Financial Information Resources for SPECIAL LIBRARIANS

Information Outlook, April, 2000 by Di Su

Speed has always been a competitive factor and corporate asset in the business world. The growth of the Internet has created an equal opportunity for information service professionals in both big and small companies to improve their efficiency.

The prominent advantages of a web source are timeliness, accessibility, and thus, the speed. You are provided with instant updates on issues like rules, official statements, interpretations, statistics, etc., and these documents can be accessed twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

There are so many valuable financial web sites on the Internet that it is impossible to include them all in this article, but it does focus on a few important sites that address general accounting issues. The sites were chosen based upon their authority, usefulness, and reliability.

POLICIES & RULES

It is vital to constantly update your knowledge in legal issues especially in a sensitive area like the accounting practice. The following are official U.S. government web sites that you may want to visit on a regular basis.

The General Accounting Office http://www.gao.gov

The General Accounting Office (GAO) was established by the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 (31 U.S.C. 702), to independently audit Government agencies. The GAO, under the control and direction of the Comptroller General of the United States, exams all matters relating to the receipt and disbursement of public funds.

Main sections on the site are:

GAO Reports and Testimony - Maintains the last three months reports. For older reports you can follow the link to archives. Most of the documents are available in both ASCII text and PDF versions. If an electronic version is not available, the citation will be linked to an online form to order a printed copy. GAO's Daybook (recent announcements) is also available from here in PDF format.

Comptroller General Decisions and Opinions - Prepared by GAO's Office of General Counsel, each Decision is identified by a numbering system beginning with B- (number) and date. The full text of each listed Decision can be retrieved in either HTML or PDF version. GAO Reports of Federal Agency Rules - Includes GAO Federal Rules Database. You can search by agency name, rule type, or publication date from pull-down menus.

GAO Policy/Guidance Publications - Among these publications are Government Auditing Standards (The Yellow Book), GAO's General Policies/Procedures and Communications Manual, Financial Audit Manual (Volume 1: Methodology, Volume 2: Tools), and Federal/Information System Controls Audit Manual. All documents are in PDF format.

Special Publications - Special topics from Business Process Reengineering Guide to Y2K issues. Each document is indicated format type, i.e., HTML, TXT, or PDF.

GAO FraudNET - You can report allegations of fraud, waste, abuse or mismanagement of federal funds by filling out a FraudNET Form online.

Mailing Lists - After you have registered online, you will receive instant email of Daybook (Daily list of newly released and newly available GAO reports and testimony), and Decisions (Daily list of newly released Comptroller General Decisions).

A site search engine is powered by Infoseek. Navigating on the site is fast and smooth since it is a text-only site. A manual of WAIS is provided with general information and search assistance, although it would be more helpful if hyperlinks were provided within the manual which is approximately forty-two pages long.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission http://www.sec.gov

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), created by Congress under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, is an independent, nonpartisan, quasi-judicial regulatory agency. The SEC's mission is to "administer federal securities laws and issue rules and regulations to provide protection for investors and to ensure that the securities markets are fair and honest." The laws administered by the Commission are the Securities Act of 1933; Securities Exchange Act of 1934; Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935; Trust Indenture Act of 1939; Investment Company Act of 1940; and Investment Advisers Act of 1940.

The Commission also serves as an adviser to federal courts in corporate reorganization proceedings under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978. The Commission reports annually to Congress on administration of the securities laws. The current annual report (1998, as the time of this writing) is available at: http://www.sec.gov/asec/annrep98/arfrontm.htm

Main sections are:

Investor Assistance and Complaints - Offers Investor alerts, FAQ on investing, SEC news and public statements, data on complaints and studies, links to federal agencies, state agencies, and investor education sites.

EDGAR Database - Allows you to retrieve publicly available filings submitted to the SEC from January 1994 to the present for free. Beginning in May 1996, the SEC required all public companies to file registration statements, reports, and other forms electronically through EDGAR (short for Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system), except for foreign companies and the smallest of public companies whose securities are exempt from registration under Reg A or Reg D. SEC filings are posted to the EDGAR Database 24 hours after the date of filing. (For more information on EDGAR, see author's article "Electronic Stacks: Using Web Sources in Reference Service" in The Reference Librarian 65, 1999, pp. 161-176.)