By Linda Hauck

One of the favorite parts of my job is to support students in their search for data and statistics. Some students needs are met by a quick search in Statista, a database that aggregates data and statistics on a wide range of topics or a smart google search employing filetype:xls or site:.gov. These quick solutions are satisfying, for sure, but the real fun happens when students need multiple datasets for data analysis, or a research methods project.

To help these students, I start the conversation by asking about their topic and how they envision using data. We talk about their ideal dataset keeping in mind how it might be generated, who is likely to collect the data, what frequency, granularity, time period, populations, and geographies are needed. If there is an agency or organization that is obviously most likely to compile the idea dataset, it makes sense to start there. If not, doing a scholarly literature review and focusing on the data or methods section of papers will point to potential sources.

This data exploration process can be time consuming but fun!

Grace Liu, Business Librarian at West Chester University, with the advice of Bobray Bordelon, Economics & Finance Librarian/Data Services Librarian at Princeton University distilled the process in this neat infographic.

Linda Hauck, MLS, MBA is Business Librarian at Falvey Library.

By Linda Hauck

Villanova faculty and students now have access to the ISS Directors and NEO Diversity Datasets.  The datasets encompass over 27,000 companies, globally.  Characteristics of company board members and named executives are documented.  This is a unique data set because not only are age, nationality and gender of persons recorded but ethnicity is as well.  Ethnicity data sources are by firm disclosure, by survey feedback, and analyst identification.

It is a well documented and rich source of information about company diversity policies, statements and goals too.   Outcomes backed up by numbers and percentages of board and officer composition by ethnicity, gender, age, tenure, and experiential factors are presented. The complete data dictionary is available here.

At present this data is available by SFTP via FileZilla or WinSCP.

Instructions are available here and linda.hauck@villanova.edu or ref@villanova.edu will share the password with authorize users. It is expected that this data will be on WRDS (Wharton Research Data Services) later in the year.  Contact linda.hauck@villanova.edu if you would like to schedule a training session.

Linda Hauck, MLS, MBA, is Business Librarian at Falvey Library.

Villanova researchers now have access to BoardEx, which presents data on companies, board members, and individuals serving on C-Suites in North America, Europe, the UK, and the “Rest of the World” from 1999 to present.  Public, private, and nonprofit organizations are included. Detailed attributes about board members and officers is provided including: age, gender, role, education, employment, achievements, compensation, networks, and committee appointments.  Summary data on organizations include nationality mix, gender ratios, attrition rates, board networks, and remuneration practices.  The use of common company identifiers simplifies linking to other products such as CRSP and Compustat/Capital IQ.

BoardEx data have been a key underlying source for empirical research in accountancy, finance, and management generally and corporate social responsibility specifically.  The Library is thrilled to be able to provide direct access to this data via the Wharton Research Data Services platform.

David Ratigan, Director of the Gmelich Lab for Financial Markets approves registration for faculty and students. Duo security app for two-factor authentication needed.

Photo: Damir Kopezhanov (Unsplash)

Linda Hauck, MLS, MBA is the Business Librarian at Falvey Library.

By Linda Hauck

Graduate and undergraduate business students often work on international market entry strategies for cases and consulting clients. Devising a winning strategy is contingent on analyzing a wide range of data about specific locations. National level data isn’t always sufficient. That’s why the Library added the Cities module to Passport (Euromonitor). Students can spend less time tracking down data and more time interpreting it to solve business problems.

The Cities module contains time series data on consumers, economic conditions, and sustainability. Historic and current consumer data covers demographics, income, expenditures, wealth, and digital access.  The economic variables available include GDP, employment, unemployment, labor force participation, inflation, consumer prices by sector, exports, and wages. Measures of mobility, pollution and climate can be used to assess sustainability potential. Coverage is not limited to the single financial or commercial center of a country: Over 1200 metropolitan areas on every continent are included.

These same data points are contextualized in Cities Reports, which benchmark and rank each city against their home countries and regions using a variety of data visualizations. Significant changes are highlighted as are unique or stand out conditions.

Accessing the Cities Reports and Data can be tricky due to the wealth of information on Passport. The Economics tab and Search all Categories box enable drilling down to the cities and variables needed.

Passport (Euromonitor) Economies: Cities module isn’t the only Library-subscribed content for learning about urban centers. Statista offers Global Business Cities Reports which feature social, economic, and cultural data.  Access World News and Factiva provide access to foreign language and English newspapers published in cities around the world.

Linda Hauck, MLS, MBA is the Business Librarian at Falvey Library.

