AFM 101/217 - Introduction to Financial Accounting
This Subject Guide will help you to find information useful to you in your studies for AFM 101-217, although the general principles can be applied to all of your units.
Finding information for your assignment
Once you have been given your topic, then you need to analyse your question. Do you need some general background material (such as dictionaries or encyclopaedias) to help you understand the major concepts? This will help you to work out the important keywords. Then you can form a search strategy by combining the keywords you have listed for yourself.
The next step is to decide what kind of information you need. Would a book be best, or would journal articles or a government document be more appropriate? This will determine which tools you will use to retrieve the information you want. The major tools are:
- Library catalogues allow you to locate books and journals about your topic which are held in your library (UNE or local).
- Journal databases (indexes) help you find specific journal articles written about your topic.
- Web search engines and other Web discovery tools make it easy for you to find relevant materials on the World Wide Web.
- Teaching staff Your lecturer is often the best person to consult if you are looking for information. However, you will probably be expected to try first for yourself before asking for help.
- Other experts including librarians and other information professionals who can help you find information quickly.
Before you begin using some of these tools, it's a good idea to learn the differences in the appearance of citations. This will enable you to recognise whether a reference you have found is for a book, or a chapter in a book, or a journal article or a conference paper.
Finding materials held in the University LibraryBelow you will find hints on how to:
- find recommended readings held in Reserve Collection
- use the online catalogue to find books and journals held at UNE
- locate useful items in the Reference collection
- find journal titles in the catalogue
- discover the best databases for finding journal articles about accounting
- learn about referencing
Recommended readings
Begin by looking for any books or journal articles recommended by your lecturer or tutors. Some of these will be in the Reserve Collection. Search the Library catalogue by clicking on the reserve link at the top right of the screen. Select Course from the drop-down box and type in AFM 101-217 to see the lists of items placed in Reserve Collection. External students can make requests for copies of any Reserve Collection articles or chapters in books by filling in a request form.
The catalogue
A library catalogue tells you which books, journals and audiovisual items are held by that particular library. You can usually search a number of ways, such as by titles, authors, subjects and call numbers. Look in the UNE Library Catalogue Help to find out how to locate items held in the University Library.
Try a Subject search in the catalogue to find library resources about particular topics. On the browse screen choose Subject from the pull-down menu. Remember the library uses standardised subject headings. Correct subject headings are listed in the large red volumes of Library of Congress Subject Headings near the catalogue terminals on the ground floor of Dixson Library. Alternatively you can contact the Information Desk on 02 6773 2458 or Ask a Librarian online.
Some suggestions for useful subject headings in accounting, finance and entrepreneurship are:
| finance - australia - periodicals | auditing | stocks |
| accounting - australia | financial statements | finance, personal |
| accounting - data processing | banking law | business enterprises |
| accounting - standards | corporations | small business |
| banks and banking - australia | managerial accounting | accountants |
| electronic commerce | business ethics | globalization |
| management information systems | bankruptcy | taxation |
| international business enterprises | investment analysis | tax reform |
| accrual basis accounting | cash flow | liabilities (accounting) |
| asset-liability management | assets (accounting) | cash management |
| disclosure in accounting | investments | cost accounting |
Reference collection
Here you can find dictionaries, encyclopaedias, bibliographies and other ready reference tools which will help you to clarify terms and find background information for your assignment topics.
| R330.016/J864 | Journal of economic literature by the American Economic Association (1969-) |
| R330.48/INT | International bibliography of economics (1952-1999) |
| R332.03/ | Various dictionaries of finance and banking |
| R332.05/I61y | International financial statistics yearbook by the IMF; interest and exchange rates etc. (1979-) Monthly issues can be found at P332.05/I61y |
| R336/G721 | Government finance statistics yearbook by the IMF (1988-) |
| R338.0922/W628 | Who's who in business in Australia (1997-) |
| R338.703/O98/1998 | The Oxford dictionary for international business |
| R338.70994/B978/2000 | The business who's who of Australia |
| R338.74/M234/1999 | Major companies of the Far East and Australasia |
| R338.740994/K81 | Kompass Australia - a directory of company information, products and services |
| R382.021/I61 | International trade statistics yearbook - quantities and values of commodities traded (1983-) |
| R657.03/ | Various dictionaries of accounting |
| R658.003 | Various dictionaries of management |
Online reference tools, such as the Encyclopedia of Law and Economics, can be found on the Research Guide for New England Business School.
Journals in the University Library
Journal articles are not listed individually in the Library Catalogue. Use indexes or abstracts in print, CD-ROM or online form to find out what articles have been published about your topic. See below for lists of those journal indexes which will be of greatest use to you in accounting.
After you have found a citation of an article which seems useful, check in the online catalogue for a particular journal by doing a Journal Title search from the browse screen. Then you can see if the library holds the journal and the volumes you need.
If you want to find out our journal holdings for a particular topic, try a Subject search in the Library Catalogue using a subject such as accounting - australia - periodicals or finance - periodicals.
