Research Guides: Business Research Guide: Getting Started

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Wall Street Journal Full Text

Use Wall Street Journal from ProQuest to access today's paper and archives going back to 2010. You can also search for individual articles by title in OneSearch.

Instruction Assessment

Access a student or instructor feedback form from the library website so we can hear about your library instruction experience.

Company Profile Databases

Using ReferenceUSA to locate a business

Mergent Online
Mergent Online offers research and analysis for more than 15,000 USA and 20,000 international companies, including annual reports and executive biographies. It allows you to build customized reports for companies of interest, create comparisons with competitors, and download the information as spreadsheets.
Business Insights: Essentials
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An easy-to-navigate company profile database that also offers news and some market and industry information. Good for research on nonprofits as well.
ReferenceUSA
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A directory of public & private companies. Searches can produce results from most small businesses and include information on income, number of employees and location. Learn more about locating companies in ReferenceUSA.

Article Databases

Nexis Uni (formerly LexisNexis Academic)
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Full text content from more than 15,000 news, legal, and business sources. Includes print and online journals, television and radio broadcasts, newswires and blogs, as well as local, regional, national and international newspapers, legal sources for federal and state cases and statutes, business information on U.S. and international companies and executives.
Factiva
Full text content from more than 32,000 sources for monitoring news, companies, markets, industries, and trends in the world of business. Includes U.S. and international newspapers like the Wall Street Journal and Barron’s, continuously updated newswires, trade journals, websites, blogs, and multimedia. Produced by the Dow Jones Service. Access limited to 3 users.
Business Source Complete
An EBSCO database with all subject areas related to business. Particularly useful are the Marketline industry profiles.
Business Insights: Essentials
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Good for information on industry and some companies. Provides indexing and abstracts for the most important scholarly business journals in addition to trade magazines and newsletters. Also includes full text information like: financial data, books, SWOT analyses, and more.

Financial Databases

Financial Industry Databases allow you to search stock market and financial information. These databases work best with public companies.

Edgar: A government database operated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). All companies, foreign and domestic, are required to file registration statements, periodic reports, and other forms electronically through Edgar. Anyone can access and download this information for free.

CCH Tax Research Network (via Intelliconnect)
Contains CCH's federal and state tax libraries, plus an integrated daily tax news service and a suite of productivity tools and practice aids. Also covers issues related to international taxation, accounting and auditing, financial and estate planning, and nonprofit organizations. Access limited to 35 users.

NOTE: Intelliconnect is the older platform for CCH. The resource is also offered on the Cheetah platform, which is due to replace Intelliconnect at some future date (TBD). Cheetah includes the same content as Intelliconnect, but in an enhanced interface with more searching and browsing capabilities. Users new to CCH are encouraged to begin their research with Cheetah.
Standard & Poor's NetAdvantage
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Industry surveys, stock reports, mutual fund reports, bond reports, corporation records, a register of corporations, an index of directors and executives, and other business analysis tools.

Misc. Databases

Thomas Register of Manufacturers: Research information on manufacturers.

Value Line Research Center: Financial information about large and mid-cap U.S. public companies: historical, forecasts, market performance, analyst consensus, beta, key ratios, business description, and commentary.

WISERTrade: Focus on analytics and comprehensive data on international trade from 107 countries.

Privately Held Companies

How do databases get information on privately held companies?
They look at government sources:

They look at news reports:

And search company websites and blogs.

Source

The material presented here is based in large part on the work done by members of the BRASS Education Committee.

Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library

Business Research Guide: Getting Started