company research

At my last full time job as an academic librarian I visited about forty classes per semester. These were usually 20 - 30 minute lectures on performing some aspect of company research and which of the library's electronic resources would be the best fits for the assignment. We usually focused on what we termed the business triangle (see image below) and how the information they needed would most often come from three distinct sources.

 

About a year after I started this job, we began exploring collaboration with the career service office on campus. It turns out that the skills we were teaching the business students for performing their academic research was very similar to the skills that the students were not properly employing to prepare for job searching and interview prep. We began working with the staff in the career services office to teach these same skills to students both before and after career fairs, in hopes that they would be better prepared for the interviews. Going to a company's website is important, but should not be the only source of information to help prep you for your interview.

All of this was happening at a larger university with a very large collection of electronic resources for the students and faculty... but much of it can be duplicated by people who may not have access to such institutions. It is my intent to spend the next few weeks blogging about ways to gain access to this quality information from resources that are freely available to many through other means.

Most public libraries purchase electronic resources for the use of the residents of their community. While the number of resources would not compare, the variety of information is typically comparable. Additionally I have identified 20 states so far that make a suite of resources available to all residents of that state. When I have finished complying the list I will share it with additional tips.

States identified so far:

AR	IN	MT	PA
CA	KS	ND	TX
GA	MA	NJ	UT
HI	MI	NM	VA
IL	MS	OH	WA

BTW if you live in a state not listed that you know has a similar suite of resources please send me a comment.