Reference resources can give a general overview or introduction to a topic, can provide definitions, and are useful for generating search terms.
Also, business reference resources are extremely important in providing a variety of data like statistics, historical charts, industry overviews, and company histories.
Books:
Online resources:
You can search for both industry information and company information in Business Source Premier. Do a web NAICS code lookup for your industry, then type that code in the search box and choose IC NAICS search from the drop down menu on the right. You should see industry surveys. You can also search an alphabetic databse of company info by clicking on "Company Profiles" at the top of the Business Source Premier search screen.