Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies News

MEL’s Database of the Week for 4/16/10

April 16th, 2010

Welcome to Database of the Week — a feature from the Management & Economics Library (MEL).  These weekly database snapshots will give you basic information about our most relevant and beneficial online resources.

Database name: Morningstar Document Research, from Morningstar.

Link: www.lib.purdue.edu/mel, in the pull down Quick Access to Business Databases alpha list right below the Libraries’ search box.

Description/focus: Morningstar Document Research is a database that contains all electronically filed Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) documents from 1994 to the present.

Start with this hint: The Morningstar Document Research home page is the advanced search page.  You can search for information about a company by entering the ticker (goog for example) or the name of the company.  When the company of interest is displayed you can then choose from its SEC filings, or get other details by clicking on the links for Profile, Business Section, Quotes/Charts/News, Insider Summary, and others. The main search page includes a focused word search field, geographic filter (country, state, region, others), and a financial filter. Further down on the home screen, you can also see company filings within an industry.  The menu on the left includes a link to search for Mutual Funds.

Why you should know this database: An important aspect of Morningstar Document Research is the ability to search across multiple company document types.  It is often used to search for aspects such as ‘research & development’ or for some key financial element like ‘poison pill’.  Thus a faculty member could research what companies are implementing such things by text-searching the documents… including the footnotes… where information is often “hidden”.

How this database can be integrated into the curriculum: A researcher can search not only an individual company but can also search for tendencies, activities, actions, etc. across multiple companies or groups of companies within industries.

Cost:  5 seats, paid annually by the Libraries and the Accounting and Finance areas in the Krannert School of Management.

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Database of the Week comes to you from the Management & Economics Library (MEL). Our intent is to give you a brief introduction to a database that you may not know.  If you would like more information about this database, or if you would like a demonstration of it for a class, contact kranlib@purdue.edu.  Database of the Week is archived  at https://blogs.lib.purdue.edu/news/category/MGMT/.  For more Purdue Libraries news, follow us on Twitter (@PurdueLibraries).

If you would like us to promote your favorite database, send an email to mdugan@purdue.edu.