The library subscribes to around 40 electronic research databases including over 4000 electronic journals from a variety of publishers. These sources are constantly being updated with publications that could be vital for your research. How can you know when important new information is available?

Fortunately, most research databases and electronic journals solve this problem for you by offering email alerts. Increasingly, publishers are creating RSS feeds as an alternative tool to email. This newsletter explains more about these tracking tools and how to take advantage of the options offered by the library’s subscription electronic resources. It is likely to be of most interest to researchers or other users who need to monitor new research output, but contains useful information for anybody who wants to spend less time searching and more time reading.

CHRISTOPHER MORLEY:

“There was so much handwriting on the wall that even the wall fell down.”

2.1. About email alerts
2.2. About RSS
2.3. E-Resources offering alerts and RSS feeds
2.4. Accessing subscription content via email alerts and RSS feed readers
2.5. Appropriate use of alerts and RSS

The IESE library now subscribes to WRDS. WRDS is a data management system for multiple datasets from different sources and providers. It offers a common web interface, tools and programs for querying and extracting data from the underlying datasets, which have been given a consistent data format by WRDS staff. Support is available from WRDS team of PhDs and programmers.

WRDS is generally recommended for research users rather than casual users.

Datasets available via WRDS:

Amadeus (Bureau Van Dijk)
Financial accounts and basic data for top 200,000 European companies, public and private.

We also subscribe direct to Amadeus, available via Library > E-Resources.

COMPUSTAT Global & EMDB (Standard & Poors)
Compustat Global covers data on publicly trading companies in more than 80 countries, representing over 90% of the world’s stock market capitalization. EMDB covers 53 markets and over 2,200 stocks in developing countries.

COMPUSTAT North America (Standard & Poors)
Annual and quarterly financial data for more than 24,000 publicly held companies.

Standard & Poor's ExecuComp
ExecuComp provides compensation history for U.S. directors and current compensation for executives for companies within the S&P 1500.

CRSP (Center for Research in Security Prices) US Stock Database 
CRSP US Stock Database contains end-of-day and month-end prices on all listed NYSE, AMEX, and NASDAQ common stocks along with basic market indices, and includes the most comprehensive distribution information available, with the most accurate total return calculations. It includes CRSP's unique permanent identifiers allowing for clean and accurate backtesting, time-series and event studies, measurement of performance, accurate benchmarking, and securities analysis.

Annual Updates: The database is updated with data for the most recent year, and the annual update is made available the following February.

Free datasets
Twelve free US datasets are included covering banks data, Dow Jones index data, transaction data for corporate bonds and other series.

How to access WRDS

1. Point your web browser to <http://wrds.wharton.upenn.edu>
 
2. In the center of the page, you will see a link entitled “account request.”  Click on that link. 
 
3. Then click on the "request a user account" link and complete the Account Request form. 
 
4.  Once you submit an Account Request, we will send an e-mail to your WRDS Representative, Carina Huguet (chuguet@iese.edu) for approval.  After receiving the approval, we will create the account and send you an e-mail message with a special URL and instructions for setting the account password and logging into WRDS.
 
5.  You may log into WRDS and begin using your new account.  Because the service is internet-based, you can access WRDS from anywhere in the world.

You will also find a link to WRDS on the library website. See Library > E-Resources.