Addendum No. 3 : Selection Guidelines for Annual Reports

Organizations publish annual reports to report to the public or to members, to satisfy organizational or government mandate, to promote orderly progress toward organizational goals, or to enhance public relations. Annual reports may contain any of the following kinds of information: mission statement, progress reports of various kinds, description of resources such as buildings and computer systems, lists of staff members, auditors' reports, results of user surveys, lists of staff publications, and financial statements. They may also include reports of research that has been completed or is in progress, or national statistics on activities related to agriculture such as crop production, agricultural imports and exports, food supply, or livestock diseases.

NAL collects representative samples of the annual reports of organizations whose mission falls within subjects that the library covers at the Comprehensive level, when the organization is:

• An international research, development or reporting organization such as the CGIAR centers or FAO
• A national-level research institute of any country
• The department of agriculture of a country
• A state department of agriculture in the United States
• An influential or historically important agricultural organization in the United States

NAL collects US agricultural experiment station annual reports when they contain information on research being conducted at the station.

NAL may collect:

• Any annual report that includes annual statistics on national agricultural production or agricultural trade that cannot be found in another resource in the NAL collection
• Annual reports that include original reports of research results, not just summaries or abstracts of research published elsewhere

NAL will not collect the annual reports of businesses, agricultural extension offices, county or provincial agricultural organizations, unless they contain annual statistics on national agricultural production or agricultural trade, reports of research results, etc. as described above.

Approved 2/15/2000