I could find is the Statute of Marlborough 1267 "made at Marlborough in the Presence of our Lord King Henry, and Richard King of the Romans, and the Lord Edward eldest Son of the said King Henry, and the Lord Ottobon, at that Time Legate in England". It includes "Remedy against Accountants. Farmers shall do no Waste. Remedy thereon." I shall leave you to find out for yourselves what that is all about. As well as reading the full text of the legislation you can view amended legislation as it has changed over time and sections that have yet to come into force. A green "A" icon links to the "attributes" of the legislation, such as start date and extent, and enables you to move between versions. The blue "P" icon indicates provisions, and versions of amended provisions, that have not yet been brought into force. I found this particularly useful for checking when parts of the Companies Act 2006 come into force. If you are viewing older legislation that has been amended, a box warns you of the fact. Is this database going to make access to UK legislation easier? If you know your way around the structure of Statute Law then yes. Those who do not and who have never had to to do battle with Acts, Statutory Instruments and the like will not be any the wiser. If you just want to read or download a copy of a particular Act then the Office of Public Sector Information at http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts.htm will probably be quicker, and it now has RSS feeds for alerting you to new Acts and Statutory Instruments. Bills currently before the UK Parliament are available on the UK Parliament web site at http://www.parliament.uk/ (email alerts only). Command Papers and departmental House of Commons Papers are at http://www.official-documents.gov.uk/ (RSS feed available). "Transformational Government Strategy". The official press release, which is short on detail, can be found at http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/newsroom/news_releases/ 2007/070110_ciostrategy.asp There have been several postings on the LIS-Profession discussion list and Stella Dextre Clarke has forwarded further information from Linda Humphries of the Delivery and Transformation Group to the list: "The Times’ figures are based on an extrapolation of the ratio of how many sites have agreed to close and those that are definitely to be retained (e.g. departments’ corporate websites) – 26 to date. There are still 374 sites to be reviewed. Of the 951 sites reviewed by their departments, 90 have already closed and 461 are planned to close. The Times’ figures are based on an extrapolation of the ratio of how many sites have agreed to close and those that are definitely to be retained (e.g. departments’ corporate websites) – 26 to date. There are still 374 sites to be reviewed. The information currently held on sites that are closing will be migrated to Directgov, Business Link or the departments’ corporate sites as appropriate. This will result in a reduction of the number of locations in which information for citizens and businesses is held, rather than reducing the amount of information available." There is now a list of sites to be closed available as a PDF at http://www.cio.gov.uk/documents/annual_report2006/websi te_list.pdf Looking through the list I noted several web sites for various marketing boards that I thought had long gone. I also see that www.tradeinfo.com is for the chop. The URL rang a ver loud clanging bell in my head and I found it on my own list of statistics sources. My comments on the interactive data tables, for me the most useful section of the site, currently are "I strongly recommend that you download and view the PowerPoint demonstration first". Ah yes, it is all coming back to me now. I had another look at it today and it still takes me ages to work out how to track down data. Whether the information will be any easier to access via other UK government sites, or if it will just disappear into a Whitehall black hole, remains to be seen. Newsdesk is based on Karen Blakeman’s Blog (see http://www.rba.co.uk/rss/blog.htm ). UK Government to Close Down Websites 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 The UK Government is closing 95 per cent of its web sites in what it claims is a drive to make important information more readily accessible for internet users. The cuts will save £9 million and are part of what they call a Business Information Searcher Vol.16 No.3/4 18 Press Backfiles unlimited British Library launches fully integrated journals digitisation service for publishers The British Library has launched a new service that offers a ‘one-stop-shop’ for publishers who wish to digitise archival material from their journal collections. The Publisher Digitisation Service draws on the unrivalled breadth of the Library’s collections as well as its expertise in converting large volumes of print material into digital format. Backfiles represent a substantial untapped asset for many publishers, but as long as substantial portions of each title’s run remain in analogue format, a cost-effective way of exploiting that