By Linda Hauck

Villanova students Ethan Shea and Olivia Dunn talk with the Villanova community about open access opportunities.

During Open Access Week, which promotes and celebrates the power openly licensed scholarship and textbooks have for knowledge sharing, students tabled on the first floor of Falvey Library. They asked their peers how they feel about expensive textbooks and access codes, which are not openly licensed.  Their answers, at least those that are publishable, were frank and to the point:

“Sad face.”

“Bad.”

“Very bad.”

“Horrible.”

“Broke.”

“I’m crying.”

Students reported spending significant sums on their course materials this semester: 25% spend up to $99, 20% spent $100-199, 20% spent $200-299, 21% spent 300-399 and 10% spent over $400. Some students raised questions about access code fairness. “Shouldn’t have to pay to access HW,” stated one student. Another student questioned access to assessments stating, “Access codes aren’t a good tool b/c they force us to pay $60-130 to take assessments, which should be covered by the school.”

Villanova students are incredibly resourceful, yet they are sometimes pushed to ethically questionable practices when it comes to finding access to expensive materials. They borrow books from each other, Falvey library, CASA, and other libraries through Interlibrary loan. They rent. They take advantage of free trials.  They use online “file sharing” libraries. They buy books from online vendors and return them within the 25-day free period…And the cycle repeats.

In the end, students were very appreciative of the faculty and programs on campus that make textbooks more affordable, especially Father John Abubaker, Lance Kenney, John Olson, PhD,  Farid Zamini, PhD, and the Humanities Department.

For more information on open access materials, check out the Affordable Materials Project (AMP). AMP promotes knowledge sharing by encouraging the adoption of openly licensed textbooks and homework systems by the OER Faculty Adoption Awards and helps delivers eBooks with unlimited user licenses at no cost to students.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Linda Hauck, MLS, MBA, is Business Librarian at Falvey Library.

International Open Access Week is an occasion to promote and celebrate the equitable sharing of knowledge. One way Villanova, through the Affordable Materials Project(AMP), encourages knowledge sharing is by supporting faculty who adopt open educational resources (OER). The Open Educational Resource Faculty Adoption Grant has much to celebrate!

Open educational resources are teaching and learning materials, often textbooks, that are typically free to use and a have Creative Commons license permitting reuse, adaption, and sharing. This means students don’t have to pay for OER e-textbooks and faculty can customize them to meet their learning objectives. The OER Faculty Adoption Grant was established to recognize faculty for all the effort that goes into revising syllabi, lesson plans, assignments, and assessments.

Past OER Faculty Adoption Grant recipients shared insights and tips about their experiences in forums recorded in 2022 and 2021.  Students participated too and noted the use of OER offered a welcome reprieve from financial pressures and contributed to their class engagement and participation.

Past awardees, Dr. Stephanie Katz Linkmeyer and Professor Jeanne Liedtka, spearheaded departmental evaluations of OER for General Chemistry I (CHEM 1151) and OER for Corporate Responsibility and Regulation (VSB 2007) which resulted in OER adoptions.  Fall 2022 is the first semester OER will be used by all sections of these courses, resulting in significant cost savings for students.

Applications are being accepted for the OER Faculty Adoption Grant through Nov. 18, 2022. Subject librarians can assist with finding suitable OER. For eligibility requirements, review criteria, and grant requirements, click here.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Linda Hauck, MLS, MBA, is Business Librarian

The Business Model Canvas (BMC) is a key tool used by both entrepreneurs and existing organizations to launch, grow, and sustain businesses and social enterprises.  Villanova’s Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship coaches innovators across campus on how to work through the BMC for their ventures.

Completing a Business Model Canvas is a key requirement for competing in the Villanova’s Student Entrepreneurship Competition (VSEC), held during the spring semester, which awards over $20 thousand dollars in prize money.

The Library collaborated with Stephen Green, Assistant Director of the Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, to curate a Business Model Canvas Guide with databases, books, articles, and research tips for filling in the BMC.  When I met with Green in the IDEA Lab, he said completing the BMC is required for VSEC because it is a necessary tool for “visualizing and analyzing any ventures’ strategy.”  He remarked that “teams use the BMC to stay on track and keep each other accountable.” Determining optimal revenue or profit models, he noted, prove to be most challenging for many teams.

The Business Model Canvas Guide may be ideal for entrepreneurs with a DIY orientation. But Business Librarian, Linda Hauck, is also available for consultations for those who appreciate a personalized, targeted approach.

