Columbia Historical Corporate Annual Reports: Annual Reports

A unique collection of Historical Corporate Annual Reports.

Annual Reports

Annual reports are provided only if the company chooses to file them with the SEC

The 4,482 corporations whose reports comprise the collection represent most of the industries that were instrumental in the creation of early industrialized America including:

  • mining
  • forest products
  • industrial machinery
  • electrical power
  • agriculture
  • food processing
  • metals manufacturing
  • oil & gas
  • textiles
  • chemicals
  • pharmaceuticals
  • communications
  • transportation
  • retail & wholesale trades
  • water utilities
  • beverages
  • insurance
  • financial services
  • publishing
  • building or construction

 

Online Resources

 

  • Digitized Annual Reports  For a selected collection of digitized annual reports for New York city companies, consult the Columbia Historical Corporate Reports Online Collection.
  • Bloomberg::

Available in the Business & Economics Library and Lehman Library. See Bloomberg Research Guide

Database offers corporate annual reports for U.S. companies from 1884 to the present. Key data (financial, Fortune 500 ranking, industry classification, key people, geographic location, auditor, and related companies) are indexed in the citation and can be searched. Reports can be browsed by company name, industry or date

This resource created and maintained by Purdue University Libraries presents a merged list of the corporate annual reports held at twelve university libraries and can be searched by keyword or by university.

 

 

 

 

The Non-Digital Collection

Historical Annual Reports are housed in Columbia University Libraries'  off-site facility. To request a report:

1. Open Excel finding aid  and find the company in the list
2. Write down the barcode associated with the company
3. E-mail business@library.columbia.edu  to request the report from off-site [barcode is needed]

Marvyn Scudder collection of Corporate Documents, 1827-1950  is stored in Rare Book & Manuscript Library. The list of corporate names are available through the Finding aid. For more information contact rbml@columbia.edu for more information. 

The Manuals of Scudder collection are in print format and housed in our off site facility in NJ

Marvyn Scudder Manual of Extinct or Obsolete Companies Vol. I 1926 -Vol. 4,1934 including Index  Continue by: 

Robert D. Fisher manual of extinct or obsolete companies v.5 (1937)

Robert D. Fisher manual of valuable and worthless securities v.6 (1938)-v.14 (1975)

*Annual Reports or manual must be requested in advance and be used in the library. Please note that access policies for Columbia University Libraries differ see: Accessing the Libraries