Fortune 500 Assignment
A list of Fortune 500 companies is available in the April edition of Fortune. The Library copy is at the Circ Desk for students to use. Fortune is available in Gale Databases and Academic Search Premier and the articles with the most recent list are available on our online reserves page which can be found on the left side of the library’s home page (keep in mind to use Online Reserves—the computer needs to know that the student is authorized to use those databases the articles came from—and the easiest way to do that is to actually go to the library’s page and open that database first—it sets a ‘cookie’)
To get information about a company, the best place to go is to our Business Databases page (under topic databases on the library’s homepage). Of these databases, the three best are: Business and Company Resource Center - this has a choice for “company search” and has various types of information “history” “articles” etc.
Business Source Premier is the best way to get to company information is to select “company profiles” --this takes you to an alphabetical list of companies—and you can click on the company to get overview information and also a link to the “datamonitor” report which has a lot of good information. It also gives you a link to search articles about the company. Business Source Premier has two interfaces to choose from, the regular interface and the “Enhanced Business Searching Interface”—but both of these have a link to the “company profiles”
Hoovers has a box to search by company. Gives an overview of the company, history, key people, etc. Hoovers also gives a link to the company website and the company’s stock letters.
You also need to find the company’s vision statement. We have a reference book titled "The Mission Statement Book” –but this book doesn’t have all companies in it. The company website is a good place to go. Keep in mind, though, that it isn’t always called “mission statement” or “vision statement” –or anything at all for that matter! Sometimes there is just a statement on there that sounds like the mission statement! If you cannot find the statement on the website or in our book, you will need to contact the company (via phone or email) to get this information.
The company website is a good place to go to find general information about the company as well as the annual report. Look for sections on the website such as “investor relations” or “corporate information” or “financial information” to find this information.
Accounting students need to get stock information for the company at the end of each week. The stock exchange closes each week on Friday at 4pm. Therefore that information would be in Saturday or Sunday’s newspaper or Monday’s New York Times In Hoover’s, on the company page, the stock symbol is highlighted and will give you the current information, including yesterday’s close. Another good place to go is BigCharts (this website is on our business and accounting online handout http://library.sccsc.edu/handouts/bus-acct.htm ). This has a link to “historical quotes” and you can put in the date and the stock symbol to see how the stock acted on that day.