Business Archives Scotland

2012-02-15T12:27:00.015Z

Part 1: Data Mapping Project Update

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.

2011 Review of Implementation

2012-02-07T09:16:00.002Z

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.

ICA Event - The Business Archvist in the 21st Century

2012-01-31T15:00:00.000Z

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

Archives Accreditation & Business Archives

2012-01-30T14:27:00.000Z

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.

The Value of Business Archives for Research

2012-01-24T14:42:00.000Z

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.

Managing Business Archives Leaflet

2012-01-24T14:37:00.003Z

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.

Crisis Management Team

2012-01-16T11:29:00.001Z

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.

Digitising the BT Heritage Archive

2012-01-13T11:38:00.000Z

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.

Colonial chic, jazz age fashion: It's all in Fraser's archive

2011-12-21T12:58:00.000Z

Colonial chic, jazz age fashion: It's all in Fraser's archive is the title of an article which appears in today's Herald about the launch of the new House of Fraser archive catalogue on Christmas Day.

The collection is held by the University of Glasgow Archive Services and is a fabulous record of the company's long history as well as being a great resource for social history, design and fashion students. The article has input from the business as well with Gary Slattery, general manager at Frasers in Glasgow, saying:

With an impressive 162-year history there are many stories, images and more that we haven't been able to share with loyal Frasers customers. So, we're delighted the archive services at the University of Glasgow are able to share the store's history with people all over the world, thanks to the launch of their new online catalogue for the House of Fraser archive project.

Help Shape the Future of Scottish Archives and Records

2011-12-20T17:04:00.000Z

The Scottish Council on Archives has been a great supporter of the National Strategy but they do more than support business archives, they are:

The lead body for the advocacy and development of archive services in Scotland. We are committed to developing a national strategy to take the archival community in Scotland forward. We support historic archives in local authority record offices and elsewhere, modern records management and electronic document management services, community archives, and activities such as conservation and preservation, as well as digitisation and learning. We also aim to promote archive services to the wider public by publicising initiatives such as the annual Archives Awareness Campaign.

In January they are holding an event to help determineits Strategic Framework for 2012-2014. There will be a consultation event on Wednesday, 11 January 2012, in the Mitchell Library Glasgow (11.00am-4.00pm).

This is an opportunity for you to help shape the future of Scottish archives and records through in-depth discussion of the guiding principles, vision, themes and objectives which will shape how the SCA moves forward over the next three years. The SCA feels that it is essential that the strategy reflects the needs and aspirations of the entire sector and all its stakeholders.

If you would like to attend please RSVP to Ben.Bennett@scoarch.org.uk by the 5 January 2012. More details are available here.

Data Mapping Project Begins

2011-12-15T11:17:00.034Z

After successfully obtaining funding from the Archives and Records Association research and advocacy fund, the National Strategy for Business Archives in Scotland is pleased to announce the start of a six week Data Mapping Project with Cheryl Brown as Data Mapping Project Officer.

The Data Mapping Project will review and enhance existing information about business archive collections in Scotland, with the objective of creating a single improved master dataset. Using this dataset the project will present information about business collections online in a flexible and interactive format.

This will allow collections for a particular industry or geographic area to be viewed in map or timeline format. This improved accessibility will provide a fresh way to look at business archives collections in Scotland as well as enabling other means of interpretation and will benefit creators, custodians and users of business archives.

To ensure that an accurate and up to date snapshot of Scottish business archive collections in 2011 is captured, any individuals or organisations holding business archive collections not included in the National Register of Archives or other online sources are invited to contact the project at businessarchivesscotland@gmail.com.

If you have collections to include, please email Cheryl Brown by Monday 30th January 2012 with the following details (where known) for each collection:
• Reference
• Title
• Date
• Description
• Extent

We are interested in unprocessed collections so please include any collections that have yet to be catalogued.

Business Archives at Christmas

2011-12-13T12:09:00.002Z

Christmas can be a good time for business archives to showcase their collections. Two lovely examples reflecting the need to buy presents or prepare for Christmas financially are from the House of Fraser Collection and the Royal Bank of Scotland Group Archives.

The House of Fraser Advent Calendar from Glasgow University Archive Services.

[Image from here]

This advent calendar is showcasing images from the House of Fraser Collection which is held by the University's Archive Services as part of its business collections.

The House of Fraser Archive provides a wealth of information on the company’s history. It includes the records of the company’s management in addition to the records of individual stores across the United Kingdom.

The calendar will lead up to the launch of a new online catalogue for House of Fraser on the 25th of December.

A second example is the RBS Advent Calendar from Royal Bank of Scotland Group Archives. This advent calendar publicised through their twitter account and using images from their flickr.

[image from here]

All the images have more detailed information available about them on the main RBS Heritage site. For example the screenshot below shows a 'Notice announcing Nottingham & Nottinghamshire Bank's Christmas Bank Holidays, 1896'.

In the week before Christmas 1896 this cardboard notice was displayed in the banking hall of one of our Nottingham branches, declaring that the banks would be closed on Saturday 26 December – Boxing Day – for a bank holiday. Boxing Day was one of four days each year that had been officially designated by the Bank Holidays Act of 1871 as holidays in England, Wales and Ireland. Scotland had its own designated holidays on slightly different days.

You can read the full description here.

