One thing is certain about investing: uncertainty. Morningstar Investment Research Center products teach and inform everyday investors on how to make money with mutual funds, individual stocks and other investment vehicles. Lets look at three parts of the database...

- Mutual Fund Analysis - Over 28,000 mutual funds are covered. The depth of each fund covered is different, with large funds tending to get more commentary and analysis whereas smaller funds just get numerical analysis on return on investments, fees, management tenure and track record to help you further your research.

- Company Stock Profiles - Over 7,500 individual stocks are covered mostly of larger companies. Much of the research on any company contains an investing thesis of the company, valuation and risk commentary, along with strategy, management and stewardship of resources overviews and analysis.

Training Center – Here you will find informative investing tutorials on topics such as what is a mutual fund, exchange traded fund or (ETF), why diversification is good, and how to use the diversification X-Ray tool. Morningstar usually offers a database training session on their website on the first Thursday of the Month.

Today's quest: find a mutual fund or stock you would like to invest in using this database and obtain research on it. To view this and other CCPL Research Tools, click here.

Ferguson's Career Guidance - Practical and Useful

Ferguson's Career Guidance Center is a practical resource to help you find information about an occupation, getting or changing a job in that field and then excelling on the job. If your still trying to figure out what you want to do when you 'grow up' or are in the process of making career changes, SC Pathways website is probably the best product we have to help with that step. If, on the other hand, you know exactly what kind of work you want to do such as a job in the education or the medical field then Ferguson's Career Guidance Center is even a better resource.

The college section helps match up your education and abilities with the career you may be aiming for next in your life. There is information on picking a college, selecting your major, and setting goals to get there along with funding strategies for your education. The job hunting and workplace skills sections offer great advice. Many resources just provide sample cover letters and resumes, but this section goes into detail explaining what the purpose and reasons for using certain kinds of resumes and the overall goal explaining practical reasons and content that should be contained in a typical cover letter.

Overall Ferguson's Career Guidance Center offers practical advice for career decision making and job finding in easy to use form of encyclopedias, written guides and personal examples in various videos and essays. This website is recommended for people who have a fairly good idea of their own career goals and kinds of work they want to do.

CCPL Resource Tools News...

Value Line Research Center is now available to Charleston County Public Library (CCPL) card holders at home and at all branches. Previously, the product was only available at select branches. In the amount of time we have had the product, patrons have been using it at home for the first time and the response has been positive.

On the other hand, in the news category, the CCPL Books in Print database was not renewed. Gale has also lost the rights to add new issues of Consumer Reports and Consumer Reports Annual Buying guide to General OneFile and other sources.

Reference USA Website Re-Design

The Reference USA long awaited website refresh is here. The search interface is streamlined and relatively easy to use. The speed of searching is vastly improved. There are issues on lingering on content thou. For example, my wife is still listed at her old apartment (with maden name) before we got married and that was over a year ago since she last lived there. Companies such as Collecta are not listed. However, I do have to give Reference USA a break since the entire company is based on the work at home model. I do kind of wonder if they do postal address updates otherwise my wife's old address would not be listed in the database... Okay, I'm picky on content, but I just wanted to point out what I picked up on. Bottom line, the search interface to Reference USA database is a big improvement.

Reference Universe - Worth A Second Look

It is easy to overlook, but Reference Universe is vastly improved in content and searching. For example, a search on Irrigation was slow. Two years ago, this subject search allowed you enough time to 'go for a cup of coffee and come back to get results finally...' to now being WOW... I can say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and get 10 citations on "irrigation" before getting to the "cious" part of the word -- Reference Universe is FAST.

There is a higher level of detail in Reference Universe then the regular ibistro catalog for hard to answer questions using print resources and it even has a few electronic resources we have access to.

Database content...
- 20,000 works from print and e-resource form with table of contents and index citations, 100's recently added just in June alone....
- Prominent publsher with the books in our collection from Gale, Greenwood, Springer and others..
- Patrons stumble upon seredipitous/useful facts to what they are looking for...

