Category: Social Sciences

Posted on

Be Connected: Finding Market Research

Following on from our Be Connected: finding and using market research for your research session, this blog post covers the main points that we covered in our session.

Where to find market research

Market Research Resource Guide

Our Market Research guide draws together the resources that we have at Newcastle University for finding key market research information. Visit the Market Research guide to access our University subscriptions on and off campus.

Mintel

As a globally recognised market analyst, Mintel produces hundreds of reports into UK-specific consumer markets every year. Each report that Mintel publishes provides a unique overview of a market’s dynamics and prospects, giving you the knowledge to devise informed and profitable marketing strategy.

What type of information will I find in Mintel?

Mintel provides consumer market research reports covering different topics or sectors of the UK market. You’ll find market research data that analysts at Mintel have collated including trends, statistics, information on brands and companies, demographic data on a range of sectors.

Which countries does Mintel cover?

Mintel covers UK only. For international marketing data, you’ll need to access another information resource we have called Passport which is provide by a company called Euromonitor.

What does our Mintel subscription at Newcastle cover?

We do not subscribe to all the reports on Mintel, currently we have access to:

  •          Automotive
  •          Beauty and personal care
  •          Clothing and footwear
  •          Drink
  •          Food
  •          Health and Wellbeing
  •          Home retailing
  •          Household care
  •          Media
  •          Retail
  •          Technology

Library Horizons contains issues associated with marketing such as green lifestyles, Christmas shopping, consumers and the economic outlook. We also have some one off reports which we’ve purchased e.g. European Retail Handbook. So we currently have access to around 200 reports.

Recently Mintel has been providing ongoing insight and analysis across a range of industries to help you understand how and why consumer sentiment and behaviour are changing during the pandemic.

To find these resources, you need to go to Mintel (via Library Search) and there’s tab dedicated to Covid-19 analysis:

Screen shot of Mintel homepage highlighting the Covid 19 tab.

With over 200 results, there’s plenty to help any research project looking at consumer behaviour during this time.

Passport

One of the major resources we have for students, researchers and staff within the Business School is Passport. This is particularly good if you’re looking for information on Market Research which can be anything from consumer preferences and buying habits, companies and their products and market share.

You can learn more about the platform from their help guide.

What does our Passport subscription at Newcastle cover?

We subscribe to research data strands that cover industries, economies, business landscape and finance. Market research data that analysts at Euromonitor have collated including consumer lifestyle reports, future demographics, country profiles, updates on consumer and industry trends, company information, market sizes and economic indicators. Passport covers more than 200 countries and regions, with a global outlook.

The company who provide Passport, Euromonitor have a great YouTube channel where they upload short videos which covers information on sectors, trends and hot topics. These are created by data analysts who work closely with that sector and collate the data which feature in the reports and charts.

We think this is great way to quickly identify developing markets, flourishing segments and areas for predicted growth and trends. So if you have been asked to pick or research a growth area or identify a gap in the market to launch a new and viable product you might to browse through their channel.

If you click to display by videos and ensure you’ve got them displayed by newest first you’ll see some trends videos so for 2021 so you’ll get a good idea of consumer trends, top cities to watch, industry and economic trends.

Euromonitor have also curated their videos under a section on their channel called playlists So if you’ve been asked to look at a specific market you might want to browse through playlists and see what videos they have.

They are short, snappy and give you enough insight which might spark an idea or help you decide on a product or market.

Statista

An extensive statistics platform covering over 1.5 million data sets (and adding an additional 500 each day) with revenue forecasts from 2015 to 2022 on over 400 industries.

Data is collected from over 22,500 sources covering over 75,000 different topics.

The platform can broken down into different elements including:

Statistics : where you can choose your industry e.g. Consumer goods, Retail & Trade.

