Some information on car dealer closings

There has been a lot of coverage in the news about the bankruptcies of major American automakers. One of the issues is auto dealers losing their franchise from GM or Chrysler as the two big auto companies attempt to restructure. The corporate websites do have some information on the companies’ plans to restructure. Here are some additional pieces of information about the auto dealerships which may be of interest.

• The official website of the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA). According to the website, NADA was “founded in 1917, represents more than 19,700 new car and truck dealers, both domestic and international, with more than 43,000 separate franchises.” NADA provides lobbying for the automobile dealer industry as well as research for the industry and various programs for dealers. They do offer membership for auto dealers, but the site does have a good wealth of information free to the public.
• Intellichoice offers a small article on “How does a dealership work?” The article provides a small overview of how exactly does an auto dealership work from the moment you enter the lot to how dealer financing works. You get a simple explanation of what each department in a dealership does. This comes from the Intellichoice website, which is a consumer resource for researching cars. If you are considering a car purchase, you can research a vehicle on this site. The site also features articles on topics related to car buying such as a survey of hybrid vehicles and information on car financing and insurance.
• The Atlanta Journal-Constitution featured an article recently with a good Q&A on why the car companies need to cut ties with dealerships. The article’s title is “Meltdown 101: Why GM, Chrysler Want Fewer Dealers” by Bree Fowler. Note that newspaper links to specific articles can expire. If you try the link, and it does not work, let us know. We can often get the article from one of our electronic databases.
• And if you are buying a car, but you are worried that your dealership may be closing, Consumer Reports has some advice. The post’s title is “What you need to know about car dealership closures.” Unlike the newspaper article above, this article deals with what the consumer needs to keep in mind when buying a car (or getting service for a car) from a dealership. Consumer Reports also has a fairly comprehensive section on their website with good information on the “Chrysler and GM Restructuring: How it affects you.” There are some very good FAQ’s here for the public. Overall, although the Consumer Reports magazine is not freely available in the website, the website still has a lot of free information for the public.

These are just some places to get you started if you want to learn more about this issue. As always, if you have any additional questions, feel free to visit our library or visit the library’s website. You can also contact the library reference desk at 903-566-7343 or via e-mail at library AT uttyler DOT edu (just replace with the appropriate symbols).

Reference Book of the Week: The Europa Yearbook

This week we look at a source for international information: The Europa Yearbook. This two-volume set provides information on political, economic, and commercial institutions around the world. The set is organized as follows:

• Volume One covers international organizations. From the United Nations to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), you can find detailed articles on international organizations. The volume features comprehensive entries on major organizations, like the U.N., the European Union, and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Then, there is a list of Other International Organizations which features smaller entries for lesser known organizations; these entries feature at least contact information (including a website if available), a small description of what the organization does, and name of the executive officer. Some of these smaller organizations are the International Police Association, the World Allergy Organization, and the International Rice Research Institute. The first volume also contains the first half of the book’s country surveys (from Afghanistan to Jordan). This volume includes an Index of International Organizations at the end to facilitate finding the information you need. Volume One also features a list of abbreviations used in the book and a small list of international phone area codes.
• Volume Two contains the second half of the country surveys (from Kazakhstan to Zimbabwe). This volume has an Index of Territories for both volumes so you can see if a particular country is covered.

What kind of questions might you answer with this book?

• Do you have a list of members for the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)? Yes. Page 308 of Volume One. And the IDB does have a website, which I found in the book too.
• Can you tell me who is the current international president of the Lions Club International? Yes. He is Jimmy M. Ross. See page 456 of Volume One.
• What kind of government do they have in Belarus? The head of state is President Alyaksandr R. Lukashenka. The country also has a Council of Ministers and a National Assembly (the legislative body). See pages 803-804 of Volume One.
• I would like a short history of The Netherlands, but I don’t want to read a whole book. Do you have a short summary or survey? Yes. It starts on page 3274 of Volume Two.

