Annual Reports
Baker Historical Collections
Appointments are not required, but they do have many materials stored off-site, so it may be best to contact them ahead of time in case they need to request materials for you. For more information about planning a visit there. Contact them at histcollref@hbs.harvard.edu or 617.495.6411.
19th-century R.G. Dun & Co. (a predecessor to Dun & Bradstreet) credit reports on local businesses, created by lawyers reporting on local companies and individuals, running to more than 2,500 volumes arranged geographically.
Baker Library Historical Collections also has a sizeable trade catalog collection (19th-early 20th century) on machinery, textiles, locomotives, etc. All of the catalogs are in HOLLIS and can be searched for under the form/genre term “trade catalogs.”
A vast accumulation of local business records bulking in late 18th-early 20th with strengths in: labor, records of merchants (e.g., Hancock family), farmer’s account books, early financiers (often with Harvard background). Lots on the China trade.
Baker has thousands of company annual reports(1820-date), with a current collecting focus on Fortune 500 and global companies. Individual reports are not in HOLLIS, but are included in an onsite database. They are starting to acquire sustainability and other types of reports and will soon acquire Stanford and UC Berkeley’s annual report collections.
Other Sources for Annual Reports
LC Subject term is: Corporations Reports
Annual Reports at Academic Business Libraries is a database locating reports of individual companies in nine major collections including Harvard.
Annual Reports to Shareholders: Historical Collections in Libraries, by Judith M. Nixon (Libraries Research Publications. Paper 123 (2010)) offers an overview of corporate report collections
Proquest Historic Annual Reports offers full text of 800 Fortune 500 companies back to 1844.
Columbia Historical Corporate Reports Online Collection
Historical Corporate Reports (University of Pennsylvania) (1800s-1975)
Business/Trade Periodicals
Bibliographies
Business journals of the United States, ed. by William Fisher. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991, 318 p.
HOLLIS Catalog
Corporate magazines of the United States, ed. by Sam G. Riley. New York: Greenwood Press, 1992, 281 p.
HOLLIS Catalog
Trade, industrial, and professional periodicals of the United States, ed. by Kathleen L. Endres. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994, 467 p. HOLLIS Record
WebWire | Trade Publications by Industry
Periodical Indexes
ABI Inform (1971-) indexes academic management, marketing, and general business journals
Business Source Complete (early 20th century- )
Industrial arts index (1913-57) indexes English-language applied science, technical, trade, and management literature: the literature of practice.
HOLLIS Record
HathiTrust version (Full text 1913-1922)
Background/Context
International directory of company histories
Local businesses: exploring their history, by K. Austin Kerr, Amos J. Loveday and Mansel G. Blackford. Nashville, TN: American Association for State and Local History, 1990, 128 p.
Baker Business | Historical Collections -- Reference | HD2785 .K43 1990
Widener | Harvard Depository | HD2785 .K43 1990
Mulligan, W. H., Jr. 1988. A Historical Dictionary of American Industrial Language. NY: Greenwood Press, 332 pp.
List of terms grouped by industry (pp. 281-323); index of institutions and people (pp.331-332).