Memorandum on the sources for the study of accounting history in the United States.

Original accounting records relating to early periods of American history of accounting are in ample supply in libraries end archives; but research activity has been only very modest in scope. The major problems facing the researcher are organization of and access to existing materials, also a relative lack of interest in history within the accounting profession and among the general public, and a resulting lack of funds to finance extended historical research. Original records of firms, covering early periods, are abundant in the big public libraries, such as the Library of Congress and the major city libraries such as New York. Materials generally are indexed only alphabetically, by firm name, not by subject matter. This very fact defeats almost every serious effort at researching those materials with regard to accounting development. The major universities also have collections containing original accounting records of early periods These collections generally are better organised and classified than those of the public libraries. Records reflecting history of a particular region of the country are found sometimes in regional universities. For example: Xavier University in New Orleans has interesting records pertaining to the early slave trade. On a country-wide basis, Harvard University and the University of California at Berkeley have the best collections of accounting records. A new edition of the Catalog of Business published by Baker Library at Harvard, is classified by subject matter and permits easy access to the collection for research purposes. This collection comprises about 1,300 sets, over 60,000 items, dating from the 18^th and 19^th centuries. It includes records related to agriculture, mining, manufacturing, construction, transportation, marketing, financial services, and government. New England firms are emphasized, but other regions of the United States and foreign firms are also represented in the collection. Aside from these universities, the University of California in Los Angeles, the University of Pennsylvania, and New York University, as well as other universities, have significant collections of original accounting records. Early American textbooks on accounting are available in public and university libraries through the country. The richest collections of early texts are found at Boston Public Library (the Bentley Collection), the Kress Library at Harvard, the University of California, and at Columbia University. The Bentley Collection at Boston is perhaps the most complete, including between 500 and 1,000 American texts on bookkeeping and accounting from the 18th and 19th centuries. These early American texts are indexed in the bibliography by Bentley and Leonard. Both the Kress Collection at Harvard and the Robert Montgomery Collection at Columbia University contain approximately 500 early American accounting texts from the 16th through the 19th centuries. The library of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants in New York also has a substantial number of early works The American Accounting Association, official organization of teachers and researchers in the field of accounting, sponsored, for the first time, a committee on accounting history during the academic year 1968-69. This This committee is presently inactive, but may be reactivated at a later date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]