Access to Bureau van Dijk’s Databases Orbis and Zephyr Canceled

By on June 30, 2011 in Business & management

The MIT Libraries is unable to renew its subscriptions to Orbis, a worldwide directory of company information, and Zephyr, a database of merger and acquisition deals, due to large unbudgeted price increases for these resources.

The cancellation also applies to subsets of Orbis, including the following databases: Amadeus (European companies), Icarus (US companies), Osiris (public companies worldwide), and Bankscope (banks worldwide).  Access to these databases ceased on June 30, 2011 via their native interfaces and also via the WRDS platform.

We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause MIT faculty, staff, and students who work with these resources.  However, their cost in FY2012 is double that of FY2010.  Such an unprecedented rate of increase would have required the cancellations of multiple other resources which are necessary to support research and teaching in management and social sciences and which are more fairly priced for academic customers such as MIT.  While regrettable, the cancellations of Orbis and Zephyr will enable us to continue to support a range of content in all disciplines, on reasonable terms, to the MIT community in the future.

Alternatives to Orbis and Zephyr

The MIT Libraries currently subscribe to other databases that provide content similar to Orbis and Zephyr.  Hoovers Online provides profiles of over 80 million companies worldwide.  LexisNexis Company Dossier provides profiles of over 40 million companies worldwide and includes options for exporting data. SDC Platinum available at a workstation in Dewey Library and via client software, provides access to information on mergers and acquisitions, IPOs, joint ventures and other deals worldwide.  Other databases for company information and financial data are listed in the following research guides:

We will continue to evaluate new products for potential purchase to provide additional access to company and deals information worldwide.

For questions about the cancellation or for research assistance, please contact Alex Caracuzzo, MIT Sloan, Management, and Finance Librarian at alex3@mit.edu, or visit Ask Us!.