Business Records at TNA

2011-12-10T14:29:00.000Z

The National Archives has a very helpful resource on researching their business collections available on their website here.

One of the best things about it is that it explains what the National Register of Archives (NRA) is and how to use it. This online register is one of the first places I start with when looking for business archive collections.

It is possible to search The National Archives (NRA) for the records of businesses using the corporate name index. Information about prominent industrialists can be found on the personal name index, while details of the records of families involved in business can be located in the family name index.

The Business Archivist in the 21st Century

2011-12-08T15:27:00.001Z

The ICA's Section on Business and Labour Archives has announced details of their International Business Archives Seminar to be held in Copenhagen next April.

The title is "With Constant Care… the Business Archivist in the 21st Century" and the flyer for it can be viewed here. More details will be released in January 2012 but 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

BAC Archive Workshop

2011-11-25T12:09:00.000Z

The Business Archives Council is holding an archive workshop for new researchers in London on Thursday 8th December.

The workshop aims to explore ways in which new research students can identify and use business records in a surprising variety of different research fields. Participants will be able to explore the vast and varied materials available at many of the UKs major and minor business archives. Now in its fourth year, this event will be hosted by The Rothschild Archive. Following a successful formula from previous years, the day will commence with an archives skills workshop run by eminent academic historians, followed by a buffet lunch, where participants will be able to meet the archivists.

Find out more here including the full timetable featuring archives and archivists from The Baring Archive, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, London Metropolitan Archives, The National Archives and the Rothschild Archive.

BACS & ARA event

2011-11-24T11:40:00.001Z

A reminder that tomorrow (Friday 25 November), the Business Archives Council of Scotland (BACS) and Archives and Records Association Scottish Region are holding a joint financial records conference sponsored by CAIS Dundee to introduce members of both organisations to the records of financial institutions.

It will provide a ‘hands-on’ opportunity to use the records of the Alliance Trust, one of Dundee’s prominent Investment Trusts and learn more about using financial records.

The Annual Joan Auld lecture founded in memory of Dundee’s first University Archivist will follow lunch and the day will conclude with the Regional Meeting of the Association and the AGM of BACS.

Find out more in the programme.

Welsh Business Archives

2011-11-23T15:13:00.000Z

Another Welsh initiative is the Wales Powering the World blog which is a project looking at Welsh Industry through Archives.

This Archives and Record Council Wales collobarative project was funded by the Pilgrim Trust under the National Cataloguing Grants Scheme. Ten of the most valuable un-catalogued business collections from north and south Wales were catalogued and are now available through their holding repositories. The collections were:

Cardiff Incorporated Chamber of Commerce, Glamorgan Archives
Coppack Bros. & Co., Connah’s Quay, Flintshire Record Office
Davies Bros., Slate Merchants, Porthmadog, Gwynedd Archives
Emlyn Colliery and Brickworks, Carmarthenshire Archive Service
Inigo Jones Ltd., Slate Merchants of Nantlle, Gwynedd Archives
Powell Duffryn Limited, Glamorgan Archives
South Wales Transport Collection, Richard Burton Archives, Swansea University
Vivian and Sons Limited, West Glamorgan Archive Service
Waddle Engineering and Fan Company, Carmarthenshire Archive Service
Wrexham Lager Company Papers, Wrexham Archives and Local Studies

They are holding a workshop on Friday 27th January in Swansea at the University Archives on the subject of business archives and their use for researchers.

NLS OneSource Business Database

2011-11-22T11:54:00.001Z

The National Library of Scotland has released information about a new business database that will provide free global business information for Scottish companies.

This database is part of its SCOTBIS service - The Scottish Business Information Service which is a national information service for Scottish businesses, based on the extensive business resources at the National Library of Scotland.

The OneSource Global Business database provides information on more than 17 million companies worldwide, including almost three million in the UK. In addition, there is information on specific industries and company executives, together with news, reports and analysis.

Welsh Copper

2011-11-21T10:30:00.000Z

A website all about Welsh Copper has been lauched. The website is a learning legacy site using the resources created for the Global and Local Worlds of Welsh Copper knowledge exchange project.

It makes many of the resources generated for various of the project's initiatives freely available and is packed full of information about copper's industrialisation in Wales and how it impacted upon world trade. Highlights include exhibition guides with downloadable resources relating to the recent major exhibition at the National Waterfront Museum, Swansea, and that now accompany the travelling exhibition.

It is aimed primarily as introductory material that can be used in the class or seminar room or just by those interested in learning more about this fascinating aspect of industrial history and heritage.

It also has information about copper business archives, including news about a survey of copper archives that the project has undertaken.

100 years of Harris Tweed

2011-11-17T13:46:00.001Z

There is an event tomorrow Friday 18th November at The Old School in Shawbost, Isle of Lewis to mark 100 years of the Harris Tweed Orb organised by Harris Tweed and The Islands Book Trust.

[Image from here]

See the flyer for more details.

This one-day event, arranged by the Islands Book Trust at the request of the Harris Tweed Authority, will mark the centenary of the Orb by reviewing the history of this vitally important and distinctive island industry, celebrating its successes and achievements, and reflecting on the current and future challenges it faces.

Thanks to the Hebridean Archive Service blog for the tip-off about this event.

More infographics

2011-11-17T13:15:00.000Z

Another lovely example of an infographic. This time showing the history and company development of the many different US Airlines.

