BADM 476

Data is collected by organizations, businesses, and government agencies. Some is available for free on the web; some is sold. Examples of "free" data on the web include:

Box office and other information about movies

• Variety magazine provides box office sales in the subscription magazine and online.
  • Online:
    • Provides data for specific week
    • Get data for other weeks by using the arrow beside the date right above the table
  • Need more?
    • To get older charts, may need to use other sources -- such as the magazine itself (which is a subscription that the Mundt Library purchases).
    • Access older Variety issues by searching for Variety in the Library's "Journal Finder."  In Journal Finder, after searching for the magazine, click on the link to the research database "MasterFile Premier".
    • On the top right side of the web page, find and click on the link to "Search within this publication"
    • In the search box, make sure this is the search you enter:   JN "Variety" AND "box office"
    • Then do the search
    • In the results, look for "Box Office Reports" in the magazines issues (on different dates).
• IMDb provides top movie lists such as "all time box office" for the U.S. on its website: http://www.imdb.com/chart/top
• Music sales / popularity
  • Billboard magazine provides charts of "Hot 100", "Billboard 200."
  • Get earlier charts using the date arrow above the chart.
• Pew Research Internet Project: Datasets
  • Provides datasets from their various surveys about photosharing, internet usage, reading, and more.
• European social, population, environment and other statistics:  Eurostat
  • data are in English, free of charge, and larger datasets can be created by setting up an login account.

It's possible to go scouting for data to see what you can find.

One method is to go to the research database called Academic Search Premier [see below for link], and try some searches for lists. 

Example 1.

a. search for: list AND 500

b. The idea is to see if you can find an article about a list (of anything) that has 500 items, such as the "Fortune 500" companies.

c. With the above search, I found a Green List 500 of companies provided by Newsweek. To see the list and variables associated with it, 

d. search Google for: newsweek "green list" 500

Example 2.

a. search for: list AND best

b. the idea is to get lists of the best (of anything).

c. With the search I found a list of the best public golf courses in all 50 states.

d. When I looked over the list, it had over 300 golf courses.  However, no associated variables were provided.

e. To gather variables, I would need to google each golf course individually or search the library catalog for a golf course directory with more detail or search google for a source of details about individual golf course. In google, I might try a search for : golf courses united states    [and then hunt in the results for directories or other sites that compile information on lots of golf courses]