Creating Quality Presentations

Do you have a presentation due for a business class project (or any other project, for that matter)?  Are you having a tough time designing a PowerPoint presentation that looks professional?  Are you struggling to find a way to add pizzazz to your topic?

There’s help available in Academic Search Premier, a database that has hundreds of articles on presentations.  There are articles with advice on choosing the best colors and font sizes, finding professional-quality stock images, using the 90-second rule, appropriate use of video, etc.

One quick way to find these articles is to do a subject search for business presentations.  Use the link for Academic Search Premier (below) and enter business presentations as a subject (see the screenshot below…you can limit to full text articles by putting a check in that box):

 Academic Search Premier (All Campuses)
on campus  |  off campus

By the way, if you’d like to see articles about speaking in public, use public speaking as a subject search.

Good luck!

NEW DATABASE! Global Road Warrior

The library has purchased access to a fabulous new database: Global Road Warrior. Focused on countries and their cultures, this database is an excellent tool for looking up points of interest, travel essentials, business culture for women, and demographics. There are also maps and images!

Global Road Warrior (Charlotte, No. Miami, Providence Campuses)

on campus |  off campus

eBook – The American History Cookbook

The American History Cookbook by Mark Zanger covers a wide range of American history cookery from the pre-colonial to school lunches.  Many of the recipes were selected from historical cookbooks with the intention to illuminate techniques used by the people of the time, and thus history.  The book is arranged chronologically by time periods (50 Chapters in total) and each chapter opens with a brief historical background then gives a typical recipe of that period.   The recipes include detailed instructions on how to prepare the dish authentically with instructions for substitutes for hard to find ingredients and difficult techniques.

The American History Cookbook is available as an eBook through Greenwood Digital Collection database.  To access this resource go to the library homepage, select databases, then scroll down to Greenwood Digital Collection and choose your location (either on or off campus).  Once you are in the database, click on “American History” subject heading to expand your options, then expand “American History (General)” and you’ll see The American History Cookbook.

Employment Articles in Business Source Complete

Looking for a job?  Did you know that you can use the library databases to find articles that offer guidance in your job search?

Here are three recent articles that can be accessed though the Business Source Complete database:

Title:  How to Land a Job in an Economic Downturn
Author: Thompson, Kimberly
Source:  Phi Kappa Phi Forum; Spring2009, Vol. 89 Issue 1, p26-27, 2p

Title:  Writing a Recession-Proof Resume
Author:  Hosking, Rob
Source:  Office Pro; Apr2009, Vol. 69 Issue 3, p5-5

Title:  The Interview That’ll Bag a Job
Author:  Needleman, Sarah, E.
Source:  Wall Street Journal – Eastern Edition; 4/14/2009, Vol. 253 Issue 86, pD4

You can find these in Business Source Complete by searching the title and author from each article, or you can find them by using these related job hunting subjects:

EMPLOYMENT interviewing
ENTRY-level employment
JOB hunting
RESUMES (Employment)

To access the Business Source Complete database, go to the library’s website:
http://library.jwu.edu/

…then click on Databases
…then scroll down until you see Business Source Complete (Business Source Premier) in the alphabetical listing.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask…

- by using the instant message feature (meebo) in the upper-right pane of this blog.

- by phone:  305-892-7043

- or stop by, we’re happy to help.

Greenwood Digital Collection

This recent addition to our databases has over 100 e-book titles on topics that range from the arts to women’s studies.  The collection can be browsed by title, subject or author.  You can also search the collection by keyword (to search the full text within the books), title, author and other fields.

There’s a Quick Search feature at the top of every page in this resource, but most users will find that the Advanced Search offers more robust and accurate searching.  The resource also has the American Heritage College Dictionary built into it for looking up definitions without leaving the collection.

