Following is material from a SICbase™ 2.0 brochure. This software product wrapped Synoptic Text’s TR/Win™ (Text Retriever for Windows) around the Standard Industrial Classification Manual, making the manual full-text searchable with a powerful query language. SIC codes subsequently were superseded by NAICS codes.
SICbase™
Standard Industrial Classification Manual
Searchable through TR/Win™
Text Retriever for Windows
Version 2.0
What is the SIC Code Manual
The Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) Manual prepared by the Executive Office of the President, Office of Management and Budget provides the standarized codes used by the U. S. Government to classify businesses by type of activity. These codes facilitate the collection, tabulation, presentation, analysis and retrieval of data relating to establishments. The private sector also uses SIC codes widely. Many online databases and printed reference sources make important use of SIC codes.
Why an Electronically Searchable SIC Manual
Effective use of SIC codes in research and database searching often depends on close and careful consideration of alternative possible classifications, a consideration not always best made using the printed manual.
A common approach to using the printed Manual is checking the Alphabetic Index in Part III and following the numerical code of a short entry there to the more detailed Titles and Descriptions of Industries in Part I. If the detailed description seems to fit, the searcher settles upon that SIC code.
This approach does not consider descriptions of other codes and it would be difficult to do so without what seems like too much thumbing through Part I.
SICbase™ is a Boolean-searchable database containing
- Part I, Titles and Descriptions of Industries
- Part II, Numerical List of Short Titles
- Part III, Alphabetic Index.
This can significantly enhance a researcher’s ability to consider appropriate classifications.
A single search with SICbase™ searches not only the Numerical List of Short Titles, sometimes circulated as an approximately 54K ASCII text file and referred to as the “alphabetical short list.” It searches not
only the Alphabetic Index. It searches all three parts of the Manual,
including the detailed Titles and Descriptions of Industries also, in full text through 20286 records. This lets the searcher easily consider other classifications that might not be retrieved by resorting only to the Alphabetic Index, classifications which never would be found by using the hardbound manual.
A search with SICbase™ can show that a different classification should be used, or that more than one SIC code should be used.
TR/Win™
SICbaseä uses TR/Win™, a Text Retriever for Windows, designed to let you find pertinent records from a file of text information using any of three search modes:
- word search
- query by form
- search language (command mode)
Online help is available when SICbase™ is running. You may access help either from the Help menu or by pressing the F1 key.
The illustration on the cover of this brochure depicts the SICbase™ screen. In the illustration, a search has been performed in command mode. The search statement was:
rain not (wheat or barley or oats or rye or corn or rice)Records in the retrieved set of hits are being displayed. The searcher has navigated part way through the set by clicking on the record navigation buttons:
The search statement is displayed in the box in the upper right hand corner of the screen.
