A Strategy for Scotland

As mentioned before Scotland does not currently have such a strategy although in 2006 Elements of a Policy on Business Archives in Scotland was published by the National Archives of Scotland and the Business Archives Council of Scotland (BACS).

In partnership with the Ballast Trust, the BACS with the support of the National Archives of Scotland and Scottish Council on Archives are developing a Scottish strategy. As a sister document to the English & Welsh strategy, its main themes are likely to be the same, yet the strategic actions to be taken will be different, reflecting the issues of devolution and previous work undertaken by the BACS and Scottish records community.

In order to kick-start the strategy’s development, we will be holding a series of short focus group meetings with different stakeholders during September 2009. These include:

• Academics and students (7 September, Centre for Business History, Glasgow University)
• Archives and Records professionals (24 September, NAS, Edinburgh)
• Heritage and information professionals and Trusts (24 September, NAS, Edinburgh)
• Non-academic users and family historians (29 September, Mitchell Library, Glasgow)

These meetings will be advertised through various listservs and archives, but if you would like to take part in any of these please email d.powell@archives.gla.ac.uk to book a place.

It is hoped that a draft strategy will be available in October for full scale consultation and comment and that a final version of the strategy will be agreed by the end of 2009.