ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries June 1985 / 293 BI for accounting students B y M ilton G. T ern b erg Social Science/Business Library University of California, Berkeley Experimenting with online business databases in an accounting course. T o find inform ation on a company is a typical as- signment given in most business schools. Students are exposed to a variety of library resources, mostly in printed form at. In most academic libraries, the rapidly growing num ber of sources in electronic form at receive relatively little use due to factors such as cost or lack of publicity. This article de­ scribes a joint library/business school project to ex­ perim ent w ith the use of online business databases in an accounting course. In 1984, the School of Business Administration at the University of California, Berkeley, received financial support to test the usefulness of certain business databases in an undergraduate accounting course. The demonstration was funded by a teach­ ing innovation grant provided by the University’s Council on E ducational D evelopm ent. Among other interests, the Council has a current com m it­ ment to prom oting com puter literacy through fac­ ulty initiated teaching projects. The grant application originated from a Busi­ ness School faculty m em ber’s attendance at a fac­ ulty seminar on databases in the social sciences. Af­ ter listening to presentations by three librarians, he immediately saw potential applications in his ad­ ministrative accounting course. The course is de­ signed to introduce undergraduates to the basics of accounting and to company financial analysis. Before applying for the grant, he approached the Social Science/Business Library for assistance in preparing the application and for assurance that the library would be willing to participate. The jointly prepared application requested funding for online time, for salaries of two student assistants, and for production of a user’s guide to business databases. T he d e m o n stra tio n was in te g ra te d into the course project, which involved a program m ed as­ signment requiring the use of numerous company inform ation sources in the library. Library staff had in previous semesters helped to develop the project and provided handouts guiding the stu­ dents to the appropriate sources. The goals of the online dem onstration were: a) to expose stu d en ts to on lin e search in g in a n o n ­ threatening m anner through the use of a search in­ term ediary (librarian); b) to experiment w ith the usefulness of selected business databases in ac­ counting education; c) to determ ine student reac­ tions to the ease of online inform ation retrieval and to the cost; d) to prepare a user’s guide to business databases for distribution in the library; and e) to increase Business School faculty awareness of busi­ ness databases. The instructor and librarian began the project by deciding which types of information from the assignment to retrieve. Test samples were run in a variety of databases to evaluate the apparent use­ fulness of each database. The instructor’s two assis­ tants were given the task of preparing the user’s guide. Since neither of them were fam iliar with on­ line searching, the librarian had to educate them quickly in the basics of autom ated information re­ trieval. Nine sample searches to include in the 294 / C& RL News guide w ere run in the following databases: Stan­ dard & Poor’s News, Disclosure II, Investext, N ew - search, A B I/In fo rm , Trade and Industry Index, PTS Prom pt, PTS F&S Index, and PTS U.S. Fore­ casts. The students were then set free to prepare the guide from their observations and from additional inform ation provided. Several meetings were sub­ sequently held w ith the librarian and instructor to review their progress and to make needed additions or changes. A d raft of the guide was distributed to th e class for com m ents, several changes w ere m ade, and the final guide printed for distribution to the faculty and to library users. Prior to the actual dem onstration phase, the li­ b rarian provided an introductory lecture on online searching. In addition, an MBA student, w riting a paper on the actual use of databases in companies, spoke to the class on her findings from interview ing m anagers in various San Francisco Bay Area firms. This helped to legitimize the business use of online inform ation retrieval in the minds of the students. T h e class of 125 stu d e n ts w as d iv id e d in to tw enty-four small groups for the dem onstration phase. Each group was to inform the librarian of the com pany it was using and to make an appoint­ m ent for a forty-m inute session on their own time. The forty-m inute sessions were scheduled over a th ree–week period. The group sessions began w ith a brief review of online searching and w h at was to be accomplished. S ince th e li b r a r i a n a c tu a lly p e rfo rm e d th e searches, it was not necessary for the students to understand in great detail the searching protocols. Five different databases were used to retrieve se­ lected types of inform ation the students had previ­ ously been required to search for m anually. The content of each database was discussed before go­ ing into it. Newsearch was used to locate very cu r­ rent articles on the group’s com pany, Standard & Poor’s N ew s provided financial statem ents, Disclo­ sure II produced a list of officers and their salaries, and A B I/In fo rm or Trade and Industry Index was used to locate articles on a significant corporate event, such as merger or stock split. Each student had initially been required to find very current articles about the com pany being re­ searched. T he lib ra ria n asked w h ere th ey h ad looked for articles and how successful their search was. The nam e of the com pany was then entered into Newsearch to dem onstrate the ease of locating very current articles. Most of the course assignment involved working w ith a com pany’s financial statem ent. One of the requirem ents was to locate the com pany’s latest quarterly earnings report. Most of the students had used in hardcopy Standard & Poor’s Corporation Records Daily N ew s and C um ulative News. The online version was dem onstrated to show th a t it was possible to p rin t the report and to allow the students to com pare the currency of the report w ith the one they had found in the hardcopy form at. The most challenging aspect of the assignment involved locating salaries for the top executives of the com pany. Prior to the lib rary ’s acquisition of proxy statem ents, this proved to be a difficult as­ pect of the assignment for both the students and the library staff. The Disclosure II database was used to p rin t out the names of officers and their salaries. This aspect of the dem onstration seemed to impress the groups most because of the difficult tim e they had had finding the inform ation m anually. T he last aspect of th e online phase involved searching for a corporate event w hich had a signifi­ cant effect on the com pany’s finances. A B I/In fo rm and Trade and Industry Index were used for this purpose. W hen possible, A B I/In fo rm was used to show the availability of abstracts in some biblio­ graphic databases. At the end of the semester, the instructor asked the students in the course to evaluate the usefulness of the dem onstration to the course assignment and to react to the cost of their group session. The stu­ dents w ere impressed w ith the ease w ith w hich in­ form ation could be retrieved and its usefulness in com pleting their assignments. Even though each group online session averaged only $30, most stu­ dents indicated th a t they w ould not be willing to spend their own money on the service. The dem onstration proved th a t selected business databases do have applications in an u ndergradu­ ate accounting course. They enable students to lo­ cate quickly certain types of inform ation, which w o u ld n o rm a lly re q u ire c o n sid e ra b le m a n u a l searching. However, the further use by the course instructor and other business faculty has not h a p ­ pened, prim arily because of the students’ negative reaction to the cost. Most faculty are reluctant to require students to spend money for inform ation. W h en try in g to a d v o c a te th e use of o n lin e searching in business education, the cost always be­ com es th e n e g a tiv e fa c to r. T h e c o n n e c t h o u r charges, designed for private business use, prohibit the w idespread use of databases in education. Re­ duced online costs for educational purposes would allow business librarians to prepare better for the future corporate users of online business inform a­ tion. Historical society libraries A p a n e l e n title d “ H isto ric a l Society L i­ braries” is one of the sessions planned by the ACRL Rare Books and M anuscripts Section’s C ontinuing E ducation C om m ittee for the 26th ACRL R are Books and M anuscripts P recon­ ference in Chicago, July 2-5. This session, scheduled for Friday, July 5, at I I a .m ., will provide a forum for discussion of the challenges and opportunities presented to library professionals in this field. Contact: W il­ liam B. Keller, Head L ibrarian, M aryland His­ torical Society, 201 W. M onum ent St., Balti­ more, MD 21201; (301) 685-3750.