Economics

Introduction

This guide is intended as an introduction to books, journals, quick reference and electronic information in economics. The Library has many other guides to its collections and services. Please see the Library home page or the guide stands near the Help Desk on the 1st floor.

Library Catalogue

The Library online catalogue can be accessed from the Library home page. It is available via the  internet. It includes catalogue records for printed and electronic books and journals held by the Library. Search by author, title, subject, series or keyword, or by journal title. Use "Advanced Search" for additional keyword search options, such as searching by author and title, or setting search limits by date or material type such as theses. For help on using the Library catalogue there is an online tutorial on the Library home page.

Some specialist materials are not included in the main Library Catalogue. These include some government documents such as parliamentary papers, legislation, internet sites and working papers. Ask at the Help Desk if you require additional help.

Finding books

The best strategy is to check the catalogue for books that you require. Every book has a classmark which represents its subject. The catalogue will also indicate on which floor a book is shelved and if it is on loan. Useful classmarks on economics include:

Most economics material in the Main Collection is located on the 2nd floor. For locations of other classmarks use the library floorplan.

There is also a separate Course Collection of key texts on the ground floor, accessible by turnstile for LSE Staff and Students only.

Government publications are located on the 1st floor of the Library (recent UK publications,  intergovernmental material and current statistics) or the lower ground floor (older UK publications, historical statistics and government publications from other countries world-wide).

Some material such as pamphlets are kept in Closed Access and are fetched from the Service Counter by request.

There is also an Archives Department on the Lower Ground Floor.

Finding quick reference materials

The Reference Collection on the 1st floor contains dictionaries, directories, encyclopaedias and printed indexes. Useful sources on your subject include:

Some important reference resources for economists are now available online. These include - The New Palgrave dictionary of economics, International encyclopedia of social and behavioural sciences, and Current Value of Old Money (if you wondered what a pound would buy in past years).

Oxford Reference Online contains subject dictionaries for economics as well as language dictionaries

Finding journals

To find printed and electronic journals journals choose "Find Results In: Journal Title Browse" on the "Library Catalogue Quick Search" screen. For the print version the catalogue will display the classmark, holdings of the journal and latest issues received. The electronic version will give you a link through to the full text of the journal. Note that there may be more than one link and that dates of coverage are variable. Electronic coverage tends to be from recent years but sometimes full text is not available up to the current date.  JSTOR is a database of back-runs for academic journals.  For LSE staff and students most electronic journals can be accessed remotely using your LSE login and password. For many journal titles the Library holds both print and electronic formats.

Electronic journals can also be found from the E- Journals page. Look through the alphabetical lists or search by title to go to a specific journal, or host, such as JSTOR.

Key titles (a very selective list) include:

Finding journal articles

Articles are not generally indexed on the online Library Catalogue, so look for the journal in which the article was published. Printed indexes and electronic databases index journal articles. Both of these are listed with links on the Library's catalogue. The Library provides a searching service for LSE staff and students called Cross Searcher that searches the content of a number of selected databases and resources. This can be used to find journal articles, and where available, links through to the full text, using the LSE article finder orange button: .

Finding electronic information resources

The Electronic Resources page contains information on all of the electronic resources to which the Library has access.

• All databases, including those in Cross Searcher and many more, are listed on the Library Catalogue.
• Click here to see databases relevant to Economics.
• There are also many free web resources that are available using the Library's Delicious account.
• A full list of Ejournals available from LSE is available on the Ejournals page. LSE Staff and students will need to use their LSE username and password to access these.

Indexes to journal articles

EBSCO BUSINESS SOURCE PREMIER - a database covering several thousand business, management and economics journals. Many of these articles are full text. Searches can be limited by date and material type.

The following databases are indexes only but the Article Finder Icon can be used to link to the electronic version of the journal if the Library has a subscription , or to the Library catalogue or to the catalogues of other libraries if the book/journal is not in stock here.

INTERNATIONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES (1951-) indexes a wide range of social science journals.

ECONLIT  (1969-) Indexes economics journals and includes abstracts.

