Help on using the SCoRe catalogue

The SCoRe (Search Company Reports) catalogue is intended to be user-friendly and intuitive to search. However, the following help topics should give an overview of SCoRe's capabilities, and help you out with any difficulties you encounter:

• What is SCoRe for?
• What data is available?
• What data is missing?
• Search by company name
• What if a company has changed its name?
• Search by year
• Search by collection
• Search by country
• Search by FT Sector
• Combination searches
• Find company information
• Find a collection's description, contact details etc.
• Getting access to document holdings

SCoRe is a database-driven catalogue of company report document holdings and company report collections in UK libraries. It is NOT an archive of digitised reports. Holdings covered include current and historical reports. Collections covered include those with archival holdings, and those without.

The purpose of SCoRe is to allow researchers and librarians to source vital company documents held in libraries around the country.

Use SCoRe to:

• Find out which UK library collection(s) holds a particular report (e.g. the Tesco annual report for 1964)
• See all available reports for a company, collection, sector or country
• Trace earlier and later names of companies, and search for reports under those names
• Get brief company information, e.g. address, website, sector, country and details of name changes, mergers etc.
• Restrict your report searching to one, several or all collections
• Restrict your report searching to one, several or all document types (annual report, interim report, 10K)
• Find out exactly what reports a library holds via a year by year listing
• Locate collections around the UK and read brief collection descriptions
• Find contact numbers, opening hours, admission rules and addresses for collections

NB. Because of varying levels of participation in the database, and varying completeness of inherited data, not every function or piece of information is available for every collection or company. See What data is available on SCoRe? for further details.

SCoRe currently lists (at February 2004):

• Over 17,000 companies from the UK, Europe, North America, Asia and Australasia, plus company data such as address, sector and website for many of these
• Over 180,000 individual reports for those companies at libraries around the UK, plus format and location info
• Historical and current reports (from as early as 1881 to the present day)
• Details of 20 company report collections in libraries across the country

There are 'gaps' in the data in SCoRe due to:

• Different levels of participation by individual collections
• Gaps in inherited data from old systems
• Intentional deletion of data

Different levels of participation:

All collections on SCoRe have a collection record, including (at a minimum): brief collection description, admission rules, opening hours, address and contact details. If they have supplied them, they also may have links to web pages about the collection, a link to the library catalogue (if it includes annual reports) and a full collection policy (PDF).

In addition, five of the original project partners have also added details of their holdings.

Collections included in SCoRe participate at one of 4 levels:

1. Year by year listing of holdings on SCoRe
2. Series start (and end) date only on SCoRe, plus link to library's own catalogue for more complete holdings info
3. Link to library's own catalogue, but no series info on SCoRe
4. No holdings information of any kind available via SCoRe(except the brief collection description)

Project partners and their SCoRe participation level:

• Library nameParticipation level
• London Business School Library1
• Manchester Business School1
• Strathclyde University Library2
• Warwick University Library1
• British Library1
• Guildhall Library (Corporation of London)4
• City Business Library (City of London)1

Gaps in inherited data:

Much of the company data on SCoRe was inherited from a London Business School legacy system. It was cataloguing practice with the old system to delete sector and country information for companies once they were archived. These empty fields have been inherited, and need completing. This work is ongoing. NB Companies without FT sector or Country values will not be retrieved via a search on FT Sector or Country

Intentional deletion of data:

Once a company ceases to be part of the lead institution's current collection (i.e. it drops from the rankings), address data is removed. This is because this data is no longer needed for mail shot purposes. It would be too much work to keep these addresses up to date, so the data is removed, rather than leaving potentially inaccurate contact information on the system.

To search for a report by company name:

• Open Search (http://www.score.ac.uk/searchform.asp)
• Enter any part of the company's name in the Company name search box. E.g. to find 'Marks and Spencer', you can just enter 'marks'. NB:Usually, the less information you enter, the better. For example, if you type 'Marks and Spencer PLC' , and it is listed in SCoRe as 'Marks and Spencer', you will NOT get any results.
• Check that no other search options have been selected.
• Click Search.
• This opens the Search results page.
• A table like the one below will display the different Report types available, and the name of each Collection with Holdings, together with the Earliest and Latest dates of their holdings:
  
• To see a full, year-by-year list of holdings, click either Details, or Online catalogue. (See What data is missing from SCoRe?).

