"Accountants Under Fire" 3/22/2002

"Stock Market Troubles" 1/16/2004

Academic Search Premier Index to major journals and magazines in all subject areas, so especially good for interdisciplinary topics. Many articles are full-text. Updated continually. Click on "Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals" to limit search results to research articles.  

Example: "In Enron's Wake: Corporate Executives on Trial" Brickey, Kathleen F. Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, Winter 2006, Vol. 96, issue 2, p 397-433.

Finding Library Books:

From the MU Libraries' Gateway, choose MERLIN Catalog. Type in words describing the issue or policy you are researching. Once you have a list of hits, select one that looks on-target, then examine the subject headings for that item. Try clicking on one of the subject headings for that book, to retrieve similar books. Subject heading searches generally pull up more relevant hits than a keyword search.

If you do not find enough books on your topic to meet your needs, change your search to "ALL MERLIN." By doing so you will be checking the library holdings at UMSL, UMKC, UMR, and MU all at once. Still not enough? Click on the MOBIUS Union Catalog button. This expands your search to about 50 additional libraries in our network. Most books you find through MERLIN or MOBIUS are requestable online, just click on the "Request Item" link. Books requested through MERLIN or MOBIUS take two to five working days to arrive. 

Finding articles from newspapers, television and radio transcripts:

If you're looking for a specific title, (e.g., New York Times, CNN), start by clicking on the "Electronic Journals" link from the MU Libraries gateway. Type the title or name of the source that you need in the "Journal Title or ISSN" box. This will take you to a listing of databases that you can select from by clicking on "Get journal" Because you will have choices, below are recommendations in order of ease of use.

Title Database

New York Times Lexis-Nexis, Factiva

Wall Street Journal ABI-Inform, Factiva

ABC, CBS, CNBC, CNN, CNNfn, Fox, NBC Lexis-Nexis, Factiva

Hints: Too many hits: limit date to a shorter time span

limit search terms to "headline or lead paragraph"

use atleast command (e.g., atleast5(enron) )

use more terms (e.g., Frist and HCA and insider trading)

Too few hits: expand date to a longer time span

limit search to "full text"

use fewer terms (e.g., Frist and HCA )

check for correct spelling

Finding more articles:

Search "Business" Databases: in addition to covering hundreds of newspapers, these databases cover business journals, trade magazines, industry reports, company financial reports, wire service stories, and transcripts from television and radio programs.

Recommended: ABI/Inform, Business & Company Resource Center, Business Source Premier, Factiva, Lexis-Nexis Academic

Sociological Abstracts Covers the field of sociology in-depth, including journals, books, dissertations and sociological association papers.

Example: "Lawful but Awful: Legal Corporate Crimes." Journal of Socio-Economics, vol. 34, no. 6, pp. 771-786, Dec 2005.

Finding Government Information:

Finding Analysis 

You will certainly find plenty of analysis in library books and in journal articles. There are also two government sources of analysis. The first source is U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports. The other is hearings held before congressional committees.

The GAO's purpose is to examine government programs and operations, and determine whether they are efficient and effective. GAO reports are catalogued in MERLIN, but you can also access reports online through the GAO's own website. From the GAO main page, click on "More Search Options," and then on the word "Advanced." This search screen allows you to search for keywords or phrases in the publication title or in the full text.

Example GAO report: "Private Pensions: Key Issues to Consider Following the Enron Collapse" GAO-02-480T, February 27, 2002.

Hearings before congressional committees can include testimony from a variety of experts, organization leaders, public servants, academics, or sometimes "just plain folks" who hold differing views on a topic. These invitees come before the committee and present their best arguments. In addition, they may submit printed material "for the record," such as privately published reports, articles or relevant newspaper clippings. After testifying, congresspersons might ask questions. The full text testimony, the question-and-answer session, and additional materials are all printed in a report which is essentially the hearing transcript. These hearings are catalogued in MERLIN and available for checkout from the library, just as regular books are. You can use MERLIN to find hearings, but if you would like to limit your search just to hearings, you can use LexisNexis Congressional database to do that. Simply click on the Advanced Search tab, then scroll down until you see item types. Check the box for "Hearings" and uncheck all the other boxes.

Example hearing: "Role of Financial Institutions in Detecting Financial Crimes." CQ Congressional Testimony, May 26, 2005 Thursday, CAPITOL HILL HEARING TESTIMONY, 4576 words, HOUSE FINANCIAL SERVICES, WILLIAM J. FOX, DIRECTOR, FINANCIAL CRIMES ENFORCEMENT NETWORK

There is a database that is very useful for public policy analysis - the Law Reviews section of LexisNexis Academic. It is in the library's list of Databases. Once inside LexisNexis Academic, choose "Legal Research" from the left navigation bar. Select "Law Reviews," then click on the "Guided Search" tab. This search screen will allow you to search for keywords or phrases in the title of an article, or in the full text. Law reviews are enormously useful because they generally provide historical context for any issue, and point out the most significant (or infamous) pieces of legislation that affected a policy arena. 

NEED MORE HELP?Stop by, call (882-4581), or e-mail (ellisref@missouri.edu), Ellis Library Reference Desk, First Floor, South, Ellis Library.