Here are a few Greenwood titles that relate to some of the majors here at JWU:

BUSINESS
Building High-Performance People and Organizations
The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Successful Leadership
Global Business Etiquette Marketing in the 21st Century
Women in Business: The Changing Face of Leadership

CRIMINAL JUSTICE
Battleground: Criminal Justice
Crimes and Trials of the Century
The Crime Junkie’s Guide to Criminal Law
Eco-Terrorism: Radical Environmental and Animal Liberation Movements
Offender Profiling in the Courtroom: The Use and Abuse of Expert Witness Testimony

CULINARY
The American History Cookbook
American Indian Food
The Business of Wine: An Encyclopedia
Controversies in Food and Nutrition
Food Culture in France (there are several other “Food Culture” titles featuring other countries)

FASHION
Fashion and Costume in American Popular Culture: A Reference Guide

HOSPITALITY
The Business of Entertainment
The Business of Sports
Encyclopedia of Sports in America
Entertaining from Ancient Rome to the Super Bowl

To access the Greenwood Digital Collection, go to the Databases section of our site, and scroll down to “G” in the alphabetical listings:

http://library.jwu.edu/research/databases/az.htm

Using the Content Specific Search form in LexisNexis

In my last post about LexisNexis, I talked about using the General Search forms and the Power Search forms.  You may also use the Content Specific Search forms which give you more control than the Easy search form and are simpler to use than the Power Search.  The Content Specific Search is designed to search a particular type of information such as News or Business.

Let’s go through an example.  When you enter the LexisNexis database, you will notice tabs at the top left of the screen.  Click on any of the tabs to utilize the Content Specific Search forms.  For instance, you need to search trade journals on the government regulation of the financial industry.  Select the News tab and enter the words in the search box just as you would on the other search forms.  You can either use the Natural Language setting, or Terms and Connectors setting.  If you are comfortable using Boolean search strategies such as “and”, “or”, and “not”, use the Terms and Connectors setting as you would when using the Power Search form.  In this case, our search phrase is “government regulation of the financial industry” and we are under the Natural Language setting.   Next we will add index terms, which are listed by category, by expanding the options under “Add index terms”.  You can select up to ten terms to add to your search.  Lets add to our search “Banking and Finance” under the Industry category; “Business Forecasts” and “Business Operations” under the Subject or Section category; and “United States” under the Region category.  Next, we will select a source for our search by choosing one from the Sources drop-down list.  In this search, we will choose “Business News Publications” from the drop-down list.   The last step is to choose a date range for our search.  A good range for our topic is the “previous 3 months”.  Finally, click on the search button located to the right of the search box to run our search.

This search yielded too many results, but we still have options to limit our results.  Since we need trade journals for our sources, we can select “Industry Trade Press” under the groups on the left hand side of the screen.  Now our results are all from industry trade journals and specifically address government regulation of the recent bailouts, executive compensation, legislation, etc.

I hope have you enjoyed this brief tutorial about using the Content Specific Search form in LexisNexis.  Please feel free to leave any comments or questions.

Emerging Opportunities for “Green” Wine

“Going green” is becoming an increasingly hot topic in the wine industry. It appears that it also becoming more profitable for wine retail and this will certainly affect restauranteurs and consumers alike. According to a recent article in Cheers, retail opportunities for wine produced with sustainable practices is on the rise. Sarah Baisley, contributing editor of Cheers and the wine steward at Malibu Pavilions, states that “the public is beginning to believe that “healthier” can also taste good–the term “quality” is starting to be applied to wines produced by green methods.” This article provides evidence that there is increased market growth for these products. Read the article yourself! Follow the steps below to access the journal through the Culinary Arts Collection database:

1. Go to http://library.jwu.edu
2. Choose Databases
3. Scroll down to Culinary Arts Collection
4. Choose On Campus or Off Campus (enter name and barcode)
5. Type the keywords: green wine into the search box
6. Click on the article title: Green movement sprouts opportunity for wine & spirits.(Guide to Green Wines).

Book Highlight: Greentailing and Other Revolutions in Retail

The library has just purchased a new book title: Greentailing and Other Revolutions in Retail. This book examines green trends in the retailing business. “Greentailing” focuses on the growing demand for sustainable, organic, and environmentally conscious products and business practices. For anyone in or planning on going into the retail business, this book is definitely worth checking out!

Greentailing and other revolutions in retail / Neil Z. Stern, Willard N. Ander HF5429 .S734 2008

To find articles on “green” retailing, you can search the database, GreenFiles, on the JWU Library website at: http://library.jwu.edu > Databases >> Scroll to GreenFiles

Getting to Know LexisNexis

Many times students will use Academic Search Premier as their primary database when starting research due to its multi-disciplinary scope.  Our campus also subscribes to LexisNexis, another multi-discipline database that provides access to full-text news, business, and legal publications.  Apprehension of use by students may stem from the unfamiliar format that the database defaults to when accessed.  By learning how to navigate through the interface using a few tricks, students will have yet another powerful database to access for their research.

