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 CIA World Factbook

Cover CIA World Factbook 2007

Welcome to another edition of the Reference Book of the Week. Today we are featuring a source straight from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; link to official agency page). The CIA publishes annually The World Factbook. This is a great resource for country information; the book is a collection of country profiles. Do note that the concept of “country” is not just independent nations. Places like Puerto Rico (a U.S. territory) and the Isle of Man (a British dependency) have entries in the Factbook as well, so you can find information about a lot of places here.The CIA draws on various government agencies as well as public and private sources for the information in the book. The book has been published annually since 1981 with categories in the entries revised over time.

With each entry, you get a set of categories: background, geography, government, economy, communications, military, transportation, and transnational issues (this would answer, for instance, if a particular country has an international dispute). The volume also features a set of helpful appendices in the back of the book and a set of color maps.

So, what sort of questions can you answer with this book? For example,

• Can you tell me how many airports does Benin have? Yes. It has five (as of 2006). Out of those five, only one is paved.
• Can I get an economic overview of Israel? Yes, starting on page 288.
• What is the capital of Mongolia? Ulaanbaatan is the capital of Mongolia (see page 388).

Now, a reader might wonder why would you want to know how many airports a country has? Or how many phone lines? Well, let’s say you are doing research for a company, and that company wants to set up shop in some other nation. Maybe the nature of your business requires you to be able to move your goods from that country back into the U.S. Therefore, you need to be aware of what are you transportation options. Will you fly your goods? Move them by ship? If you want to use ships, does the country have ports? That is just one example of why you might want to use this book. Overall, when it comes to finding a good overview of any country in the world, The World Factbook is an excellent resource.

The World Factbook is available in the library’s Ready Reference Collection (that’s the shelf right behind the reference desk). The call number is G 122 .U56a 2007. The library currently has the 2007 edition.

The CIA also puts The World Factbook online (link is to the online edition). The information is the same as in the book; however, the online edition is updated faster than the print. The latest online edition is the 2008 edition. The online version provides a quick pull-down menu where you can select the country and then get to the information for that country. The website also provides options for downloading the book. Do note that the downloads are big files.

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.

Reference Book of the Week: Economic Report of the President

Here we go with another edition of Reference Book of the Week here at The Patriot Spot. Today we feature a federal government document: the Economic Report of the President. Even though the title says “of the President,” don’t be fooled. The report is actually written by the President’s economic advisers. To be precise, the report, which is submitted annually to Congress, is written by the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. According to law, it “is transmitted to Congress no later than ten days after the submission of the Budget of the United States Government” (from the GPO Access website).

So, what does this document do? According to the Government Printing Office (GPO), it includes:

• ” Current and foreseeable trends and annual numerical goals concerning topics such as employment, production, real income and Federal budget outlays.” In other words, you get what the Council sees as current economic trends in topics like productivity, employment, and other topics. For example, the 2007 report looks at things like the transportation sector in terms of issues like fuel markets and infrastructure.
• “Employment objectives for significant groups of the labor force.” This is where some of that stuff on productivity mentioned above comes in.
• “Annual numeric goals.”
• “A program for carrying out program objectives.”

The report usually includes as well a year in review (for the year prior to the report) so you get an overview of the economic picture in the nation; they also look at international issues and trends as they may affect the United States. Another value of a document like this is in the tables. There are a lot of tables with statistics and figures to support the material. There are also boxes, which are basically text boxes with additional or supplementary information. This is yet another way to look at the federal government, the economic policies, and what they do with your tax dollars. The report also gives a look at the economy from the view of the executive branch. Thus, here why this document is important: it “is an important vehicle for presenting the Administration’s domestic and international economic policies” (219).

The library currently has the 2007 edition. It is placed in the Ready Reference shelf (behind the reference desk) under the call number HC 106.5 .A272 2007. The print edition for the 2008 is currently on order.

Note: This document is available online via the GPO Access website here. Under the link you can find the PDF to the 2008 edition, which is the most current. You can look at the complete document, or at individual tables. If you prefer to download the information, there are options for that as well. You can go as far back as 1995. There are some historical editions of older reports (1960-1980) provided via a collaboration between the GPO and FRASER (Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research).