The Barrington Area Library offers three key databases for investment research: Morningstar Research Investment Center, Standard & Poor’s NetAdvantage, and Value Line Investment Survey, all accessible with a library card. Each database provides various tools for researching stocks, bonds, and mutual funds, including stock screeners, analyst reports, and financial education resources. Users can navigate these databases online at balibrary.org, with support available through the library's adult services reference desk.

1. Morningstar Research Investment
Center, Standard & Poor’s
NetAdvantage, and Value Line
Investment Survey
Library Resources for Stocks, Bonds,
and Mutual Funds.

2. • The Barrington Area Library has three
databases that are great for following stock
market trends.
• These databases are Morningstar Research
Investment Center, Standard & Poor’s
NetAdvantage, and Value Line Investment
Survey.
• They are free with your Barrington Area
Library card.

3. Go to balibrary.org and click
on “databases.”

4. Click on “Business and Careers” or
scroll down to Morningstar
Research Investment Center.

5. In “Business, Careers, Technology”, you
will be able to find all of the business and
economic-related databases. They
organized alphabetically. Let’s first look at
Morningstar Research Investment Center.
After clicking on it, you will need to enter
your Barrington Area Library card number.

6. Morningstar Research Investment Center

7. This is the main page of Morningstar Investment Research Center. You
can start by simply entering in a ticker number or name of a
company.
The “Companies”, “Funds”, and “ETFs” tabs all have similar features.
Once you know how to navigate one tab, you will be able to navigate
the others. Let’s look at “Companies.”

8. After clicking on the “Companies” tab, this
is the page you will see. Let’s click on
“Stock Analyst Reports” first.

9. The Stock Analyst Reports page consists
of Stock Names, Sector, Industry, Market
Cap, and the date of the report. Click on
the Stock Name for additional information.

10. Read the analyst note and click on the
different tabs for guided research.

11. In the tabs, if you click on Stock
Screener, you will be able to input
data to screen your own stocks, or
simply click on “Morningstar
Screens” to view pre-made stock
screeners.

12. The “Portfolio” tab lets you find out how your own
portfolio shapes up, find out about asset
allocation, and use Morningstar calculators. You
can also read newsletters, and attend classes by
clicking on the “Help & Education” tab, as well as
the “Newsletters” tab.

13. Standard & Poor’s NetAdvantage

14. Back in the “Business, Careers, and Technology”
database page on the Barrington Area Library’s
website, click on “Standard & Poor’s NetAdvantage”
and enter your Barrington Area Library card when
prompted.

15. On the main page, find links to screeners
for stocks, corporations, mutual funds,
bonds, and private companies. You can also
read the latest financial news and
commentary, as well as see stats for
today’s market.

16. If you click on the “Companies” tab, you
will see links to different snapshots,
investment ideas, and S&P stars. You can
also search for companies and executives
by name.

17. When you click on the “Industries” tab, you
can find reports that are updated regularly
by S&P that let you know how an industry
is doing. Simply click on HTML or PDF to
read the report. You can also choose “Sub-
Industry Review” for additional reports.

18. The “Mutual Funds/ETFs” tab will allow
you to do Fund Research, access a
Fund Screener, and also see top-rated
domestic and international funds.

19. The “Directories” tab lets you find key
information on Security Dealers of North
America, as well as a Register of
Corporations, Executives, and Directors.

20. Click on “Financial Education” for
different interactive classes on a variety
of subjects.

21. Value Line Investment Survey

22. Back on the Barrington Area Library’s
database page, click on “Value Line”
and enter your Barrington Area Library
card when prompted.

23. This is the main page of Value Line. You
can look up stock information by company
or you can look at the latest Value Line
Investment Surveys are updated and
published weekly. Additionally you can
screen stocks.

24. To look at a company’s financial page,
type in the name of the company or
ticker symbol in the top right corner. A
drop-down menu will appear so you can
click on the company that you want to
research.

25. This is an example of a financial page for a
company. If you scroll down, you will see
there is a section for commentary,
rankings, valuation, 3-5 year projections,
sales, score ratings, industry analysis and
more.

26. At the top of the page, you can also view the
PDF reports for each company. These reports
are published every 3 months. Simply click on
“PDF Reports” and select the date you wish to
view.

27. This is an example of a PDF report
for a company. You can print it out
or save it to your computer.

28. Back on the main page, if you click on “dashboard”, you
can view featured commentaries, the stock market
today, and current publications. The latest Value Line
Investment Surveys are updated and published weekly.
You can download them to your computer and/or print
them out. The most popular tend to be Ratings &
reports, Selection & Opinion, and Summary & Index.

29. Clicking on the “Selection & Opinion”
tab will give you a PDF of this week’s
economic and stock market
commentary.

30. When you click on “Summary & Index”, you
will get a PDF that gives you key market
statistics for the week. Note that there are
separate Summary & Index reports for small
and midcaps.

31. If you want to screen stocks, click
on the “Find Ideas” tab and then
click on “Screener.” You can select
criteria from the left-hand column
to set up your screener.

32. All criteria selected will be loaded in
the center of the page. You can make
further adjustments or simply reset
the criteria.

33. The Investment Education tab
includes educational articles, glossary,
and tool guide for using The Value
Line database.

34. Want to learn more?
• The Barrington Area Library’s Slide
Share account has tutorials on other
business databases available with
your Barrington Area Library Card.
• Access these tutorials here.

35. Questions?
• You can visit the Adult Services
Reference Desk, call us at (847) 382-
1300 x 1, text is at 66746 (type code
askbal the first time you send a text),
or send us an email.
• Thank you for using the Barrington
Area Library! For more information on
our business resources, check out our
business page at balibrary.org/business