More Scottish business archives join the UNESCO Register

The National Library of Scotland has had its John Murray Archive selected by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)  as one of the 2011 additions into the UK Memory of the World Register.

Martyn Wade, National Librarian and Chief Executive Officer of the National Library of Scotland, said: "To have been included in the register last year was thrilling. To have been included again so soon is recognition of depth and quality of our archives here in Edinburgh. It is especially pleasing that the John Murray Archive has been selected for the register following our recent acquisition of the collection and our commitment to make it accessible to the nation."

Other Scottish inclusions are the Bank of Scotland Archives and The customer account ledgers of Edward Backwell, 1663-1672 at the Royal Bank of Scotland Archives.  The ledgers are the earliest systematic set of banking records to survive in the United Kingdom.

Information about the other collections that have been added is availble here and include several business related collections:

• GPO Film Unit collection
• The Wedgwood Museum archive
• BT Research Centre collection

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Pringle's Day of Record

A feature article in today's Telegraph reports on the Day of Record event that Pringle held in Hawick in August last year.  Following on from the event a 12-piece archive collection was created by the MA students at Central Saint Martins in conjunction with the specialised knitwear craftspeople in Hawick.

The project was designed to:

Flesh out Pringle's practically non-existent archive and create a collection off the back of its findings. 'When I first arrived at the company and visited the factory, I asked about the archive and people laughed,' explains Benoit Duverger, Pringle's managing director, who started at the company a year after the brand ceased manufacturing in Hawick in 2008. 'I was shown a room with a couple of boxes stuffed with jumpers. That was all that was left after a flood in 2005 swept everything away. Hopefully today will give us back what the flood took.'

'We nearly did get to a point where we forgot who we were, what we'd achieved and our innovations,' Duverger says. 'Rediscovering our archive will put us in touch with our history. It is fantastic meeting people who had first-hand working knowledge of designing or working in our factories. They're able to explain techniques we haven't used for decades so that we can bring them back.'

Read more about it here on the official website.  Other articles about this project have appeared in Vogue (July 2010) and on the Central Saint Martins' blog (May 2011).  There is also an interview with Prof Louise Wilson here.

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Stoddard-Templeton Archive Open Day

University of Glasgow Archive Services is hosting an open afternoon for the Stoddard-Templeton Archive on Friday 20th May, between 2 and 4pm.

The Archive combines the design and corporate records of James Templeton & Co Ltd and Stoddard International plc, two of Scotland's leading carpet designers and manufacturers.

{design for glasgow cathedral carpet from the blog}

This event is designed to highlight the potential of the Archive for research and teaching, and is aimed at academic staff, postgraduate students and heritage professionals. This will be an informal event, with items from the Archive on display and short presentations throughout the afternoon. Full details are available in this flyer.

Please contact Claire Paterson to book a place, or drop in during the afternoon.

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125 years of Coca-Cola

To mark its 125th anniversary Coca-Cola is planning a summer of celebrations with commemorative packaging, advertisements and promotions (more details in the press release)

{Image from here}

For this celebration they have created several different online sites, from a live online 'thank-you' that linked to facebook, twitter and youtube to a virtual walk through of their 125 year history and archives at the very best of coca-cola where they have selected the 125 most important items from their collections to show people and are also hoping to gather stories and memories of Coca-Cola from users.

As a brand it makes great use of its business archive and this a great example of what a huge organisation can do to celebrate its heritage.  Their archive team also have a long-running blog called Coco-Cola Conversations which is worth checking out.

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