Reports: This section is very comprehensive and you can select :

  • Dossiers which are a quick quantitative overview of a topic. These are in house reports which contain the most recent and relevant statistics concerning a single subject. You can export these in PowerPoint or PDF format.
  • Outlook Reports which are trend forecasts
  • Surveys which are market insights from an expert and consumer perspective
  • Toplists which are company ranking for sales and analysis
  • Market studies
  • Industry Reports which are perfect for highlighting key figures for a particular industry sector. These are updated annually and contain textual information as well as numerical data such as turnover and revenue.
  • Global Business Cities Reports which are ranking and key statistics on particular cities.
  • Brand reports contain insights into the brand itself
  • Country reports
  • Further studies which are more in-depth reports

Outlooks; these provide information on specific areas and help you identify the potential in those areas. This can include forecasts, detailed market insights and key performance indicators.

Statista online help video

This short video from Statista gives a nice overview of the different search functionalities.

Access via https://www.statista.com/ or via the record on Library Search.  (If you are accessing on campus, the platform will authenticate using IP address. If you are accessing off campus you will be taken through EzProxy so access should be seamless if you’ve logged in previously using your Campus ID and password).

Business Source Complete – MarketLine Reports

MarketLine Reports provide detailed analysis for companies, industries, and countries. These reports can be found within Business Source Complete and contain:

  • Industry: Includes Porter’s Five Forces, trend drivers, and outlook.
  • Country: Based on PESTLE analysis, cover a wide range of issues.
  • Company: Includes company performance and SWOT analysis

Where else to look?

The University subscribes to a number of business news sources, including online access to the Financial Times and The Economist. Visit the Business News Resource Guide to find out how to access the University Library subscriptions for free, including downloading the Financial Times app.

The Business School also provide alternative resources to find market research, which you can access via the Business Subject Guide.

Don’t forget to check out our Market Research Resource Guide and the Business Subject Guide for additional help and resources.

If you have any questions about any of these resources, please contact you Business Library team via Library Help.

Slide from our Market Research session

BeConnected_NUBS-Market-infoDownload
Posted on

Be Connected: Using Newspapers and Audio-visual material in your research

As part of the University’s Be Connected week, we ran a webinar focusing on newspapers and audio-visual resources, highlighting the benefits of using these fantastic resources and how to get the most out of our databases. 

If you missed out on the webinar – fear not! We’ve put together a handy summary of key resources and take-aways for you to explore. Presentation slides from the webinar can also be found at the end of the blog. 

Three newspapers piled on a desk next to a mug of tea.

Why are newspapers and audio-visual resources useful? 

Well, these resources can be an invaluable source of information as they offer different perspectives on events or topics, by offering commentary and opinions and art (via adverts or cartoons) that reflect the social, political and cultural attitudes of a particular place and time. 

They’re a fascinating alternative to the more authoritative voice of journal articles and books – and while they obviously come with a range of bias and inevitable fake news, this presents unique opportunities for analysis and discussion. 

Can’t I just use Google to find out about the news? 

The main benefits of using Library resources over Google is access – while some newspapers, such as the Guardian, allow you to read their articles for free, most do not or if they do, you’ll find the page covered in annoying adverts and pop-ups.  With our resources it’s simple to access, download and save articles or images from a wide range of newspaper sources. 

Our databases also have tailored advanced search and filter options that help you to narrow down your search and find exactly what you need.  Google does have some basic date filters and you can use the advanced search to limit to a particular source and document type but it’s not as simple or intuitive. 

However, accessing newspaper websites via Google does offer the option of browsing through the day’s news articles, and provides the associated pictures and photographs, which are lacking in some of our databases. 

Where can I find the Library’s newspaper archives? 

The Library provides access to a wide range of UK and international newspapers from the 17th century to the present day, mainly in online format. You can access and find information about all these resources on our Newspapers Guide. 

As a starting point, we’d recommend trying Lexis for current news and Gale Primary Sources for historic news archives.  Both of these resources allow you to search a wide range of sources at once and both have great search tools! 

You can watch the video guides below to learn how to use these databases: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikfQPYSrMWo

Are there any other useful resources related to news and the media? 

For TV and radio news programmes, you might like to take a look at Box of Broadcasts, which provides access to broadcasts from over 65 channels dating from 2007. 

