Part of creating a business plan is to conduct market research to gain a better understanding of both your customer base and your competitors. The Library subscribes to ABI/INFORM Collection, which contains some of the world's best leading business research. This database provides access to thousands of scholarly journals, trade publications, newspapers, reports, standards and practice guidelines, and much more.
Studies continually demonstrate a correlation between improved grades and library usage, so be sure to use the suggested research strategies provided on this page.
Select the database ABI/INFORM Collection from the Start Here page of this guide. Once in the database, use the large search box to enter keywords and phrases to search for information related to best practices, quality management, and performance management as they relate to your chosen business.
For example, search the phrase "best practices" microbrewery . Placing quotation marks around the words "best practices" tells the database to search those words together as a phrase:
Here is an example of a possible search result:
Notice on the left side of the results page that searches can be refined in many ways. To limit your results to company reports, select Reports within the Source Type field.
Below is a report of a company profile and SWOT analysis. This result was retrieved after searching "best practices" microbrewery and limiting results to reports only:
Additional searches may include:
Add an asterisk (*) to the end of the word microbrew. The database will retrieve results that include every word that begins with the letters you entered (i.e., microbrew, microbrewery, microbreweries).
