Recurring Reference Questions: How Do I Get Harvard Business Review Articles?

The details of the question vary slightly. It might be "My teacher wants me to read this particular article...how do I find it?" or "My professor says my paper must include at least one article on the topic from Harvard Business Review (HBR), how do I do that?" but we definitely get a lot of reference questions about how to locate articles in this very well known scholarly business journal.

Occasionally, misguided students (or faculty) who are used to Googling for everything--always a dangerous proposition!--end up at the website for the HBR and think they need to buy access to articles. If you are a current student or faculty member at Suffolk, there is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON TO DO THIS! We at Sawyer Library subscribe to the definitive Business Source Complete (BSC) database, which includes HBR back to 1922, and pay an extra hefty fee besides, to ensure that our community has full research and classroom use of this essential journal.

So, let's review how to access the HBR and find things in it. As with most things, more than one approach will work. First, checking for the title (of the journal, not the article) in the online catalog, is always a valid starting point. The catalog record will tell you ALL your access options, including paper and microform.

Still, most people want online! So here are a couple of easy ways to go for electronic access. Since I have already told you that HBR is in BSC, you could go directly to Business Source Complete, and when you get to the opening search screen, you can enter author, article title or topic keywords (using your boolean operator and in between) and put the term harvard business review in the publication box below and slightly to the right. Here is an illustration:

But often the easiest approach to identifying, searching, and retrieving materials in an electronic journal, starts with our library homepage. Look for the eJournals search tab in the "Search Library Resources" box. Put in your title. (And, remember, hbr is an abbreviation, so you must spell out harvard business review, although there is no need to capitalize letters.)

When you hit enter or click the arrow, our Serials Solutions service will check for the journal and tell you that although HBR is available in several databases, only BSC has both the older issues and the current ones. Click the link for Business Source Complete and you will go to a database page detailing that journal. If you have a citation (year, volume, issue, pagination), you can, if you like, simply click the year, then issue, then article that you want. (This will get you there, but often takes a bit of clicking and browsing.) I prefer--whether I am looking for a topic or a specific article--to click the link for Search within this publication above the "All Issues" list of years. This sets up a base search for Harvard Business Review as a journal. You would then add keywords to search for a specific article or topic.

For example, let's say your professor says that you must read the article "Transforming Giants" by Rosabeth Moss Kanter. After we click the "Search within this publication" link we can add and transforming giants and kanter to the search box to perform a boolean operation to add these additional concepts. The database then identifies the one article in HBR that also contains the phrase transforming giants and the word kanter. See:

This is a relatively quick and easy way to find an article. And a similar technique could be used to search for keywords of your choosing that appear in the journal. And, of course, you can use this method with just about any journal that you verify through the eJournal Locator. Although the screen will vary from database to database, almost all links in the eJournal Locator will take you to a screen that provides an option for searching within that particular journal for additional keyword concepts.

Link of the Week: The Economic Census

Most people are familiar with the U.S. Census, which is supposed to count every U.S. resident and is conducted every 10 years. (2010 is a census year - so if you have not returned your census form yet, here is what your community stands to gain by having a high participation rate.)

However, the Census Bureau also conducts an Economic Census. This is done every 5 years, the most recent one being from 2007. The data collected provides a detailed snapshot of the U.S. economy, by counting the number of establishments nationwide, their sales, their annual payroll, and the number of their employees. The Census Bureau then assigns each establishment to a specific industry, according to the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). The 2007 NAICS is comprised of 1,175 industries grouped into 20 sectors, and by means of the Economic Census, these industries can in turn be viewed from the national to the local level.

Why would someone who is not a government official be interested in such things? The statistics can provide a tool to identifying business markets and competition. Comparing changes from one census to the next can illustrate trends in industries by location (or for that matter, trends in different locations by industry).

It takes some time before the Economic Census data is compiled and released. This is done in stages, and the bulk of the data sets are available 2-3 years after the census is conducted.

Not surprisingly, finding and using the data effectively can be a challenge, but there are tools available to help.

One is a reference book held by the Sawyer Library: Industry Research Using the Economic Census : How to Find It, How to Use It, by Jennifer C. Boettcher and Leonard M. Gaines.

Other tools come from the Census Bureau itself, which has posted a User Guide and instruction materials (Power Point slides and handouts) from conference lectures held around the country. The instruction materials and included exercises are especially helpful, since they provide an insight into the types of queries the Economic Census can answer.

