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Wilson So is the Director of Hitachi Consulting Corporation XBRL at the Special Libraries Association Conference
Written by Rita Ormsby Posted on June 15, 2007
Rita Ormsby is assistant professor and information services librarian at The William & Anita Newman Library Baruch College, City University of New York. She reports on an XBRL program she organized for the Special Libraries Association (SLA) annual conference in Denver on June 5.
About 75 attendees from academic libraries, corporations, government agencies, law firms, mutual funds, and vendors came to a 90-minute session on XBRL and Financial Reporting. The session was organized by the Business & Finance Division’s Investor Services and College & University Business Librarians sections. From comments of thanks received after the session, it is apparent that for many attendees it was either the first or most detailed explanation that they had heard of XBRL.
My colleague at Baruch College’s Newman Library, Prof. Louise Klusek, gave an overview and explanation of XBRL, discussed how to use it, described XBRL International and the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) voluntary filing program (VFP). She also provided information about the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council’s (FFIEC) filing requirements in XBRL and proposals of the Investment Company Institute and the Canadian Securities Administrators.
Prof. Klusek briefly demonstrated the SEC’s Interactive Financial Report Viewer. She also gave an overview of XBRL around the world, including pilot programs and other XBRL initiatives, including earnings releases, Global Reporting Initiative sustainability reports, and tax returns in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. She referred to a September 28, 2006, Gartner report that predicted a change in the marketplace for SEC basic fundamental data, and more accurate, broader, and more effective (and less expensive) research coverage. In noting that information relating to XBRL efforts is changing rapidly, she suggested that librarians should keep abreast of the SEC’s activities, test free XBRL tools, and talk to data vendors.
Courtney Cowgill, CFO and Treasurer of Oceanic Exploration, a Colorado-based corporation, presented the practitioner’s view. Ms. Cowgill explained how she became one of the first CFOs in Colorado to make a financial filing with the SEC using XBRL (she volunteered when she was contacted, as she kindly had for this SLA presentation). She demonstrated the filings. Although she said adopting XBRL was the right thing to do, in light of global efforts to adopt XBRL, she also discussed the effort and expense involved for a small company such as Oceanic Exploration. She discussed XBRL and provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
Like Prof. Klusek, she encouraged librarians and information professionals to keep abreast of XBRL efforts, both here in the United States and abroad. She also said that XBRL will likely open opportunities for librarians with knowledge of financial statements and analytical skills.
Since the session, I have thought how rare it is to hear a CFO speak to librarians, and I am very grateful that Ms. Cowgill agreed to talk to SLA members. There is much education to be done about XBRL for many potential user groups, including academic librarians.
Here are some other thoughts I’ve had about XBRL since the conference:
- Standardized financial filings will help individual investors, beginning students, and faculty researchers. A big question for the academic librarians who help researchers is, How will vendors handle prior filings? Will there be a greater reluctance to purchase needed data if XBRL does make data available faster, cheaper, and better (i.e., fewer errors)?
- There is much education to be done about XBRL for many potential user groups, including academic librarians.
- When the data is freely available, how will academic librarians make a contribution to analysis of that data? If we don’t have a role, is this another event that might lead students to think the library’s resources have limited value? How will students learn about XBRL? Through course assignments? Library workshops or tutorials? How will I find the time to keep up with XBRL and all the other accounting-related changes that are occurring?
The materials from the session, along with some helpful XBRL-related resources compiled for librarians, will soon be posted on the SLA Business & Finance website. You can also contact me for them.