This resource is updated annually. You can find the latest edition, the 2008, in the ready reference shelves behind the reference desk. The call number is JN 1 .E85 2008.

Reference Book of the Week: Statistical Sources

Welcome to another edition of the Reference Book of the Week here at The Patriot Spot. When I used to work as an instruction librarian, and I taught a lot more classes, one of the things I often told students writing research papers was that a good number or statistic was a pretty good way to impress their audience. I would say that with a smirk, but I also showed students where to find good statistical sources to help support their research. The U.S. Census Bureau website is a great resource, and it is a very popular one. But what happens when you need international sources? I need to know the consumer price indexes for Azerbaijan, where can I find that? Can you get me data on use of pesticides in Chad? How about statistics on airlines in Spain? Well, if you have a need for answers to these and other questions, our pick this week will help with that and more.

This week we are featuring Statistical Sources, a two-volume set published by Thompson Gale that provides a listing of statistical sources. In essence, when you need to know where you can get statistics on a particular topic, this is a good place to find out. This set of books does not provide the statistics; the books tell you what source (print, database, website) will have the statistics. This is how the publishers describe the book:

“The work continues to be an easy-to-use alphabetically-arranged dictionary and guide to current sources of factual qualitative information on well over 20,000 specific subjects, incorporating more than 140,000 citations and more than 1,600 sources, readily leading users to the widest possible range of print and non-print, published and unpublished, and electronic and other forms of U.S. and international statistical sources for economic, business, financial, industrial, cultural, educational, and other topics” (from the Preface, vii).

The set is arranged alphabetically by topic. In the case where an agency or organization does not publish their statistics, contact information is provided so researchers can contact that entity directly to make an inquiry. Before the main part of the book, there is a Selected Bibliography of Key Statistical Sources. This is a small annotated guide of basic general statistical resources. The book set also features appendixes of specific publication titles for the sources mentioned in the books as well as listing of agencies and organizations. The library currently has the 2008 (31st) edition in the ready reference shelves behind the reference desk. You can find this resource under the call number Z 7551 .S84 2008.

Reference Book of the Week: Occupational Outlook Handbook

Welcome to another post in the Reference Book of the Week series. Once again, we are featuring a U.S. Government publication: the Occupational Outlook Handbook. It is officially known as U.S. Deparment of Labor Bulletin 2700. When it comes to career information, this item is a lifesaver. Most libraries, whether they are document depositories or not, will carry a copy of this publication. In brief, this book gives information on careers. If you want to know more about a particular job or career, how much it could pay, what education it would require, and its outlook in terms of employment, this is the place to go. The handbook is published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, an agency within the Department of Labor, which is “the principal fact-finding agency for the Federal Government in the broad field of labor economics and statistics” (from the BLS website).

The Robert R. Muntz Library has the “library edition” of the Occupational Outlook Handbook. This is basically a hardcover edition with stronger binding for institutional use. In plain English, we buy a stronger edition because we expect it to be heavily used. You could also buy the book in trade paperback through the Government Printing Office (GPO) online bookstore if you were so inclined. However, you are welcome to come to the library and use our copy. So, what’s in the book then?

