The Thomas J. Watson Library of Business and Economics is one of the largest collections in the United States for the study of management, finance, economics, industry and related fields. Special focus is placed on the topics of accounting, business economics, business history, management of organizations, management science, operations management, corporate and international finance, international economics, corporate relations, security analysis, marketing, money and financial markets, and labor. The library's collection reflects the Business School's and the Department of Economics' emphasis on the economics of developed and developing nations, international business conditions and practices, global trade, emerging markets and international securities trading.

Included in the collections are an extensive reference collection and a wide variety of financial, economic, marketing, and business news databases. Many of the databases are web-delivered and may be used on or off campus by authorized Columbia users; others must be used at workstations in the library.

For a complete listing of databases, please click here.  Columbia University's electronic resources are restricted to current students, faculty and staff.

The library holds more than 400,000 books, 700,000 microforms, 1,200 journal titles and extensive files of government publications. The journal collection includes U.S. and international periodicals and trade and association journals. The microform collections include disclosure documents for publicly traded U.S. companies from 1970 through the late nineties [superseded by database access]. The older component of the Watson Library's collection contains many unique sources useful to the researcher in business or economic history.