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Businesses at Christmas

Monday 24 December 2012

Christmas greetings by air
[from BPMA Flickr here]
Before finishing up for Christmas, I wanted to share some of the lovely bits and bobs that business archive collections have been sharing in the last couple of weeks.

The Christmas posters from British Postal Museum and Archive are as always great, including this example above. They also have a series of podcasts, that include one on the history of Christmas cards.

The Design Archives at the University of Brighton exists to promote the study of design and is an internationally significant scholarly resource focusing on British design and global design organisations in the 20th century. They have a set up on Flickr - Season's Greetings from the Design Archives.

The National Railway Museum has been sharing images on twitter, including this one of GNR Christmas Excursions. As has M&S Heritage, the Guardian Archive and Coca-Cola Archives. The Royal Bank of Scotland Group Archives have been doing the same thing over on their facebook.



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Case Study: Dundee Whaling Project

Friday 21 December 2012

We've squeezed in another new case study on the Scottish Business Archives website before the end of the year. This is a really interesting one about how archives, museums and libraries with collections relating to Dundee's whaling history have worked together to produce a resource that highlights the fantastic history of the industry.


The full case study is available here and there others can be found here.

We've a few more drafted and ready to go in the New Year, so keep an eye out for them.

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Instruments of Power

Wednesday 19 December 2012

Instruments of Power is a follow-on project by Paul Sillitoe from his PhD research at the University of Liverpool. The aim of that research was to develop new ways to make technical drawings more accessible for researchers, by making them more understandable for archivists.

Download a pdf of this image

The text below has been submitted by Paul, his new project will work with archivists and researchers to transform theoretical findings into practical outcomes. So he will be looking for archivists and researchers to act as consultees for the project.

The Problem
Technical drawings graphically represent engineering and manufacturing designs better than any textual description. These potent instruments of power and innovative thought depict progress, process and product across British industry.

Yet they are under-valued, under-used and at-risk research resources - less likely than textual records to be selected as archives, or adequately described for researchers. Why?

As a second-career archivist, from an engineering background, I took reading technical drawings for granted. Yet as I began to manage archival cataloguing teams, I realised that many archivists could not understand them. Their predominantly arts-based backgrounds had not equipped them for this foreign technical language, whose graphical conventions differed across industries and time.

Consequently, many technical drawings, even if secured for archival preservation, remain uncatalogued and inaccessible to researchers. The archival record for Britain’s period of industrialisation is therefore unbalanced.

A Research Solution
My hypothesis is that archivists do not need to understand a technical drawing in its entirety. They only need to be able to extract the information required for appraisal and cataloguing.

The aim of the PhD research was therefore to discover whether sufficient information could always be found within a technical drawing that was unrelated to its subject content. Such generic information, if identified and described, could form the basis for practical guidance to the understanding of technical drawings.

The PhD research statistically surveyed a sample of complex twentieth-century technical drawings. Individual concepts and characteristics were identified, and their frequencies of occurrence quantified. Thirty four concepts and characteristics were identified as almost always occurring within technical drawings, and having potential to be useful to understanding.

Forty further concepts and characteristics were identified as occurring less frequently within the sample. They have potential to be useful to understanding if they are found to occur more frequently in other samples of technical drawings. Archivist and researcher consultees are now required. Consultees are now sought to help assess the practical utility of these concepts and characteristics in understanding technical drawings. The consultation will be held principally online. Your views will contribute to published practical guidance to the understanding of technical drawings for archivists and researchers.

If you are interested in the project, then please contact Paul on paul@sillitoe-uk.net

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Scotland's Industrial Souvenir

Friday 14 December 2012

The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland have digitised volume 2 of their copy of Scotland's Industrial Souvenir. This is a trade catalogue from 1905 which highlights Scotland's industrial achievements. RCAHMS head of collections Lesley Ferguson, said:
“From Edinburgh’s breweries, brush makers, glue factories and ironmongers, to fish merchants in Aberdeen and confectioners and jute merchants in Dundee, these beautifully detailed advertisements conjure up the sights, sounds and smells of Scotland’s industrial heyday."
The BBC produced a lovely gallery of the images on their site yesterday, which is the second time they've include business archives on the site following the gallery of Bartholomew Archive last week.

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The Bartholomew Archive at NLS

Friday 7 December 2012

Today, the National Library of Scotland opens its exhibition of Bartholomew Archive material in their George IV Bridge building. Putting Scotland on the Map: The World of John Bartholomew and Son will explore the techniques and processes by which Bartholomew brought their maps to life.

