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Accounting: Background/General Resources

A University of Lethbridge Library guide to Accounting research and resources.

About Reference

Reference materials - such as encyclopedias, dictionaries, textbooks, etc - can provide a good overview of a subject and lead you to further related resources, and are a great place to start your research.

Reference Books

Books and e-Books

Search the library catalogue to find books on the particular area of accounting you are looking for.  Use 'and' to connect your terms to narrow your search (ie accounting AND ethics). You can do keyword searches as well as subject searches, which utilize the Library of Congress Subject Headings to locate items on the same subject. Some relevant subject headings include:

These same terms (and more) will work as keyword searches, but you will get many more (and possibly irrelevant) results using a keyword search. Try both and take it from there. If you search any term in the 'subject' field, the catalogue will try to suggest related subjects for you to try, as well as more sub-categories of the subject. Of course, if you know the title or author of a book, you can search the catalogue using those fields as well.  For broad categories like accounting, it might also be useful to search for the general subject heading of accounting combined with a keyword (or several) using 'and' using the 'advanced keyword search' option.

You can also do an 'advanced keyword search' and restrict the 'material type' to limit your search to a particular format (ie, e-books only).

Open Access Textbooks

Searching the Library Catalogue