Another day another workshop. This time it was Business Information on the Internet organised by TFPL on September 27th, and attended by information professionals from the private, academic and banking sector. As usual I asked them to come up with a group Top 10 Sites and Tips. If you are loosing track of the top 10s that have been popping up on this blog, I shall be compiling two combined lists in December: one for business and market research, and the second for search tips.

This is the order in which the participants nominated the sites:

1. Resource Shelf – http://www.resourceshelf.com/ – “where dedicated librarians and researchers share the results of their directed (and occasionally quirky) web searches for resources and information. The editorial team is headed by Gary Price and Shirl Kennedy. Use the search option to hunt through the archives for recommended sites on a topic, and subscribe to the RSS feed to keep up with the latest additions to the ‘shelf’.
2. Google – http://www.google.com/, http://www.google.co.uk/ . It can be temperamental and it doesn’t always do what it says on the tin, but for much of the time Google still comes up with the goods. Make sure that you are using the advanced search features for example file formats searches, limit by domain, numeric range search, synonym search etc. and that you are using the right ‘bit’, for example News, Blogsearch, Google Books.
3. Yahoo Finance – http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/ . Good starting point for companies listed on the UK stock exchange and a selection of other countries stock exchanges. For some markets there are free, daily historical share prices for 10 – 15 years (varies depending on the country and exchange) and free intraday charts. If you are into share price data and analysis click on the Technical Charts and you can play around with wonders such as Bollinger Bands.
4. Google and Yahoo News for the last thirty days of news stories. Go to Google or Yahoo and click on the News options. Both have good international, national and local coverage, and offer alerting services. Google recently launched a Google News Archive service going back 200 years for some story lines and publications. (Many of the articles are priced). Also try Ask (http://www.ask.co.uk/ or http://www.ask.com/) and Accoona (http://www.accoona.com/)
5. Alacrawiki Spotlights – http://www.alacrawiki.com/ . Click on the Alacra Spotlights link in the top left hand corner of the screen for access to overviews of key resources on industry sectors. Great for bringing yourself up to speed on industry specific sites and as introduction to sectors that are new to you. Although this is a wiki, the Spotlights area is locked so that only Alacra editors can change the content of the pages in this section.
6. Intute – http://www.intute.ac.uk/. The Resource Discovery Network is dead – long live Intute. Do not be put off by the academic address. This is an excellent starting point for evaluated, quality sites on a wide range of subjects and industries. If you are looking specifically for business information, these can now be found under http://www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/business/.
7. FT.com – http://www.ft.com/ . What can one say? “No FT – no comment according to the advert strapline. To get the most out of this site you will need to subscribe, that is pay money. Level 1 costs £98.99 a year and gives you access to subscriber-only FT content and tools including personalised news alerts, FT analysis and the 5-year archive. Level 2 costs £200 a year and gives you Level 1 access plus access to 500 global press sources and financial data on about 18,000 companies worldwide.
8. PWC EdgarScan – http://edgarscan.pwc.com/ (click on the EdgarScan link). Repackages the US official SEC filings data and makes it easier to search and identify relevant official documents from US listed companies. There is a wide range of search, display, export and analysis options, all of which are free of charge.
9. Freepint Newsletter + Bar – http://www.freepint.com/ . Fortnightly newsletter available on the web and by email covering a range of information related issues and subjects. The “bar is a web based discussion area where you can ask for help with tricky questions. But “Where’s the free beer? asked one workshop participant.
10. Marketresearch.com – http://www.marketsresearch.com/. A good starting point for pay as you go market research reports. Also try Mindbranch (http://www.mindbranch.com/) and Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/ . You may find that publishers do not always supply the whole of their catalogue to these content aggregators or that the reports are embargoed for varying periods of time. If you find an interesting report via one of these aggregators, double check with the original publisher to see if there is a more relevant or up to date report available direct from them.