2012 Best Practices for Government Libraries

Overview
Government agencies and corporations are investing millions of dollars in “big data” technology platforms. Their primary
focus is on storing and extracting value from very large volumes of a wide variety of data—from back-end systems, data
warehouses, digital sources, Internet research, etc. But a key consideration often overlooked is the need for third-party
data that complements this data in order to enable comparative modeling and corroboration. LexisNexis ® aggregates
tens of thousands of news, business, legal, public records, and patent sources, serving as a comprehensive supplier of
third-party, trusted data to help organizations leverage their big data technology investments.
(LexisNexis business, news, and public
records and social media data)
Social Media
content
External Open Source
aggregated and
trusted content
Unlocking the Value of Big Data
As the hype over big data continues, technology
platform providers are touting the benefits of big data
analytics and integration in the hopes of capitalizing
on this fast-growing market. McKinsey Global Institute
summarized these benefits in a 2011 report, noting the
“… five broad ways in which using big data can create
value. First, big data can unlock significant value by
making information transparent and usable at much
higher frequency. Second, as organizations create
and store more transactional data in digital form, they
can collect more accurate and detailed performance
information on everything from product inventories to
sick days, and therefore expose variability and boost
performance. Third, big data allows ever-narrower
segmentation of customers and therefore much
more precisely tailored products or services. Fourth,
sophisticated analytics can substantially improve
decision making. Finally, big data can be used to improve
the development of the next generation of products
and services.” 1
Of course, business intelligence gleaned from purely
internal data reveals only a partial picture of key trends
and events. It is critical to combine internal data with
external data to truly extract the whole picture and gain
the full value of big data.
Internal Business
Unit–Specific
B i g D at a S o u rc e s
Big Data
Technology
External Private
Datafeed e.g.,
supplier data,
shared sensor data
Enhancing the Value of Big Data
Internal
Enterprise Data
Big data technology platform providers and the
organizations they are targeting are focused on the
storage, management, and analytics of large volumes
of data. They are overlooking the importance and value
of additional third-party data—not only to corroborate
the data they have, but also to enhance the context
of the data.
A leading provider of third-party big data is LexisNexis,
with data aggregated from more than 26,000 news
and business sources, many exclusive to LexisNexis,
as well as 6,500 unique international sources, 600+
wire services, 6,000+ magazines, and more than 4,000
premier Weblogs. LexisNexis offers full-text, same-day
and archival coverage from major U.S. publications,
including The Washington Post ® program transcripts
from leading news networks; thousands of company
reports on public and private businesses; and analysis
from Dun & Bradstreet ® , Dow Jones ® , Hoover’s ® ,
Standard & Poor’s ® , and Moody’s ® . And while many data
providers may attempt to extract or download data
from the open Web, LexisNexis has actually licensed
its content. Licensed content is normalized, indexed,
and stored, rendering LexisNexis content more easily
discoverable and analyzable.
Leveraging Your Big Data Technology Investment