Just the FAQs Ma’am: Lippincott’s Knowledge Database

Penn’s Business FAQ provides quick reference help on a wide range of questions relating to business research. The FAQ is a knowledge database consisting of 15 broad categories (e.g. “Finance”) and more than 600 specific questions (e.g. “How do I find Info on Venture Capital and Private Equity?“) plus several thousand keywords and links that can be used for retrieval.

The system allows searching for keywords, phrases, and words in combination. The specific questions and sources in the database reflect librarians’ experience in responding to the questions of Wharton students and faculty, and feedback from the database itself. The database was queried more than 68,000 times in the past year. The Business FAQ can be searched from Business FAQ search box on Lippincott’s Home Page or by typing keywords and phrases in the FindIt searchbox at the top of any Penn Libraries home page.

Here is a list of the question categories:

And a sample Q&A

Some FAQs most frequently requested are:  How do I Find ?

Analyst Reports

Industry Statistics

Private Company Information

League Tables

And here are a few examples of questions with hard to find answers:

Number of computers owned by a company

Short Interest by company

Changes in Financial Index membership and weightings   

The software for the FAQ was created and is maintained by the Penn Libraries Information Technology and Digital Design Department. We have shared the software with other academic libraries.  Here is a list of our FAQ partners.