“Yet even out of the spotlight, the business of Michael Jordan has never been better. We estimate that Jordan earned $60 million over the past year mainly through his endorsement deals with Nike, Gatorade, Hanes, Upper Deck, 2K Sports and Five Star Fragrances. He also owns five restaurants and a car dealership in North Carolina. His annual earnings are greater than any other sports figure save Tiger Woods who topped our world’s highest-paid athletes this year.”

In case you didn’t know, Nike dropped Lance Armstrong back in October after the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency released an extensive report on the doping allegations against him. You can read the full article here and the full report of the doping allegations here.

MIT recently released an article entitled “Celebrity Endorsements, Firm Value and Reputation Risk: Evidence from the Tiger Woods Scandal” by Christopher R. Knittel and Victor Stango. This article focuses on the effects that his scandal had on the stock market. The article can be found here.

These websites are geared toward the public, so the terminology is explained in a way that’s easily understandable.

If you’re looking for websites about investing and you’re not sure where to start, try The Motley Fool. This page has helpful investing information that doesn’t talk over your head. Also try SmartMoney or Money magazine. Both of these publications are written for the public and include helpful information on investing.

And don’t forget the Wall Street Journal and Business Week.

These pages will give you access to many useful articles, but if you want access to the entire publication, you can check here to see if the library has purchased a subscription.

This page also includes tax information for political organizations, chartitable organizations, private foundations and other non-profits. Take advantage of the search box on the IRS page and enter key words for more information on a group.

History of the tax-exempt sector

You also may want to read the article published by the IRS entitled “A History of the Tax-Exempt Sector” by Paul Arnsberger, Melissa Ludlum, Margaret Riley, and Mark Stanton to learn about the history of the tax-exempt sector.

Statistics

For more current statistics on these groups, try the IRS page entitled “SOI Tax Stats – Charities & Other Tax-Exempt Organizations Statistics” here.

Gallup provides detailed information on key periods during the holiday season, such as Thanksgiving weekend and the days leading up to Christmas.

Also try the library’s ProQuest Newsstand database. Enter terms such as CONSUMER EXPENDITURES or CONSUMER BEHAVIOR and CHRISTMAS or THANKSGIVING to find articles. Remember to limit to the correct time period.

ABI INFORM/Complete is another good resource. Try the same key words as above.

You can also find information by doing an Advanced Google search. Simply go to Google and type in your search terms (ex: consumer spending christmas 2012). Then select the cog wheel in the upper right of the screen and choose ADVANCED SEARCH. Change the LAST UPDATE line to whatever you need it to be and then search. You can also change the domain name to .gov or .edu if you want to limit to educational or government websites.

Expenditures

Start with these sources to research how much money a company spends on ads:

Mergent Online: Look up your company and then select the ANNUAL REPORTS tab on the page. (You can also look up annual reports on the SEC’s website. See my previous post for information on how to do that).

Also try looking in the Advertising Red Books available in the Oviatt Library.

Trends

For trends in advertising, try Adweek, Brandweek or Advertising Age publications. All of these are available online through the Oviatt Library.

Additionally, there are many government websites that talk about global entrepreneurship. Do an Advanced Google search for these (ex: global entrepreneurship site:.gov).

You can also find older tax forms under the FORMS & PUBS at the top of the screen. This pages includes a list of links to the most popular forms. If you don’t see your form or you’re looking for older forms, then choose the appropriate category from the three choices.

Again, make sure that you enter the word “Form” in front of your form number. Otherwise, you will get instructions, changes, etc. to that form.

Mergent Online database will show you important events in a company’s history, such as the date the company was founded or incorporated. In that same area, you also will find other historical information about the company.

Business Source Elite database is another source for company histories. The video below shows you how to find a SWOT analysis in the MarketLine Report (previously called a DataMonitor Report). However, the report also has a section that talks about the company’s history:

You can also try the company’s official website for historical information.

Also try Googling your court case to see what you can find on the Internet. If you use an Advanced Google search (ex: roe vs wade site:.gov), you will get even better results.

What’s even greater about Google Scholar is that you can search the library’s full-text articles at the same time. If you log into Google Scholar from the library’s website here, just follow the instructions to set up your browser to search the library’s articles, too.

Let’s use an example of how to use Google Scholar. Once you’ve set up your preferences using the steps on the library’s website, you can start searching. For this example,  let’s say you are researching the gambling industry and want to find information on gambling casinos versus state lotteries and their effects on each other. You could simply enter “casinos versus state lotteries” (without the quotes) in Google Scholar and get thousands of articles that talk about your topic. You can also limit by year on the left-hand side, which is great when you get too many results from your search.

Not sure what scholarly peer-reviewed means? This video explains it for you: