Financial Statement Analysis

Financial statement analysis often serves as a capstone course for the accounting and finance curricula. In such a course, students evaluate financial disclosures of corporations, along with other information, in order to make economic decisions. Information about a company, the industry in which it operates, and macroeconomic conditions that affect it are critical in generating a thorough analysis. Librarians represent an important link in the financial analyses conducted by students because of their ability to access and direct students to appropriate information sources. This paper examines the primary information needs of students engaged in financial statement analysis and the role that librarians fulfill in providing that information. A financial analysis is presented by separating date into units, flowcharing the search procedure and classifying key characteristics.