[Image from here]

This graphic was designed and created by Larry Gormley of HistoryShots. From the website:

The purpose of this graphic is to uncover and explain how the industry was created and how it arrived at its present form. At the core is a full genealogy of over 100 US airlines from the major airlines to the small local service carriers. Folded into the genealogy is the relative market share of passenger traffic for each airline. This allows the viewer to understand how the industry was controlled for many decades by the Big Four and how this dominance was quickly replaced by a number of other airlines.

Data Mapping Project

2011-11-16T18:09:00.001Z

The NSBAS Implementation Group are pleased to announce that the Archives and Records Association have approved a grant from their research and advocacy fund for a Data Mapping Project in Scotland.

The data mapping project aims to create a single consistent and clarified dataset for business archive collections in Scotland that will provide improved and flexible information for creators, custodians and users of business archives.

It will do this by locating and mapping business archive collections and collecting policies in Scotland. The focus will be the verification of data about known business archive collections to inform the National Strategy for Business Archives in Scotland. Analysis of the results of this data collation will provide information that will inform many other areas of the strategy and create a project methodology that can be shared with partner organisations in the rest of the UK.

The project will:

Gather and disseminate information on business archives for use by heritage professionals, researchers and businesses to improve management of and access to collections.
Develop and share a methodology for carrying out a survey of collections.
Add value to existing data and share this enhanced data with owners.

We will have a project officer working on this in December and have been very fortunate this week to receive extracted data from the National Register of Archives. This contains information about over 6,000 business archive collections which we plan to check, update and map so that users will be able to search the data by geographic area, time period and industry sector. This ability will in turn help to identify collecting strengths and weaknesses and reveal gaps in the collections across Scotland to inform surveying policies and other work.

We will be posting about the project here on the blog as we get started and it progresses. If you have any questions then please email Kiara or businessarchivesscotland@gmail.com.

Guinness Was Good for Us

2011-11-14T14:25:00.001Z

The Scottish Oral History Centre is holding a workshop today in Glasgow at 5:30pm called 'Guinness Was Good for Us: Understanding Corporate Culture Through Oral and Visual Approaches' by Prof Tim Strangleman.

[Image from here]

The workshops are open to all and held in Room 4.02 of the McCance Building at the University of Strathclyde.

More information here.

Financial Records Training

2011-10-27T12:24:00.003+01:00

On Friday 25 November, the Business Archives Council of Scotland (BACS) and Archives and Records Association Scottish Region are holding a joint financial records conference sponsored by CAIS Dundee to introduce members of both organisations to the records of financial institutions.

It will provide a ‘hands-on’ opportunity to use the records of the Alliance Trust, one of Dundee’s prominent Investment Trusts and learn more about using financial records.

The Annual Joan Auld lecture founded in memory of Dundee’s first University Archivist will follow lunch and the day will conclude with the Regional Meeting of the Association and the AGM of BACS.

Find out more in the programme.

The business of running an estate

2011-10-26T09:32:00.002+01:00

The Dorset History Centre (which is the archives service and local studies library for Bournemouth, Dorset and Poole) has created an online educational pack using its manorial records.

The pack has been designed for school pupils and is pitched at key stage 3 students and contains assorted resources for teachers.

Manorial records are the records of manors which were "areas of land and property belonging to a single landowner - the lord of the manor. They were estates which included land for growing crops and grazing animals, and a manor house. Manors had their own courts which dealt with local disputes and property transactions."

So its a great example of early business records being used to teach children.

Family businesses

2011-10-22T16:32:00.000+01:00

The Institute for Family Business has published research which reveals the 10 oldest family businesses in the UK. Nine of these had been trading for over 200 years and the Financial Times highlights the oldest which is a butchers called R.J. Balson & Son that started trading in in 1535. Another article about it is available here.

The ten companies are:

RJ Balson and Son (butchers)
R Durtnell & Sons (construction)
C Hoare & Co (private bank)
Morning Foods (cereals)
Aspall Cyder (juice & vinegar)
Lock & Co (hat maker)
Toye, Kenning & Spencer (military manufacturer)
Folkes Group (real estate)
Berry Bros & Rudd (wine merchant)
Salts Healthcare (surgeons’ instrument manufacturer)

Catalogue of Dreams

2011-10-21T16:01:00.000+01:00

The University of Worcester Research Collections is holding a conference relating to its Kays Archive collection on Tuesday 15 November.

The Catalogue of Dreams:

Kays’ mail order catalogues & the development of 20th century aspirational living

Date: Tuesday 15 November 2011
Time: 9.30am-4.30pm
Venue: Charles Hastings building, City Campus, University of Worcester
Attendance is FREE. Lunch will be provided.

Established in 1890, Kay & Co Ltd of Worcester became one of the largest mail-order companies of the 20th century. Offering interest-free cash credit, Kay & Co Ltd made both fashionable and functional living available to consumers outside the metropolis, selling everything from clothes to carpets, cheerful homewares to live chickens.

This day-long conference explores how the imagery and text of the Kays catalogues, 1920-2000, offer a prism through which to view the development of aspirational living and body image presented to consumers during the 20th century. Further details and booking forms are available here.

You can see over 1500 images that have been digitised at world of kays as part of their JISC funded project.

