ProQuest ABI/INFORM Complete™ Provides Gateway for Global Economic Crisis Research
ProQuest is adding new index terms and content to ABI/INFORM Complete<sup><small>™</sup></small> that will streamline research of such emerging business trends as the global economic crisis. ABI/INFORM Complete provides a digital gateway to more than 4,000 business journals, and will include new content from Incisive Media, Business Monitor International, and Economist Intelligence Unit. Manual indexing by a team of editors makes ABI/INFORM’s search results “smart,” returning content that goes beyond the user’s specific search terms, to directly and quickly expose the most relevant information.
“For over 35 years, ABI/INFORM Complete has empowered librarians to deliver a genuine value-add to business researchers by uncovering data that’s often not exposed by a general search engine,” said Jeff Wilensky, vice president of publishing for ProQuest. “Our evolving index terms and smart use of search technology give researchers an edge in surfacing results. ProQuest takes the heavy-lifting of refining search results off the user, so researchers quickly and easily find the content they want to use.”
ABI/INFORM vocabulary managers monitor new and emerging business trends, linking relevant content to words and phrases that business researchers might search. The result is a constantly evolving vocabulary that employs natural language to make the search process easy and intuitive. This process, in combination with our Smart Search technology, allows ABI/INFORM Complete to perform content searches, rather than just keyword searches that users find with open Web searching. As a result, searchers seamlessly uncover more content that’s unique and insightful. For example, in 2001, vocabulary terms were added to support research of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Terms like airline security, sectarian violence, suicide bombings, and weapons of mass destruction captured the essence of hundreds of articles added to the database immediately after the attacks. A researcher entering any of those phrases would retrieve relevant, focused articles every time.
The ABI/INFORM Complete vocabulary, already known for its strength in business and economic terms, continues to grow with the addition of new terms pertinent to the U.S. economic crisis, enabling libraries to streamline research on one of the most studied topics in business research today. Further, the new terms are retrospectively indexed to surface relevant archival content– providing an opportunity to compare similar events throughout history with a single search. The new terms include American Recovery & Reinvestment Act 2009-US, Credit default swaps, Emergency Economic Stabilization Act 2008-US, food prices, jet fuel prices, and auction rate securities, among others. Vocabulary managers add an average of 150 terms annually, continuously evolving the ABI/INFORM Complete controlled vocabulary to reflect current business trends and meet the needs of researchers.
New content has also been added to ABI/INFORM Complete through ProQuest’s agreement with Incisive Media, a leading business publisher on subjects that include Risk Management, Finance, Insurance, Law, Accounting, Real Estate, Banking, and IT/Computing. The agreement will make 65 Incisive journals available online through ProQuest. In addition to new sources of content, ABI/INFORM Complete continues to expand beyond journal articles to include business cases, SWOT analyses, industry reports CEO profiles, as well as market research of all kinds, including trends and forecasts. The new content enriches the breadth of search results, making in-depth research easier and more efficient. Agreements just signed with Business Monitor International (BMI) and the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) will add nearly 700 country-focused reports to ABI/INFORM Complete.
ProQuest is combining these new index terms, content, and article types with platform technology that empowers users in new ways. Features such as ProQuest Smart Search, the ProQuest Search Widget, Email Alerting Service, My Research, Reference Linking and RSS Feeds allow users to leverage the power of Web technology to reduce search time and improve the use of content.
For more information on ABI/INFORM Complete or any ProQuest research product, visit www.proquest.com.
About ProQuest
ProQuest creates specialized information resources and technologies that propel successful research, discovery, and lifelong learning. A global leader in serving libraries of all types, ProQuest offers the expertise of such respected brands as Chadwyck-Healey™, UMI®, SIRS®, and eLibrary®. With Serials Solutions®, Ulrich's™, RefWorks®, COS™, Dialog® and now Bowker® part of the ProQuest brand family, the company supports the breadth of the information community with innovative discovery solutions that power the business of books and the best in research experience.
More than a content provider or aggregator, ProQuest is an information partner, creating indispensable research solutions that connect people and information. Through innovative, user-centered discovery technology, ProQuest offers billions of pages of global content that includes historical newspapers, dissertations, and uniquely relevant resources for researchers of any age and sophistication—including content not likely to be digitized by others. Inspired by its customers and their end users, ProQuest is working toward a future that blends information accessibility with community to further enhance learning and encourage lifelong enrichment.
For more information, visit www.proquest.com or the ProQuest parent company website, www.cig.com.