It’s been a while since I’ve featured an electronic resource for New Stuff Tuesday (you have to go all the way back to 21 October 2008 for the last digital NST). It doesn’t mean that we haven’t gotten anything new for our online collection – on the contrary, we have added a number of e-reference titles and the Gale Literature Criticism Online, among others.
However, Barb mentioned in her post yesterday that the Wisconsin Department of Instruction had added Newspaper Source Plus to BadgerLink, the state’s online electronic library. What she didn’t mention that they added so much more! Apparently, the DPI decided to celebrate BadgerLink’s tenth birthday in style with the massive upgrade of its offerings from EBSCOhost. All of the residents of the state of Wisconsin now have access to TWENTY-EIGHT resources from the vendor. That number includes twelve resources that are either new or upgraded.
- Auto Repair Reference Center
- Book Collection: Nonfiction — Elementary, Middle and High School Editions
- Business Source Premier
- Consumer Health Complete
- Educational Administrative Abstracts
- History Reference Center
- Humanities International Complete
- Literary Reference Center
- Newspaper Source Plus
- NoveList
- NoveList K-8
- Science Reference Center
Make sure to check out the new resources either through BadgerLink or our website!
Euromonitor has recently bulked up their foreign trade offerings. Our Passport Reference & Markets subscription now contains import/export figures for all sorts of commodities, from fruits to furniture, for approximately 140 countries. Here are a few interesting tidbits that I just learned from looking at the new data:
- Germany was the world’s biggest exporter of passenger cars in 2008 (US$140,158 million). Forty percent of all of the world’s passenger car exports come from Germany or Japan.
- The USA was the world’s biggest importer of petroleum and petroleum products in 2008 (US$482,787 million). However, China is rapidly catching up, with growth of 397% in US$ terms between 2003 and 2008.
- China was the world’s biggest exporter of iron and steel in 2008 (US$65,065 million), exporting 41% more than the second biggest (Germany) with exports growing at an annual average rate of 68% between 2003 and 2008.
To access the new information, click on the Countries link in the main navigational bar – the statistics can be found under the Foreign Trade category to the left.
The Library will not continue to subscribe to STAT-USA. Our current subscription runs through the end of this month (June). The resource, produced by the US Department of Commerce, provides market research and analysis on international business opportunities.
If you have relied on information from STAT-USA in the past, don’t worry – the Library has a solution. Many of the reports found in STAT-USA are available through Export.gov in their Market Research Library. You can obtain a free account and access as students and researchers. If you’re just looking for the Country Commercial Guides, which explain how to do business in a particular country, those are available without registration.
And you should also not forget Passport Reference & Markets (formerly Global Market Information Database) for another source of excellent international business information.
I feel like the majority of what I blog about is the economy and trying to come up with synonyms for recession. I guess that as the business librarian, it is expected of me.
America is not alone in the current economic hardship – the rise of globalization and the ever-connected societies of the world have the entire world feeling the pinch. However, some countries are feeling it worse than others. So just how is Italy or Venezuela or [insert favorite country here] dealing with the slowdown?
In response to this question, Euromonitor has published a series of Global Risks and Vulnerabilities briefings as part of Passport Reference & Markets (formerly known as Global Market Information Database). These reports address external sector shocks, real estate, government finance, energy, socio-political shocks and environmental shocks as part of a measure of the country’s economic health.
To get to the documents, click on the Countries link in the main navigational bar and the Country Briefings are located in the upper-right corner.
Did you know that:
How do I know all of these random facts? You might think that it’s all just useless information, but if you’re trying to design advertising campaign for a product, then these are golden nuggets. Maybe you need to profile who buys Bic pens versus Uni-ball pens. Whatever the case, Mediamark Reporter will give you the numbers to guide your analysis. Produced by Mediamark Research & Intelligence, the resource is a fountain of random and incredibly detailed information about consumers and their purchasing and media consumption habits. The Reporter contains over 550 product & service categories and 6,000 brands. Best of all, you can easily export the data to a spreadsheet for later use.
Want to know more? Check out the How to Use Mediamark Reporter guide or contact Kyle Naff, Business Librarian, at naffk@uww.edu or 472-5519.
This resource is restricted to UW-Whitewater faculty, staff and students and is for academic use only.