Talking with fellow entrepreneurs is another great way to generate ideas about how to approach populating your BMC. Nova Women Entrepreneurship Panel, held on Monday, Oct. 17, at 5 p.m. in the IDEA Lab is a great opportunity to learn from founders. You can register here.

Linda Hauck, MLS, MBA, is Business Librarian at Falvey Library.

By Linda Hauck

Current news databases are used by researchers across disciplines to stay current with developments, construct meaning out of evolving events, and analyze content for political, social, cultural, and public health trends.

Having access to a wide range of local, regional, national, and international sources is key.  Falvey Library has significantly improved access to news by subscribing to Factiva, which adds over 6000 unique, full text titles to our collection, including The Washington Post, Boston Globe, Atlanta Journal Constitution, and Chicago Daily Herald. Transcripts of National Public Radio’s Code Switch and Fox News’ Hannity are searchable. Many foreign language publications are included as well.

The range of trade news is impressive, from Backpacker to Diabetes Week and Global Warming Focus to Oil Market Intelligence. Factiva is a Dow Jones product so the news coverage and indexing is particularly good for financial, economic, and business topics.

The search interface is flexible.  The “Free Text” search box can be used to replicate a search similar to Google; the “Search Form” provides prompts for more focused queries; and examples of advanced search commands facilitate precision searching.  When using either the “Free Text” or “Search Form” handy options for filtering results by subject, industry, region are available. Factiva’s default is to limit searches to the most recent 3 months, so researchers with a deeper time line will need to modify the date range.

Factiva’s Company/Markets tab is an added bonus. Company profiles describe the business segments, corporate family, financial results, and peers, but their real advantage is the depth and breath of company news provided.  The industry snapshots are less robust, but do rank key competitors, facilitate a deep dive into the news, and offer recent analyst reports.

Factiva compliments our other news aggregators, Access World News, Nexis Uni, and ABI Inform, and our direct subscriptions to top news such as The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Financial Times.

For a full list of news sources including archives see Databases A-Z filtered by newspapers.

Linda Hauck, MLS, MBA, is Business Librarian at Falvey Memorial Library.

Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash

The Affordable Materials Project in conjunction with Subject Librarians went on a Listening Tour to learn about faculty course materials practices, challenges, and concerns.  During the fall of 2021 and spring of 2022, AMP members and librarians spoke with faculty teaching high enrollment, introductory courses that typically use commercial textbooks.

We had conversations about how textbooks and homework systems are chosen and used and what services might promote the use of high-quality, low-cost textbooks and open educational resources (OER).   The Listening Tour’s findings and recommendations are now available here.

By Linda Hauck

Earth Day 2022’s theme is “Invest in our Planet.”  The first Earth Day in 1970 took place at a time of crisis not unlike our own;  Smog, oil spills, pesticide use, open space loss, and untreated industrial pollution threatened human health and wildlife. That first Earth Day led to bipartisan support for the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and passage of numerous environmental laws.

Photo by Marcell Viragh on Unsplash

Over 50 years later, the climate crisis threatens humans, animals, and plant life and with extreme temperatures, wildfires, drought, rising sea levels, pandemics, and more.  Businesses, which have often preferred market based responses to environmental pressure over regulatory ones, are taking steps reduce their carbon footprints and to minimize exposure to environmental risks. Likewise, investors are seeking ways to distinguish between levels of corporate environmental commitment.

Morningstar Investment Research Center is a great place for environmentally conscious investors to get started. You can find daily articles under the Articles & Videos’ “Sustainability Matters” tab.  The screening tools for mutual funds, exchange traded funds, and equities all include a Sustainability Rating to help investors evaluate potential assets on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) dimensions. Check out the methodology before using any rating scheme.

FactSet (Contact Finance Lab for to register for remote access), a database provided by the Gmelich Lab for Financial Markets, offers multiple ESG databases covering not only funds and equities but bonds as well. ESG ratings can be used in the screener, company/security, and portfolio monitor. The Truvlau Labs is their premier ESG data provider that applies artificial intelligence to business news, trade journals & blogs, watchdog groups, and social media to arrive at disaggregated ratings.

Investing in financial markets isn’t the only way to back environmentally friendly businesses. Consumers can do so through thoughtful choices and here are just a few library resources to help do just that.

• Beyond Greenwash
• Food, Environment and Climate Change: Justice at the Intersections
• An Introduction to Sustainability: Environmental, Social and Personal Perspectives
• Sustainable Home: Practical Projects, Tips and Advice For Maintaining a More Eco-Friendly Household
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
• An (Almost) Zero Waste Life: Learning How to Embrace Less to Live More

Linda Hauck is Business Librarian at Falvey Library.