Business Source Premier
via EBSCOhost (Business Searching Interface)
- Introduction
- Access to Business Source Premier
- Getting started
- Searching
- Search results
- Printing, saving and emailing articles
- Help
- Academic Liaison Librarian: Sue Cumberpatch
Introduction
Business Source Premier, is a major business research database, providing the full text of more than 2,300 journals, including over 1,100 peer-reviewed business publications. This includes the Harvard Business Review back to the first issue in 1922, and most other journals included back to 1965. The database also includes other sources of full text information such as country economic reports from the EIU, market research reports, industry reports, country reports, SWOT analyses and detailed company profiles for the world's 10,000 largest companies. The database is updated daily.
Access to Business Source Premier
BSP may be searched from any supported computer on campus. All databases at York are accessible via MetaLib
- Find MetaLib from the University homepage: follow either Student home| Library | MetaLib gateway or Staff home | Library | MetaLib gateway
or
- Go directly to MetaLib at http://metalib.york.ac.uk
When you get into MetaLib, choose the Find Database tab. Locate Business Source Premier (EBSCO)from the alphabetical list of databases and click on the title link.
To access BSP from non-campus network machines, you have two options:
- Either click on the login link from the first screen of BSP, and login with your University of York network username and password
- Or set your PC's proxy settings as described on the following Web page, then go to MetaLib as described above.
Getting started
There are two interfaces to BSP. This guide will deal with the Business Searching Interface, which is the default interface when you access BSP from MetaLib.
Searching
There is a Basic search screen, but the default is the Advanced search screen, part of which is shown below:
As you will see, there are many options for expanding or refining your search. The most simple way to search would be to enter your subject terms into the search boxes and search all the text in the database, for example:
This would produce far too many results for you to handle, and the majority would not be specific to what you want. So you need to develop a search strategy which will give you the best results possible. Here are things to consider and use in such a strategy:
Boolean Operators
Boolean operators can be used to combine terms either to broaden or to focus the scope of your search. These operators can be selected form the drop-down box to the left of each search line:
| AND | Both terms will appear in the record (travel and europe) | 
|
| OR | Either word appears in the record (college or university) | |
| NOT | The second term will be excluded (television not cable) N.B. Use NOT with care as this may also discard useful results |
Wildcard and Truncation symbols
These can be used to broaden your search term to include variant spellings and plural forms. In the BSP database:
| * | Use an asterisk truncation character to expand a word stem by an unlimited amount of characters, e.g. comput* will find computer, computers, computing, etc. |
| ? | Use a question mark wildcard character to replace 1 character, e.g. organi?ation will find organisation, organization |
Search fields
Specifying a particular field for the word or term will be particularly useful if you want to search for things like company entities or Ticker symbols. Some of the search fields are shown here:
| Indexes to some of these fields can help you determine the best terms to use. Click on the Indexes link in the Browse panel on the right of the screen, to search for terms; for example, searching for ikea in the Company entity index produces a list including IKEA (COMPANY). |
Limit results to
The Limit results to panel at the bottom of the main search screen includes several options for limiting your search, to get results which are more specific to your requirements.
The Published Date limit function is particularly useful.
Search results
The results of your search will be displayed as a list of brief reference details of each article.
Click on the HTML Full Text, Linked Full Text or PDF Full Text links to see the full text of an article. If you see the 
link it means the title may be available electronically and will link to the host site, but may alternatively connect to the Library catalogue so you can find out if a print copy is available at York.
Printing, saving and emailing articles
Printing articles from BSP is straightforward - when you have the full text of an article on the screen, just click on the on-screen Print icon.
Saving is also simple, just click on the Save icon, then save the article as an HTML or PDF file on your PC (drive H: on campus network PCs).
To email the full text of an article, click on the email icon then email the file to yourself as an attachment.
To print, save or email your list of references:
- Add the items to your folder by clicking on the Add link under the folder icon next to the titles you wish to save.
- Click on Folder at the top of the screen
- Click on the relevant button from the following:
Help
The Help link is always available at the top of the BSP screen, for guidance on most features. The Management Studies Academic Liaison Librarian, Sue Cumberpatch, can also help. Or ask for help at the Enquiry Desk on the ground floor of the Library.