Keys to searching the database well...
- Use the browse searching if your unsure how to search. It functions similiar to catalog subject search.
- Use of phrase searching is the main way to use the databae.
- Use of "and" or "or" boolean searching in a strict sense does not work -- think phrase searching.

Things to watch for while searching...
- Each result should be checked for a title availability searching in Ibistro. Due to ISBN linking, format, and edition problems e-resources/books we do have in the collection say (prior editions) to links in database might not show up in Ibistro eventhough it is on the shelf or available online.
- AccessScience/GVRL direct full-text links within the database recently went down... we are hoping to restore these soon.
- If a title sounds to scholary for a public library, we probably don't have it -- try ILL or CofC if this is what the patron wants and it seems there is NO alternative for the needed info...

Database Updates: PowerSearch, RefUSA and others...

Spring is gone, and Summer is here. There are a few new and upcoming changes to the Resource Tools listings on the ccpl.org website.

- PowerSearch is getting a website refresh, with much of the same standard search as norml with new window dressing. The PowerSearch trial version is currently the featured product on SC Discus.

- RefUSA is scheduled to get a website refresh this Summer with new user interface.

- Salem Press e-resources based on the Magill's Medical Guide and Milestone Documents in American History were added recently to the Resource Tools section of http://ccpl.org/ website as Salem History and Salem Health.

- Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL) books are being added with additional volumes such as Business Plans Handbook Volume 14, U*X*L Encyclopedia of World Mythology and others in the Gale liturature for Students series are coming.

Also, we are in the process of dropping a few electronic resource tools as well due to budgetary reasons in the coming months. As changes are about to happen, notes will be posted to this blog and in other places.

Career/Job Finding Process Ebooks

Learning Express Library has a collection of ebooks covering career starter guides and the job finding process. A May 2007 Charlestonref blog post also provides a general product overview. There is a registration process after logging in initially; and this is so you can stop a test or activity and then pick it back up where you left off at a later point in time. Instructions for how to access the product and create a login are listed on the website for in library and home access use.

Once you have logged into the product, to access ebooks within the resource scroll down to the bottom portion of the screen. Keep in mind that you may need to scroll down on the page depending upon screen size. You will need to look for and select the link with an illustrated arrow pointing to: Ebooks: Browse our complete listing of ebooks. Once you have have clicked on the link, a search dialog box appears for entering your topical terms of interest. What follows are a sample of many of the ebooks within the resource tool.

Select Career Starter Ebooks:

Firefighter Administrative/Executive Assistant Career Starter, 2e, Computer Technician Career Starter, Cosmetology Career Starter, 2e, Cosmetology Licensing Exam, 2e, Culinary Arts Career Starter, Early Childhood/Teacher Career Starter,Hotel/Restaurant Career Starter, Paralegal Career Starter, 2e, Pharmacy Technician Career Starter, Practical Solutions to Everyday Work Problems, Teacher Career Starter, 2e, The Complete Professional, Visual Communication, Webmaster Career Starter, 2e, and others...

Select Job Finding Process Ebooks:

Goof Proof Interview, Goof Proof Resumes & Cover Letters, Great Interview, Great Resume, Job Interviews that Get You Hired, Resumes that Get You Hired, Search Smart and Get Ahead,Your Career, and others...

Profiling Business and Company Resource Center

Business and Company Resource Center (BCRC), is deceptively full of little goodies and golden nuggets of business information. The accompanying screen shot of this blog post is to a snip-it view of the balance sheet of Blackbaud's financial year end of 12/31/2008. The resource contains publicly traded domestic and foreign companies with their line item balance sheet, income, and cash flow statements along with ratios. The dashboard sections contains the ability to compare various companies in a list side-by-side view for line by line comparisons.




Digging deeper, you can find mutual fund listings, commodity prices, bank rates, and other goodies as well in (BCRC). At this time, there is not an easy way to get to the financial dashboard section, but typically doing a public company name search and then looking for the financial data tabs this will do the trick. There is a weakness in currency of industry overviews, but in some fields that is not crucial to get the most recent industry data.

