INSURANCE
Insurance is more important than the average person is aware. Beyond protecting a car or house, insurance is what is needed to protect those who wish to go forward in business, because it would be difficult (not to mention foolish) to do so without being prepared to cope with potential disasters. This is especially true of large operations. Risk management, among other things, is a way of figuring out if risks are worth taking considering their benefits and which are not.
The subject guides for business, finance, economics, and accounting or others may be of interest as well.
DATABASES
EBSCO
As ever, EBSCO is a great way to do research. It is actually an aggregator, and that means that it searches lots of different databases at the same time. For business-related information, one might want to select these particular ones (to avoid getting irrelevant hits):
Academic Search Premier
Business Source Complete
Legal Collection
Newspaper Source
Regional Business News
Vente et Gestion (business journals in French)
Economia y Negocios (business journals in Spanish)
Hospitality & Tourism Index
Academic Search Complete
Electronic Journals
This allows you to browse ULM's available journals by name, so you can know very quickly whether or not we have the publication you want.
JSTOR - The scholarly journal archive
There are many journals on JSTOR-- it means "Journal storage." You can search by issues and genres, and inside the article text itself. JSTOR brings you journal pages just as they appear in print-- and just about as usefully.
LexisNexis Academic Search
LexisNexis has devoted a specific part of its powerful database interface to Business research (accessible by clicking the corresponding link on the left of the front-page). Using it will be extremely useful as it has detailed company information, news, journals, and more. Also, don't forget the general news or the Legal Research option.
Mergent Online
This resource can produce a lot of things, including very detailed profiles of companies with codes, numbers, recent stocks, contact information, summaries of what they are, financials, competitors, and more. Do remember, though, that it only goes back as far as 1997. If you want to dates earlier than that, you'll have to use the print version. As this time, they are shelved in the stacks.
INTERNET RESOURCES
A.M. Best
A.M. Best Company is a credit rating organization, and it is very well-known and trusted. There is no cost to sign up for a basic account, but it has some limitations. It can provide news, press releases, information on legal claims by state, and more.
The American Institute for Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters (AICPCU)
This site is produced in association with the Insurance Institute of America (IIA). The site has educational support material, information on exams, and a discussion forum.
claimspages.com
This is a very large link hub site with a variety of resources, like directories, specialized search engines, articles, job postings, and more. There are also discussion forums for specific subjects in insurance.
Hays B. Clark Insurance Resource Center
This is right here at ULM. Insurance students and professors can access this special collection of insurance resources in room 2-27 of the Administration building.
Louisiana Department of Insurance
This website has quite a few useful resources. It can be a quick way to reach specific offices in the department (fraud, Commissioner of Insurance, legal, etc.) and to find forms. There is an online glossary , press releases, guides, FAQs, links, and more.
Louisiana Insurance Guaranty Association
LIGA was created in 1970 to protect the insured when an insurance provider itself collapses. It covers property and casualty insurance. It has an Insolvency List that shows what companies are insolvent, when it happened, the POC Filing Deadline, and the state where it resided. This site also publishes LIGA annual reports.
Insurance Education Foundation
As the name implies, the IEF promotes education on the subjects insurance and risk management. This is aimed at everyone rather than only those studying it. There are sets of complete lesson plans (even with PowerPoint files) on various subjects, news, links, articles, and more.
insure.com
Although there are ads on its pages, this site can be useful as a directory and for finding links when you browse by state. You can also browse the site by types of insurance. There are articles containing useful advice, news, FAQs and more.
The International Association of Industrial Accident Boards & Commissions (IAIABC)
The IAIABC "is a not-for-profit trade association representing government agencies charged with the administration of workers' compensation systems throughout the United States, Canada, and other nations and territories." The website has some useful literature, like surveys, presentations, and documents. There is also a message board, here called a web board.
National Association of Insurance Commissioners
The NAIC's primary concerns are ethics and making sure insurance providers are fair to the public and fair to competition. The site has news, alerts, legislative information (sometimes appearing alongside relevant articles), meeting information, and much more. Separate parts of the site are dedicated to consumers, industry, and members.
The National Association of Professional Insurance Agents (PIA)
PIA represents insurance agents in the United States and Puerto Rico. The site has papers on topics like flood insurance and crop insurance, news, information on events, a Spanish language section for "agentes latinos," and more.
The National Conference of Insurance Guaranty Funds
"The NCIGF monitors national insurance activities and coordinates information for multi-state insolvencies." The website has news and updates, reports, manuals, directories, and a useful links page.
The National Underwriter
The National Underwriter is a publishing company, so most parts of this site require a subscription, but it still has quite a few free articles. There are publications on specific topics, such as Life, Health, Casualty, and others.
PCI
PCI a property/casualty trade association and it promotes members' public policy positions. The site has news, articles on industry issues, an RSS feed, and other pages related to the association.
Society of Insurance Research
As its name implies, Society of Insurance Research promotes research in insurance and respect for doing it. There is news, information on events, and the site's collection of links is very nice.
Yahoo! Insurance
The portal site yahoo.com has a portion set aside for insurance. This is, of course, meant for average consumers, but it does have news, editorials, advice, guides, a glossary, and calculators, all with a pleasingly polished presentation.
Of course, that can't represent absolutely everything that there is. For more information, see the library catalog, visit the stacks, or the URLs below. It is also entirely possible to find information related to your topic in other disciplines.
This guide was created with the help of these useful resources:
http://library.msstate.edu/content/templates/?a=272&/
http://www.libraries.psu.edu/business/insurance/default.htm
http://www.ldi.la.gov/useful_links.htm