Researching: An Inside Job

“The film that cost $20,000,000,000,000 to make” is the tagline for the 2011 Oscar winning documentary, Inside Job.  If you haven’t already seen it, you can check it out from the Van Pelt Video Collection, click here for its availability in VCat.  The documentary is both informative and well researched.  We can do much of the same research in databases available at the Penn Libraries.  So, if you are interested in fact checking the fact checkers take a look in the resources described below.

Factiva is a newspaper article database that covers 25,000+ sources globally.  Search for articles written on or around a certain date or about a specific topic.  In the database, go to Search => Search Builder. For example, run a search for the keywords financial crisis in the date range 09/01/2008 – 09/30/2008. Everyone from the Associated Press to Women’s Wear Daily were talking about the financial crisis; 22,927 total articles. See our previous post for additional suggestions for researching historical newspaper articles.

Clean, Green, and Renewable Energy. Are there any Alternatives?

Alternative energy sources are intended to replace fuel sources that have negative impacts on the environment or to substitute for non-renewable resources. Alternative energy sources are also referred to as “Renewable Resources”, “Clean Energy” or “Green Energy”.

The Penn Libraries have several specialized resources of information for the alternative energy market.

Alternative Energy eTrack (Global Data) is a database of alternative energy information encompassing a range of industry markets and equipment worldwide.

Alternative Energy eTrack includes intelligence on companies operating in the global alternative energy market and covers all key alternative energy markets including wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, bio, ocean, hydrogen, energy storage, energy efficiency and energy infrastructure markets.

Simmons Says – Analyzing Consumer Marketing Variables

What magazines are most heavily read by women who have bought GAP jeans recently? What are the favorite TV programs for men under 30 who drink Redbull? The answer to such detailed questions on the relationship among product and brand usage, spending behavior, media habits and demographic factors require a database that allows us to cross classify variables.

One such database is Simmons OneView, which provides U.S. adult consumer information on product and brand usage, spending behavior, and media habits. It can be used to create multi-level crosstabulations analyzing the demographic and psychographic characteristics of product users and their media behavior. The data comes from the Simmons National Consumer Study (NCS), which is sent out to samples of the U.S. population several times a year. Simmons also conducts a National Hispanic Consumer Study (NHCS), which includes the same data as the NCS but asks additional questions of Hispanics.

The database has several thousand variables including lifestyle information, detailed demographics, media habits, brand purchases and consumption. The crosstab function is simple and flexible.

What You Want to Know @ Research To Go

Looking for research help, but find it difficult to get to the Lippincott Library between classes?

Stop by Huntsman Hall Room 251 for Research To Go to get help from the Lippincott Library’s research librarians.

When: Every Monday – Thursday

Time: Between 12:30PM – 1:30PM

The GSR is located across from the MBA Cafe on the second floor of JMHH.  Look for Monopoly themed signs to find your way.

The poster on the window provides some sample topics, but feel free to ask anything related to your specific research interests.