Changes for McEwan's & Younger's

2011-10-10T15:20:00.000+01:00

The Scotsman reports on the sale of McEwan's and Younger's to the Bedfordshire-based brewing company Wells and Young's.

You can read about the acquisition on the Wells and Young's website as well, where their Managing Director Nigel McNally says:

“This is a significant and major acquisition, and secures the future for the much loved McEwan’s and Younger’s brands. We are hugely excited about these fantastic Scottish ales joining our stable, they bring a wealth of opportunities to our business which we will realise through brand investment, innovation and exploiting export potential. We are committed to maintaining the rich Scottish heritage of the brands. We will continue brewing McEwan’s draught ales at the historic Caledonian Brewery and we will set up a small Scottish office to support the brands and our range of beers.”

Business Archives in the FT

2011-10-03T14:22:00.001+01:00

Another great article from the Financial Times about menswear fashion brands who are using their heritage and archives to inform their collections and brand identity. It includes examples from Burberry, Wolsley, Belstaff and Denham. Belstaff's chief executive Harry Slatkin is quoted as saying that:

Belstaff is an iconic English brand. When you find a brand that has such a rich history, you pay homage to it and you don’t change it. The challenge is adding modernity and making it current to today’s modern world.

RBS Archives on twitter

2011-09-21T15:40:00.001+01:00

The Royal Bank of Scotland Archives are on twitter as @RBS_Archives and last week they launched a new twitter account for @Johnofthebank to allow them to tweet the 18th century diary of John Campbell, the cashier in charge of RBS during the Jacobite uprising in 1745.

From their press release: His diary records how he paid the rebels in gold from reserves held in Edinburgh Castle and the first tweet will be his diary entry from 14 September 1745, the day he took the bank's valuables to the Castle in anticipation of the Jacobites' arrival in the city. Ruth Reed, Archives Manager at RBS said:

"The diary was ideal for Twitter as it was written in small, daily sections, often with several different entries throughout the day. We're excited about using a new technology to tell a very old story, and hope it will bring this fascinating part of history to a whole new audience."

Donate a memory

2011-09-15T13:03:00.000+01:00

The Museum of Brands in London is holding a donate a memory day on monday 26th September from 10 am to 4.30 pm.

This is a free event for senior citizens only to celebrate their childhood memories and pass them on to the next generation. A team of volunteers will be on hand to gather visitors' memories in a digital memory bank.

Archives Matter

2011-09-14T12:59:00.002+01:00

The Scottish Council on Archives recently launched their Archives Matter brochure.

According to their website this publication seeks to achieve these objectives:

to serve as an introduction to the world of archives
to act as a source of information that will encourage exploration and enquiry
to be a persuasive advocacy document highlighting the importance of the archives and records management sector. The publication is both informative and visually attractive, filled with thought- provoking commentary and stunning images.

The brochure includes examples of business archives and why they matter. It discusses company heritage with Lloyds Banking Group, technical records with the Ballast Trust and using archives for marketing with Diageo.

Its a great brochure, full of lovely pictures, quotes and examples and is full of inspiration about how to use archives and make them work for you.

Thomas Cook celebrates 170 years

2011-08-27T10:43:00.000+01:00

with this great infographic:

A History of British Holidaymaking in Numbers brought to you by Thomas Cook holidays

Rather nicely, they also provided the html code for the infographic to allow other people to embed the image on their website which is what I've done here. I found it via this site which notes that the facts and information came from their in-house archivist.

Managing a Small Repository

2011-08-24T16:30:00.000+01:00

The Religious Archives Group Conference theme this year is “On a Wing and a Prayer”: Managing the Small Repository.

Looking at the programme there are some similarities in the issues faced by religious archive with those owners of small business archives face. The conference seeks to

address the needs of those running small repositories and, in the present economic climate, will, we feel, strike a chord with many. There will be presentations on what can be done to preserve materials on a tight budget and another on inventive ways of promoting your collections.

For those working with small business archives, it might be worth enquiring if you can attend and go along on the 27th September to see what lessons can be learned from our colleagues in the religious archives group.

Lyle & Scott 'Archive Exchange'

2011-08-10T12:09:00.001+01:00

On Saturday 28th August Lyle & Scott are are hosting the ‘Archive Exchange’ at the Beanscene in Hawick.

Lyle & Scott was founded in Hawick in 1874 and is immensely proud of its roots in the Scottish Borders. You can clearly see the influence of archive and heritage designs in the company's vintage, heritage and archive range of clothing collections

This is an event to kick-start our campaign to restore the company’s archives. We are on the lookout for any vintage Lyle & Scott memorabilia you may have – garments, historical documents, photographs or cuttings from newspapers – and asking you to bring them along to be photographed for our record. To say thank you we are offering a brand new Lyle & Scott item in exchange! So please come along and share you stories over a cup of tea.

For more information about the event please contact Jen.Kent@lyleandscott.com or 0207 467 7519

You should also check out their blog for a post about branding their vintage collection, it describes the process of researching the brand and its yellow eagle logo using the archive collection here in Scotland.

Old Shops of Stornoway

2011-08-10T09:46:00.010+01:00

Tomorrow evening (Thursday 11th August) there is a joint event being held in Stornoway by Tasglann Nan Eilean Siar (Hebridean Archives) and the Stornoway Historical Society about old shops and businesses in Stornoway.

