Venturing forth: Venture capital and private equity information in academic business libraries

ABSTRACT

Due to limited disclosure requirements, obtaining private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) information presents challenges to academic researchers. However, the universe of commercially available resources that focus on private equity and venture capital has increased substantially over the past decade. This article examines recent academic business literature to evaluate whether resources from newer providers in this subject area (CB Insights, PitchBook, Preqin, PrivCo) are gaining traction among academic researchers. It also matches the resources that researchers are citing to library holdings in an effort to measure library support for PE/VC research. The results indicate that data from traditional providers (Dow Jones, S&P Capital IQ, Thomson Reuters) continues to be heavily used and that libraries are providing moderate support for PE/VC research.

KEYWORDS:

• Business faculty
• databases
• information access
• library resources
• private equity
• venture capital