Customer Reviews

Super Searchers Do Business: The Online Secrets of Top Business Reseachers (Super Searchers series)

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The migration of literally thousands of companies and their databases to the Internet has made available a tremendous amount of helpful information about the inner workings of these companies and the products and services they have to offer. The availability of all kinds of information in a variety of formats has given birth to a new breed of corporate employees - research professionals. Linked closely with terminology such as "competitive intelligence" and "data mining," researchers can play an important role in the future of any company doing business today.

Mary Ellen Bates has done the business community a great service by bringing together a handful of some pretty amazing interviews with researchers involved in finding information for business use. Super Searchers Do Business offers readers plenty of useful research tips and ideas gleaned from these researchers already operating in the corporate trenches.

The professional researchers interviewed for this book offer plenty of insightful help. They identify some of the databases they use, the discussion groups and mailing lists they participate in, the journals they read, the electronic newsletters they receive, and some good recommended reading. These resources are listed at the back of the book for convenient reader accessibility. While the use of these resources alone won't guarantee researching success, they do offer a good place to start.

Other helpful insight offered by these researchers includes their advice. Each offer their own angle for success. They point out how they make use of multiple resources for information gathering, how they have learned to move from one resource to another when the task calls for new direction, identifying reliable resources, and how they have learned to rely on their "gut" feelings at times when sorting through information. The professional researcher must learn not only how to gather information but how to package it together to meet their client's needs. This book will show readers how!

One of the recurring themes identified throughout this book is that of combining research skills with a business mindset. The researchers interviewed for the book demonstrate by example how they have interacted with their clients. They cite actual circumstances they have faced on the job and how they responded to client demands. This valuable insight will go a long way to help readers assess their own research and interpersonal relationship skills and help them to learn how to relate better with their own business clients.

This book is ideal for persons desiring to improve their research skills. It's loaded with tips, resources, and many ideas that can make online and off-line researching an easier and more productive task to accomplish. It is must reading for persons desiring to setup their own research services!

This book is attractive and value-adding for the following reasons: 1. It contains interviews with a cross-section of business researchers, in a largely Q&A format. 2. It contains lists of several useful reference sources, which are also cross-referenced throughout the book. That helps the reader understand the context for each reference source, and determine whether it's going to be useful to the reader or not. 3. The flow of material through the chapters (essentially interviews with the researchers) offers an interesting direction to the whole book. 4. The book is written in a lucid (simple, conversational) style. It's not heavy duty reading. 5. I found it offered practical insights. Good value for money!

This is a great book for anyone who wants to use the Internet or online services to do research. I liked the variety of super searchers who were interviewed, and I learned something from every one. The book is useful and fun to read, too!

Whether you are an experienced business searcher or a novice in this area, this book will have something (no, it will have lots) for you. Mary Ellen Bates has carefully chosen and interviewed a very diverse group of business researchers, each of whom has a unique perspective on the nature of business information and how to find it. I found good advice, tips, and approaches in every single one of the chapters. One of the reasons that this book will be useful wherever you are on the experience spectrum is that the interviews each contain, on the one hand, valuable perspectives, and on the other, practical and concrete tips and suggestions. On top of that, the author's excellent interview techniques resulted in very readable, very enjoyable dialog. For any business researcher, this book will very quickly pay for itself.

This book is attractive and value-adding for the following reasons: 1. It contains interviews with a cross-section of business researchers, in a largely Q&A format. 2. It contains lists of several useful reference sources, which are also cross-referenced throughout the book. That helps the reader understand the context for each reference source, and determine whether it's going to be useful to the reader or not. 3. The flow of material through the chapters (essentially interviews with the researchers) offers an interesting direction to the whole book. 4. The book is written in a lucid (simple, conversational) style. It's not heavy duty reading. 5. I found it offered practical insights. Good value for money!

With the rapid expansion of the web, this book is already woefully out-of-date. The format is distracting and the text is poorly edited.