New Database: LGBT Life with Full Text

Interested in Queer Studies/Queer Theory as a scholarly field? Or are you simply interested in reading about the lives and concerns of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered and intersex people, as represented by the writings of these communities? Then you will want to make use of a new database Sawyer Library has added called LGBT Life with Full Text.

Ebsco, the publisher, calls LGBT Life with Full Text "the definitive index to the world's literature regarding Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender issues." With its mix of activist and scholarly literature, it is certainly the most extensive resource that I have seen in this multifaceted subject area.

The database contains indexing and abstracts--in the familiar EbscoHost interface--for more than 140 LGBT-specific core periodicals and over 290 LGBT-specific core books and reference works. Ebsco has also gone after "data mined from nearly 40 priority periodicals and over 2,400 select titles." With the assistance of the One National Gay & Lesbian Archives, the publisher was able to index (and in some cases reproduce) many materials that show the progression of gay rights in this country, and beyond. The Lesbian Herstory Archives of the Lesbian Herstory Education Foundation is also assisting Ebsco in further developing content for the database, which is clearly a work in progress.

Scholarly materials and research studies can be found here. So, too, you will find an abundance of popular, cultural and political publications like The Advocate and Lesbian News. In addition, other source-types such as monographs and reference book entries as well as grey literature, newsletters, case studies, and speeches are identified or reproduced. LGBT Life has also loaded some 50,000 bibliographic records from NISC’s Sexual Diversity Studies (SDS) .

The database now includes more than 120 Full-Text Journals and more than 140 Full-Text monographs and books. And more additions are planned. I was happy to see that Bay Windows, New England's "largest GLBT newspaper," is indexed and available full-text here. But although a Gay Community News is also available in the database, it is not the well-remembered "GCN" published here in Boston from the early '70s to the early '90s, but rather a publication of the same name still being published in Dublin, Ireland! All the better to expand our global understanding of gay topics and issues, perhaps.

For more information on what is indexed or available full-text in the database, take a look at this title list from Ebsco.

The file also includes a LGBT Thesaurus providing a specialized set of LGBT terms, used to enhance the indexing beyond what is found in standard (Library of Congress based) subject headings. The LGBT Thesaurus will be an evolving project, with new terms added as needed. Currently, the thesaurus includes over 6,400 terms. It's great that Ebsco is trying to expand the vocabulary for the database. But I must admit that I am currently disappointed in the number of subject terms and the amount of abstract information available in many of the records here.

Still, it is impressive that much of the indexing and some of the full-text goes back as far as the 1950's; well before the Stonewall Riots and the designated birth of the gay liberation movement in 1969. And speaking of Stonewall, the types of community remembrances and debates that you can find on a modern "historical" subject like this one make it clear how valuable this database can be in supplementing and expanding the materials you might be able to find in more familiar databases.

Obviously, it could be worthwhile exploring current events topics like the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy here. But, heck, it's even fun to take a general pop culture subject like Dolly Parton for a spin through a fascinating resource like LGBT Life with Full Text!

[FIND LGBT Life with Full Text on the "Databases by Subject" List for Social Sciences, on the second column. ]

New Database: Boston Business Journal / Bizjournals Online

Sawyer Library users have always had many options when it comes to searching through business news sources. We have the Wall Street Journal as a current database (as well as a deep--back to 1889!--archive). Business and industry news sources are available through general databases like Business & Company Resource Center, and the massive LexisNexis Academic has a specific search page just for "Business & Industry News." These are all good options for the national and international scene.

As for regional business news, our excellent Business Source Complete has a specific adjunct database called Regional Business News (RBN) that claims to provide an added component of "comprehensive full text coverage for...more than 80 regional business publications covering all metropolitan and rural areas within the United States." BUT, sadly, the regional business news of New England and Massachusetts has never been the strong suit of this database, despite its claims. RBN does include New Hampshire Business Review, the Rutland (VT) Business Journal and Valley Business Journal (also of Vermont), and a few New York State publications like Hudson Valley Business Journal, but it does not have the key business paper of eastern Massachusetts, the Boston Business Journal (BBJ), which we have always subscribed to as a current-reading paper and for which we have microform backfiles (with gaps) back to 1981.

Since newsprint falls apart and no one wants to deal with microform (even when someone bothers to produce it!), we have always wanted a reliable online source for the BBJ that would provide access wherever our library users have an internet connection. And now we have it. Sometimes called "bizjournals" or BBJ, we list in on our database list as Boston Business Journal/Bizjournals Online. This online file will likely be a valuable resource for both researchers and job-seekers here in Massachusetts and also for those interested in other business markets throughout the country.

