A comparison of accounting indexes

Abstract

Chapman is business reference librarian, University of Alabama. Many types of people look for accounting information-practicing accountants, researchers, students in accounting courses, and businesspeople, among others. The types of information they look for varies also--government regulations, professional standards, empirical research, practical examples. Accounting periodical literature is an important source for each of these types of information. Regulations and standards are announced and their significance discussed; scholarly articles are presented; and practicing CPAs describe techniques or suggest solutions to common problems. However, to take full advantage of the information contained in accounting periodicals, good indexing has to be available. This study compares the access to accounting periodical literature offered by four indexes. Two of the indexes specifically address accounting: Accountants' Index and Accounting Articles. The other two indexes are general business indexes which include accounting as one of the many business topics they cover: Business Periodicals Index, a familiar H. W. Wilson index held by many libraries, and ABI/INFORM on Disk, one of the more popular CDROM products which provide bibliographic references to business sources. The study will describe how well the general business indexes cover accounting periodicals and to what extent the specialized indexes can expand that coverage. It will compare the number of accounting periodicals covered by each and, for a given sample periodical issue, examine both the number of items covered and the number of access points per item.