SOCIAL SCIENCES CITATION INDEX  (1980 -) indexes social science journals and includes citation references

EMERALD MANAGEMENT RESEARCH XTRA -indexes hundreds of journals in business and management

Working papers

Many university departments now publish their research online in the form of working papers. They can be found from the university web sites. Many working papers are available  using the Library's Delicious account. Working papers can also be found using Google Scholar or Advanced Google searching. Try limiting the domain address to "ac.uk". This will limit subject searches to the web sites for UK academic institutions. Many university libraries also have links to institutional repositories containing some full text research - for example  -

LSE RESEARCH ONLINE, which can be searched by Department, subject or author.

The Library subscribes to the NBER working papers online ,  REPEC and the Economics Research Network (SSRN) which contain  many collections of online working papers

Internet sites

INTUTE (formerly Social Sciences Information Gateway) has links to useful web sites for economists, which have been selected by academic and library staff in UK universities

The Royal Economic Society web site also has useful information.

Data

The Library holds a large collection of data of interest to economists. Some of this is in print in the Current statistics collection on the First Floor of the Library. It is published by governments and IGOS. All publications are on the Library catalogue. In addition the Data Library available to LSE staff and students has a selection of resources for economics. Some of the most important are publications from the Economist Intelligence Unit - EIU Country Data, EIU Country reports and EIU Market Indicators and Forecasts

Data from intergovernmental organisations such as the International Monetary Fund  include the IMF country reports, and IMF Direction of Trade Statistics. These resources are available for LSE staff and students and require registration with the Economic and Social Data Library Service (login via the UK Federation). SOURCEOECD contains online publications and statistics from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.  For reports and statistics from other IGOs search on the Library catalogue under the name of the organisation.

Company financial data is available from databases such as FAME  (Financial Analysis Made Easy) for UK companies, AMADEUS  for European Companies, ICARUS and MERGENT ONLINE for US Companies. (only available on Campus) and OSIRIS for company information world-wide.

GMID (General Market Information Database) for market research information worldwide.

DATASTREAM - Online service offering financial and economic data, including exchange rates, bond data, stock market indices, interest rates and economic indices worldwide. Includes historical data.

BLOOMBERG - a source of financial information

BOARDEX - for tracing biographic information of business personnel

These services are available to LSE staff and students at the PCs on the first floor of the Library.

Online reference material

This includes electronic versions of encyclopedias and dictionaries. Index to theses and Dissertations Abstracts are also available online. See separate guide to Reference Resources.

NEXIS (LSE staff and students only)
Full text of a wide range of UK and some non-UK newspapers (mostly from 1980s onwards) as well as a number of business related databases.

For historical news coverage there is the TIMES DIGITAL ARCHIVE 1785-1985. Older runs of the Financial Times are on microfilm and fetched on request. The index is in the Reference Collection at ZHG34

Other electronic resources

LSE exam papers  - past exam papers are available online to LSE staff and students from the Library web site.

The Library is a a European Documentation Centre, with a collection of European Union official publications such as legislation, consultation documents, judgements of the European Court of Justice, and reports. Material is located on the First Floor in the Intergovernmental Organisations Collection. Publications have the prefix EC. The official web site of the European Commission  - EUROPA  has links to the web sites of all other European institutions and EURLEX - a full text database for EU law. See also subject guide for European Information

British Government publications include Parliamentary debates, bills, statutes, government reports and consultation papers. Material published since 1980 is on the First Floor, older publications are on the Lower Ground Floor. Many parliamentary papers from the 18th, 19th centuries  as well as more recent publications are now available online. See also subject guide for Government

If you are an LSE student or member of staff, you may be able to use most other libraries of the University of London for reference, and in some cases borrowing. There may also be other specialist libraries you may be entitled to visit.

Further information on other libraries can be found at 'Using other libraries'. Such information will include who is eligible to visit, access to catalogues and opening hours. Please always check before you visit any other libraries.

Locations for journals in other London University libraries can be found on the Union List of Serials. For books search each London University library catalogue. Use COPAC to search the catalogues of the main research libraries in the UK including the British Library.

If a book is not available anywhere in London you may place an inter-library loan request. You may also request that the Library purchase a book if not already in stock using the Book recommendation form

Check the Library home page for further information.

Library training sessions include Endnote (managing your references), citing and referencing, "More to life than Google -using the internet" and much more. For sessions on European information, government publications and business information you can book a session with a member of Library staff.

Contact

For any further assistance, please ask at the Help Desk located on the 1st floor of the Library, or contact Barbara Humphries (Liaison Librarian for the Economics Department) b.humphries@lse.ac.uk

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