Our opening screen for the database offers towards the upper left, the "featured local publication" of the BBJ. Click on the title link to the Boston Business Journal, and you will be offered the latest issues as either a PDF or a digital newspaper. Note, too, that the latest issue of the Book of Lists will be available here. These rankings of local companies and nonprofits can be handy in many situations. For example, here's the very top of a page on accounting firms:

Besides coverage of the current BBJ and Book of Lists in digital (sometimes a bit slow to load and navigate, according to your machine specs) editions, there is also a news archive in quick-to-load HTML available back to 1996. If you are looking for articles on a local company, this is probably your best option. Look for the "Search Archive" box to the right of the opening screen.

And if you are not interested in Massachusetts, but instead are interested in other US markets, the Boston Business Journal/Bizjournals Online also includes similar digital editions and archives for the other forty or so papers published by American City Business Journals. A few other "regional" business papers like Albany and Buffalo, New York are available here. The others are as wide-ranging as South Florida, Phoenix, Puget Sound and Honolulu.

The Boston Business Journal/Bizjournals Online should fill a real gap in local business research. We hope you find it useful. And if you need to expand your research of Massachusetts business topics, you might want to run your topic through Massachusetts Newsstand, as well. This database covers most of the general newspapers of the state, including the Boston Globe and Herald.

[FIND Boston Business Journal/Bizjournals Online on the "Databases by Subject" List for Business & Management, on the first column, right above Massachusetts Newsstand. ]

Library Systems Alert--Evacuation Day Proxy Shutdown

Update: 7pm, 3/17/10-------The proxy server is back up and database access, off-campus, has been restored.

Please be advised that major electrical work is being done at Sargent Hall (the Law Building) on Evacuation Day/St. Patrick's Day, Wednesday, March 17th. This will result in an outage that is expected to start around 11pm on Tuesday the 16th and last until computer equipment is brought back up on the morning of the 18th, at approximately 9am. Why does this matter to Sawyer Library users? Well, our proxy server--the computer server that authenticates Suffolk users off-campus--is actually located at the Law Library. If this server is shut down, as it must be on the 17th, all of our databases will be unavailable off-campus.

Since this is a legal Suffolk County holiday, as well as the middle of Spring Break week, we are hoping that this will have little impact on our researching students and faculty. But please be warned of this disruption, and plan your research accordingly. We apologize for any inconvenience.

RSS Feeds and Periodical Databases

Those little square orange boxes with the radiating white rings, the symbol for RSS feeds (Really Simple Syndication), have quietly advanced over much of the internet. RSS ennables the automatic gathering of the latest updates to online news sources, blogs, and other websites. Once established, the user may view their personal collection of RSS feeds in one place, such as: Bloglines, My Yahoo!, and Google reader, or browser customization, such as Live Bookmarks in Mozilla Firefox.

However, making use of RSS feeds in an academic setting is not necessarily seamless. Users who wish to access RSS feeds of scholarly journals and subscription news publications may be faced with several hurdles:

1. The publishers of many scholarly journals provide RSS feeds of the table of contents of their most recent issues. The logical next step is to want to go directly to the full text of a featured article. However, RSS feeds obtained directly through a publisher/journal website (or through a service such as
   ticTOCs Journal Table of Contents service), are likely to require either a paid subscription to the journal, or payment for the individual article, when the user follows the link to an article. The user then has to check to see if their university/college library has access to the journal, and assuming the answer is yes, the user must go through the library's system to reach the journal.



2. Many periodical databases offer 'journal alerts' (or RSS feeds of the most recent table of contents) for the journals contained in their databases. Theses alerts may be sent to an email address (where they may rapidly fill up an email box with new mail), or the user may subscribe to the alerts as an RSS feed. However, when users capture the feed URL and put it into a feed reader, they may receive an error message. This is because the URL code for feeds obtained through a periodical
   database are likely to include code that includes the library's proxy server (the system by which libraries authenticate their current students and faculty.) One solution is for the user to identify and delete the portions of the URL which designate the proxy. The RSS feed should then be legible to the feed reader, and as long as the links to the individual articles remain proxyized, then the user should also be able to reach the full text of the article, once (s)he is verified as a current student or faculty.