Historic stock prices in (BCRC), typically go back to 2001 which is good, but not back as far as Mergent or even as far as Yahoo Finance that goes all the way to the 1970s on certain companies. Overall, Business and Company Resource Center is a great source to take a look at and use just to see what is in the database if you have not looked business information in while.

Job Hunting Resource - Part 4 Furthering Your Education

This is the forth post in a series on Job Hunting and the South Carolina Pathways.org website. Previous posts on the topic are available in 1, 2 and 3. Are you looking at continuing your education in a degree or non-degree program? The Kuter “Considering Education or Training” section may help.

The education or training component covers degree and non degree programs for further areas of study you may want to consider. The schools profiled in detail are based on in person classroom settings or online throughout the United States, military installations and US territories. Various tabs such as “name and location”, “school and campus characteristics”, “programs and majors” and “admissions and costs” all allow a person to narrow there list of schools down by various criteria in one search list combined in a “see list” format.

Overall, the Kuter education component is very useful in considering furthering your education, tuition costs, application process and other preferences associated with selecting a school of your choice and desired education outcomes.

The Job Hunting Resource Helps Statewide...

A new resource is available for South Carolina residents looking for a job change, wanting directional help in their job search or returning to the workplace after an abscence. The SC Pathways website, which is powered by Kuder skills assessment testing and paid for by various state agencies/organizations, for SC residents is available to adults, students of all ages and businesses for people to find jobs that interest them and businesses to find employees. In the next series of posts, I'm going to cover the four main components of the Kuder resource. Keep in mind this product does require a registration process that takes a few minutes. SC Pathways is available for just SC residents and residents of other states who have paid access to the the following:

Skills/Interests Assessments Section

Occupational Interests

Education or Training Considerations

Getting Ready for the Job Search

= Creating Resumes Online

= Finding Employers

Note: SCOIS at this time is not available as part of SC Pathways for adults, but is available to most students state wide through individual schools.

Reference Universe - Need for Speed Answered...

Reference Universe in the past was a product you could go for a cup of coffee and still be waiting on search results... Recently, search result speed was greatly enhanced. The same general search strategies of using just one or two words in a phrase still works best and it will be nice to see possibly boolean searching become available some day. Bottom line, by far the faster retrieval time of search results is the best improvement to the database outside of content since we got it a couple of years ago or so...

Reference USA - Spelling Check Feature

Spelling a word correctly in a directory search is usually a key factor in the success or failure. Recently, I re-discovered the fuzzy spelling feature in the look-up option. Spelling "elecctrician" instead of electrician may still generate the needed grouping of businesses in many cases if the spelling is close enough. There is also the option of running the word into the Google spell check as well by just typing in the word or phrases and upon executing the searching looking for the Did you mean? link to appear with the hopefully correct spelling to appear.

Newsbank Gets Video Content

Video content is now available on Newsbank. Sources vary such as large market CBS, NBC and ABC affiliate television stations to traditional Newswire sources providing video content such as the Strange News Broadcast from the Associated Press (AP) to Chiiki.tv specializing in Life and Leisure.

Hathi Trust Ditigal Library - Great Ebooks Online

The Hathi Trust provides a combined collection of public domain/content restricted titles from primarily academic libraries in ebook form online. According to the Hathi website on November 8th, 2008, there are approximately 353,000 titles like Charleston Furniture 1700-1825 which are publicly available online, while approximately an additional 2 million are online with digital rights management restrictions. The Hathi Trust now has a beta ebook search website.

New: Gale Virtual Reference Library Ebooks

Recently, new e-books were added to our Gale Virtual Reference Library set. These are available individually by subject and by All A-Z listings individually on the website. Take time to browse the table of contents. Each of these e-books have something unique to offer...