content will not be fully achievable. Most academic publishers are either planning, or have already begun, the process of digitising archival material from their journals collections and making it available online. For many, however, one of the first major hurdles they face is sourcing the full text content they need to do this. For a variety of reasons, few publishers have maintained comprehensive archives of all their titles – current and defunct – and some have had to source as much as 75% of their archival content from third parties in order to carry out digitisation. Because of the vast extent of its serial collections, the British Library can save publishers time and money in locating such material. One of the Publisher Digitisation Service’s earliest customers was SAGE Publications, which began its journals backfile digitisation project this time last year and looked to complete it in 12 months. The original scope of the project was approximately two million pages (20,000 journal issues) but grew to over 2.8 million as the project progressed and SAGE acquired more journals. SAGE had less than 25% of its own journals content available for digitising, so it had to turn to other sources for locating and scanning the missing issues. “Although much of the content was fairly easy to locate, several hundreds of issues were rare and extremely difficult to find,” said John Shaw, Director of Publishing Technologies at SAGE Publications. “The British Library proved to be an incredibly valuable resource for journal content. Library staff were easy to work with, responsive, expeditious, well organised, and provided high-quality images of the content that was requested.” He added: “It is fair to say that SAGE would have been unable to meet its ambitious goal of locating and digitising its content without the assistance and expertise of the British Library.” As well as offering the full range of the UK national library’s collections, the Publisher Digitisation Service also offers logistical advantages: content is located and digitised in one place and can be delivered to the publisher by FTP, thereby avoiding the risks and costs associated with obtaining material physically from a variety of sources. Mat Pfleger, the British Library’s Head of Sales and Marketing - Priced Services, said, “We have already worked with a number of leading publishers to support their digitisation programmes and because everything is done on site we can provide timely outputs to agreed daily targets. Projects are also fully managed by an appointed account manager. For all these reasons we can save publishers time, money and headaches in managing their digitisation programme.” For more information on the Publisher Digitisation Service, contact Mat Pfleger on + 44 (0) 20 7412 7297 or email [email protected] For media enquiries, contact Ben Sanderson at the British Library Press Office on 01937 546126 or via email: [email protected] Emerald Selects ScholarOne's® Manuscript CentralT for Online Peer Review Leading publisher partners with Thomson Scientific's Newly Acquired ScholarOne Emerald, a leading publisher of academic and professional literature in management, library services and engineering is pleased to announce its partnership with Thomson Scientific to use ScholarOne's Manuscript CentralT as its online peer review system. Thomson Scientific is part of The Thomson Corporation (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC) and leading provider of information solutions to the worldwide research and business communities. "It is with great pleasure that we welcome Emerald to the Manuscript Central user community," said Keith MacGregor, executive vice president of Academic and Government Markets at Thomson Scientific. "A partnership between Emerald, the world's leading publisher of management journals and databases, and ScholarOne, the industry leader in scholarly publishing, is a natural fit. We are both dedicated to servicing the publishing needs of authors and editors." "Emerald prides itself as being a publisher that offers an excellent service to its authors and editors," said Rebecca Marsh, Emerald's director of editorial and production. "Therefore, we are delighted to sign an agreement with ScholarOne to provide an efficient online submission and peer review system through Manuscript Central." Manuscript Central offers a number of features to address scholarly publishers' needs, enabling users to submit, review, annotate and format technical manuscripts in innovative ways. In addition, the recent acquisition of ScholarOne by Thomson Scientific gives authors and publishers access to additional expertise in information and tools that span the entire research process. "Thomson Scientific is launching a Manuscript Management Toolset that integrates elements of Manuscript Central with Web of Science® and EndNote®," added MacGregor. "Publishers such as Emerald will soon be able to offer journals these tools which will enable authors to create their manuscripts in 19 Business Information Searcher Vol.16 No.3/4 Press EndNote and then use Manuscript Central