Introduction

For research in business courses or other subjects, you may need to find information about companies, such as their financial condition, their position in the market, or their structure and leadership. This guide will help you use the LexisNexis database, which is an excellent source for this information. We assume you have already done the Library's Searchpath tutorial (http://www.shepherd.edu/libweb/searchpath/searchpath/). If not, you should do that first. It will give you crucial skills and save you a lot of time in the end.

Types of information

• Company Dossier: Overview of all aspects of a single company; can also be used to create a list of companies based on size, location, etc., or to compare up to five companies
• Company Profiles: Search for detailed information about a company in the numerous specialized databases available in LexisNexis
• SEC Filings & Reports: EDGAR filings, annual & quarterly reports & proxy statements

1. From the Scarborough Library homepage (http://www.shepherd.edu/libweb/), click on "Popular Electronic Resources" and choose LexisNexis Academic from the popup menu.
2. In the red bar at the top, click on "Business."
3. This will take you to the Company Dossier page. The other options described above are in a menu on the right.

On each of the search pages, you'll find a variety of boxes where you can enter words or choose from a menu. The following search tips apply to all pages.

• You can search for information about an individual company by entering its name, but you call also search by its ticker symbol, the unique code letters that are used to identify it on the stock market. You can look up a company's ticker symbol at the Yahoo Finance website (http://finance.yahoo.com/lookup).
• You can search for information about multiple companies in the same industry by entering an SIC code -- the 4-digit code that is used to identify a specific industry. You can look up SIC codes by clicking a link next to the search box.
• The boxes and menus are mostly self-explanatory. You can choose to find companies of a particular size, based on the number of employees or the size of their revenue or sales.
• You can search for companies in a particular state or country.
• Note that you can also limit the information by the date.
• When you run the company dossier search, you'll get an overview of all aspects of the company. Each section has a button to click if you want to print or email that information.
• If you run a company profile search, you'll get a list of the documents you retrieved based on your search terms. Click on the link to see any document.