If you’re more interested in media commentary and analysis, the Film and Television Index provides coverage on film and television theory, writing, production, cinematography, technical aspects, and reviews, while Statista offers insights and data on the newspaper and television industries. 

For more ideas, explore our Film Subject Guide, and Images Resource Guide. 

Delving Deeper

To find out more about this subject of news resources and getting the best out of them, check out the slides from this Be connected: using newspapers and audio-visual resources webinar.

Posted on

Be Connected: Finding Company Information

Photo by Sean Pollock on Unsplash

As a student, it can be difficult to decide which databases or web sites you might want to use for your research and it will be dependent on the question you are trying to answer. 

Company information resources can help you compare companies across industries, financial or employee criteria and research individual companies of interest. Depending how much detail you are looking for, you can access short profiles that give you an overview of individual companies or build detailed reports for companies that fit your criteria, including full balance sheets, income statements, ratios and more. 

Where to find company information

Company Information Resource Guide

Our Company Information guide draws together the resources that we have at Newcastle University for finding company profiles, financial data and executive information. Visit the Company Information guide to access our University subscriptions on and off campus.

Business Source Complete

Business Source Complete is a full text business database that covers management, economics, finance, accounting, international business. It has full text access for nearly 3,600 scholarly, business related journals. It also includes trade publications, industry profiles, company profiles and SWOT analysis.

Company Information can be found in a basic search across all of Business Source Complete. You can either search by a company name or BSC will suggest companies that are linked to your topic keywords.

Alternatively, you can search within the Company Information section by company name.

What else can you find in BSC?

Company Profiles

The Company Profiles section found under the more menu gives
you access to a full profile report for thousands of companies.
Search by the company name. It includes detailed company
information for more than 1.1 million of the world’s largest
public and private companies.Information includes financials,
subsidiaries, products, employees, industry information and
more.

Company Profiles are drawn from a number of different sources
including:

  • Marketline: A business information company covering the automotive,
    consumer, energy, financial services, healthcare and technology
    sectors. Used to called Datamonitor.
  • Medtrack Company Profiles: A biopharmaceutical corporate intelligence company.

Industry Profiles

Nearly 10,000 Industry Profiles that are updated annually. These are full text and can come from a variety of different providers including Marketline.

Nexis

Nexis is a major full text database for global news and business information.

Access to over 35,000 sources, with more than 12,000 international news sources including UK daily and regional newspapers, and company information for over 200 million companies worldwide.

In Nexis you can :

  • find newspaper articles and trade journal articles on a business related topic
  • gather information about a company, industry, country and people
  • keep up to date on a topic of interest

Company and financial reports

  • 180 company databases from around the world
  • Coverage of over 200 million companies worldwide (public and private)
  • Over 20 million US companies included (public and private)
  • In-depth company profiles
  • Company snapshots
  • Financial analysis and competitor information

Industry and Country Reports

  • Daily industry-led news
  • Comprehensive monthly/quarterly reports
  • Industry & country driven reports including SWOT, forecastings, market trends and analysis
  • Multi-national sector directories broken down by key industry verticals

Companies Search

Use the Companies tab to look up factual data on a company. For example name of executives, ages, bonuses, salaries, description of the company, history of how they were funded and competitors.

For advanced use of Nexis, select the Power Search. This allows you to be very specific about the keywords you enter, where you would like them to appear in the article and which publications you would like to search.

Bureau van Dijk databases

At Newcastle University we subscribe to three products which provide access to company accounts, ratios, activities, ownership and management information.

Fame

This resource covers UK and Irish companies providing data for company accounts, ratios, activities, ownership and management.

