SCoRe: Company Annual Reports - assuring the distributed national print archive

Project concern

Historic company annual reports are important primary documents for business studies and economics. They are unique sources of historical accounts data, but many libraries - unaware of the value of these documents - are increasingly discarding reports as more current material becomes available electronically.

Purpose

• To provide a comprehensive, national company literature resource for researchers

• To provide a focus for the development of a national strategy to ensure continued access to this material

Aims

• To create a web-based union catalogue of annual report holdings

• To develop a project website describing the collection policies of UK institutions

• To assess the feasibility of a document delivery service to HE researchers

• To highlight the collection development issues surrounding company annual reports

• To provide a framework for developing a national collection strategy

Deliverables

• Web catalogue of annual report holdings in UK libraries (mainly higher education, but to include others), which have significant pre-1995 holdings. Will also contain current holdings and international holdings where these can be readily incorporated.

• Collection policies for annual report literature at UK higher education libraries, with descriptions of and links to other significant collections in national and public libraries.

• Interim and final studies addressing collection development, bibliographic and management issues specific to annual reports literature. To be published on project website and distributed to HE libraries with annual reports collections and other interested parties.

• Collection policy statement describing commitment of key bodies towards preserving and collecting annual reports literature, together with details of any academic deals which the project is able to negotiate.

• Establishment of focus group to develop a national strategy for company annual reports and to enter into negotiations for an academic deal with commercial providers of electronic services covering full text annual reports

Achievements of the project

• Project website including resources for company report collection managers and researchers tracing annual reports, as well as background project information. Includes all project deliverables. At http://www.score.ac.uk

• Web-based national union catalogue of company report holdings (SCoRe: Search Company Reports) live at http://www.score.ac.uk. Contains full holdings of all 4 HE project partners’ collections, and of the British Library. Also contains collection descriptions for 18 other collections.

• A major achievement: the incorporation of far more data on SCoRe than originally envisaged. In particular, inclusion of the British Library’s holdings (a significant proportion of which were previously uncatalogued) is a major attraction of SCoRe, and one not initially planned. Current and international holdings have been catalogued for all HE partners, in addition to the minimum requirement of UK archival holdings.

• A web admin interface to SCoRe, to enable project partners to manage their collection. Allows addition/deletion of companies and reports, and easy export of company address details for mail merge purposes.

• A National Collection Strategy briefing paper, for circulation to funding, PR and other interested bodies. It outlines the current situation with regard to the national archive of annual reports, and warns of a likely future loss of vital research data sources if no action is taken to assure the distributed national print archive.

• A Company reports toolkit. This is a practical manual, demonstrating best practice in the management of company report collections, and is aimed at librarians with responsibility for annual reports. Part 2 shows how to use SCoRe to manage collections.

• Promotional activities include distribution of SCoRe pens, leaflets, posters and regular newsletters; a discussion list; presenting at the annual conferences of the British Business Schools Librarians Group, The European Business Schools Librarians Group and the American Business Library Directors, and an article about the project in the SCONUL Review.

Partners

• London Business School (lead institution)

• Manchester Business School

• University of Warwick

• University of Strathclyde

We are also collaborating with:

• British Library

• Guildhall Library (Corporation of London)

Contact Details

Project website

http://www.score.ac.uk

Content: Gill Davenport
Last updated 2 July 2002