SCoRe Search Company Reports

1

• SCoRe (Search Company Reports)
• The national UK catalogue of printed company
  reports
• Gill Dwyer
• CCM Summer Expert Workshop
• 16 July 2007

2
What

• SCoRe is the outcome of a collaborative
  collection management project funded by the
  Research Support Libraries Programme.
• The project was called Company annual
  reports assuring the distributed national print
  archive and it ran from October 2000 to July
  2002.

3
Who

• Higher education
• London Business School (lead institution)
• Manchester Business School
• Strathclyde University
• Warwick University
• Other
• British Library
• Guildhall Library (Corporation of London)
• All partners have significant collections of
  pre-1995 company reports

4
Why

• Annual reports are important primary documents
• Despite their importance printed reports are in
  danger of disappearing
• No single, free repository of annual reports in
  the UK. Many libraries hold significant,
  historical collections which together provide a
  distributed national archive

5
Purpose of project

• Provide a comprehensive resource for researchers
  interested in using company report literature
• Provide a focus for the development of a national
  strategy for ensuring continued access to this
  literature

6
Project deliverables

• Web catalogue of UK reports holdings in UK HE
  libraries with significant archive holdings
• Collection policies for company report literature
  in UK higher education libraries, with
  descriptions of other significant collections
• Study addressing collection development,
  bibliographic and management issues specific to
  annual reports literature
• Collection policy statement describing commitment
  of key bodies towards preserving and collecting
  annual reports literature
• National strategy for company annual reports and
  an academic deal with commercial providers of
  electronic full text annual reports

7
Project evaluation successes

• Creation of a national union catalogue SCoRe
• SCoRe live on the web and well used by
  researchers
• Contained the complete holdings of the
  collections of LBS, MBS, Strathclyde, Warwick and
  the British Library
• Expanded to include non-UK and current holdings
  and the holdings of the British Library - a major
  collection
• Adopted by project partners as main or secondary
  management tool for company reports

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SCoRe (continued)

• An administrative interface created for company
  report management
• 16 libraries joined at collection level, in
  addition to the 6 project partner libraries
• Included details of approx 166,000 reports at
  January 2003. Extra funding awarded by RSLP to
  migrate the database to SQL Server, a more
  appropriate platform for such large quantities of
  data

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Project evaluation successes

• Collection management deliverables
• Full collection management policies available for
  HE partner libraries and brief collection
  policies for all participating libraries
• Company reports toolkit a practical manual for
  managers of company reports collections. Part one
  advises on collection development, bibliographic
  and management issues. Part two demonstrates how
  to use SCoRe to manage company report collections
  
• National Collection Policy briefing paper

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Project evaluation failures

• Did not achieve an agreed national collection
  strategy for company reports
• Did not negotiate an HE licence with commercial
  providers of electronic services covering full
  text annual reports

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Successes reasons why

• Strong vision of what we hoped to achieve
• Project officer based at LBS seconded from our
  staff, started straight away, no delays for
  recruitment. Remained an integral member of
  staff throughout
• Good database architecture for SCoRe database
• Employed good software development company to
  build database, search features, website

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Reasons why (continued)

• Small committed group of partners who really
  bought into the concept. BL decided to join in
  when it saw the website and functioning database
• RSLP generously provided extra funding (almost
  double the original grant) which enabled us to
  expand SCoRe and develop it as a current
  collection management tool
• Project partners were committed to maintaining
  SCoRe important that we establish a means of
  continuing work after the project ended. We set
  up the SCoRe Users Group

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Failures reasons why

• National collection strategy. Crucial to involve
  the British Library and long period of change and
  re-organisation at BL has frustrated attempts
• Negotiating HE licence with providers of
  electronic full-text company reports. Their
  pricing and business models are geared to
  financial firms, insufficient interest in the
  academic market

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Since the project ended

• City Business Library has added its holdings
  to SCoRe.
• SCoRe software has been further developed, new
  features added, website re-designed.

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The future

• Guildhall Library, which has a unique
  historical collection dating back to 1880, has
  expressed an interest in adding its holdings.
• A university library in New Zealand has recently
  enquired about using the SCoRe software to
  maintain its company report collection and
  hopefully develop a national union catalogue.