Databases (Indexes)
These give you references to articles, reviews, chapters, and papers which appear in journals, books, reports and conference proceedings. Journals are also known as periodicals, serials or magazines. For help with understanding journal indexes and learning how to use them, click here.
Many of the indexes are available online and many also contain the articles themselves in full-text. To access them, you will need to have a UNE username and password. Full instructions are here.
There are a number of ways to find the electronic indexes available at the University Library. Click on Resources and then try the New England Business School Recommended Databases link for convenient access to useful indexes for accounting. Alternatively, once you know your favourite indexes, you can select them from the Most Popular Databases list on the right hand side of the Resources page. In addition, there are easy links to tools for web searching.
For more details on how to find information for your assignments, how to use indexes, how to cite your references or write an essay, try eSKILLS UNE.
New England Business School Databases (Indexes)
Remember to use the online Help in each index for tips on the best methods to use or consult the University Library guides.
* Available on CD-ROM on the Stand-Alone computers in Dixson Library. Ask at the Information Desk for more details.
| AusStats | AusStats has all of the Australian Bureau of Statistics publications in fulltext from 1998, data from the 1996 and 2001 Censuses, and more than 2,000 spreadsheets of statistics. |
| CCH Online | CCH Online contains the fulltext versions of CCH Australian Master Tax Guides, corporations law, Fringe Benefits Tax Guide, GST and Sales Tax Guide, parts of the CCH Tax Library and so on. A password is required. |
| CSA | PsycARTICLES is a collection of full-text articles from 42 journals published by the American Psychological Association. Access is also available through PsycInfo (1988-). On the CSA page click on Specific Databases and select PsycARTICLES. |
| CSA |
Econlit is the American Economic Association's comprehensive international index of academic articles, dissertations and working papers. Citations and abstracts (1969-). On the CSA page click on Specific Databases and select EconLit. |
| CSA | PsycInfo cites articles about organisational and business psychology, as well as issues such as stress at work. It is indexed by the American Psychological Association. Citations and abstracts (1887-) plus access to full-text PsycARTICLES (1988-). On the CSA page click on Specific Databases and select PsycInfo. |
| CSA |
Sociological Abstracts: indexes articles for sociology, economics, demography, community development, rural issues, social work and social psychology. (1963-). On the CSA page click on Specific Databases and select Sociological Abstracts.
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| Current Contents | Current Contents provides the table of contents and bibliographic information for current issues of leading international scholarly journals in all of the major disciplines. Citations and abstracts (1993-) |
| Emerald | Emerald is MCB University Press' online collection of journals on marketing, management and other professional subjects such as accounting, auditing, and business strategies. Fulltext (1994-), citations and abstracts (1989-) |
| Expanded Academic | Expanded Academic is an international, multidisciplinary journal index offering an option of fulltext articles for several hundred academic journals, newspapers and magazines. |
| Informit | AGIS plus Text and AGIS (Attorney General's Information Service) includes law for banking, companies and securities, taxation law and criminal offences. AGIS citations and abstracts (1975-); AGIS Plus Text 120 full-text journals (1999-) |
| Informit | Australian Public Affairs Full Text and APAIS (Australian Public Affairs Information Service) are useful for current articles on Australian political, legal, economic, social and cultural affairs. APAIS citations (1978-); Australian Public Affairs -Full Text 300+ full-text journals (1995-) |
| Informit | CINCH: An index for Australian criminology, including computer crimes (1968-) |
| Ingenta | Ingenta is a combined U.K. & U.S. online service that indexes thousands of journals from all disciplines. It can be searched for free as a journal index, and articles can also be obtained for a fee. |
| Factiva | Factiva has two components - newspaper coverage and companies/market reports. It integrates content from national newspapers, news wire services, business journals and websites providing full-text stories from Australia and around the world. Company profiles and financial information can be retrieved in a number of formats including reports and charts. |
| ProQuest | ProQuest is an international, multidisciplinary collection of several comprehensive journal indexes, which includes many articles in fulltext. ABI/Inform Global (for economics, management and business), Proquest Computing (web commerce), Accounting & Tax Database, Banking Information Source, Proquest Asian Business, Proquest European Business and Social Science Plus (international relations and economics) are some of the relevant indexes which help to make up the Proquest package. |
| Stand Alone* | CLIB 96 and CLIB 2001 provide statistical information from the 1996 and 2001 Censuses and time series data comparisons from the 1986, 1991, 1996 and 2001 Censuses. |
| Web of Knowledge | Social Sciences Citation Index covers nearly 5,000 high quality journals in over fifty disciplines in the Social Sciences, including accounting, business, finance, criminology, demography, economics, industrial relations, information systems, international relations, law, management, marketing, personnel management, psychology and statistics. Citations and abstracts (1997-) |
| Wiley Online Library |
Wiley Online Library is Wiley Press' complete collection of journals, online and in fulltext. Over 40 journals are currently available in the business, finance and management areas. |
Referencing
When you use material written by other people for your assignments, it is important to acknowledge their work and use the correct format. Click here for more information about referencing and plagiarism. The UNE Economics, Business and Law Faculty prefers the use of the Harvard or Author-Date referencing system.