Information Resources at Madison Public Library

Business Source Premier

If you’re a business owner/entrepreneur researching business trends, an investor researching a company, or a student doing a paper on business or economics, Business Source Premier is the perfect place for you to begin your search.

• What is Business Source Premier?
• How do I access Business Source Premier?
• How do I conduct a search?
• Are there examples?
• What's unique about searching Business Source Premier?

What is Business Source Premier?

This modern electronic resource has a wide variety of full-text popular business magazines, scholarly journals and trade publications. Covering such topics as management, accounting, marketing, HR, and finance, it includes full text for thousands of periodicals, including Business Week, American Banker, Forbes, Fortune, and The Economist.

How do I access Business Source Premier?

To connect to Business Source Premier, go to the Madison Public Library web page. By choosing Research > Databases > Business Source Premier from the Madison Public Library web page, you will be able to access the database from anywhere. Or, access the database here.

If you are using the database from home, you will need to enter your full library card number without the spaces.

How do I conduct a search?

Searching Business Resouce Center is like searching most EBSCOhost databases; choose from Basic, Advanced, and Visual.  For detailed information on how that works, visit Searching in EBSCOhost or ask a librarian for assistance.

Are there examples?

As with all Ebsco databases, searching can be as simple or as involved as you’d like it to be. For example, try simply typing Ice Cream into the basic search box and you’ll get thousands of results about the business of ice cream. Looking on the right and left of the center results box, you’ll see ways to effectively narrow your search, restricting by date, type of publication, full text, company, etc. To learn other ways to conduct an effective search, however, let’s look at what's unique about Business Source Premier.

What's unique about searching Business Source Premier?

• Company Profiles
  
  
  
  Use Company Profiles to obtain more information about a particular company. Click on Company Profiles (menu item located at the top of search page) and you’ll be brought to a spot where you can search by alphabet or enter a company name in the Browse search box.
  
  For example, enter Oscar Mayer into the Browse box. Click on Oscar Mayer Foods Corporation and get a brief abstract of the company’s business, NAICS number, etc. Try selecting the Datamonitor Report to get a complete company profile, with history, major products and services, key competitors and more.


• Thesaurus
  
  
  
  Use the Thesaurus to use the proper subject term for your search. Click on Thesaurus (menu item located at the top of search page) and you’ll be brought to a spot where you can browse Ebsco’s Business Thesaurus.
  
  For example, go to the Browsing search box (under top search box) and enter Management. Scrolling down, you’ll see the many search terms related to Management. For example, check the box next to Management—Employee Participation and then click Add at the top of the list. You’ll see that Management-Employee Participation has been added to the search box (DE means descriptors). From there, if you click Search, you’ll see only management results pertaining to Employee Participation
  
  At this point you can add more search terms for management or browse for other subjects. Be sure, however, before you add more, to click on and, or, or not. Using and, for example, will guarantee that every result after hitting Search will contain all your descriptors.
  
  And, as with all Ebsco databases, remember that you can effectively narrow and limit your search by using the items to the right and left of the center results box, restricting by date, type of publication, full text, company, etc.