History of the Rosenberg Corporate Research Center

At its location in the old Stanford GSB complex near the historic Quad, the J. Hugh Jackson Library contained:

  • A classified collection of over 400,000 items.
  • Hundreds of thousands of corporate reports on microfiche.
  • A range of financial research databases.
  • An outstanding academic periodicals collection with nearly 1,600 subscriptions.

As the organizing principle of the main floor of the Jackson Library, the Rosenberg Corporate Research Center (RCRC) formed the heart of its resources. Established in 1992 with a generous gift from philanthropists Louise J. and Claude N. Rosenberg, Jr, MBA ’52, the center occupied a central space in the Jackson Library. It was opened with great fanfare in a ceremony featuring Dean Michael Spence, Professors John Gardner, and John “Jack” McDonald, and others. The RCRC was created with the convenience of the user in mind, gathering together in one physical location the latest business and information resources available in print and electronic formats, and providing user support through reference services.

Historically, a great deal of the impetus for the rapid growth of the Jackson database collection dated from the Rosenberg gift. This bequest laid a firm foundation for the subsequent acquisition of numerous important new electronic resources at the library.

The focal point of the RCRC was a distributed network of computer workstations, each providing access to an array of state-of-the-art business and financial databases. Emphasis was given to corporate financial data, industry/market statistics and indexes to periodical articles. Full-text electronic article files in business literature rounded out the complement of research resources.

The center ceased to exist after the library relocated to the Knight Management Center in 2011.