Dear Colleague

Welcome to the first issue of Dialog Business & News Update. We are very pleased to offer this new resource designed especially for information professionals and knowledge workers in the business community. In addition to bringing you product and content news, search tips and other information specific to the Dialog and DataStar products, we will offer other items of interest from industry experts and colleagues.

Please take special note of the “call for contributors” section. Our goal is to make this newsletter relevant and valuable for you, so please send us your ideas and feedback. We look forward to hearing from you.

Deborah Stine
Business Specialist

Dialog NewsRoom: 11,000 Sources From Around the World

In 2005 Dialog NewsRoom on Dialog and DataStar increased its total number of sources to more than 11,000. Dialog NewsRoom is a continually updated database with news reporting aggregated from 130 countries around the world.

Content
Dialog NewsRoom’s 11,000 sources include newspapers, newswires, specialty newsletters, broadcast transcripts, trade media and scholarly journals, drawn from 130 countries in English and 13 other languages. More than 90 percent of the sources are active, with new reporting added shortly after first publication. Many of the sources are archived up to 30 years.

New Sources
New content includes sources covering geographic areas like the Ukraine, Pakistan, Bangladesh and former Soviet republics, and business, retail, nursing content and transcripts from NBC news shows. Additionally, Market News Service from Market News International, providing perspectives on long-term trends and comprehensive economic data, and international country-specific Riskwire, Viewswire and Executive Briefings reports from the Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) were added to NewsRoom. Click here to review specific titles.

Dialog NewsRoom Extends Archive

Each year Dialog and Dialog DataStar add databases containing the previous year's records to the Dialog NewsRoom archive. On Dialog DataStar, 2005 articles have been added to the NE05 database. NEWS contains both 2006 and 2005 stories until 31 March when it will contain only stories added since 1 January 2006. On the Dialog service, a new database was added (File 996) and years of coverage changed for existing databases (Files 989–995). The following table shows current coverage for each segment of Dialog NewsRoom. The change was made to ensure that the most recent data always displays first when searching more than one file (OneSearch). Review the list of archive databases.

Dialog				DataStar
File No.	Updates	Coverage		Label	Updates	Coverage
989	Continuous	Current 7 days		NEWS	Continuous	Jan 2005 to present
990	Continuous	Current 3-4 months		NE06	Continuous	Jan 2006 to present
991	Archive	2005		NE05	Archive	2005
992	Archive	2004		NE04	Archive	2004
993	Archive	2003		NE03	Archive	2003
994	Archive	2002		NE02	Archive	2002
995	Archive	2001		NE01	Archive	2001
996	Archive	2000		NE00	Archive	2000
				TRNE	Closed	ONTAP (Training)

Historical Financial Data for an Industry

MG Financial/Stock Statistics (File 546) provides five years of historical financial data for specified industries. There are over 600 industries covered by the database. The data includes such figures as Market Value and Volume, Income Statement, Earnings Information, Balance Sheet, Ratios, and Comparison to Market. The data is compiled from all of the companies within the database that are assigned to the industry's SIC code. Each report will state the number of companies that comprise the industry. Because the data is thoroughly indexed and tagged, it is possible to create reports that include just the data you want, sorted in a variety of ways. You can then copy the data into a spreadsheet or other application for further analysis. See the Bluesheet for more details.

DialogLink 5: Customized Business & News Reports

DialogLink 5 has made it even easier to create customized Word or Excel reports using your retrieved business and news data from Dialog. Complete your search, click Get Template from the Report Tab on the DialogLink 5 tab bar to download the template(s). Templates for Dun & Bradstreet, Piers Imports/Exports, NewsRoom, U.S. Company Directories, to name a few, are already created for you. Note: If you prefer, you can also create your own custom template.

The Need for Business Partnering in the Global Marketplace

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are an important part of every country’s economy. In Europe, according to Professor Ruth Taplin, Director of The Centre for Japanese and East Asian Studies and author/editor of numerous books and articles in the area of economics, “65% of European Gross Domestic Product (GDP) comes from small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), compared to 45% in the US.”

Read Professor Taplin’s article entitled “Innovation Business Partnering in Europe and the USA – Are European SMEs Losing the Battle?” The article discusses how European SMEs can compete with cheaper suppliers from the Asia Pacific, and with more technologically advanced offerings from the United States.

Guidelines from Professional Associations

Professional associations often provide standards and other information to guide professionals in their fields of interest. Read Recommended Best Business Practices for Opinion and Marketing Research, designed to help promote excellence in opinion and marketing research, written by the Marketing Research Association (MRA).

Call for Contributors

Participate in knowledge sharing with your colleagues interested in business/news-related topics. Share your story suggestions with us at support.dialog.com/enewsletters/contribute/.