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The Harvard Business Review recently published its annual list of breakthrough business ideas for 2009.
"This year’s HBR List includes ideas that we think are more useful than fanciful, more immediately practicable than speculative."
Examples:
-"The IKEA Factor: When Labor Leads to Love"
-"Launching a Better Brain"
-"The Dynamics of Personal Influence"
etc.
Mergent Online contains up to 15 years of quarterly and annual financial data and other information for the publicly-held companies it covers. This has been limited to 10,000 U.S. companies until recently, when the publisher added coverage for more than 20,000 publicly-held firms in more than 100 different countries.
Mergent Online can be accessed from the Rod Library home page under Databases A-Z and also from the Rod Library Business Portal.
International market reports may be available in Rod Library databases and from professional association and federal government web sites. International markets for specific products may be discussed in articles as well.
About half of the reports in the Mintel database, which can be accessed from the Rod Library home page under Databases A-Z and also from the Business Portal, cover non-U.S. markets. Most of the non-U.S. reports cover specific European countries. Some reports cover international markets as a whole, though; for example, the International Hotel Industry report includes sections on China. (A personal account must be created to access this database.)
Business & Company Resource Center, also available through the Business Portal and through Databases A-Z, contains reports on products in specific countries. Go to Advanced Search, and switch the Content Area to Industry Overviews. Entering the country terms in the first box, such as China or Chinese, and the product in the second box, such as wine, in some cases retrieves overviews of the market for a given product in a specific country. You may need to change what's being searched from Keyword to Full Text. Also, watch for the green Market Research tab in the upper right side of the screen for more sources.
A Rod Library research guide for International Business & Economics gives a few more suggestions. For example, the Industries & Markets section suggests trying a U.S. government site on exports which leads to reports on doing business in other countries and sometimes on specific products in other countries.
Library staff members are often asked if we can give someone a list of the books they have checked out in the past. Our answer has always been, "No." The library takes seriously the privacy of your library records so we do not maintain a list of what you borrow after you return it.
"My Reading History" is a new feature which allows you to track items you borrow. Some patrons have asked for this service as a means of recalling a book or author they liked or for keeping a list of what they have already read. Participation in the feature is entirely voluntary. You may start or stop using it, as well as delete any or all entries in "My Reading History”, at any time. If you choose to start using "My Reading History", you agree to allow our automated system to store this data.
To enable “My Reading History” go to My Library Account, choose My Reading History, and then choose “Start Saving My Reading History”. This begins the collection of titles you borrow from the Rod Library.
(This item originally appeared in the Rod Library News blog on 1/15/09.)
There are different ways to do this. One approach is to use LexisNexisAcademic or WestLaw Campus. Both are available from the Rod Library Databases A-Z page or from one of the Business Portal pages.
In LexisNexis Academic, for example, click the Legal link at the top of the page. After reaching the Legal section, click the Federal & State Cases link on the left side of the screen. The resulting form includes a place to enter the case name or citation if you already have such information.
A drop-down menu on the Federal & State Cases search form can be used to pick (and search) only U.S. Supreme Court cases or Iowa, Federal & State Cases combined, for example.
One way to find cases that deal in a significant way with some topic, from the North Western Reporter (court cases from Iowa and other midwestern states), is to structure the search as in this example:
Cite (n.w.) and headnotes (breach of contract) [and add either more keywords, or a date range, etc.]
Or pick the Iowa, Federal & State Cases combined drop-down to search Iowa Federal and State court cases. Here's what LexisNexis says about what's available through the drop-down for Iowa, Federal & State Cases combined:
"The Iowa combination of Federal and State case law provides all available case
law for jurisdictions relating to Iowa.
The Federal case law includes the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, as well as the U.S. District Court and Bankruptcy Courts for the State of Iowa.
The State case law includes the Supreme Court of Iowa and the Iowa Court of Appeals."
