Annual Reports: Preserving and Disseminating a Source for Business History

摘要

Lippincott Library's Historical Corporate Annual Reports Collection contains useful primary sources of information for several disciplines, including applied accounting and business history. They also are reflections of the societal and cultural mores of the times. Unfortunately, these reports are fragile, difficult to locate, and hard to access. The creation of a digital collection preserves images of the reports and makes them easily accessible for anyone with access to the Internet. This paper details the efforts of Lippincott Library at the University of Pennsylvania to create an electronic collection of historical annual reports based on a large print collection owned by the library. The challenges of electronic "preservation" are discussed, as well as possible solutions.