The Bartholomew Archive is the remarkable record of the Edinburgh-based firm of map engravers, printers and publishers, John Bartholomew & Son Ltd. It is one of the most extensive cartographic archives available for research in a public institution.
There are some amazing images in the exhibition, some particularly lovely ones that illustrate the role of women in work.

Find out more about the collection on their blog and website and the BBC had some preview images up online yesterday here.

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Exhibition to celebrate The Dandy's 75th anniversary

Thursday 6 December 2012

The University of Dundee Museum Services have created an exhibition in their Lamb Gallery to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Dandy, the world’s third-longest running comic created by Dundee publishers DC Thomson.

On Saturday 8 December at 2pm there will be a special event to tie into this exhibiton. The event takes the form of an informative and engaging series of talks about The Dandy’s history and its future. The event takes place on Saturday at 2pm in the Baxter suite, room 1.36 (on the first floor of the Tower Building). The exhibition will be on show until 12 January (except when the University is closed for Christmas 23 December – 2 January).

As well as looking at the past and the great archive, the event will also look to the comic's future, giving an exclusive behind-the-scenes glimpse at the creation of the new Digital Dandy, with a discussion led by Dr Chris Murray of the School of Humanities, with contributions from former Dandy editor Morris Heggie, new Digital Dandy editor Craig Ferguson, Digital Production manager Mark Hunter, writer Dan McGachey, long-time DCT artist David Sutherland, and one of the artists who is very closely involved in the direction of the Digital Dandy, Stephen White.

The exhibition and launch have been created as part of an on-going partnership between DC Thomson & Co Ltd, the University of Dundee Museum Services and the newly established Scottish Centre for Comics Studies based at the University.

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Scottish Canals Heritage Strategy

Thursday 29 November 2012

Scottish Canals have recently launched their draft heritage strategy

They have a great collection of business archives that are a key part of the heritage strategy and one of the aims is to: "improve understanding, condition of and access to Scottish Canals' artefacts and archive." But interestingly their strategy covers a huge range of types of heritage:

This strategy will cover all types of cultural heritage associated with Scottish Canals. As well as engineering structures, buildings and natural heritage, our estate includes archaeological sites, historical documents and artefacts. We also wish to safeguard and promote cultural heritage that is not physical, including traditions, craft skills, language, literature, knowledge and associations with past events and people.
The consultation will close on 14 January 2013, to submit your feedback click here.

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Meet the Archivists: a review

Monday 19 November 2012

our goodie bag
We're very pleased with how our first Scottish ‘Meet the Archivists’ event went on the 9th November. This was a free event organised by the Business Archives Council of Scotland, the Scottish Council on Archives and the Centre of Business History to encourage students and academic researchers to make the most of business archive collections.  

Thank you to everyone who attended and contributed information to the day. There's going to be a proper write up of the day in the SCA's Broadsheet next month. A particular thanks to those who attended and have been kind enough to fill out our mini survey and say lots of nice things about the day which seems to have been very successful with everyone rating it either ‘excellent’ or ‘very good’.

Comments included:
“was a really useful and inspiring day”
“Great atmosphere; great line up of interesting and knowledgeable speakers; sessions were at the right pace and information given at the right level; great to have the opportunity to discuss my research with archivists and to get some pointers; loved the goodie bag - and lunch.”
"A really worthwhile training event. Thanks to all involved."

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Meet the Archivists

Monday 29 October 2012

In 10 days time, on Friday 9th November the first Scottish 'Meet the Archivists' event will take place at the University of Glasgow.

 
This FREE workshop aims to encourage students and academic researchers to make the most of Business Archives by bringing together academics and archivists to discuss and explore with students how business archive collections can be used for their research.  You can find out more and register for the event via eventbrite.
 
This event has been organised by the Business Archives Council of Scotland, the Scottish Council on Archives and the Centre of Business History.  It follows the pattern of successful events organised by the Business Archives Council in London for the last four years and an event held at Swansea University this year.
 
