Outstanding Business Reference Sources: The 2010 Selection of Recent Titles

Each year at the ALA Annual Conference, the Business Reference Sources Committee of RUSA’s Business Reference and Services Section (BRASS) meets to select the outstanding business reference sources published since May of the previous year. With all due respect to the familiar and longstanding column title, committee members have come to think of our charge more broadly as finding the most outstanding business information sources, the better to reflect the evolving nature of the formats and means of accessing business information to meet reference needs. For 2010, the committee weeded titles proposed during 2009–10 down to fifteen that made the final review. Among those, the committee selected three as outstanding business information titles and an additional six as noteworthy titles. The works reviewed below cover such areas as economics, the music industry, corporate sustainability, retailing, brand valuation, the current and historical U.S. role in international trade, and an innovative new vehicle for affordable (or free) online access to premier instructional resources in business and economics.