*Company search tips*

• SCoRe performs automatic right- and left-hand truncation searching. So entering 'bank' will retrieve AKBANK TURK ANONIM SIRKETI, AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND BANKING GROUP LTD and BANK AMERICA.
• Wildcard searching can be performed using the % symbol. E.g. 'organi%ation' retrieves both LITTLEWOODS ORGANISATION and TELEPHONE ORGANIZATION OF THAILAND.
• Companies are stored in SCoRe in UPPERCASE. However, searching is NOT case sensitive.
• Boolean searching is not possible with SCoRe. Because Boolean searching is not supported, take care how you search for companies which include AND in their name. Most of these are entered with an ampersand. Try searching on both e.g. MARKS AND SPENCER and MARKS & SPENCER. Better still, just enter part of the name, e.g. MARKS.

Companies frequently change their names for a variety of reasons, (merger, takeover, rebranding etc.). In SCoRe we have attempted to link related companies (e.g. pre merger and post merger names) so that you can click through from one record to another, and discover all of the potentially relevant documents for your research.The Company details page will show the nature of the name change in greater detail. We do not guarantee the accuracy of this data however.

Here is an example of how the links work between related companies (using the example of seraching for DIAGEO PLC):

• Open Search (http://www.score.ac.uk/searchform.asp)
• Enter DIAGEO in the Company name search box.
• Click Search.
• This opens the Search results page shown below:
• Click on the company name to go the Company details page.
• The Company details page will tell you if the company has changed its name:
• You will see two See also references: GRAND METROPOLITAN PLC and GUINNESS PLC. These are previous names by which Diageo has been known (Diageo was formed through a merger of these two companies).
• Click either of the See also company names
• You will see that this takes you back to the Search page, with the new See also company name entered for you
• Click Search to locate reports listed under the alternative name.

SCoRe lets you search for a particular company's report for a certain year:

• Open Search (http://www.score.ac.uk/searchform.asp)
• Enter part or all of the company's name
• Enter the year you are looking for in 4 digit format, e.g. 1959.
• Click Search.
• This opens the Search results page.
• SCoRe will display results for any series that starts on or before the year specified in the search. E.g. if you search for British Petroleum 1959 you retrieve details of 2 annual report series starting in 1954. To check that 1959 is available within those series, you must then click on either 'Online catalogue' or 'Details'.

You can search for reports in one particular collection (e.g. your local library), or you can search across several or all collections:

• Open Search (http://www.score.ac.uk/searchform.asp)
• On the Search page, click the collection or collections you wish to search. Select one collection with the mouse, select several individual collections using control+click, select a range of collections using shift+click, or just click 'All' to search for reports everywhere.
• Click Search.

Please note that some companies lack country entries and a search by country will not retrieve every appropriate company in the catalogue.

To browse a list of companies registered in a particular country:

• Open Search (http://www.score.ac.uk/searchform.asp)
• On the Search page, expand the Country drop down list.
• Select the country you wish to browse. NB You can only select one country at a time.
• Click Search.

Companies in SCoRe are assigned ONE sector heading each from the Set of sector headings used in the Financial Times Companies & Markets section (with the addition of a few extra home grown categories for e.g. public administration). Please note that some companies lack FT sector headings and a search by FT sector will not retrieve every appropriate company in the catalogue.

• Open Search (http://www.score.ac.uk/searchform.asp)
• On the Search page, expand the FT sector drop down list.
• Select the sector you wish to browse. NB You can only select one sector at a time.
• Click Search.

You can combine all of the search criteria in SCoRe.

Simply select/enter all the relevant criteria, and click Search.

The search will only retrieve reports that match ALL the specified criteria.

SCoRe contains address, sector, website, Companies House number and name change information for some companies. We cannot guarantee that this data is accurate. To access this company information:

• Search for the company in any of the ways described above
• On the Search results page, or the Document holdings page, click on the company's name.
• Not all information is available for all companies, and some companies have no company details available. See What data is available on SCoRe? for details.
• Search for reports about the company by clicking the SCoRe button for reports relating to this company

To find details of a collection:

• Open Collections (http://www.score.ac.uk/collections.asp)
• Either select a collection from the list, or click on the name of a collection on the sensitive map.
• The Collection details page will tell you:
  • What searching options are available for this collection. Options include: Holdings not searchable via this site; Full holdings in library's catalogue and Search SCoRe catalogue.
  • Collection details, including name, subject, description, coverage, brief collection policy, full collection policy (optional), Administrator's name, address, telephone and email of collection, opening times and admission rules. There may also be links to further information about the collection or to the library's catalogue.

For more information about visiting libraries, document delivery services and obtaining reports from companies see Getting access to document holdings.