There will be representatives from the following archives available to discuss their collections as well as information about many other business archive collections in Scotland and the UK:
  • University of Aberdeen
  • Diageo Archive
  • Edinburgh City Archives
  • Glasgow City Archives
  • University of Glasgow Archives Services
  • Lloyds Banking Group Archives (Edinburgh)
  • Marks and Spencer Company Archive
  • National Records of Scotland/National Register of Archives for Scotland
  • Royal Bank of Scotland Group Archives
  • Tasglann nan Eilean Siar (Hebridean Archives)

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New SCA website

Monday 15 October 2012

The Scottish Council on Archives have launched their new website today.  As they are kind enough to host all the information and resources for the National Strategy for Business Archives in Scotland this means the links for information about Business Archives in Scotland have changed.


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Jaguar's 90th anniversary

Thursday 13 September 2012

Jaguar Heritage organised an event in cooperation with BAE Systems this month to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the foundation of the Swallow Sidecar Company - Sir William Lyons' first business and the forerunner of today's Jaguar Cars Limited.

image from here
The event was a gathering of a rare collection of Jaguar cars at BAE's Warton site, for a ‘birthday surprise’ in the form of a flypast by a Eurofighter Typhoon.

 see more images in the slideshow

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Edinburgh's industries and RCAHMS

Monday 10 September 2012

As part of Doors Open Days this year the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) is offering a number of talks and tours at their offices in Edinburgh on Saturday 22nd September.  There are two that will particularly focus on the businesses and industries of Edinburgh and its an excellent opportunity to find out more about the work of RCAHMS who contribute much to the business archives sector.

From their website:

Hear experts talking about our extensive collections and view our exhibitions and fi lms. You’ll also get the chance to go behind-the-scenes to discover how we photograph, measure and draw industrial sites, and fi nd out how these unique images form an important record of Scotland’s industrial past and present.
View the programme here.

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Data Mapping Project Report

Tuesday 14 August 2012

The report and methodology for the Data Mapping Project has been published on the SCA website. We are still experiementing with the best way to make the dataset of 6120 collections available online.

At the moment we have a draft Google fusion table which allows us to display parts of the data in different ways. For example, there is a map view of the collections by business location and also repository location.


Or this view which shows the connections between industry sectors and companies.
Many thanks to the Archives and Records Association for funding the first stage of this project.

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Meet the Archivists Poster

Friday 10 August 2012

We now have a poster for the Meet the Archivists event in November.

The Meet the Archivists event will take place on November 9th 2012. It is a FREE workshop to encourage students and academic researchers to make the most of Business Archives will be held at the University of Glasgow. It will bring together academics and archivists to discuss and explore with students how business archive collections can be used for their research. You can find out more and register for the event via eventbrite.

Please download it and share it with people.

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Case Study: RBS and NLS UNESCO’s UK Memory of the World Register - business archives of national importance

Wednesday 25 July 2012

Sometimes business archives can tell a story of huge national importance. The records of the Company of Scotland are such a collection and were one of the first ten archival collections placed on UNESCO’s UK Memory of the World Register in 2010.

(click to enlarge)
The case study describes why these business records are of national importance and the benefits gained by UNESCO recognition of the Company of Scotland collections belonging to the Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc and the National Library of Scotland.

The full case study is available here and there others can be found here.

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Case study: John Murray Archive - celebrating the history of the book

The John Murray archive is a treasure trove of over 200 years of the firm's publishing history as well as containing information about 7 generations of the Murray family. It contains stories of travel, adventure, passion and much more.

(click image to enlarge)

The case study describes how the business archive collection is used by a wide variety of researchers through the NLS' events, talks, online activities and education/outreach programs and demonstrates that business papers are essential and integral to understanding authors.

The full case study is available here and there others can be found here.

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New case studies

I'm pleased to say that we have some new case studies on the Business Archives in Scotland website. 

The two new ones feature the John Murray Archive and the importance of celebrating the history of the book and business archives of national importance from the The Royal Bank of Scotland and National Library of Scotland entry into the UNESCO’s UK Memory of the World Register.

I'll blog about each of them separately but in the meantime you can read them here

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Scottish Brewing Archive Association Conference

Wednesday 18 July 2012

The Scottish Brewing Archive Association are holding their 2nd conference this September in Glasgow.

The conference is titled "A half and a hauf" - a celebration of the links between brewing and distilling in Scotland.  The programme can be viewed online along with a booking form and methods of payment here.

Three experts from the industry will be giving presentations:

  • Douglas Murray, Diageo plc - Brewing and distilling: a common heritage 
  • Gordon Motion, The Edrington Group - Timber to tumbler: cask use in Scotch whisky 
  • Stuart Cail, Harvieston Brewery - Some thoughts on producing wood aged beers 
After the presentations delegates will have an opportunity to participate in a tutored whisky and beer tasting and to chat with the speakers and SBAA committee members over lunch.

