Digital Accounting Collection

The Digital Accounting Collection (DAC) is part of the University of Mississippi Libraries. The collection contains both current and historical accounting materials, with over 2,400 items in digitized searchable full-text format, and over 33,000 bibliographic citations for other materials.

Within the DAC, there are several discrete collections, most in full text. The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants’ non-current professional standards, codes of professional conduct, and exposure drafts relate to professional auditing and accounting standards in the United States. The Academy of Accounting Historians' Journal and Notebook contain, respectively, scholarly research on accounting history and information on the activities of the Academy. The Accounting Pamphlets - Full-Text collection contains searchable full-text accounting pamphlets that are not under copyright. The McMickle and Accounting Pamphlets – Citations Only collections list in searchable indexes an eclectic mix of thousands of accounting monographs. The Photographs and Illustrations collection offers portraits and drawings related to accounting.

The Digital Accounting Collection may be searched in several ways. The bibliographic entries are searched by categories such as title, author, keyword, and subject. The full- text items may be searched in toto. A “Browse Subjects” page offers a list of all the subjects under which the full-text items are indexed.

Collections

The Accounting Historians Journal - Full-Text

1974 - June, 2011

The Accounting Historians Journal is available in digital full-text thanks to the kind permission of the Academy of Accounting Historians. Included are files and bibliographic records for each issue and for each major item in each issue. From 1974 to 1992, both a searchable PDF and a separate page-image PDF are provided. From 1993 to 1998, the PDF page image contains embedded searchable text, reflecting advances in PDF technology. As the software does not always translate images to text accurately and proofreaders do not catch all the software reading errors, having both an image and a searchable text file allows the researcher immediately to check the accuracy of any questionable transcription. Beginning in 1999, native (searchable) PDFs are provided by the publisher.

Accounting Historians Notebook - Full-Text

1978 - April, 2011

The Accounting Historians Notebook is available for the first time in digital full-text thanks to the kind permission of the Academy of Accounting Historians. Included are files and bibliographic records for each issue and for each major item in each issue. From 1978 to 2003, the scanned page images have embedded searchable text. Beginning in 2004, native (searchable) PDFs are provided by the publisher.

AICPA Codes of Professional Conduct - Full-Text

The AICPA Codes of Professional Conduct collection includes the following: 1. The ET (ethics) sections from the Professional Standards from 1974 through 2005 2. The BL (by-laws) sections of the Professional Standards from 1974 through 2005 3. Separately published pamphlets of the Code from 1917 through 1997 4. The By-laws as they are included with the Code in the separately issued pamphlets (1917–1997). 5. Commentaries on the Code by A. P. Richardson, John L. Carey, and John L. Carey and William O. Doherty For links to these items see AICPA Code of Professional Conduct.

AICPA Exposure Drafts Collection - Full-Text

The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, as a standards promulgating body, has published drafts of proposed standards and circulated them for comment. These drafts represent a critical phase in the standards setting procedure and are studied by practitioners and historians alike. As they were not originally meant to be part of the permanent record, copies of these drafts are often difficult to locate. Non-current drafts are now available digitally with the kind permission of the AICPA. Each bibliographic record is accompanied by a PDF page image file with a searchable text behind each page image.

The McMickle Collection

In 1996, Dr. Peter McMickle of Memphis donated his collection of rare accounting books to the Academy of Accounting Historians, with the provision that the library be housed at Ole Miss. The library consists of more than 1,200 individual titles, with more than 500 volumes dating from the 19th century and the oldest volume dating back to 1655.

The McMickle Collection is located in the Patterson School of Accountancy. The items do not circulate. Small travel grants to use the collection are available to members of the Academy of Accounting Historians.

Accounting Pamphlets Collection - Full-Text

Of the thousands of accounting pamphlets in the University of Mississippi’s AICPA collection, some of those in the public domain have been digitized and are available in searchable full-text. These include governmental publications such as the SEC’s Accounting Series Releases (Nos. 1- 140, 1937-1973; search under the title “Accounting Series Release”) and old CPA exams published by the states. Items published prior to 1923 or for which copyright was not renewed are also in the public domain. For example, early 20th-century pamphlets often provided practical guidance to bookkeepers on the accounting for particular trades, industries, or services. The AICPA library collected these ephemeral treasures for over eighty years and many are available digitally. In some instances, a PDF containing page images is provided along with a separate PDF with searchable text. In other instances, only one file containing both the searchable text and the image is provided (reflecting advances in PDF technology).

Accounting Pamphlets - Collection of Bibliographic Citations Only

Various Dates.

This is a catalog of over 33,000 accounting pamphlets owned by the University of Mississippi library and originally collected by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. Only brief bibliographic citations are given: author, title, publisher and date. When available, the subject classification number from the original AICPA library collection is also included. The collection is housed in archival boxes and a box number is included in the record for retrieval purposes. Please include the box number when requesting material from the collection. The collection includes a wide range of materials ranging from the late nineteenth century through 2000. Besides the traditional pamphlet materials, there are article reprints and clippings from trade journals, individual journal issues containing accounting articles, short runs of professional newsletters from accounting organizations around the world, and legal briefs. Also check the University of Mississippi libraries catalog for other materials.

Photographs and Illustrations Collection

The art illustrating the accounting literature from the Summa to the present is surely one of the most underappreciated aspects of accounting history. This collection includes the frontispieces of 16th- and 17th-century accounting texts; cartoons and illustrations from 19th- and early 20th-century books, logos, and mastheads; and photographs from early organizational meetings, early journals and books, and from the pages of the Accounting Historians Journal and Accounting Historians Notebook.

History

The DAC had its origins in the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants’ Library. The Institute’s Library began in 1918 with 2,000 books and pamphlets, part of the collection being a donation of Leonard H. Conant, a former president of the organization. An endowment fund organized by George O. May helped sustain the library’s collections through the years. In 2000, the AICPA decided to transfer its library to a University. The Institute selected the University of Mississippi as the new home for the collection and the transfer was made in August, 2001. Service to the AICPA membership as well as the larger scholarly community has continued from the University of Mississippi location. A grant from the Institute of Museums and Library Services provided the funding to begin digitizing some of the rare and unique items in the collection as well as information useful to practicing accountants. The Digital Accounting Collection is the end result of these many efforts.

Technology

A number of technologies have been used over the course of the digitization project. Early scanned documents were edited using Adobe Acrobat Professional versions 6, 7, 8. More recently, ABBYY FineReader has been used for editing.

Bibliographic data is entered in Dublin Core format using MetaData Builder, a product from library automation vendor, Innovative Interfaces, Inc. Digital objects such as PDFs and jpeg images are attached and displayed using another Innovative Interface product, Media Management. Finally, the collection is displayed and searched using the Innovative Interfaces web opac product.

References

Bonner, Paul. 2007. A Treasure Trove of Accountancy’s Past. Journal of Accountancy, Vol. 207 (August): 58-60.

Dublin Core Metadata Initiative

Kurtz, Royce D.; Herrera, David K. & Stephanie D. Moussalli. "Digitizing the Accounting Historians Journal: A short history", Accounting Historians Journal (Birmingham, AL: The Birmingham Printing and Publishing Company)) 33 (2): 157-168, ISSN 0148-4182.

Library of Congress. Dublin Core to MARC Crosswalk.

Martin, M.M. 2004. Adapting Reference for a Unique Group of Distance Learners: Serving the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). Journal of Library and Information Services in Distance Learning, Vol. 1, No. 4: 59-66.

University of Mississippi Libraries. Dublin Core to MARC Crosswalk/Mapping Decisions

External links

• Digital Accounting Collection