Uses

• To locate current and archived business news
• To consolidate business news from various U.S. regions into one database
• To allow users to search various news sources at once

Coverage and Scope

Regional Business News covers about 75 publications that include business news from rural and metropolitan areas of the U.S. The types of publications include:

• Newswires
• Newspapers
• Business journals

Dates of coverage vary considerably among the publications, and not all publications are covered through the present day. Coverage for some publications goes back to the early 1990s, other publications, such as daily newspapers, only have archives for a few months in the past. Some publications have full text, some only citations, and some a combination of both citations and full text.

Some questions you should be able to answer after this tutorial:

1. How can I find out the coverage dates for particular publications?
2. How can I receive search alerts from Regional Business News?

Two Main Methods of Searching

Keyword searching

• Basic: Enter terms into a field
• Advanced: There are three search fields, and you can choose to search in titles of articles, all the text in articles, by geographic location, etc.

Publication browsing

• Clicking on the "Publications" button will allow you to browse through publications indexed by the database
• Once you select a journal, you can search articles or citations within just that journal

Search tips

Boolean operators

Boolean operators link terms together and provide ways to narrow (limit) or broaden (expand) your search

AND narrows a search: Searching for "gas prices" AND "Texas " will find only articles that have both terms, excluding those that include only one of the terms

OR broadens a search: Searching for "gas prices" OR "Texas " will find articles that have either of these terms

NOT narrows a search: Searching for "gas prices" NOT "Katrina" will find articles that contain "gas prices" but not "Katrina"

These terms can also be grouped with parentheses to make a search more specific to your needs: e.g. (Katrina OR Rita) AND (gas NOT Louisiana )

Examples of Searchable Fields

AB - Word from abstract or Author Supplied Abstract e.g. AB "Enron"  

DE - Performs an exact search for subject headings and author-supplied keywords describing an article. e.g. DE "stock market"  

CS - Cover Story Performs an exact search for the value "Y" indicating that the article is a cover story. e.g. CS Y along with other search terms like DE oil ("CS oil" wouldn't work)  

PG - Number of Pages Performs an exact numeric search for an article's page length. e.g. PG > 5

(EBSCOHost--complete list available in RBN Database Help)

Wildcards : represented by the question mark symbol (?)
"?" symbol replaces a character in a word, thus retrieving several possible letter combinations

e.g. a search for ne?t will find results containing "next" and "nest" and "newt," etc.
e.g. wom?n will find results containing terms "woman," "women," etc. (EBSCOHost)

Truncation : represented by asterisk symbol (*)
"*" symbol, when placed at the end of a word, will replace any number of letters

e.g. a search for "indust*" will find results containing words "industry," "industries," "industrial," "industrialization," etc.

Saving a search and receiving alerts

To save a search:

• Click on Search Histories/Alerts tab
• Click on "Save Searches/Alerts" link
• Click on "Create a Charge Back Account" link if you don't have an EBSCO account and follow the steps. (It only takes a few minutes). If you already have an account, just sign in. A yellow banner will appear over the EBSCO logo
• You can name your search, write a brief description of it, and save it permanently, for 24 hours, or as an alert

If you save as an alert:

• What "alert" means is that the database will run your search for you regularly and send you updated results
• When you choose to save a search as an alert, you will be directed to a new window
• Use pull down menus to choose:
  1. how often you want to receive alerts
  2. how far in the past you want the search to extend (i.e. Do you want all the articles published in the previous month, two months, etc. since your last alert?)
  3. how long you want your alert to run for (a month? a year?)
• Enter your email address(es) and preferences, and hit "Save"

Strengths and weaknesses of Regional Business News

Strengths

• Business news from many sources that would be hard to track down individually
• Includes news not covered in major papers like New York Times and Wall Street Journal
• Simple basic and advanced search interface
• Ability to save and retrieve searches and alerts

Weaknesses

• Not as many limiters and expanders as other EBSCO databases
• Limited coverage of many publications
• No thesaurus that that allows users to pick and choose subject terms
• Some searchable fields can be slightly confusing (i.e. Cover Story)