  • Turnover > £1.5 million
  • Profits > £150,000
  • Shareholder Funds > £1.5 million

Amadeus

This resource covers standardised annual accounts (for up to 10 years), consolidated and unconsolidated, financial ratios, activities and ownership for over 7 million companies throughout Western and Eastern Europe, including Germany, France, Italy, Ukraine and Russian Federation. Company financials are in a standard format so you can compare companies across borders. Information includes Financial strength indicators, directors, images of reports and accounts for listed companies, stock prices and detailed corporate structures

  • Operating revenue > €15 million
  • Total assets > €30 million
  • Number of employees > 150

Oriana

This resource covers accounts, ratios, activities, ownership and management for around 80,000 very large companies across the Asia-Pacific region, including China, Singapore, Hong Kong and India. information includes company financials, financial strength indicators, directors and contacts, original filings/ images, detailed corporate structures, market research and economic country profiles and outlooks, business and company- related news and M&A deals and rumours

  • Operating Revenue >= 100 million EUR (130 million USD)
  • Total assets >= 200 million EUR (260 million USD)
  • Employees >= 1,000

Where else to look?

The University subscribes to a number of business news sources, including online access to the Financial Time and the Economist. Visit the Business News Resource Guide to find out how to access the University Library subscriptions for free, including downloading the Financial Times app.

The Business School also provide alternative resources to find company information, which you can access via the Business Subject Guide.

Don’t forget to check out our Company Information Resource Guide and the Business Subject Guide for additional help and resources.

If you have any questions about any of these resources, please contact you Business Library team via Library Help.

Slides from our Company Information session

BeConnected_NUBS-Company-InfoDownload

Posted on

Student guest post: resources for your English literature/language studies

We’re delighted to welcome a guest blog post from Leanna Thomson. Leanna is a second year undergraduate English Literature student, and a blogger for the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics.

Leanna Thomson
Leanna Thomson

“This semester, I studied the module ‘Independent Research Project Preparation’, which included a guest lecture from the Library all about their resources. I found the information about databases so useful that I wanted to share it with students outside of the module, because I think it could really revolutionise their remote learning! I hope you find these resources as useful as I did.”

Our top eight sites for finding secondary and specialist sources

The search for relevant, high quality secondary sources to reference in your assignment can seem like a challenge, especially during remote learning. Sometimes your online search can yield so many texts that you don’t know where to start; other times you struggle to find anything at all. However, our top online database picks will help you find the perfect text in no time! All you have to do is use Library Search or your library subject guide to access the databases.

1. Library Search

A search on the University library catalogue, Library Search, not only fetches up results from the Library’s huge range of books, articles, newspapers, audiovisual content and more, many of which you can either access online or order for click and collect or home delivery. It will also find papers from the hundreds of journals and databases that the Library subscribes to, including both interdisciplinary and SELLL specific titles. Library Search also has advanced search setting and filters, which can help you find exactly what you need. You can also access specialised guides about finding secondary sources for your subject.

2. Literature Online (LION)

LION is a literature-specific database, perfect for seeking content such as literary criticism, works of literature to use as comparisons to your primary texts or enforcements of your argument, reviews, periodicals and audiovisual content, to name but a few of its elements. Its advanced search engine can be modified so that it only finds what you are looking for, and it is a perfect database to turn to when you can’t find quite enough literary-focused content on your topic.

3. JSTOR

JSTOR offers full text online access to scholarly journals, books and book chapters across all subject areas. It has basic and advanced search options that allow you to search by topic keyword, author, subject area, title or publisher.

You can also download JSTOR texts as pdf files, meaning you can store them on your computer or print them off.

4. Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA)

LLBA focuses on academic resources for the study of language: including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics, and descriptive, historical, comparative, theoretical and geographical linguistics.

LLBA thesaurus

It also features a specialised linguistics thesaurus, which you can use in advanced search to refine and focus your search. The thesaurus provides a searchable list of all the subject terms used in the database, and highlights links between broader, narrower and related terms, helping you to select all of the keywords relevant to your topic.

5. Scopus

Scopus is a large, interdisciplinary database of peer-reviewed literature, including articles, book chapters and conference papers. It includes a range of smart tools that can help you track the research in your area. You can search for documents, sources, authors and institutions, and compare and contrast them using a variety of different tools.

It includes full reference lists for articles, as well as lists of texts which have cited a particular article. This allows you to uncover all the information relevant to your research. You can also set up citation alerts, so you can be informed of new, relevant material automatically.

