Outstanding Business Reference Sources: The 2003 Selection of Recent Titles (2004)

Following established guidelines and criteria, a working group of the BRASS Business Reference Sources Committee voted to adopt these as business reference or notable titles published during the previous fourteen months. Brief reviews are included. Business reference sources are often expensive, fragmented, and enchanting. Wait a minute, enchanting can't be right. Let's replace that with dense. What is quite clear, however, is that business information is abundant and complex, and selection responsibility in this area can be intimidating. In an effort to aid selectors and other reference librarians, the Business Reference Sources Committee launched this endeavor in 2002. The selected are considered high-quality reference works suitable for medium to large libraries. This year, a few are also highly recommended for some small public and special libraries. Bragg, Steven M. Business Ratios and Formulas: A Comprehensive Guide. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2002. 334p. $85 (ISBN: 0-471-39643-5). Steven Bragg, a CPA with a long list of initials next to his name, has written twelve previous books on accounting methods in small and large businesses. With this title, he offers a book that can be targeted to corporate managers, new entrepreneurs, and students of business. Since all businesses produce some kind of information that can be used to measure performance, Mr. Bragg has gathered more than two hundred of these measurements to demonstrate how managers can track the performance of their business, as well as that of their separate departments. The book contains performance measurements that include not only the traditional management and financial formulas, such as cash flow and return on investment but also evaluative measures used in logistics, engineering, sales and marketing, and production departments. Each of the measurements is accompanied by a brief description, an explanation of the calculation, an example of how to apply the formula to a real-life situation, and, most interestingly, how the measurement can yield incorrect or misleading information. The book may be used to search for a single calculation, which can be used for targeted needs, or in its entirety, to develop a complete set of measurements covering the entire operating and financial situation of the company. Another highlight is the final chapter on Measurement Analysis with an Electronic Spreadheet. It describes the use of Microsoft Excel in automating five types of analyses: financial statements, project analysis, investment analysis, risk analysis, and trend analysis. Access to all the formulas and definitions can be found at the end with a glossary, a summary of all the ratios and formulas, and a topical index.--Irene Weiner, Baker University, Baldwin City, Kansas Klosgen, Willi, and Jan M. Zytkow, eds. Handbook of Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery. New York: Oxford Univ. Pr., 2002. 1,064p. $250 (ISBN: 0-19-511831-6). This handbook could easily be a central source for the rapidly burgeoning field of Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD). It is a welcome first of its kind. There is a growing intrigue over how effective KDD will be in a wide range of domains and, as a result, there has been an increase from a few dozen researchers in the field in 1989 to many thousands today. The editors have done an outstanding job of collecting and organizing some of the best research in the field for researchers, practitioners, system developers, teachers, newcomers to the field, and customers KDD serves. Coverage includes the essential theories, methods, and applications of KDD and addresses its unique challenges. Contributors include well over one hundred leading experts from corporations and universities worldwide. This is a terrific resource that would be valuable in any library serving clientele who are interested in or who would benefit from KDD--scientists, engineers, industry leaders, managers, and analysts, to name but a few. …