• African American Almanac - African American history, society and culture.
• Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography - Collection of narrative and brief biographies of individual scientists.
• Everyday Finance: Economics, Personal Money Management and Entrepreneurship.
• Gale Encyclopedia of Diets - covering dieting concepts, historical approaches and public health.
• Gale Encyclopedia of Mental Health - covers 150 mental disorders with entries concerning identification and treatment.

Diversifying Portfolios with Morningstar X-Ray

| View | Upload your own

In most cases, it is a good idea to diversify your investment money for retirement and other endeavors. If you have all your investment money in say technology stocks, and it goes bad, your financial future may be bleak unless you have money in a variety of investments. One such tool to help make diversifcation of investment decisions is the Morningstar X-Ray Tool. To use this tool, take a look at he following slidecast.

Step 1. Go to Morningstar website at: http://www.morningstar.com.
Step 2. Either SIGN UP or LOG IN for free to use X-Ray tool.
Step 3. Select Portfolio tab.
Step 4. In drop down Portfolio Manager menu, select Instant X-Ray sm.
Step 5. Enter in mutual fund or stock market ticker symbols plus dollar holding value.
Step 6. After entering values, click {Show Instant X-Ray} for report.
Other investment tools and resources are provided and listed on the www.ccpl.org website.

STAT-USA : Business Database at Main Library

STAT-USA is one of a few databases with Main only access for CCPL users. This database covers economics and trade primarily in two parts.
(1) State of the Nation has economic indicator data to specific sectors like: housing and construction; employment; manufacturing and industry; monetary statistics; economic policy and productivity. As a side note, you may find Federal Reserve Board (FRB) speeches entertaining to read. :) (2) Globus & NTDB component has country overviews; economic data; export/import stats and potential international trade leads.

Bottom line, much of the same or similiar content is available buried in various government websites; however, this database does maintain unique content not found elsewhere online.

SC Procurement Contracts & Proposal System Changes

South Carolina Business Opportunities (twice weekly publication) is now available for free and without charge or need to enter a password. The resource lists proposed contracts that the state is seeking bids. There is also a new process for online bidding and contractors registering as an excerpt on the website states

"On November 5, 2007, the State of South Carolina will 'go live' with a new procurement system under the South Carolina Enterprise Information System (SCEIS) sponsorship... [Online functions include:] 1. viewing and responding to current Materials Management Office (MMO) and Information Technology Management Office (ITMO) procurements,2. managing your company's account information, and 3. accessing other collaborative functions, such as online bidding."


Additional Links:
Chief Procurment Officers for Goods and Services and Construction

Morningstar Mutual Funds

Morning Star Mutual Fund provides analyst opinions and research covering mutual funds. The resource provides investors with an overview of options in mutual funds, fund governance and management, historical profiles, performance, ratings and risk, portfolio analysis, and Morningstar's own take on a topic. The online version content is available in PDF form on Website. The product also covers select mutual funds with equities (stocks) in the US and abroad; and also bonds being taxable and municipal. The print and electronic editions of the Morningstar Mutual Fund product is available at Dorchester, John’s Island, Main, Otranto, Mt Pleasant and St Andrews.

DB Sources for Taxes - Stock Pricing Info...

It is not often when one of our big investment databases such Mergent, Valueline, General Business File ASAP, and Business and Company Resource Center misses a subject area where a freebie comes in to play being historic daily stock price closes and stock splits. When someone sells a stock for tax purposes, and I make this disclaimer that I am not a tax advisor by any stretch and this should not be considered tax advice at all, a patron may seek the maket close price and if any splits occured (usually when 1 share becomes 2 to lower the price of the stock for buyers) to compute taxes. Keep in mind that this can get tricky really fast.

Long story short, finding the closing market price of a stock on a certain date can be tricky especially if it is from ~1999 or earlier as newspapers can be a good source or at the Main library Capital Changes Reports (thank you Amanda H for the other alternative). To find stock splits, reported market price close numbers the best site seems to be Yahoo Finance. Also the chart seen in the graphic is currently in beta version and is not the default.