The event will be held in the Teachers Building, St Enoch Square, Glasgow on 7th September 2012 and is open to anyone interested in the Scottish brewing and distilling scene: beer and whisky enthusiasts, collectors, members of the industry, historians, students studying brewing and marketing, etc.

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Italian Business Archive ENI on youtube

Thursday 12 July 2012

Thanks to an article in this month's ARC magazine I've discovered the YouTube channel for Eni, an Italian energy company.  They say that:

The history of eni has not only been told in print, but has also been captured on film, hundreds of thousands of feet shot by filmmakers and intellectuals such as Bernardo Bertolucci, Alessandro Blasetti, Folco Quilici, Gilbert Bovay and Leonardo Sciascia, to name but a few.

Eni’s film department operated from the 50s until the mid-80s, and produced authentic works of cinematic art, but mostly documented the history of the twentieth century Italy, and giving us today a complete picture of the years that radically changed the country, both within and beyond its borders.
 Have a look at their films here, including this Italy on Wheels film.

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Industry from above

Friday 29 June 2012

This week, the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) and its sister organisation in Wales (RCAHMW) and English Heritage launched the Britain From Above website.   It is a treasure trove of aerial photography from across Britain, with 5,000 images online already.

It features some of the oldest and most valuable images of the Aerofilms Collection, a unique and important archive of over 1 million aerial photographs taken between 1919 and 2006.
It is particularly good for seeing some great images of industry such as shipbuilding, steel, locomotives and engineering.  Such as this great one of the Harland and Wolff yard in Govan, 1947.
[from here]

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Meet the Archivists in Scotland

Wednesday 23 May 2012


On November 9th, a FREE workshop to encourage students and academic researchers to make the most of Business Archives will be held at the University of Glasgow.

It will bring together academics and archivists to discuss and explore with students how business archive collections can be used for their research.  You can find out more and register for the event via eventbrite.

This event has been organised by the Business Archives Council of Scotland, the Scottish Council on Archives and the Centre of Business History.  It follows the pattern of successful events organised by the Business Archives Council in London for the last four years and an event held at Swansea University this year.


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Coats & Clarks celebrate 200 years

2012 marks the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Clarks factory in Paisley.  To celebrate this milestone, the company Coats & Clarks have created a website which contains an interactive timeline and a space to encourage people to share their sewing stories.


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Frame on Frame: textiles films from the Scottish Screen Archive

Wednesday 25 April 2012



Image from here
On Thursday 17 May from 6pm Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh presents a film night by Dr Jonathan Murray who is a Lecturer in Film and Visual Culture at Edinburgh College of Art entitled:

Frame on Frame: textiles films from the Scottish Screen Archive

This event uses textile films held by the Scottish Screen Archive to look at what they tell us about who we were as they do about what we wore:
Given the historic cultural, industrial, and economic importance of textile manufacturing for Scotland, it is no surprise that the Scottish Screen Archive contains a wealth of documentary films depicting the subject. As one might expect, such material often examines traditional and modern fabric-making processes at considerable length. Yet the works in question also speak to an audience far wider than professional textile-makers and scholars alone, and their interest is more than just factual and technical in nature. If the films surveyed below explain the weaving of Scottish fabrics, they also illuminate the diverse, and often surprising, ways in which Scotland wove ideas from or around its native cloth and carpet. We find gendered and imperial British identities within the post-WWII nation championed or challenged in some of these films, while others lay bare the constant push/pull between competing values of tradition and modernity that shaped so much of twentieth-century Scottish culture and identity.
Book your free tickets via Eventbrite

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Business Archives TNA podcast

Monday 23 April 2012

Alex Ritchie, the Business Archives Advice Manager at The National Archives, gave a talk on Business Archives: New Initiatives and Developments on the 22nd March 2012.

The talk looked at the background to company archives and the recent development of national strategies to promote business archives more widely along with other new projects.

It is now available to listen to as a podcast here.

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Scottish Business Archives and the Titanic

Thursday 19 April 2012

A collection of papers for the Dumbarton yachtbuilders R McAlister & Sons (ref TD1347) which belongs to Glasgow City Archives contain details of the order and delivery of four Englehardt Collapsible Lifeboats for the Titanic.

The Ballast Trust who have catalogued the collection have blogged about it here.

