Baker Library | Bloomberg Center

Historical Collections

Collections

Business Manuscripts Collection

  • Approximately 1,400 collections of original business manuscripts from the fifteenth through the twentieth centuries
  • Subjects include agriculture, transportation services, manufacturing industries, and marketing and financial services

Harvard Business School Archives

  • Includes published and unpublished materials that trace the history of HBS from its founding in 1908 to the current day
  • Rich in photographs that vividly capture HBS, including faculty members, students, the campus, and special events

Photograph Collections

  • Over 22,000 images of factories, equipment, techniques, processes, and people at work in industrial settings
  • photographs relating to U.S. industry as well as business operations in Central and South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia

Baker Old Class Collection

  • Unique arrangement of the collection brings together books, periodicals, and pamphlets organized by industry
  • Includes trade publications, government documents, corporate histories and publications, and business directories from ca. 1840 to 1971

R. G. Dun & Co. Collection

  • First commercial credit reporting agency in America
  • Manuscript credit reports on individuals and firms from the United States, Canada, and the West Indies, dating from 1841–1892
  • Information on the duration of the business, net worth, sources of wealth, and the character and reputation of the owners, their partners, and successors

Kress Collection of Business and Economics

  • Rare books, pamphlets, broadsides, manuscripts, and prints, from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries with traditional strengths in economic philosophy, political economy, commerce, and business history
  • Digital facsimile images of a portion of the Kress Collection available through The Making of the Modern World

Historic Corporate Reports Collection

  • Includes annual reports, prospectuses, proxies, registration statements, and miscellaneous items such as brokerage-house reports and unpublished corporate histories from 1820 to the present day
  • Documents approximately 20,000 companies

Baker Library | Bloomberg Center, Harvard Business School, Soldiers Field, Boston, MA 02163, 617-495-6040