6. MLA International Bibliography

The MLA international bibliography is produced by the Modern Language Association, an organisation dedicated to the study and teaching of language and literature. It indexes books and articles published about modern languages, literature, folklore, and linguistics. It contains many links to full texts, and as its title suggests, it includes texts from all over the world. The electronic version of the bibliography dates back to 1925 and contains over 2.2 million citations from more than 4,400 periodicals (including peer-reviewed e-journals) and 1,000 book publishers. It’s an ideal database for any SELLL student!

7. Google Scholar

A search on Google Scholar is just as simple and fruitful as an ordinary Google search, but the results will be peer-reviewed, academic sources, so it’s a much more reliable search engine for your university work. It will also bring up references from a range of different information sources, including Google Books, online journals, downloadable pdf files and even many of the databases discussed on this post!

What’s more, there are lots of useful filters: you can search by relevance and by time period, which is really useful for when you are looking for sources from a particular moment in time. There are also “cited by” lists, so you can track research forwards in time, and suggestions of similar texts for each source.

8. Accents and Dialects

Accents and Dialects is a searchable database of English accent recordings from the British Library Sound Archive.

Recordings include early spoken word snippets from the 1890s onwards, Opie’s collection of children’s songs and games, an evolving English word bank, and a survey of English dialects. Each recording includes a detailed description, with some containing linguistic information too, and most can be downloaded for academic use. You can browse the database by project, county, or date: the search box on the top right of the page can be used to look for specific keywords, including dialects or places.

Thanks Leanna: some great tips there! If you are a student, and would like to write a guest blog post for us about any aspect of the Library and its resources, please just get in touch with us: we’d love to hear from you!

Posted on

PubMed: Becoming familiar with controlled vocabularies


Are your literature searches run mainly in keyword-based platforms such as Google Scholar, Scopus or Web of Science?

Have you been told that you need to diversify your search, or maybe use a new database such as PubMed? Did someone mention that MeSH terms could improve your search?

If you do not know what those terms mean or where to start, you are in the right place. The following video will explain to you what controlled vocabularies are and why they are a powerful tool for retrieving relevant papers.

Now, let’s put theory into practice and demonstrate how to use Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) in PubMed. The video below will do just that.

Let’s have a look at what other controlled vocabulary databases you can use in medical sciences or if your Social Sciences student whose work crosses over with medical sciences. You can find all the databases mentioned below and others in Library Search:

Since the previous videos focus on PubMed, you might wonder what other databases you should be using. If you are unsure how to find the most relevant databases for your course, you can watch a video that will show you how to identify them.

Is Medline the database for you, but you need some help with the basics? Watch our:

Finally, please remember that this is general advice and it might not cover your particular area of interest. If you have any specific questions, please do not hesitate to contact us on Library Help, where you can email us or speak to us through the Live Chat feature.

Posted on

Resource in Focus: Mintel and COVID19 information

As a globally recognised market analyst, Mintel produces hundreds of reports into UK-specific consumer markets every year. Each report provides a unique overview of a market’s dynamics and prospects, giving you the knowledge to devise informed and profitable marketing strategy. Mintel is also one of the many Business specialist databases that we subscribe to here at Newcastle University, which you can access via Library Search, or along with many other of our resources via our Business Subject Guide.

Recently Mintel has been providing ongoing insight and analysis across a range of industries to help you understand how and why consumer sentiment and behaviour are changing during the pandemic.

To find these resources, you need to go to Mintel (via Library Search) and there’s tab dedicated to Covid-19 analysis:

Screen shot of Mintel homepage highlighting the Covid 19 tab.

With over 200 results, there’s plenty to help any research project looking at consumer behaviour during this time.

Let us know if you have any questions or queries about this resource: lib-socsci@ncl.ac.uk

Posted on

Watch Christmas Films on Box of Broadcasts

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Everywhere you go
Take a look at the Christmas watch list, there’s plenty to watch, not miss
With Elf, Die Hard, and A Christmas Carol show…

Staff and students of Christmas past have selected some Christmas films to complement the Law in Literature collection. These are films to watch for fun and not with a specific law focus (although Miracle on 34th Street is there for your courtroom drama fix).

