Finding trade journal articles in Business Source Premier Olivia Olivares James W. Miller Library

Trade journals and magazines Written by industry insiders for other insiders. Feature articles with in-depth coverage and analysis of issues and trends in a particular industry that would be of interest primarily to persons working in that industry. As sources of information for business researchers, trade journals are far better and preferable to general-interest news magazines like Time or U.S. News, and more likely to contain useful, industry-specific information than business news magazines like Business Week or Fortune. The following is a guide to locating trade journal articles in Business Source Premier. Other business databases with significant business and trade journal coverage include ABI/Inform and Lexis-Nexis Academic.

There are a number of ways to search for trade journal articles in BSP. All depend on whether you’re looking for trade journal articles about a particular company, an industry, or a country.

To search for trade journal articles on a particular company: click the down arrow in the pulldown menu marked “Select a Field,” and choose “CO Company Entity.”

For example: if you’re looking for trade journal articles about Dell, the computer manufacturer, you might enter “dell” in the search interface, then specify “CO Company Entity” in the pulldown menu.

The search results page lists 6552 results for Dell. Note that the articles all include Dell Computer Corp. as a subject heading.

On the left side of the screen, there’s an option to limit the search results by document type.

When you click “Trade Publications” in the Source Types menu, the rest of the screen will gray out. After that, you can click the green “Update” button to limit your search results to articles published in trade journals.

The search results are now reduced to 2878 articles, rather than 6552, and all articles are from journals written for industry insiders. Titles include Audiotex Update, TWICE: This Week in Consumer Electronics, and New Media Age.

Note that the pulldown menu in the initial search interface also gives you the option of searching by NAICS number. For more on the NAICS number and where to find it, review the company research tutorial.

Questions? Please contact: Olivia Olivares, business research specialist James W. Miller Library Saint Cloud State University (320)