Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies News

MEL’s Database of the Week for 11/13

November 16th, 2009

Welcome to Database of the Week — a feature from the Management & Economics Library (MEL).  These weekly database snapshots will give you basic information about our most relevant and beneficial online resources.

This Week’s Featured Database: LexisNexis Statistical, from LexisNexis, Inc.

Link: www.lib.purdue.edu/mel, in the pull down Quick Access to Business Databases alpha list below the Libraries’ search box.

Description/focus: LexisNexis Statistical is a collection of statistical tables and datasets collected from federal agencies, the United Nations, the World Bank and other sources.

Start with this hint: Admittedly the LexisNexis Statistical interface is less than elegant.  Selecting from the basic table/publication menu on the left will get different results for the same term since they are searching different sources. A search in Find a Table for “small businesses” nets 866 hits.  If you switch to Find a Publication, be sure to check the box next to Limit to abstracts that have full text attachments; the resulting list for “small businesses” here will be 322 hits. If your term doesn’t get any results, go to the link for the Subject List next to the search field.  Contrariwise, if there are too many results, narrow your results by selecting one parameter, such as Geographic.

Why you should know this database: LexisNexis Company Statistical, though not our friendliest interface, is worth the patience it may call for.  Troll the list of subjects to see the extensive coverage available.  The results can be limited to statistics from the Federal government,  state governments and private sources, or international sources.

How this database can be integrated into the curriculum: Statistics are critical for decision making and with LexisNexis Statistical students don’t have to hunt for the right government agency to find the data they need.

Cost: Paid by the Libraries annually.

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Database of the Week comes to you from the Management & Economics Library (MEL). Our intent is to give you a brief introduction to a database that you may not know.  If you would like more information about this database, or if you would like a demonstration of it for a class, contact kranlib@purdue.edu.  Database of the Week is archived  at https://blogs.lib.purdue.edu/news/category/mgmt/database/.  For more Purdue Libraries news, follow us on Twitter (@PurdueLibraries).

If you would like us to promote your favorite database, send an email to mdugan@purdue.edu.