By Linda Hauck

By Centro de Estudios Públicos – https://www.cepchile.cl/CEP40Aniversario, CC BY 2.0 cl, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=112613569

Falvey offers extensive access to commercial journals published by Elsevier, Sage, Wiley, Emerald, Taylor & Francis, Springer-Nature, Oxford University Press, and Cambridge University Press, among others. Many factors are taken into consideration in negotiating access to these very costly resources, including alignment with curricula and research activity, journal impact or prestige, indexing, cost structure, actual usage, turn-a-ways, and stated demand.

A faculty member noted high quality, peer-reviewed journal articles relevant to a frequently offered graduate course were accessible using Business Source Premier and SCOPUS, two recommended database for business, and the Library Search Articles and More tool, but access to full text access was only available via interlibrary loan. The faculty member submitted a request for purchase.

As is often the case, the cost of subscribing to the single journal was quite high, but the journal was part of the Henry Stewart Business and Management Journal Collection, which maps to multiple disciplines taught at the Villanova School of Business, including digital marketing, real estate, data analytics, and supply chain management. Bundled with our HSTalks instructional video collection, the Library was able to negotiate for the Henry Stewart Business and Management Journals Collection.

Students and faculty now have immediate access to current issues and backfiles of these journals that publish papers written by applied scholars and seasoned practitioners.

Link to the full text of 22 Henry Stewart journals by using the “find it” button in Business Source Premier or SCOPUS, or by using the Journal Finder.

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

Credit: Ill. Niklas Elmehed © Nobel Prize Outreach This use is strictly editorial. This permission is free of charge, according to https://nobelprize.qbank.se/mb/?h=f142eee16bc09dd5247dd753fd9ef889

On Oct. 9, 2023, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to Claudia Goldin, PhD, the first woman to be awarded the prize solo and the first woman offered tenure by Harvard’s economics department.  Dr. Goldin’s work has been centered around documenting and understanding the history of women’s labor force participation and the gender wage gap.  Her work has important  implications for labor market, educational and social welfare policies.

Dr. Goldin’s work is not confined to understanding disparities, but extends to correcting them.  Across academia men economics majors outnumber women at an alarming rate. In an IMF podcast Dr. Goldin observed: “Men think economics is about finance so they take economics. Women think economics is about finance, so they don’t take economics. Women believe economics is not about people, that psychology is about people, which is what many women end up majoring in. We have to do better in teaching them that economics is about people.” Dr. Goldin was the principal investigator in a the Undergraduate Women in Economics Challenge, which was an experiment that incentivized colleges and universities to implement creative interventions to improve the popularity of majoring in economics to women.

Cheryl Carleton, PhD, Associate Professor, Economics, who teaches Women in Economics ECO 3118, noted that Villanova is working to “increase diversity overall, which includes women.” According to the Federal Reserve, 7% of white men and 6.4% of underrepresented men major in economics at Villanova University, whereas only 2.5% of  white and underrepresented women major in economics.  At Villanova, significant gains have been made by hiring more diverse faculty who bring “new methodologies, which appeals to a broader audience, including women.”

Dr. Carleton noted that Mary Kelly, PhD, Associate Chair, Economics, has been active in promoting a diverse range of events and speakers to appeal to a broader range of students.  The most recent Economics Department newsletter documents these efforts.  Carlton trusts these initiatives “inspires [women & underrepresented students] to take some economics courses and thus they are more able to use the tools of economics throughout whatever career path they choose.”

Below is sample of the books Goldin’s authored, co-authored and edited in our collection:

• Urban Slavery in the American South, 1820-1860: A Quantitative History. University of Chicago Press, 1976.
• Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women. Oxford University Press, 1990.
• The Regulated Economy: A Historical Approach to Political Economy. University of Chicago Press, 1994.
• The Defining Moment: The Great Depression and the American Economy in the Twentieth Century. University of Chicago Press, 1998.
• Corruption and Reform: Lessons from America’s Economic History. University of Chicago Press, 2006.
• The Race Between Education and Technology. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008.
• Women Working Longer: Increased Employment at Older Ages. The University of Chicago Press, 2018.
• Career and Family: Women’s Century-long Journey Toward Equity. Princeton University Press, 2021.

Many of Dr. Goldin’s papers are published in the most prestigious economics journals.  The breadth of her research is thrilling.  You can browse the papers on EconLit here.

Finally, Dr. Goldin’s devotion to a rigorous scientific method is expressed via the many datasets she collected and made accessible for replication and further uses via the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research.

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

Join Linda Hauck, Business Librarian, Falvey Library, for a Backpack to Briefcase: Business Research session. Competitive Intelligence involves gathering, analyzing, and acting on data that impact an organization’s future success. This introductory research session will focus on how to gather public information across multiple sources about competitors and industries. CI allows organizations to make better decisions, see opportunities and avoid pitfalls. Knowing how to gather information is the first step.

Bring your laptop and an appetite to flex your CI skills and enjoy free pizza!

The workshop will be offered on the following dates:

•    Monday, Oct. 23 at 5 p.m., Falvey Library, Room 206: REGISTER HERE
•    Monday, Dec. 4 at 5 p.m., Falvey Library, Room 205: REGISTER HERE
•    Wednesday, Dec. 6 at 5 p.m., Falvey Library, Room 205: REGISTER HERE

Photo by krakenimages on Unsplash

By Linda Hauck

Villanova faculty and students now have access to Pitchbook. Pitchbook provides data on companies, investors, and deals in the private equity and venture capital space.

Pitch book offers screeners for companies, deals, funds, investors, and service providers. These are not your typical screeners limited to filtering by geography, profitability, and industry.  The screeners are much more granular than most, including specialized criteria relevant to rapidly evolving businesses with deal types, debt characteristics, web and social media metrics, verticals, and patent holdings, to name a few.

The Pitchbook Library Research Center has reports on industries, technologies, and public and private market performance and benchmarks. Here, you’ll find surveys on sustainable investment, European M&A activity, and reports on agtech and food as medicine. Pitchbook is the best tool at our disposal for learning about emerging businesses. If you’re looking for firms working on renewable ocean energy, youth banking, anti-aging, smart packaging, or cannabis beverages, browsing the emerging spaces will get you there.

Use cases for Pitchbook include business development and marketing, tracking competitors investments, environmental scans for innovative products and services, finding potential investors,  analyzing industry and vertical trends, and finding Villanova alumni.

Access Pitchbook with your Villanova email address.  Downloading is limited and regrettably our subscription does not include live support, the mobile app or Excel add on.

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

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.