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Business Archives: New Initiatives and Developments

Wednesday 21 March 2012

If you're in the Kew area tomorrow (22 March) Alex Ritchie, the Business Archives Advice Manager at The National Archives, is giving a talk on Business Archives: New Initiatives and Developments at 2pm.

The talk will look at the background to company archives and the recent development of national strategies to promote business archives more widely. There will be an update on the current ABC survey, which seeks to identify the records of the architecture, building and construction sectors. The talk will also focus on individual projects under way to improve storage and access to the records of companies such as Marks & Spencer and Clarks Shoes.
Find out more here

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Marks and Spencer Archive

Friday 16 March 2012

Image from here
The new Michael Marks Building opens its doors to the public today, Friday 16th March. This building is the home of Marks and Spencer's Company Archive which has been relocated from London to the University of Leeds.  Read more about it in the University press release here and on the BBC here.

As well as a new building the archive have also created a wonderful new interactive website Marks in Time where you can find out about the company's history, its collections, events that they are holding and even share your memories of M&S.

Image from here
Best headline for the story comes from the SCA with 'this is not just an archive... this is a Marks and Spencer archive.'  The SCA along with The National Archives, the Archives and Records Association and the Business Archives Council all sent letters of congratulation to M&S on the new Company Archive.




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Valuable lessons of the past

Thursday 15 March 2012

Is the title of an article by Alisdair Northrop in the March 2012 issue of Scottish Business Insider.

It looks at why business history is relevant for today’s companies and explains that:
Scotland has an extraordinary business heritage. In the past the country was at the heart of the industrial revolution as a major player in many areas including ship building, textiles and locomotive manufacturing. Although much has changed it still has many world leading companies. But what can we learn from our past and are there more ways we can exploit our heritage? There is also a danger that some of the valuable archives of Scottish companies could be lost forever.
You can read the article online here or view a pdf version here. It features discussions and quotes from Archivist Lesley Richmond at the University of Glasgow, business historians Prof Ray Stokes from the Centre of Business History and Prof Charles Munn.

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Year 2 Actions

Tuesday 6 March 2012

The Implementation Group have published the Year 2 Action Plan for the National Strategy for Business Archives.

The action plan has pulled out those actions from the broader actions listed in the Strategy that we will work on this year.  They include:

  • More case studies
  • Plans for a 'meet the archivists' day
  • Improving links with insolvency practitioners to help preserve records at risk
  • Publishing the results of the Data Mapping Project
Read them here.

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Network Rail opens up its collections

Saturday 3 March 2012

Image from The Guardian
A great example of a business archive opening up its collections was unveiled last week with the wonderful new Virtual Archive website for Network Rail's collection of engineering drawings and plans.

The archive collection held by Network Rail has more than 5 million records dating back more than 300 years.

The site has categorised items by people, stations, companies, bridges & viaducts and tunnels.

Explore it here.

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Part 1: Data Mapping Project Update

Wednesday 15 February 2012


For the last six weeks as part of the Data Mapping Project I have been working to update and enhance an extracted dataset of Scottish business archive collections held by the National Register of Archives. The project funded by the Archives and Records Association is part of a wider project by the National Strategy for Business Archives in Scotland.

As you may have seen from my previous post, the aim of the project is to provide a new online resource which presents the enhanced dataset in visually new ways. The finished resource will enable interpretation and analysis of the business collections by industry, geographical location and by repository sector.

This will provide a resource for archivists and researchers to explore business history by viewing business archives differently, encouraging fresh interpretation on the subject area.

One of the surprise findings of the project was Manufacturing only contributes to 1% of the total Scottish business archives with businesses involved in Shops, Merchants and Distributors representing 13%.

The project methodology and report outlining the findings and recommendations will be posted here shortly. Future stages of the Data Mapping Project will also be posted on this page.

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2011 Review of Implementation

Tuesday 7 February 2012

2011 was the first full year of implementation for the National Strategy for Business Archives in Scotland.  To mark this we have prepared the following infographic to highlight some of our achievements in our first year.


You can download a pdf version of of the Annual Review to see it in more detail.  This also has information about general business archive news in 2011 on the reverse.
  • Information about the implementation group, its members and meeting notes is available on the business archives section of the SCA website.
  • Our case studies are all available online and we are planning to produce and publish more this year.
  • The resources that we have created and/or published can be found in the resources section of the website.
  • The results of the Data Mapping Project will be shared here on the blog and in time we will be created a page within the business archives section for detailed information about the project, its methodology, report and online resource.

