Company annual reports: ensuring access for researchers

Abstract

Many of the recent company collapses, such as Enron, WorldCom, Tyco and Global Crossing, are believed to have been predictable by the detailed reading of several years of a company’s annual report and accounts. A company’s published annual report and accounts are important primary documents for anyone with an interest in the organization and electronic databases are therefore frequently seen as one convenient method of providing access to annual report information. Typical databases providing this service include: Perfect Information; Juniper; UK Company Factfinder; Global Access; Business Browser; and CAROL (Company Annual Reports Online). A closer look, however, reveals that these services, in addition to being expensive, have a number of inherent limitations. A project was undertaken by the libraries of London Business School, Manchester Business School, the University of Strathclyde, and the University of Warwick to find a solution to this problem. The project, “Company annual reports: assuring the distributed national print archive”, funded by the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP) and running from October 2000 to July 2002, aimed: to provide a comprehensive national resource for researchers interested in using annual report literature; to identify and catalogue major collections of historic company annual reports (substantive collections of pre-1995 material); to address collection development issues, in particular retention policies; and to investigate the potential for the development of a national collection strategy for company annual reports. The project outcome was the development of the SCoRe Database (Search Company Reports) (http://www.score.ac.uk), a Web based, national union catalogue of company annual report holdings in major collections held by academic and national libraries.