Pringle Archive Exhibition

2011-08-05T13:47:00.000+01:00

Good news for those of you in Edinburgh during the festival this month. The Pringle Archive Project 1815-2011 is appearing as an exhibition at Harvey Nichols, St Andrew Square, from August 3 to 24.

Gordon Drummond, director of Harvey Nichols Edinburgh, says:

We are delighted to be showcasing the rich history of one of Scotland's most iconic brands and to highlight the importance of the Scottish textile industry and its contribution to international fashion.

For details, call 0131-524 8388 or read about it here, here and here.

New Case Study Plans

2011-08-02T16:02:00.000+01:00

After the great selection of case studies we put together for the launch in January, we'd like to do more! We are planning to produce some more of these in the Autumn and would like to know if there are any stories out there of business archives in Scotland that you think should be told or would like to find out about particular companies and sectors.

We're open to suggestions and will do our best to put together a selection as interesting and diverse as the last bunch.

Scottish Business Archive Case Study

Please leave us a comment below or email me with suggestions and thoughts.

New blog

2011-07-24T12:35:00.001+01:00

I spotted a new blog today called Taking Account of our Past and it will document the process of cataloguing accountancy papers.

From the blog:

The Taking Account of our Past project is based at Wolverhampton Archives and Local Studies and its purpose is to catalogue the collection of Smith, Son and Wilkie, a chartered accountancy firm who were based in the city. This project has been funded by a grant from the National Cataloguing Grants Programme for Archives, which is administrated by The National Archives. The grant of £36,000 has enabled the service to appoint Kimberley Benoy as a cataloguing archivist to work exclusively on this 18 month project.

Business History Matters: The Modern Corporate Archive

2011-07-19T14:48:00.001+01:00

Interesting post from the Business History Matters people about the importance of a corporate archive in today's business climate. In particular the fact that

an archives’ relevance to larger business goals is crucial. Companies should
make sure that users’ needs are met, and that the content derived from archival
materials serves marketing and communications objectives, with mechanisms in
place to support continuous improvement and/or expansion.

Read more about The Modern Corporate Archive

Major business accessions to repositories in 2010

2011-07-19T14:13:00.001+01:00

The National Archives has published the results of its 2010 annual 'Accessions to Repositories' survey.

In this survey, the National Archives collects information from over two hundred record repositories throughout the British Isles about manuscript accessions received in the previous twelve months.

There is a business category for the results, the results of which can be seen here. Some of the highlights in Scotland include:

Joseph Brown, stonemason, Banff: working papers, incl specifications for projects in Banffshire and Nairn 20th cent (DD1485) - Aberdeen City Archives
Craigenlow Quarries Ltd, Dunecht: minute books, slides and films 1946-1979 (Acc 477) - Aberdeen University, Special Libraries and Archives
Matthew Wright & Nephew Ltd, timber merchants, Irvine: ledgers and cash books 1854-1912 (10/45) - Ayrshire Archives
Weir Group plc, pump manufacturers: records from Alloa works incl predecessor companies 1900-1986 (PD 253) - Clackmannanshire Archives
Uniroyal Ltd (formerly North British Rubber Co Ltd), rubber goods and chemical manufacturers, Newbridge: minutes, share, financial and staff records, etc 1856-1986 (GGD701) - Dumfries and Galloway Archives
James MacLaren & Sons, architects and surveyors, Dundee: architectural drawings 1862-1896 - Dundee City Archives
Don Brothers, Buist & Co Ltd, jute and flax spinners and manufacturers, Dundee: Buist family personal and business papers c1806-1945 (2010/398) - Dundee University Archive, Records Management and Museum Services
Edinburgh and Leith Master Plumbers' Association: records 1911-1970 (Acc 831) - Edinburgh City Archives
Christian Salvesen Ltd, transport and logistics company, Leith: diaries of Dr IM Macintosh when with the company 1956-1962 (E2010.32) - Edinburgh University Library, Special Collections
Falkirk & Larbert Water Trust: letter books, accounts, meter survey books 1890-1970 (A1263) - Falkirk Council Archives
McLay, McAllister & McGibbon, chartered accountants, Glasgow: additional ledgers and cash books 1899-1976 (ACCN 3436) - Glasgow University Archive Servives
William Wilson & Son, tartan manufacturers, Bannockburn: tartan pattern book c1830 (GH) - Heriot-Watt University Archive, Records Management and Museum Service
Highland Railway Co: records c1890-1970 (D1212) - Highland Council Archives
James Fleming, general drapers, Blairgowrie: records c1920-1953 (10/38) - Perth and Kinross Council Archive
John Baxter (Chemists) Ltd, Cambuslang: records c1920-1989 (Accession 1146) - Strathclyde University Archives

Darien Scheme Exhibition

2011-07-08T16:53:00.000+01:00

The National Library of Scotland and the Royal Bank of Scotland have engaged in a joint venture to create an exhibition of their material relating to the Darien Scheme. It celebrates the inclusion in 2010 of the archives of 'The Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies' in UNESCO's UK Memory of the World register.
The result of this is an exhibition 'The key of the universe': Scotland and Darien, 1695-1707 which will run from 1 July to 31 August at the National Library of Scotland.

To mark the exhibition opening there was an article in The Scotsman on Wednesday 6th with RBS Archivist Laura Yeoman.

