Mississauga/Toronto, Ontario, November 14th, 2006 – The University of Toronto is now the new home for D&B Canada’s historical business archives.

D&B Canada recently donated hundreds of volumes of their Mercantile Agency Reference Books profiling Canadian businesses between 1857 and 1984. The donated collection also includes handwritten profiles of Toronto businesses between 1865 and 1871.

A similar repository of D&B business archives lives at Harvard University’s Baker Library. Termed the "Holy Grail of business history" by a New York Times writer, the depth of the D&B information has enabled researchers and writers to validate events, occurrences and movements for a variety of subjects.  

"The University of Toronto Library is delighted to receive this valuable collection of Dun & Bradstreet Canada's historical business archives, which has been partly integrated into the Robarts Library collection (post-1920 material), and partly housed in the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library (pre-1920 material)", says Carole Moore, Chief Librarian of the University of Toronto Libraries. “The collection will be an important resource for the business community as well as historians, geographers and other scholars. Researchers working with the early directories at D&B headquarters have already discovered references to Canadian towns that no longer exist.”

Karen Payton, Manager of Branding & CI at D&B Canada explains, “The history of Canadian business was housed in D&B’s corporate library. We realized the value of the decaying books and manuscripts and we had to get the information into the hands of experts to be properly housed and used for research. The University of Toronto was a natural fit.”

D&B has been collecting information on businesses for more than 165 years. Based in New York, the company opened their first Canadian office in Montreal in 1857 – a full 10 years before confederation – and began collecting information on Canadian businesses. Most of the early information is handwritten and many of the small towns referenced don’t exist anymore.

Access to the D&B Canadian archives is available through the University of Toronto. Other Canadian universities, as well as historical societies, have already expressed interest in viewing the valuable materials. Through this donation, D&B is giving back to the community, providing invaluable historical information to scholars, researchers and historians.

About The D&B Companies of Canada Ltd.

D&B (formerly Dun & Bradstreet) is the world's leading provider of business information and insight, helping companies to Decide with Confidence® for over 165 years. D&B's global commercial database contains more than 120 million business records, including information on 1.5 million Canadian businesses. The D&B database is enhanced by D&B’s proprietary DUNSRight® Data Quality Process, which transforms the enormous amount of data we collect daily into decision-ready insight. Through the D&B Worldwide Network – an unrivaled alliance of leading business information providers around the world – customers gain access to the world's largest and highest quality global, commercial business information. D&B is traded on the NYSE: DNB.

Learn more about D&B at dnb.ca or call 1.800.INFO.DNB.

Contact:

Philip Drash, Director of Marketing
drashp@dnb.com
905.568.6670

© The D&B Companies of Canada Ltd.

About The University of Toronto

The University of Toronto Library System is one of the largest in North America, and consists of over 30 libraries on three campuses in the Greater Toronto Area. The Robarts Library stands today as the premier humanities and social sciences collection of the University of Toronto, and is considered one of the finest in the world. The Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library is renowned for its rare materials, and is visited by scholars from around the world.

Contact:

Diane Marrow, Associate Director, Advancement, University of Toronto Libraries
diane.marrow@utoronto.ca
406.978.7655