ECON 325: Entrepreneurship: Principles & Practice

We've made changes in response to COVID-19. Here’s what to know about campus libraries for spring 2021.

What is in this guide?

Use this site as as your doorway to information resources, online workshops and classes, and more that will help you develop your entrepreneurial and research skill sets. You can always email Nancy or schedule a meeting to ask questions, brainstorm ideas, or anything else.

Learn Research & Design Skills

Market Research Basics
Overview of the market research mindset: big questions you need to ask, information sources to help you answer them, and links to library databases.
Learn Data Viz
On this self-paced site, learn basics of data visualization, infographics, mapping & GIS, and more.
Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator Training
Self-paced training modules for Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator
SkillfUL Tech Workshops
Online workshops for Adobe Spark, WordPress, and Adobe Premier Pro

Databases for Your Research

These library databases will help you get started. This is not an exhaustive list. Be sure to check out Market Research Basics for more specialized databases, and see all business & entrepreneurship databases here.

IBISWorld Industry Reports
Industry reports for about 700 industries in the U.S.

Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
BCC Research
Science & tech focused industry reports. The reports include detailed market size forecasts.

Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
Statista
A catch-all for data & statistics. Search by keyword and be surprised at how much you may find.

Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
Mintel Academic
Consumer & market research reports that give market size and trends, market segmentation, supply structure, advertising and promotion, retail distribution, consumer characteristics like brand loyalty, and market forecasts.

Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
Coverage: 2001 -
SimplyAnalytics
Mapping database. Use to access demographic & psychographic data, consumer expenditure, Nielsen market data, and more. Especially good for market sizing. Go here for more info.

Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
Orbis
Use Orbis to locate company information, good for identifying info about competitors.

Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
Data Axle Reference Solutions
This is like yellow pages on steroids. Find info on U.S. businesses & consumers.

Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users. North Carolina residents with a borrower's card may access from off campus by visiting NCLive directly. Contact the Davis Library Service Desk for the NCLive password (instructions).
Coverage: Current information only
American City Business Journals
40 city/regional business journals. Articles & news stories may provide industry info and data, companies/competitors, rankings, and more.

Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
Coverage: 2000-current

Honors Report Resources

Tips for honors students completing the honors research report requirement.

Tips for how to tell if a citation is a peer-reviewed research paper

Google the journal or book title. The journal homepage, or the "About" page, will state explicitly if it's a peer-reviewed publication. Sometimes journals publish articles that are not peer-reviewed, like editorials or book reviews; the "About" page will tell you which article types are peer-reviewed.
Search for & find the article. Does it match the general form of a scholarly peer-reviewed article? Use the Anatomy of a Scholarly Article site to help you determine if so.

Tips for finding your 5 peer-reviewed research papers

Search for your article title in the Articles + Catalog Search box.
Go to the library homepage and search for your article title in the main search box.
Go to this customized settings page to set up your Google Scholar to get articles from the UNC Libraries.