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Proquest ABI/Inform Collection

A guide to all aspects of ABI/INFORM Collection including content, searching, and viewing results on the ProQuest platform.

Data & Reports Search Tips

Use Data & Reports to search for reports and other published materials with data on companies, industries, and markets. Please see the Browse section of this guide for additional information on using another search method for locating this information.

1. Data & Reports Search Form and Pull-down Menu

Boolean and proximity operators are supported. The default is to search for ALL terms entered. Separate terms with OR to find any of the terms. To search for an exact phrase, use "quotation marks" around your search.

When running a search, the search default from the pull-down menu is either set to Anywhere or Anywhere except full text. Anywheret searches the full bibliographic record (all indexed fields) including the ProQuest full text. Anywhere except full text searches the full bibliographic record, but does NOT include a search of the ProQuest full text.

2. Data/Report Types To Include

Company Research includes Company Profiles, Annual Reports, and Articles (profiles/case studies).

Company Profiles

Hoover’s Company Records provide access to over 44,000 company overviews, histories, officers and board members, competitors, product and operations information and more. IntelliDocs technology embeds links to corporate profiles within articles for seamless access.

Annual Reports

Analyze balance sheets and income statements with over 7,000 annual reports from nearly 1,000 leading North American companies. 

Articles

Journal articles containing company and annual report data including company profiles and case studies.

Market Research includes Industry Reports, Market Reports, and Articles.

Industry Reports

Features new Industry Reports from BMI (Business Monitor International) delivering regional insights, SWOT analyses, market trends, forecasts, and more. The Snapshots Series adds access to over 9,000 more reports spanning 43 industries in 40 countries.

Market Reports

Critical background for strategic planning initiatives with access to thousands of market research articles and hundreds of reports from top-notch resources—including FirstResearch as well as Just Series, a major publisher of SWOT analyses and business research for food, beverage, auto, and style markets.

Articles

Journal articles containing industry and market report data.

3. Date Range

The Date range limit defaults to search all dates. Other options include Last 7 days, Last 30 days, Last 3 months, Last 12 months, Last 3 years, On this date, After this date, Before this date, and Specific date range.  

4. Database Specific Limits and Fields

Company/Organization, Location, and Industry are part of the subject field search. They are defined as types of subjects and can be located by searching the subject field, but also are indexed separately and in addition to the subject as specific subject types. When a subject from a record happens to be a company or organization, a location, or industry, you will find a separate indexed subject field for these types. Subjects are also known as descriptors, subject headings, controlled vocabulary and sometimes classification terms. The subjects in ABI/INFORM are pulled from the ProQuest Thesaurus. To learn more about searching for subjects in the thesaurus, please see the Searchable Fields section of this guide. Each of these search options also include a look up link to the browsable index for this field. Use the look up link next to the search box to browse the subject types and add them to your search. To learn more about the look up feature, please visit the Searchable Fields section of this guide.
 
Market Segment is defined as a specific subset of the population. If you want to specify that your search results contain information on the market segment, use the look up link next to the field to browse the available market segments. Select the appropriate market segments and the keywords will be added to your search.
 
5. Display Options
 
 

The Sort results by menu controls the sort order of the records that appear in the results page. Sort by relevance, date (oldest first), or date (most recent first). Relevance is determined by an algorithm that factors in the number of times your search terms appear in the record as well where in the record your search terms appear.

Items per page is used to select how many results will display on the results page. Choose from 10, 20, 50, or 100 items.

Duplicates can appear in ProQuest if the item is indexed in more than one database or collection. The default behavior is to suppress the duplicate, however, if you would like the duplicate items to appear in the results, select to include duplicate documents.

 

Data & Reports

If you are experiencing problems with our guides and databases, please contact ProfessorJanet S. Ward, jward@limestone.edu, Assistant Director of the Library and Web Services Librarian.