GENIOS - a German Gem
Jinfo Blog

30th April 2009

By Udo Hohlfeld

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On a recent discussion on the FreePint Bar (http://digbig.com/4yqyc) a German language database host was mentioned: GENIOS (http://www.genios.de). It might be that many in the industry do not know the GENIOS service as it lacks an English language interface. Still, due to its uniqueness as pure German language database host in an English language dominated industry, I feel it is well worth to briefly describe this gem. Today's GENIOS results from a merger between GBI Gesellschaft für Betriebswirtschaftliche Information mbH (founded already in 1978) and Genios (founded in 1985), the then database host of the well-known Handelsblatt Gruppe. Today, GENIOS provides near-time information to about 25,000 researchers which is stored in more than 1,000 databases covering about 60 million company records, 300 daily and weekly newspapers, 450 professional publications or more than 50,000 market and industry reports. Of course, core to all this data is German language business information. But only recently GENIOS started to extend its offering by licensing international content (e.g. ProQuest). Beyond providing access to third party content, GENIOS offers own services and products such as "Knowledge Summaries" (summaries of hot economic topics), own databases such as FAKT (market and industry information) and BLISS (business literature database), or "Branchenwissen" (news and reports from Germany's 15 core industries). For any researcher targetting information related to Germany, Austria or Switzerland, GENIOS is the top notch resource - no matter which topic is in the research focus. For German language researchers GENIOS is a good starting point to see "what is out there" and gain easy access to in depth German language information. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, a major drawback might be that there is no English language interface. Yet, it is questionable if this might be of any help given the fact that the major part of the content provided is in German anyway. GENIOS is very convenient to search offering a manifold of support such as keyword lists, easy search forms, database descriptions and example records. There are no charges related to searching, only when content is retrieved document fees apply. Researchers can subscribe to the service or even research and buy content on the fly by credit card. GENIOS is well established with about 25,000 registered customers and about 150,000 occasional customers.

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