The Edible Archive

2011-07-06T12:09:00.000+01:00

The Scottish Council on Archives is appearing on Radio Scotland today on the Kitchen Cafe show to discuss the Edible Archive project.

This project is part of the Archives Awareness campaign for 2011 and the SCA "is inviting archives and members of the public across Scotland to contribute recipes from their collections and personal cookbooks. Your contributions will be included in an archival cookbook, The Edible Archive."

So far contributions include examples from business archives in images like this one from the Jackson Elphick & Co. Ltd company who were actually bathfounders, enamellers and sanitary engineers. But this image of a kitchen range was found in a trade catalogue in their collection held by Glasgow University Archive Services.

Image courtesy of University of Glasgow Archive Services
from Jackson, Elphick & Co Ltd Collection, GB 0248 UGD 122/3/1/10
taken from here

Nestlé opens archives facility in York

2011-07-04T14:51:00.001+01:00

This weekend Nestlé opened a new archives facility in York. Paul Grimwood, Nestlé UK chief executive and chairman said "the archive demonstrated how serious Nestlé UK was about preserving and promoting its history in the UK."

Full details about the archive are available in this news article in the Yorkshire Press.

A tin of Rowntree chocolates sent to soldiers in the Boer War
{image from here}

Co-operative plans for anniversary

2011-06-28T10:16:00.000+01:00

In 2013, the co-operative will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the CWS - the Co-operative Wholesale Society. A new business history of the group is planned for publication then and a team has been put together to research the company

There is more information in a leaflet here.

Cork Business Archives

2011-06-17T10:35:00.000+01:00

Cork City and County Archives have a new online exhibition that "explores the commercial heritage of Cork through its historical archives."

The exhibition is called Cork: Merchant City and features a variety of items from different collections within the archive including examples from shipping, brewing, provisions, distilling and retail industries.

There's also a great article in the Irish Times about the family dynasties behind many of the businesses.

Thanks to ArchivesIreland on twitter for this infomation.

Scott's Men

2011-06-16T15:44:00.000+01:00

The Scotts' Exhibition at the McLean Museum starts on Saturday 25th June until 10th September 2011. The exhibition marks the 300th anniversary of Scotts' of Greenock.

Download a poster here.

STICK: BP's Shale Oil Archive Returns Home to West Lothia...

2011-06-10T15:13:00.000+01:00

From the STICK blog: BP's Shale Oil Archive Returns Home to West Lothia...: "Today is an exciting day at the Museum of the Scottish Shale Oil Industry in Livingston as we have just taken delivery of the first batch of Scottish Shale Oil Industry records which have been transferred on long term loan from the BP Archive..."

More Scottish business archives join the UNESCO Register

2011-05-24T10:47:00.000+01:00

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:

Pringle's Day of Record

2011-05-23T14:31:00.000+01:00

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.

Stoddard-Templeton Archive Open Day

2011-05-18T10:37:00.000+01:00

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.

125 years of Coca-Cola

2011-05-09T11:57:00.001+01:00

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.

Social Enterprise, Victorian-style

2011-04-18T16:36:00.005+01:00

One of the surprises of the 100-Oldest Companies project was discovering that many Scottish companies were initially started to bring benefit to the local community.

Of the 100-Oldest, the Corstorphine Public Hall and Cupar Corn Exchange Companies were both set-up to build and then manage their titular facilities for the public good, addressing important needs in their respective localities. Many of the subscribers were local men and women (though some of the shareholders in Cupar were members of the landed gentry), and neither company sort to make any profit from their investment.

Of the other companies still surviving, The Dean Grounds Association raised money for tennis lawns, which it then handed to the Dean Tennis Club, and the previously mentioned Leith Cemetery Company provided a much needed service (at affordable prices) to the people of Leith.

Although we may think of companies as a means to maximise profit, this sort of publically spirited enterprise actually pre-dates many larger, money-making businesses incorporating themselves: most large firms regarded limited liability companies with suspicion until the 1890s and 1900s. Perhaps when current politicians talk of the need for social enterprise and community investment, they could do worse than look to the past for examples of success.

Photo of the Cupar Corn Exchange tower, taken from wikipedia. The owner is user:kilburn

Diary of events

2011-04-12T09:57:00.000+01:00

The Managing Business Archives website now has a diary of events related to business archives and business history across the UK and wider world.

Managing Business Archives website

2011-03-21T10:47:00.000Z

I've mentioned the Managing Business Archives website before here which is a great resource containing detailed advice for caring for business archives and a great selection of case studies.

I'm pleased to say that there is now a link to the Scottish strategy in their links and news sections and in time we hope to add our case studies to the website.

TNA podcasts on Business History

2011-03-17T15:01:00.000Z

The National Archives (TNA) has a very successful series of podcasts which contains some useful talks related to business archives and history. Some examples include:

This looks to be something that will be developed and added to in the future as the Business Archive Advice Manager has mentioned here.

Survey Work for the 'Scotland's 100-oldest Companies Project'

2011-03-02T16:46:00.004Z

Two very different companies allowed me access to their records within the last week for the 100-oldest Companies project.

The first was the Edinburgh Crematorium Limited, who allowed me to survey the surviving records of the Leith Cemetery and Cremation Company. These records consist of a small, but perfectly formed, collection going back to the company's foundation in 1887.