to easily submit them for review." New office details: Contacts Catherine Dhanjal, TheAnswer Ltd 01883 650434 or 0794 166 9925 [email protected] Will Gane Level 26, 44 Market Street, Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia Tel: 61 2 9089 8647 Fax: 61 2 9089 8989 [email protected] Sydney Gill Etienne Head of Corporate Communications Emerald Group Publishing, Ltd. 60/62 Toller Lane, Bradford, BD8 9BY UK Phone: 01274-777700 Fax: 01274-785201 www.emeraldinsight.com [email protected] Bahrain Paul Costers 148, 14th floor, Al Jasrah Tower Diplomatic Area PO Box 3214, Manama Kingdom of Bahrain Tel: 973 17 570 406 Fax: 973 17 532 259 [email protected] BvDEP continues to expand Three continents see new offices Bureau van Dijk Electronic Publishing (BvDEP), one of the world’s leading electronic publishers of company and business information, is starting 2007 with the opening of three new offices. The offices will open in Sydney, Bahrain and Chicago by the end of the month. Chicago is BvDEP’s third office in the United States: New York was established in 1994 and San Francisco 2005. The openings will bring the total number of BvDEP offices to 24 and are in response to these areas seeing an increase in both existing customers and forecasted growth. Chicago “We’re seeing a particular increase in demand for international data,” said Dominique Carnoy, BvDEP’s CEO, “We’re meeting this requirement with products such as ORBIS, which contains information on over 20 million companies around the world, as well as expanding our sales teams to serve these customers. Opening new offices is just one element of our growth.” CILIP's publishing arm, Facet Publishing, launches its 2007 catalogue, featuring more than 40 new titles. Mitchell Gouss Address to be confirmed [email protected] Facet Publishing announce a major new programme of books for 2007 Forty new titles are due to be published in 2007 on subjects ranging from copyright and information rights, to using the latest Web 2.0 technologies, digital convergence and reader development. With a third edition of Tim Padfield's classic text, Copyright for Archivists and Records Managers just published, there are many more practical and useful copyright and legal issues titles to follow. Look out for further details of a brand new subscription-based web product, Keeping within the Law and a second edition (this time in print) of Digital Copyright, both by Paul Pedley. Look out too for Information Rights in Practice by Alan Stead and Information Governance by Angela Abell later on in the year. BvDEP also publishes regional information on its AMADEUS (Europe) and ORIANA (Asia-Pacific) products, BANKSCOPE and ISIS contain global banking and insurance information respectively. In addition, ZEPHYR contains global M&A data and OSIRIS global listed company information. Its expanding MINT range of products, which includes a global version, was launched in 2004 to meet the specific needs of end users. Domestic company information products include the well-known FAME which focuses on the UK and Ireland. Christine O'Hare's essential Business Information Sources: a beginner's guide is due in March and will be packed full of useful tips on how to get the best out of business information resources. We can also look forward to Karen Blakeman's Evaluating the Integrity of the Information Sources You Use, which looks at how to select quality information sources. BvDEP’s products are available on free trial, visit bvdep.com, or e-mail [email protected] for more information on its free trial scheme or to contact any of BvDEP’s offices. BvDEP is exhibiting at Information Online 2007 in Sydney from 30th January. Contacts: Louise Green Marketing Manager BvDEP 020 7549 5012 [email protected] Business Information Searcher Vol.16 No.3/4 Four major new textbooks are to be published including a second edition of The Library in the 21st Century by Peter Brophy and Librarianship: the complete introduction, by Gobinda Chowdhury, Paul F Burton, David McMenemy and Alan Poulter. Also due out shortly are Organizing Information by G G Chowdhury and Sudatta Chowdhury 20 Press and Research Methods in Information by Alison Jane Pickard, which is out next month. Following on from the acclaimed Principles and Practice in Records Management and Archives Series launched in 2006 are two more titles for records managers, archivists and any library and information professionals involved in these vital areas: Planning and Implementing Electronic Records Management by Kelvin Smith (author of Freedom of Information: a practical guide to implementing the Act) and Understanding Data and Information Systems for Recordkeeping by Philip C Bantin. This is just a taster of what Facet Publishing has to offer in 2007. Take a look at our website www.facetpublishing.co.uk or email Mailto:[email protected] for further information about our complete list of publications. Contact: Mark O'Loughlin, Marketing Manager, Facet Publishing Tel: 020 7255 0597 Email: [email protected] Blog: www.facetpublishing.blogspot.com 21 Business Information Searcher Vol.16 No.3/4
