By Linda Hauck

Falvey now has access to premium data on the Sports Business Research Network (SBRnet), which conducts twice yearly consumer surveys of a representative sample of U.S. consumers 13 years and older.  The surveys include questions about sport and team fandom by demographic characteristics (gender, age, income, geography, and education), media usage (social media, device usage, and channels watched), spending on merchandise, sports travel behavior, and select food and beverage consumption patterns and insurance, banking, and credit usage.

This new content compliments the news, directories and additional data sets in SBRnet. There are directories for sports venues, marketing agencies,  sport associations and team and player performance sites.  Its a one-stop shop for sporting goods spending, participation, attendance, fan demographics, and media usage data, downloadable in Excel format. Use it to keep up to date on business developments on everything from baseball to fantasy football, sports gambling, pickleball, and sports law to name just a few topics.

SBRnet is a top pick for sports analytics, marketing and management students.

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

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.

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.

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.

The Library in partnership with the Villanova School of Business has added the Accounting & Oversight module to our basic Audit Analytics subscription. Audit Analytics structured data facilitate scholarly research on governance, shareholder activism, Sarbanes-Oxley controls, accounting and auditing firms, IPOs, corporate social responsibility, and cybersecurity and more.

All US public companies are included with historical data to 2000. The Accounting and Oversight module is of particular interest because of it’s Accounting Quality Risk Metric, which allows screening by the type, time, and severity of specific risk factors, such as litigation, insider changes, or financial and auditing reporting events.  It also provides cybersecurity disclosure notifications for ransomware, phishing, unauthorized access, and malware with links to original filings or reports.

Access Audit Analytics directly or via WRDS (Wharton Research Data Services), individual password required.

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

Corporate annual reports and SEC filings are the raw materials used for content analysis by researchers examining company histories, corporate strategy, risk, disclosures about environmental and human capital, governance & communication differences to name just a few areas of inquiry. Villanova now has access to collections of these documents in Mergent Archives listed on Databases A-Z and the Business Subject page.

The historical glossy annual report collection includes US companies as well as Canadian, European, Latin American, Africa, Middle Eastern, and Asian.  There are over one million reports in the collection going back to the 19th Century. Full runs for all firms are not immediately available, but this is a growing collection and efforts are being made to achieve full coverage.

The collection, which is in in Adobe PDF format, can be searched by company name, country, and year. The SEC  historical collection (also in PDF format) includes only 10-K, 11-K, and 20-F filings from 1970 to 1995. They can be searched by company name, year, and state.

In addition, the Mergent Archives platform includes historical Moody’s/Mergent Manuals covering the industrial, transportation, banking and finance, public utility, international, and OTC sectors.  Also included are the CRB Commodity Yearbooks from 1939 to present.  Each volume includes data tables and contemporaneous market analysis for commodities from apples to ethanol, soybeans to zinc.

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

The Villanova community now has Harvard Business Publishing eBooks. The collection includes practice oriented HBR Guides (such as to giving feedback, coaching, thinking strategically, or leading teams), themed article collections (such as ones by Christensen, Kotter, and Davenport),  and “must read” articles from the Harvard Business Review. Important works such as Blue Ocean Strategy are included.

The collection is relatively fresh with 42 titles published in 2018 alone, such as Reverse Innovation in Health Care and Smart Business: What Alibaba’s Success Reveals about the Future of Strategy. Sadly, HBR cases are not included.

Unlike our access to Harvard Business Review on EBSCOs Business Source Premier database, this content is licensed for assigned course readings. Furthermore, each title may be used by unlimited simultaneous users.

However, this content is not digital rights management free, so users that download the full text as PDFs or ePubs will only have access for a limited time (usually seven days) and may need to download again after the loan has expired.  Most of the titles do permit the permanent download of up to 100 pages per session. It is entirely appropriate to use this content as required or optional course materials. Providing students with persistent links or embedding it in Blackboard can offer students increment savings on course packs.

The books in this collection are discoverable in the book search on the library home page, listed on the databases A-Z list and on business subject pages.

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

The new Idea Accelerator—This video shows what is, where it is, and who can use it:

For additional “How to” videos, click the “Help” button on Falvey’s homepage.