For example, to create a journal alert RSS feed for the journal Computers in Libraries, one could do the following:

• Check the online catalog, or the Electronic Journals List to see if the journal is contained in any of the periodical databases that the library subscribes to. This journal is available through several databases. For this example, the Ebsco database Academic Search Complete was chosen.



• From the record for that journal in Academic Search Complete, click on the Alert/Save/Share link.



• Choose "Create an Alert" from the pop-up screen.



• Copy the RSS Feed URL.



• Before you submit the URL to your feed reader, edit out the parts of the URL that refer to the proxy server. A feed URL that started out as:
  
  http://0-rss.ebscohost.com.library.law.suffolk.edu/AlertSyndicationService/Syndication.asmx/GetFeed?guid=2346435
  
  will be changed to:
  
  http://rss.ebscohost.com/AlertSyndicationService/Syndication.asmx/GetFeed?guid=2346435
  
  The initial 0- (zero hyphen) and the .library.law.suffolk.edu are removed.



• The advantage to using the Ebsco databases as a source for an RSS feed, is that the links to the individual articles retain the proxy code, thus enabling users to reach the articles from off campus through the usual authentication procedures.

Many periodical databases, notably Ebsco and Gale Cengage, offer 'Search Alerts' whereby a search strategy can be saved and captured as an RSS feed. All of the same problems (and possible solution) that 'journal alerts' have apply here as well: users must remove the proxy parts of the feed URL in order for a feed reader to properly interpret the code.

With a little bit of initial effort, RSS feeds can be an effective way of keeping current with specific publications and/or customized search topics. And for those who are willing to invest some extra effort, there are services such as Yahoo! Pipes that ennable the creation of
'mash-ups' of multiple RSS feeds into a single feed. There is a truely excellent post about this using Pipes on the Library TechTalk blog, by Michael Shochet, a Systems/Reference Librarian at the University of Baltimore.

Technical Issues: Scary Browser Warnings When Accessing Databases

All internet browsers are increasingly conscious of security challenges these days. They want to warn people who use their software of any possible scams like phishing schemes (wherein a crook tries to steal sensitive information from you by creating a fake website that pretends to be a legitimate one). But in an attempt to protect internet users from cyber-thieves, browser developers have ended up frightening nice, unsuspecting library users who only want to do a bit of online research!

How? Well, many security warnings are based on the browser spotting a mismatch of a known URL (web address) or a website's recognized secure (SSL) certificate. This looks like a evil phishing masquerade to the browser software, but--in the case of library databases--is completely innocent. Libraries authenticate users by sending them through a proxy server. A proxy server redirects the user, verifying their bona fides (when they not at a campus IP) before sending them into the database. To do this, the shortcut/link is altered.

As an example, the base URL for Ebsco's Academic Search Complete is http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?authtype=ip,uid&profile=asp

but if you write this for our proxy server, it looks like http://0-search.ebscohost.com.library.law.suffolk.edu/login.aspx?authtype=ip,uid&profile=asp

There are extra bits to the address. In other words, there is a mismatch. This causes warning triggers in some browsers in some situations. We at Sawyer Library see this problem most often with Firefox.

What sometimes happens is that you click on a link at our Library database lists or other resource links and all of a sudden you get a scary screen:

Understandably, when a browser offers a button that says "Get Me Out of Here!" many people are going to click it. But in the case of using our library links to get to a database, this is not the right choice. (Not if you really want to do some research!) Instead, look for the bottom option on the error message that reads "I Understand the Risks"

When you click that option, the area expands underneath the statement. It says that if "you understand what's going on," you can add an exception that gives the browser permission to make the connection. See below:


The thing to do is to click the button to add an exception for connecting to the database. This brings up yet another scary screen. The URL is indicated, and the option at the bottom is to "Confirm Security Exception."


Click that button, making sure that the little box is clicked that says "Permanently Store This Exception." (That will keep you from having to go through this procedure again for this database.)

Since most libraries use proxy servers, other libraries have experienced similar issues. For example, to see this page from Bowling Green State University's Librarie. And here's a support blog entry from Firefox on the "This Connection is Untrusted" error that has a bit more information on this message.

To state the obvious, there are times when you do not want to go to an untrusted site--like when you receive an email purporting to be from your bank, and it instructs you to verify your password! But the Sawyer Library links to our databases can be trusted. Do not fear! Confirm the exception. Login in with your name and Suffolk ID if you are off-campus. And Happy Research!