The textbook for this course is Ghauri, P.N., & Gronhaug, K. (2005). Research methods in business studies: a practical guide. (3rd ed). New York : Financial Times Prentice-Hall.

Postgraduate research skills

Now that you are a post graduate student, you will need to research wider and a little deeper than you have previously. You can make more use of materials like theses, and print and electronic journal articles, ebooks and statistics. You are also eligible for some extra library services such as interlibrary loan, to obtain an item which the Library does not have in its collection. You may need to learn EndNote if you are contemplating writing a thesis.

You are welcome to contact your subject librarian (Accounting and Finance) for a consultation about data or literature searching so see the contact details above.

Library homepage and Subject guides

The Library's home page gives access to the catalogue and the list of databases. The Subject guides gives access to your subject page for Accounting and Finance as well as business topic guides. See also the Business librarians' page Services for Business postgraduates. Accounting & Finance Subject Librarian contact details are above.

 Library tutorials

Try the Business Information Skills Online  - an online tutorial which can help improve database searching skills.To help you find out more about the library you can take the Virtual Library Tour or attend a library workshop by booking here

Dictionaries

Print Accounting and Finance related dictionaries and encyclopedias can be found in the Business & Economics Reference Collection on Level M. A selection of online dictionaries is available on the Accounting and Finance subject page

The Library catalogue

 Library databases

Many databases are available on the Library homepage and give access to scholarly information of good quality. The library offers courses on how to do effective searching on all these databases.

What is the difference between the Library catalogue and a database?
The on-line catalogue for the University of Auckland Library will tell you what the library physically holds - books, journals, videos, theses etc. It does not list the contents of individual journals. You need to search a database to find this information.

Databases are basically huge lists of journal article references that can be searched by author, title or subject/keywords. Not all of the journal article references found in a database will be held in the library and some databases do not contain the full text of the article. You will need to search the library catalogue to find out what journals the library holds. Some databases also include references to book chapters, conference proceedings, working papers etc eg ABI Inform. There are databases that specialise in one subject area, while others cover a range of subjects.

What is the difference between a book and a journal?
The difference between books and journals is the way in which they function. A journal is designed as a means of quickly publishing the results of original research (Primary Literature) and a book is designed to present an overview of a subject area, pulling together the results of many pieces of research (Secondary Literature).

Books are usually published only once, unless the book is very popular, in which case there are several printings and different editions as the book gets updated. Books are very useful for any assignment unless your lecturer has specified that you must use journal articles, or that the information must be very current, such as within the past 2 years. Books do not have information that is as up to date as journals, but they are good sources for determining the extent of established knowledge in a field.

A journal (includes serials, magazines) is published in a numbered sequence, usually on a regular basis, e.g. monthly, quarterly etc. Each issue of a journal consists of a number of papers (journal articles) each written by a different author or group of authors. Journal articles provide the most up-to-date information on current research - providing a succinct and focused treatment of specific aspects of a topic.

The following is a select listing of databases covering journal, magazine and newspaper articles. See a fuller list on the Accounting and Finance Subject guide and the Business & Economics databases page.

New Zealand databases

Australia / New Zealand Reference Centre
A full-text collection combining content from Australian, New Zealand and overseas magazines and newspapers

NZX Company research  New Zealand companies and some real time price data, charting, sector information,.Stock Exchange announcements, major shareholders, financial profiles, prices, capital events, indices, company history, research area of NZX prices and indices, and NZX Annual reports  has full text annual reports back to 1995.

Index New Zealand (INNZ)
Indexes New Zealand content journals. More academic in orientation than Newztext or Newzindex but no full text content. INNZ indexes the Chartered Accountants journal of New Zealand. To find articles in their full text, simply check on whether the journal is held in the library or on another database.

Newzindex
Newzindex indexes articles of interest to business from major daily New Zealand newspapers and business periodicals. Focusing on major national, political and social issues as well as business-related topics, Newzindex is an extensive resource for researchers and business people throughout New Zealand. There is no full text available, but you can search on Newztext Plus or the Library catalogue to find the articles.

Newztext Plus
A collection of the full text articles from many of New Zealand's key business publications (National Business Review, NZ Business, the Independent) and newspapers including the NZ Herald. User guides for Newztext Plus are available on the Database connect page on the Library homepage.

Note:There is also New Zealand company information in Business Source Premier, ABI Inform and Factiva databases listed below.

International databases

Accounting and tax
This database is part of the same suite as ABI Inform so is easy to search and can be searched at the same time as ABI Inform. Most key accounting publications are included with many being available in full text.

Business Source Premier
This large database includes accounting journals such as the Journal of business finance and accounting and the Journal of accounting research.

EconLibrary
This database covers references to the leading journals in accounting and economics, but does not include full text. If you find something of interest check in the Library catalogue for holdings of the journal under Main search and click " serial title ".

Google Scholar : Helpsheet
Search engine for scholarly literature. Not a structured database but good for cross-disciplinary topics and has useful 'cited by' links.

Science Direct
This database contains accounting books in full text and journal titles including Accounting ,Organizations and Society and Management accounting research.

Scopus
Scopus is a multidisciplinary database focussing particularly on scientific information but with significant business content. Covers journals, web sources and patents. Not full text but the library will often have the journal on another database.

Web of Science
Chose the Social Sciences Citation Index for business material. Coverage is back to 1991.

How do I find journal articles on my essay topic?

• Define your topic and develop a search strategy - use the Business Information Skills Tutorial for more help with constructing searches.
• Search the appropriate databases to find journal articles for your topic.
• Have a look at this useful guide to see the difference between academic and popular journals.
• If the article is not full text on the database either click the Find Full Text icon on the article record, or note down the details of the article you want (i.e. journal title, year, volume and issue, author (s), article title, page numbers).
• The Find Full Text button will tell you if the article is full text on another database and/or can run a serial title search through the Library catalogue.
• If there is no Find Full Text link, to find out if the Library holds the journal that contains the articles you have found, do a SERIAL TITLE search on the Library catalogue. You need to type in the title of the journal, not the title of the article.
• Search limits are available. You can limit your search to Scholarly (or academic) publications, limit by the date, then add further search terms.
• You can also limit a search to directly relevant material by searching using the subject heading or keyword used in an article which you have found to be relevant. Copy this subject heading into your search boxes and click on "Subject heading " in the drop down search box

 Financial databases


Financial databases page -a list of databases available for financial analysis of stocks, company results, and economic data.
For further data on company financials see these Library guides: International company information and New Zealand company information