Though the business is not well-known outside of Leith, its story is an interesting one of local people addressing a local need for a cemetery, which they then ran until increasing overheads prompted the sale to Edinburgh Crematorium in the 1960s. You can find more in my entry on the project wiki here. I looked through the records on site in the peaceful surroundings of the Lodge at the entrance to Seafield Cemetery in Leith.

The second was KPMG, who gave me access to the records of a company formed at much the same time, the Quays group. Interestingly the company started life as the Cathcart Cemetery Company, though by 1910 they had become Alexander Holdings, the holding company of the first Ford Motors sales dealership in Edinburgh. In 2000 it became Quays Group, a property investment company operating in Poole, until it went into administration in 2004.

Sadly, unlike at Seafield Cemetery, there was little of historic value left in the Iron Mountain store where KPMG, as company administrators, hold the records. There is more detail on the project entry.

However it was interesting to compare and contrast what survived from two companies that started with very similar aims, yet whose paths took markedly different turns down the road.

(Photo of Seafield Cemetery sourced from here)

Photography Collections of Financial Companies

2011-03-02T16:36:00.000Z

With thanks to Carmen Hofmann for this information via ARCHIVES-NRA:

The European Association for Banking and Financial History (EABH) is calling for papers to be presented at the workshop: Photography Collections of (Financial) Companies - A Corporate Historical View to be held at ING, Amsterdam on Thursday 19 May 2011

The objective of the workshop is to learn more about the existence, importance and use of corporate photography collections in (financial) organizations for a broader public.

The widespread use of photography by companies led to the development of often extensive corporate photography collections, many of which were kept in relative obscurity in a company’s historical archives. The aim of the workshop is to put these corporate photography collections in the spotlight, with a focus on photography at financial companies. Where are these collections? How are they preserved and managed? Who knows about them? How are they used? How can we see these collections?

The program committee encourages the submission of papers with specific emphasis on the following areas:

Corporate photography collections in financial institutions
Corporate photography collections in museums and public archives
Use of corporate photography collections at exhibitions and in publications

The program committee will consider papers dealing with the topics mentioned above. The aim of the workshop is to encourage creative thinking and debate among the participants. As such, the program committee is especially interested in presentations that contain not only a theoretical aspect, but which in addition actively engage the audience in observation and discussion.

Archivists, curators, researchers, scholars, photographers or corporate-designers, interested in presenting a paper or outlining their field of work in relation to the topic, should send an abstract (of approx. 500 words) to: info@bankinghistory.de by Friday 11 March 2011.

BAC cataloguing grant

2011-02-25T17:13:00.000Z

With thanks to Moira Lovegrove for posting the following information to Archives-NRA listserv:

In support of the National Strategy for Business Archives, the Business Archives Council (BAC) is delighted to announce that it is once again offering a cataloguing grant for business collections. The aim of the grant, in funding the cataloguing of a business collection in either the private or public sector, is to:
provide financial support for institutions/businesses that manage business archives
reach collections that have not yet been prioritised but have potential academic or socio-historical value
create opportunities for archivists or para-professionals/volunteers to gain experience in listing business collections
make more business collections accessible
We envisage that the £2000 grant will be used over the equivalent of a 4-week period to fund an archive intern or temporary staff member (under professional supervision) to catalogue a discrete collection of business records. This can either be a detailed catalogue of a small collection or a top-level catalogue of a more substantial collection. Grant recipients should provide the BAC with an article for its newsletter, and the catalogue should be made available to the National Register of Archives (published by The National Archives). Any questions about the grant should be addressed to Karen Sampson, Honorary Secretary of the Business Archives Council, at karen.sampson@lloydsbanking.com or on 020 7860 5762

For more information – criteria and application form – see the BAC’s website

The deadline for applications is 30th June 2011.

Case study: G L Watson & Co. - investing in your brand and archives

2011-02-24T09:36:00.003Z

G.L. Watson & Co. was established in Glasgow in 1873 as the first dedicated yacht design office in the world. The firm has a long history which the archive supports with unique material on the evolution of yacht design, the America’s Cup, many famous yachts, their Owners, Crew and Builders. Noting the importance of the collection the company committed to its conservation and cataloguing.

(click image to enlarge)

The case study describes what a key resource the archive is for the company and why they have invested in it making it possible to house the entire archive within the firm’s Liverpool offices in an accessible manner.

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

Case study: Capturing the Energy- future-proofing industry

2011-02-21T09:17:00.004Z

The Capturing the Energy project was established to promote wider recognition of the technical and cultural importance of the offshore oil and gas industry to the UK.

It has been a partnership project between business and Aberdeen University to create a permanent base at the University for documents and artefacts dating back over the 50 years since the industry was founded.

(click image to enlarge)

The case study concentrates on the early work between Total E&P and the University of Aberdeen to ensure the survival of records relating to the Total-operated Frigg Gas field, which straddled the UK-Norway median line and supplied up to a third of the UK's gas; the field ceased production in 2004 after 27 years. The project then grew in scope to try to capture the broader history of the UK offshore oil and gas industry.

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

Case study: RCAHMS - creative use, interpretation and community engagement

2011-02-18T09:07:00.003Z

The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) is one of Scotland’s National Collections and is responsible for information and archives about the built heritage of the nation.

It has an archive which preserves the accumulated results of 100 years of surveying, recording and interpreting the built heritage of Scotland. This collection is made up of 14.5 million items, including photographs, maps, drawings and documents, it provides a vivid and fascinating picture of the human influence on Scotland’s Places from earliest times to the present day.

