Accounting and Finance:
information sources
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Introduction
This guide identifies some of the Accounting and Finance sources available in
print in The Library and accessible via the internet. These sources should
prove helpful when searching for information for assignments, projects and
dissertations. You should also refer to the Resources For Your Subject
page for Accounting and Finance on Library Online. You can find this
information, and direct links to electronic resources, on these pages.
The Skills for Learning website can be accessed via Library Online or at
www.skillsforlearning.leedsmet.ac.uk. It is useful for general advice on
planning your research and devising an information search strategy.
If you need further help ask staff in The Library. If you need more specialist
help than they are able to offer they will refer you to the Academic Librarian
for Law, Accounting and Finance.
Sources
The Library Catalogue lists all journals available in hard copy on the shelves.
Online journals can be found using the Resources > Journals > Find
eJournal List on Library Online on the web at at
http://libraryonline.leedsmet.ac.uk/.
Other web sources can be accessed from the Resources > For Your
Subject > Accounting and Finance page.
Web sources are available from any networked PC in The Library and most
are also accessible off-campus (i.e. from home or work).
Copyright © 2013 The Library
Leeds Metropolitan University
Screenshots reproduced with the permission of the software provider
Books
Classmarks
You will find relevant books available in The Library under the following
Dewey Decimal classmarks (650.9 and below is on the second floor, 651 and
above are on the third floor at City Campus Library).

Accounting: 657 – 657.4

Finance: 332

Financial Management: 658.15 – 658.151

Taxation: 336.2 – 336.39
Reference Books
Relevant reference resources can be found in the Quick Reference area on
the ground floor of City Campus Library.

A Dictionary of Accounting, 657.03 DIC

UK Kompass register, 338.702541 KOM
Discover
Discover is a one-stop search engine which includes about 90% of all
resources available in Leeds Metropolitan University Library. This includes
records from the Library Catalogue and most of the electronic journals and
databases we subscribe to.
You can find a list of all databases not currently on Discover under the
Resources tab on Library Online.
We recommend using Discover for keyword searches. If you already have a
reference to an article, journal or book we still recommend finding it using the
Library Catalogue (for the journal or book) or the A-Z ejournals list (for an
article in an electronic journal). If you use the Discover box on the
Accountancy pages, it will limit your search to just accountancy related
sources.
Databases
Information databases are the organised collection of references to journal
articles and other information that you need to consult for specialised or more
up-to-date information than will be provided by a textbook. These are
available in print format and/or electronically on the web, accessed via Library
Online. The latter are much more easily searched, on multiple search terms
simultaneously.
A list of relevant databases can be found on the Resources > For Your
Subject > Accounting and Finance. These sites are subscription
services. You will need to enter a username and password, usually your
Leeds Met username and password and will get free access. There are two
main types of Database:
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libraryonline.leedsmet.ac.uk
Indexes and abstracts
These will typically cover a particular area of interest (for example,
Management Accounting Research) or may cover a wider area such as Social
Sciences generally. Indexes will give a full reference to an article: title, author,
date, name of journal, volume and page and usually a set of “keywords” or
subject terms that indicate the content. Abstracts will contain the reference
and also a short summary of the article (sometimes written by the author of
the article, sometimes not). These are thus more useful in deciding whether
or not the article is relevant to your purpose. Carefully note the full reference
if you decide an article is useful to you and now you must find the article itself
– note that typically the Index/Abstract service does not lead directly to the full
text of the article – see under Journals for this step.
Here are some examples of Abstracts and Indexes:
World Banking Abstracts

Web-based service available via the Databases page on Library Online.