• The table of contents: This can be your first point to start a search. It gives you a sense of how the book is organized. The OOC is organized by career groups (clusters) such as: management, business, and financial occupations; professional and related occupations; and service occupations. Each cluster is then further divided. For example, you would find education, training, library, and museum occupations under the professional and related occupations cluster. My job, librarian, would be in that section (on page 266).
• Each job entry features the following: a set of significant points to give you some quick facts about the job; nature of the work describing what the job typically does and entail; training, other qualifications, and advancement where you learn what kind of education and/or training is needed for that job; employment; job outlook; earnings; and related occupations which often tells you other careers that are similar or require some of the same skills. Finally, each entry gives a list of additional sources of information, mostly websites.
• Special features: the volume includes a series of special sections on topics such as: sources of career information; and finding and applying for jobs and evaluating offers. There is also a section labeled “Data for Occupations Not Studied in Detail.” The OOC does not cover in detail every single career. They claim to cover 9 out of 10 jobs in the U.S. (23). This additional section “presents summary data on 128 additional occupations, for which employment projections are prepared, but for which occupational information is not developed” (843).
• The book features an index in the back of the book, which allows readers to look up a specific job and find the page directly. There are some cross-references. For example, let’s say you want to be a pet groomer. You look it up and find there is no “pet groomer” listing. However, you look a bit more, and there is a listing for “groomers,” telling you then to go to page 485. It also tells you that for groomers, you need to see jobs under “animal care and service workers.” However, unlike other reference books, it does not make you take the extra step of finding the “see also” entry in the index; it gives you the page right away.

The Occupational Outlook Handbook is revised every two years. The library just acquired the new 2008-2009 edition. It is available in the library’s ready reference shelves (the shelving right behind the reference desk) under the call number HF 5381 .A1036.

Also, like a good number of government documents, the OOC is available online is freely available online. Here is the direct link to the OOC. The BLS site, which I linked above, also links to it under the “Publications” heading. The online version allows you to look at the career clusters, there is a link to the A-Z index, or you can search the publication by typing a term in the search box to get the information (this is what I usually do when I use the publication). The online resource also features some other helpful features such as a guide for teachers. In addition, I would like to note that you can find other valuable labor resources through the BLS website such as information on the Consumer Price Index (CPI), productivity, and employment. If you want to see where many news anchors get their labor numbers or want to know what exactly is the CPI, the BLS site is a good place to look.

Some hints for finding business ratios

Recently, a good number of students have visited the library or contacted us looking for some business information. The students tell us that they need to choose a company and then compare that company’s financial information to the industry average. Students can do this in a few ways. Here are two of them:

• They can use Industry Norms and Key Business Ratios. The call number for this series of books is HF 5681 .R25 I 525, and they are kept in the library’s reference area. These volumes contain ratios for many industries, which you can look up by SIC Codes. However, the books do not list all industries.
• Students can also use the Mergent Online database. Find Mergent on the library’s website by clicking on [Databases by Subject]. From there, click on the link for [Business and Technology]. Finally, click on [Company Information]. Mergent is on that list. Once on Mergent’s front page, click on[Enter Mergent] to get to the database itself. The following steps then are to make a custom comparison report.
  1. Start by finding the company’s SIC or NAICS code by doing a search on the Company Name or Ticker Symbol. Just type the name of the company, or the ticker symbol if you know it, on the small search box.
  2. Return to the main Mergent search screen and do a search on the SIC or NAICS code using the “2 Classification” section. If you are only interested in searching for companies on the US exchanges, click on the checkbox next to “US exchanges only” located below the company search box.
  3. Click on the option that says [Click Here to Add all companies from this search to add all the companies from this search (excludes private company results)]. right above the list of companies. The companies will now be added to the Company Analysis List.
  4. Towards the upper right of the screen you should see a section that reads [Company Analysis List (expand).] If you hold the mouse over expand, the list of companies will popup along with some options. Click on the [Create Comparison Report] link.
  5. A pop up window will appear with all of the companies checked. In the second section, choose a Category, then a Sub-Category, and then click on the [Add Report Item] button. Add as many items as you need.
  6. If necessary, choose the years that the report needs to cover.
  7. **IMPORTANT** Click on the checkbox next to “Include average in heading” which appears below the list of report items.
  8. Click on the [Create Report] button at the bottom. Another window will pop up with the financial information you requested for each of the companies listed. Above the numbers for each category is the peer average.

If you need to know more about SIC Codes, you can look them up on this site from the Department of Labor here. You may also come across NAICS Codes; find them at the Census Bureau, which also has a tool if you need to convert SIC Codes to NAICS and back, go here.