Database of the week: FT.com / Financial Times

I know it’s been database of the week before but FT.com is addictive reading at the moment. You can use the site free of charge when you register via https://library.lincoln.ac.uk/ > Find > Databases > F > FT.com. Use the account within 90 days otherwise you’ll need to re-register. There’s no risk of that, of course. I read it daily. The analysis, market insights, and other features like the famed Alphaville section is superb. At South Mimms service station on Saturday, I noticed that the Weekend version cost £4.30p. To you (as a student or member of staff) it is free. That’s the best deal possible.

Screenshot of the FT.com website

Reading the Financial Times online today

There’s never been a better day than today to watch events unfold than by reading the Financial Times online. At the University we have unlimited access to FT.com whose sections like Alphaville  (it will ask for your university username and password) tracks the markets and an invaluable online forum. For instance, nougats like Jan Hilbebrand’s article on a secret Brexit plan (yes, one really does exists) is worth seeking out, saying that Germany’s Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble has already made preparations for a Brexit. Also the fastFT (“a global team working across timezones to give you market-moving news and views twenty-four hours a day, five days a week”) is an excellent tool to follow today’s news as it appears ‘live’.  The housing market, the Pound, stocks and shares, investment, the FTSE  and spread betting are news stories just from the past hour as Brexit hits the financial markets.

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FT.com video on using twitter

Lucy Kellaway from FT Comment advises on whether CEOs need Twitter. She’s been studying the CEOs with the most Twitter followers and examining their popularity. Some great advice here. Any CEO not using Twitter is not engaged. If you want to be engaging be Elon Musk (‘boy wonder stuff’) the only one she recommends. But boring bland tweets from famous CEOs get thousands of retweets, sometimes a bizarre and inexplicable phenomenon. You’ll find the video halfway down the FT.com page (there’s no embed code for all those blog aficionados out there) then you’ll need to log on using your username and password if you’re off campus.

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Keeping up to date with FT.com alerts

Arguably, there’s no genuine alternative to using FT.com for studying business. Crucial to any business student is access to the best up to date resources at a fingertip using a desktop, tablet or mobile, and our unlimited access to FT.com provides articles, graphs and analysis from over 600 journalists worldwide certainly provides that promise in bucket-loads. If you’re a business student, keeping up to date with news and analysis gives you the edge when it comes to writing any financial assignment; such as knowing where and what to invest in is essential insight. I’ve often wondered about the curious similarities between the skills of a research librarian and a stockbroker as both need to track the news and be fully informed about their subject area as an ongoing pursuit. Indeed, there’s really no alternative to fine tuning these skills. For instance, there’s an absorbing article ‘How long would it take to leave?’ about the possibility of Brexit, post 23rd June.

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You can set up alerts based on search terms via email, change your preferences, time the delivery so you have complete control over the information you receive , as well as having the option of receiving a weekly ‘letter from the editor’ with as a‘s personal views on the current news agenda and the fabulously named ‘Best of Lex‘ email featuring a compilation of the week’s best commentary.  RSS feeds are another way of getting alerted to relevant news, if you want, to your desktop or mobile.

To gain access to FT.com you’ll need to go to the Library webpage at library.lincoln.ac.uk then to resources > databases > F > FT.com and register if you haven’t already done so. Plus you’ll impress the academics by regularly visiting this site (and thoroughly analysing what you find, of course!).

FT.com now available

 

1 2We are delighted to announce that we have access to the Financial Times online via FT.com across the University, set up in conjunction with the Business School. This means that the invaluable graphics supplied by FT.com are available across the University for the first time. The FT.com site access is in addition to our existing access to full-text articles from the Financial Times via the ABI Inform and Factiva databases.

Users can either log in to FT.com via the Library’s website (library.lincoln.ac.uk) and locate it under the ‘databases’ section or create their personal account directly from a University of Lincoln computer.