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ICA Event - The Business Archvist in the 21st Century

Tuesday 31 January 2012

The ICA's Section on Business and Labour Archives International Business Archives Seminar is coming up in April.


The title is "With Constant Care… the Business Archivist in the 21st Century" and the programme for it can be viewed here. The event will run for 2 days over 16-17 April 2012 in the A.P. Moller - Maersk Headquarters in Copenhagen.

It will include presentations on:
  • Trends in general management strategy 2012-2015
  • Archives management in Mergers & Divestments
  • Organisation – how to position yourself
  • Sustainability in archives
  • Electronic Records Management – cases from the real world

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Archives Accreditation & Business Archives

Monday 30 January 2012

An Archives Accreditation standard is currently being developed by The National Archives in partnership with other archive organisations.

Accreditation will provide a framework for benchmarking performance and support development planning.  It will drive improvement by externally validating and accrediting achievement.  The proposed core modules that the accreditation process will be based on are the same as those for the UK museums accreditation scheme and group requirements into three categories:

  • Organisational health
  • Collections
  • Users and their experience

Encouraging Scottish business archives to participate in any wider accreditation schemes developed for the UK was Action 8.3.2 in the Strategy.  As a result the Implementation Group will be responding to the consultation and would urge business archives nationwide to contribute constructively to the consultation, to ensure that any special considerations regarding archives that primarily hold business records are taken into account and that the scheme is accessible to them.

The standard will be piloted in June this year but there is still time to have your say.  There is going to be an open online webinar consultation to be held on 9 February. To receive an invitation to the webinar on Creating Archives Accreditation please email info@janicetullock.co.uk.

For more information about the standard there is a FAQ that the national archives have prepared which explains some of the basic principles of accreditation and how to get involved.

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The Value of Business Archives for Research

Tuesday 24 January 2012

A reminder that there is a workshop on the Value of Business Archives for Research being held this week on Friday 27th January in Swansea at the University Archives on the subject of business archives and their use for researchers.

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Managing Business Archives Leaflet

The Business Archives Council has just published a Managing Business Archives leaflet.

The leaflet has taken some of the content of the Managing Business Archives website to create a document that can be downloaded and distributed to businesses.

It is designed to be useful to companies of any size looking to establish their own archives, whether in-house or externally. It will also be useful to local record offices who frequently receive requests for assistance from such companies.
You can download it here or request a hard copy by getting in touch with them.

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Crisis Management Team

Monday 16 January 2012

A Crisis Management Team was created in 2009 as part of the English and Welsh strategy. The team was created to represent all parts of the archive sector to organise agreed responses to business archives under threat and it exists to monitor and assist in steering records at risk into suitable homes.

Details of the team members are now available on the Managing Business Archives website.  The Scottish Representative is Kiara King, Ballast Trust Archivist.

If you are aware of business records at risk in Scotland then please contact Kiara by email at Kiara.King@glasgow.ac.uk or on 01505 328488.

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Digitising the BT Heritage Archive

Friday 13 January 2012

Some business archive news for the start of the new year.  A million pound project to digitise the BT Heritage Archive was launched this week in London on 11th January.  The project is called New Connections: BT e-Archive and is:

A collaboration between Coventry University (CU), BT Heritage and The National Archives (TNA). It aims to catalogue, digitise and develop a searchable online archive of almost half a million photographs, images, documents and correspondence assembled by BT over 165 years. This large and remarkable collection details the history of Britain’s leading role in the development of telecommunications and the impact of this technology on society. The BT Archive is held, with limited public access, in central London and is by any standard a collection of national and international importance, recognised by UNESCO.
You can find out more on the project blog.

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About This Blog

This blog will provide information about the development of a National Strategy for Business Archives in Scotland. It will also be used to provide general updates about Business Archives in Scotland.

This blog is written by Kiara King, the Ballast Trust archivist. Updates on the Data Mapping Project are written by Cheryl Brown, project officer.
This blog ceased to be updated in 2013. Follow @busarchscot for the latest news on business archives in Scotland.

Participate

The Business Archives Strategy for Scotland was published in August, read it here. Keep an eye on the blog for more news about business archives and the strategy's implementation.

You can also contact us at any time with thoughts and contribute your comments to the blog!

Contact us

Please contact us if you have any comments or suggestions.

Kiara King (Ballast Trust Archivist)
Kiara.King@glasgow.ac.uk

BACS
bacs@archives.gla.ac.uk