Searching ProQuest Historical Annual Reports

ProQuest offers the Historical Annual Reports database which contains over 150 years of reports from over 800 companies in the United States. Below is a brief guide that will assist you in using the database. For more information on ProQuest's Historical Annual Reports Database(HAR), go here.

HAR is found among our other ProQuest databases. scroll down to the section of " Historical Databases" and select "ProQuest Historical Annual Reports" . HAR is also found in the complete list of all Western Libraries' databases.

Advanced Search: The default starting point is the "Advanced Search". From this screen you can search the complete full text or select specific sections of the reports. (e.g. Location, Product Name, People). As well, you can select a particular year or range of years. Search tip: If you are looking for the reports of a specific company, search in the Company/Org field, otherwise you will get results which include any mention of your company in any report.

The Citation Screen: This screen is very useful and clearly reveals the elements that can be searched. The "Companies" and "Related Companies" fields are especially helpful since they indicate corporate name changes and spellings and allow you to identify related companies.

More Search Options: Below the "Advanced Search", at the bottom of the screen, there is a tab to select "More Search Options". This allows you to be more specific in your search. Options like NAICS code lookup, Earnings per share, Assets and even Person lookup allow one to be as specific as possible.
*Hint: Change “Results per page” to 30 to display more results on a page.

Look Up: Beside some of the options, there is a "Look Up" feature which provides additional options. Below is an example of the "Look Up" for NAICS codes which allows you to look for specific kinds of companies. Once the item is found, select "Add to Search" and it will be added to the search box.

About Link: Beside the more specific sections (Product/Brand names, Auditor, etc) there is an "About" link. This pops up a help box that explains what the section is and demonstrates how to use that feature to search with Search Tips.

Browse Tab: The "Browse" Tab across the top of the search sections shows the HAR broken up by Company, Industry and Dates. On the Industry tab, by clicking on a speific industry, a list of the associated companies will appear. But by clicking “View Documents” it will bring you to all associated reports.

Example: This is an example search for the word "Canada" in the document text, before 1950. It should be noted that HAR includes only American companies. This example would simply yield any mention of Canada. A more thorough search would be "Canada or Canadian".

The default sort of results is oldest first. You can change this to most recent first or most relevant first

*Notice the word Canada is highlighted in the document.

Example: This is an example of a Product Name search.

Example: This example illustrates how to find of the Top 10 Fortune 500 companies in 1985. (the results show up alphabetically; you have to look at each citation to determine the numerical rating).

Example: This is a search for companies with Earnings Per Share of -$700 and $100 before 1930. The negative can also be shown in brackets as (700).