The Institute of European Finance abstracts of articles about the world’s
financial services industry, from 1992
Zetoc
 Zetoc is an online index to the journal articles and conference proceedings
of the British Library. The British Library has a huge collection of journals
as it is the national library of Great Britain. Any articles you find here are
available to read at the British Library, which is useful if there are any you
find in journals that Leeds Metropolitan University don’t have.
Ejournal services
It is also possible to search for articles on the journal provider’s own site.
Bear in mind that you are only searching the journals that particular provider
publishes, perhaps covering much more general matters than your area of
interest and possibly for a more limited time span. The benefit of this
approach is that if you do find a useful article, if The Library at Leeds
Metropolitan University has an electronic subscription to the journal, you can
have full text access directly.
It is always sensible to use more than one source and this applies even more
when using journal providers to search – use all of these to ensure good
coverage.
Some of the ones you might look at are:
EBSCO

Two of the EBSCO databases provided might be useful: Academic
Search Complete and Business Source Premier. ASC is very wide in
subject area and BSP covers the whole Business Area.
Emerald Full Text

Has articles from over 100 management journals, in full text back to 1994.
libraryonline.leedsmet.ac.uk
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Ingenta Connect

Covers a very wide range of academic journals including many of interest
to this subject area.
JSTOR
 JSTOR is a journals archive source and does not have the most current
issues of the journals it contains. It is very useful for looking for older
articles. It is multidisciplinary.
Sage Journals Online
 Full text access to over 380 Sage journals, some of which are in the
Business and Management subject area.
Science Direct
 Over 130 journals are available in the areas of Business, Management,
Accounting, Finance and Economics. These are available in full text.
Wiley Interscience
 Online journals for learning, research and professional practice. Wide
range of subject areas are covered including business, economics, finance
& accounting.
Journals
Once you have found a reference to a journal article then you must locate the
article itself. Do not assume you will necessarily get full text access, even if
you find a reference on a journal provider’s site. It depends whether Leeds
Metropolitan subscribes to the journal with that provider. The Library may
have a print subscription only, an electronic subscription (maybe with a
different provider) or both.
The best thing to do is to search the Library Catalogue for the Journal title.
You can also check under the Find eJournal List on Library Online to
see which journals we have access to online.
Company information
Four popular online sources are:
FAME

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FAME (Financial Analysis Made Easy) is a database of mainly
quantitative information of the 140,000 most significant UK companies
taken from Annual Reports. For many companies there is 10 years worth
of data.
libraryonline.leedsmet.ac.uk
OSIRIS

Financial details for International Companies.
Nexis

This provides mainly qualitative information about companies,
internationally, with articles from major publications such as the Financial
Times, the Economist, the Wall Street Journal and other sources.
Company Reporting

Company Reporting reports on constantly changing financial reporting
practices of public companies.
Newspapers
At City Campus Library there are two months print archives of the Financial
Times in the High Demand Area.
There are links to newspapers from the Journals and Newpapers pages
on Library Online.
Most newspapers allow open access to the current issue and a limited
archive, typically 30 days. However, you can get access to a larger archive of
most newspapers via the Nexis database.
Nexis
Nexis provides a convenient way of searching many titles at once for a topic.
There are hundreds more titles available on Nexis – regional and national and
international; broadsheet, tabloid and local. Nexis provides a massive archive
to a wide range of newspapers. It is text only so you don’t get the look and
feel of the newspaper or the images, and sometimes miss out on tables and
charts.
Note: To search the Financial Times newspaper on Nexis you must select its
title from the search page before searching. This is because the Financial
Times have put restrictions on how Nexis can provide its content.
Web gateways
Gateways are websites that provide organised and categorised links to sites
relating to a particular subject or of interest in a particular area. The links are
likely to be much more relevant than just doing a keyword search on the web
as a whole and have in many cases been evaluated by specialists in the
relevant field and thus contain high quality information.
Here are some that should be of use in your area. Links are available via the
What types of information are available? section of the
Resources For Your Subject page for Accounting and Finance.
libraryonline.leedsmet.ac.uk
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Accounting Web

Resource for UK accountants and accountancy professionals
CIMA: Chartered Institute of Management Accountants

Links to professional information, events, employers, etc and also support
for CIMA students; plus a list of further useful sites
Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales

Major professional body – many useful links; there is a student area on
the site
Further help
Library staff are always happy to help with any queries you may have.

Phone Us (0113) 812 1000 - you can also get 24/7 IT support on this
number

Email Us or Chat with Us via the Need Help? page on Library Online
http://libraryonline.leedsmet.ac.uk

Visit Us - come to the Help and Information Points for Library account
and borrower enquiries, IT support and help with research or finding
information
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