Types of business information

Business information is concerned with companies, theories, markets, trade, governments, finance and management. As you will learn in your university studies, there are many different types of business information.

Formats vary widely, for example book chapters, newspaper articles, magazine articles, academic journal articles, Facebook postings, Tweets, blogs, etc. 

Business is a fascinating area of study, as developments can take place daily or have their origins in the century before last.

Take a look at the publication cycle showing the development of published information through time.

Formats of business information

The same business information may be found in different formats. For example, you and a friend might read the same newspaper article, but you found it in the paper copy while she found it online. This will have impact on how you reference the article and may also influence how you evaluate its significance.

Evaluating information

A skill you need to develop at university is information literacy. The ability to locate, evaluate, and use the right information for the right purpose will also be important in your future work.

When you search for information, you are going to find lots of it ... but is it accurate and reliable? Library databases contain peer reviewed articles, which have been approved by the academic community, whereas sources on the internet may not be accurate or reliable. You will have to determine this for yourself, and you can use the following principles as a guide.  Remember that different criteria will be more or less important depending on your situation or need.

Searching business information online

Use the Library's business databases, rather than Google, as the main source of information for your business research. Remember that there are sometimes limitations in the currency and reliability of information you can find while searching on the web.

In this section we will introduce you to three core business databases: Business Source Premier, Australia/New Zealand Reference Centre, and Newztext Plus. Learning the features of these databases will help you with future searching, and make you aware of the range of features and information sources they offer. Before you start searching there are things to consider:

• Do you need academic or popular material?
• What keywords will you use? Think of similar words (synonyms) and related terms. Are there phrases? TIP: Use your essay question as a starting point for identifying keywords and phrases.
• Do you need to limit by geography, e.g. New Zealand, Auckland?
• Is date of publication important? Are you looking for historical or current material?

Working with results

Refining your search 

If your search needs to be refined to get fewer results or expanded to get more, there are a number of ways of doing this.

When searching the databases you can combine your search words and phrases. Although database search screens may look different, most of them work using the Boolean Operators AND, OR, and NOT.

If the results are not what you want, you might need to expand or narrow your search.

• Try Expanding your search if you are not getting enough relevant results.
• Or Narrowing your search if you are getting too many results.

Finding Full-text

In many cases the article will be available in pdf or html format directly from the database you are searching. If the article is not available in full text from the database there are a number of options to find the full text. 

In a database like Newztext Plus it is possible some articles will not be available from the database in full text and you may need to locate a print copy of the magazine or newspaper. For more help use this handy guide, Finding NZ business magazines and newspapers in the Library.

Test yourself

Some questions may have more than one correct answer, choose the best answer.