The university library holds hundreds of annual reports that are not available anywhere else

The university library’s repository holds more than eight hundred corporate annual reports that are not available anywhere else in the Netherlands. Annual reports form the foundation of the business collection of the scientific library, writes Barbara Konjevod.

For as long as companies published annual reports, libraries have collected them. With the rise of the Internet, many companies started offering digital versions of their annual reports alongside the print copies they had traditionally provided to libraries. Annual reports are considered as the foundation of any library’s business collection.

A company annual report is a document published mostly by public companies to disclose corporate information to their shareholders for the previous year. It generally contains an opening letter from the Chief Executive Office, comprehensive financial data, results of continuing operations, subsidiary activities and projections for the future.

Besides this, annual reports have photographs, graphics, and advertisements that can provide a rich history of information on a company which can be difficult to acquire elsewhere. Because of that they are invaluable tools for investigating historical business activities of companies.

The Economic Archive Collection of the Tilburg University Library contains printed corporate annual reports from over 2000 companies with diverse geographic coverage (Netherlands, USA, The Dutch East Indies, Germany, Sweden, Japan etc.) and inconsistent period coverage with the earliest reports dating from the late nineteenth century.

It is stored in the Library’s depot and spans across 220 meters on the shelves. The collection is focused primarily on local companies, items of historical significance, and unique items. More than 800 reports in this collection are not found elsewhere in the Netherlands.

The exact provenance of this collection is unknown. However, the collection continued to grow over the years, until 2004 when the library stopped collecting printed annual reports because it was assumed that they could be found online. Some reports from the 1990s can be found online, sometimes with a fee or database subscription, but many historical reports have not yet been digitized and are available only in print.

Online annual reports available via the library

The accessibility of annual reports depends on the status and type of the company. Most public companies are legally required to file financial statements, but it can be very difficult to find annual reports on private companies. Finding the most recent annual reports is easiest by searching the company’s webpage, usually in the investor relations section.

In addition, Tilburg University Library provides access to external online sources and subscription databases to corporate annual reports: AnnualReports.com, Company.info, EDGAR, Factiva, LSEG Workspace. The library also provides guidance through economics and management subject guide on how to access annual reports in databases.

Looking for annual reports in the Economic Archive Collection? You can browse the collection in library catalog to see what is available. To borrow an annual report, please inquire at the library front desk.

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