Christchurch City Council annually produced yearbooks. These were published books detailing information about the Council as well as local facilities and other useful information. Although not all the content is consistent, generally the yearbooks include details of elected members often with a photograph of the Mayor, lists of current committees and their members, details of municipal reserves across the city, rates information, financial information for the Council and other information of public interest such as that relating to electricity, tramways, public baths, underground conveniences, water supply and cab fares.

Throughout the handbooks are photographs of city scenes and buildings. There are known gaps in this sequence with the earliest dating from 1910.

It is unclear at which point these yearbooks were no longer produced by the Council, however there is some overlap with content found in the Handbooks which are held in the Council archives from 1974.

Those missing from this sequence are: 1905-1909, 1913-1918, 1921-1922 and 1924-1925