LexisNexis defaults to a “general search” form, which is geared toward a simple query and searches across the most popular content.  You may want to start your research here if you are not sure which sources to use. The “general search” automatically incorporates terms and connectors (Boolean operators such as “and” and “or”)   based on what was entered.  Simply type in a few words or short phrases that describes your topic, then click the search button. Using this feature will often yield hundreds of results.

The “power search” has many advantages, and I urge students to view the tutorials available on the left hand side of the screen to learn more. One main advantage of the “power search” is that you can choose between terms and connectors or natural language. Select terms and connectors to retrieve more specific information such as a relationship between the search words entered, comprehensive coverage of an issue, or specific information in a document. It is best to select natural language when the topic is more conceptual than specific or when a search is complex and you are uncertain which terms to use.

LexisNexis offers a variety of search options. At the top of the search page there are several category tabs, each designed to search a particular type of content.  There is a news tab which can be used to search within a specific source, the New York Times for example.  The legal tab allows you to search search within law review journals, federal and state cases or codes, tax law, and international legislation. Under the business tab you can  search for information such as corporate news, financial and business information for specific companies. Finally, use the people tab to search for biographical information about individuals using the biographical search form.

I’ve have just briefly touched on a few of the basic features of LexisNexis. I suggest that you experiment with some of the options I have discussed above to get familiar with LexisNexis, then take the tutorials. Over the next several weeks I will highlight specific features within LexisNexis. If there is a specific feature you would like me to discuss, please add a comment or question. LexisNexis is just another powerful tool the library offers that can empower you to effectively access the information you need to succeed in the academic and professional world.

Cybercrime Research: Keywords and Subject Headings in Academic Search Premier

Sometimes a term for a topic may have variations in how it is spelled out.  For example, “Cybercrime” shows up in various forms:

cybercrime
cyber-crime
cyber crime

In this brief tutorial, you’ll see how to see an easy way to use the word “or” to search these variations in one search, and you’ll see how to use subject terms in Academic Search Premier:

To access Academic Search Premier, go to our library site:

http://library.jwu.edu/

…and click on the “Databases” link.
…then click on “Academic Search Premier”

Starting out with keywords:

It may be useful to search all of the keyword variations to find what you need.  For a quick search, you could search cybercrime (and each variation) as a keyword in the title.  An easy way to do this in one step is to insert the word OR between your terms to enter them in the same search (and for phrases, it’s often beneficial to use quotation marks to keep your terms as phrases).

Here’s an example of how to use Academic Search Premier to find articles that contain cybercrime, cyber-crime or cyber crime in the title (of the article).  To search for articles with these keywords in the title, select “TI Title” in the dropdown box to the right.  See the example below; the terms and drop-down item have been underlined in red:

Revising your search with relevant subject terms:

After looking at your results, it may be useful to redo the search by using Subject Terms that are relevant to the topic.  Here are a few of them listed in Academic Search Premier:

COMPUTER crimes
COMPUTER crimes — Investigation
COMPUTER hackers
CREDIT card fraud
CYBERTERRORISM
IDENTITY theft
INFORMATION technology
INTERNET fraud

To search for articles by subject, choose “SU Subject Terms” in the dropdown box on the right:

 

Here are some additional subjects that you might consider.  You can search them individually (if they’re closely related to your main topic), or use them to narrow your search by adding them to the row below:

ACCESS control
COMPUTER security
COMPUTER viruses
CONFIDENTIAL business information
CRIME
CYBERSPACE
DATA protection
DATA security
GANGS
LAW
ORGANIZED crime
SWINDLERS & swindling
UNITED States. Dept. of Justice
UNITED States. Secret Service

 

Military & Government Collection:

Another database you may want to use for this topic is Military & Government Collection.  It comes from Ebsco, the same company that gives us Academic Search Premier, and you can use the same subjects listed above to find more articles on your topic.

Please note:
Subject terms used in one database often may not be the same in another, especially if the databases are from different vendors.  The best strategy in searching is to use keywords that relate to your topic, and then revise your search using relevant subject terms. 

Also, if you are ever in a database and don’t see “subject” as a searchable field, don’t stress out…some databases use the term “descriptors” or “topics” instead of “subject” as a searchable option.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask…

-by using the instant message feature (meebo) in the upper-right pane of this blog.

-by phone:  305-892-7043

-or stop by, we’re happy to help.