The ‘Law in Literature Newcastle University – Christmas Watch List‘ is available on Box of Broadcasts. Box of Broadcasts (BoB) is a FREE TV, film and radio streaming database that can be accessed through Library Search (University ID required, UK access only). Read more about BoB, including a review of a Law student’s film recommendation.

Take a look at the list of festive films, look at the other Law in Literature playlists, or search for films to complement your studies, and enjoy the well-deserved Christmas break!

Posted on

Digimap: Global and Society

Screen shot of Society Digimap.

Adding to our existing EDINA collection, we now have access to both Global and Society Digimap.

Society includes census and socio-economic data which can be layered across the map software to provide a picture and give an insight of society in a given area. For more information about how to use the Society data, watch this video from EDINA.

Whilst Global provides access to global datasets in cartographic styles and downloadable formats. It allows you to browse, annotate and print global maps and access to downloadable global datasets for use in GIS software.

To access these resources, click on the link to the Digimap collection via Library Search or our Maps Resources guide, log in with your university account and click on the Society or Global tab to access the data.  You will need to accept the license agreement the first time you use it.

Please explore and email us if you have any questions, or post it as a comment on this blog. For other map resources, check out our Maps Resources guide.

Posted on

Resource in Focus: Fortune Magazine archive

We have recently subscribed to Fortune Magazine Archive – an extensive cover-to-cover collection of the long-running business magazine dating from its very first issue in February 1930 through December 2000.

Subjects Covered in this magazine:

  • American business
  • International business
  • Economics
  • Industry
  • Technology

Published monthly by Time Inc., Fortune Magazine sought to provide news and analysis of both American and, later, international business, economics, technology, and industry.  Each issue featured vivid color illustrations and photographs, as well as high-quality feature articles, published at a time when most business magazines were merely black and white compendiums of statistics and figures. 

Articles and cover pages are fully indexed and advertisements are individually identified, ensuring researchers and readers can quickly and accurately locate the information they seek. Fortune Magazine Archive is valuable to researchers of 20th-Century current events, politics and culture, as well as those interested in the history of business, advertising, and popular culture.

Posted on

Get more out of JSTOR!

JSTOR is one of our most popular academic databases, and you may be one of the many people who uses it regularly. It provides access to thousands of journal titles, books and other resources.

We subscribe to many of its collections, giving us access to thousands of journal backruns, spanning many decades and subject areas, together with 6,500 Open Access books (all catalogued on Library Search), and over 1.3 million images, videos and audio files, via Artstor Public Collections.

STOP PRESS! We now have access to an additional 59,000 JSTOR ebooks. Read all about it!

But are you getting the best out of JSTOR? Read on to find some tips and features you might not know about…..

Advanced search

JSTOR is a very large, multidisciplinary database, so a simple keyword search won’t usually be the most effective way to search it. Click on Advanced Search to get more options which will give you better control over your search: for example, just searching in certain fields (e.g. author or abstract) or limiting your search by date, resource type, language or subject area.

Text analyser

This exciting new feature enables you to drag and drop a document, and JSTOR will then process your document’s text to find the most significant topics and recommend other documents within its database. Try it out!

Workspace

Using Workspace, you can save, organise, and share your sources, including non-JSTOR content. You can also add notes and generate citations in many popular formats. You need to create an account on JSTOR in order to use this feature.

Text mining

Data for Research (DfR) provides datasets of JSTOR content for use in research and teaching. Data available through the service include metadata, n-grams, and word counts for most articles and book chapters, and for all research reports and pamphlets. Datasets are produced at no cost to researchers, and may include data for up to 25,000 documents.

Further help

You can get more help with JSTOR by clicking on Support at any time, or visit their specialised library guides for a more in-depth focus on particular topics. For the very latest JSTOR developments, tips and features, follow @jstor on Twitter.