(click image to enlarge)

The case study focuses on the project to catalogue the archive of the architect Sir Basil Spence which was gifted to the RCAHMS and spans his complete working life. Through the Sir Basil Spence Archive Project, it has been possible to reassess the work of Spence and to demonstrate the potential of architectural collections to encourage people of all ages to appreciate and explore their heritage.

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

Business connections: Aberdeen Maritime Museum receives funding from Mae...

2011-02-16T17:39:00.001Z

The Aberdeen Maritime Museum has received £90,000 of funding from Maersk Oil to help with the refurbishment of its education suite.

Maersk Oil wants to leave a lasting legacy in the Granite City and believes the museum offers a unique opportunity for people to discover more about the industry which is playing such an important role in shaping its history.

Other areas of the Museum have also benefitted from funds raised through connections with business - the Energy Exploration Galleries are being renewed after Oil & Gas UK members raised the minimum £360,000 required for the project.

Full story here.

Case study: Lloyds Banking Group - identity and engagement

2011-02-15T08:56:00.012Z

Lloyds Banking Group has an extensive archive, which comprises some 6 km of records, stored at state of the art repositories in Edinburgh and London.

The bank's archive includes records of several well-known Scottish brands, including Bank of Scotland and Scottish Widows. For the bank, the archive is a hugely rich resource, which it seeks to make use of in support of the business.

(click image to enlarge)

In the past, materials from the archive have been used to support milestone events such as company anniversaries. They are also regularly used at colleague training and orientation events, to inform and inspire staff with the history and heritage of the company.
The full case study is available here and the other case studies can be found here.

'Oldest Companies' Progress

2011-02-14T16:30:00.008Z

The Scotland's 100 oldest companies project has passed the halfway mark as the fiftieth entry was posted up today on the project wiki. While the BACS Surveying Officer may pretend that it's been a solitary slog at the coal face, in actual fact the response from business, record-holders and interested researchers has been very enthusiastic. Thanks to everyone who has helped, a large 'thank you' page is being prepared on the wiki even now.

However while progress has been generally good, I have been unable to unearth anything on three companies. If anyone knows anything about The Scottish National Glass and Glazing Company Limited (SC001047, incorporated in 1881), Scottish Property Investment (SC001597 incorporated in 1887) or Spanish Real Property (SC000683, incorporated in 1876) please get in touch, either via here or the blog. Thanks.

(Photo is sourced from here)

Morton Young & Borland Textiles

2011-02-14T15:30:00.001Z

The Independent has an article today (and the Scotsman also featured this story over the weekend here) about how the firm of Morton Young & Borland Textiles based in Newmilns, Ayrshire has been involved in supplying authentic period fabrics for the TV series Boardwalk Empire.

(image source)

The company records are held privately but have been surveyed and the details of them are available on the National Register of Archives for Scotland website here.

**Update** Much better pictures here.

Case study: Scottish Business Archive - Supporting Business to Secure its Heritage

2011-02-12T15:23:00.006Z

The Scottish Business Archive at the University of Glasgow is one of the largest collections of business records world wide, and represents the business interests of Scotland from the eighteenth century to the present. The collections reflect the contribution and breadth of activity that Scotland’s business, industry and enterprise has made, and continues to make, to the world economy.

(click image to enlarge)

The Scottish Business Archive offers services to the Scottish business community, providing a corporate archive service. It works closely with the Business Archives Council of Scotland to offer advice and support to business on the management of information resources, and provide an off-site archive management service for heritage resources. This service offers business an alternative option for the professional management of its archives which minimises investment in property and staff.

By depositing their archives with the Scottish Business Archive, businesses are contributing to the nation’s heritage and cultural assets. Whilst it is rooted in the industrial concerns of the west of Scotland such as shipbuilding, railway locomotive manufacture, and textiles the Scottish Business Archive has grown to cover almost all types of business and industrial activity in Scotland and the UK. The 400 collections represent 1,000 companies, from banking, confectioners and distillers to retail, solicitors and undertakers.

The full case study is available here and there are a range of others here.

Solicitors' business records

2011-02-10T18:46:00.000Z

The Law Society has produced very useful guidance entitled depositing records and documents with public sector archives.

It is aimed at solicitors, office managers or personnel responsible for case files or storage of solicitors' files and records and hopes to:

reverse the trend of the destruction or sale of these historically significant legal documents and solicitors are encouraged to consider alternative options for their redundant items. This practice note provides advice on depositing old client documents or early records about your firm with the appropriate local authority record office.

Case study: Diageo - Brand Passion and Integrity

2011-02-09T08:40:00.011Z

The Diageo Archive holds records relating to more than 1500 brands past and present, from those long established such as Johnnie Walker Scotch Whisky, Smirnoff Vodka and Tanqueray Gin to more recent innovative brands such as Baileys Irish Cream. The collections span 402 years of history with brands such as Bushmills Irish Whiskey having heritage and history dating back to 1608 and they tell the rich histories of these brands as well as our distillery sites, companies and people. From 18th century ledgers to the most recent annual reports, the archive materials authenticate and add texture to these rich histories.

The case study postcard featured an image of Johnnie Walker taken from original 1908/09 advertising campaigns and used as part of the launch of Johnnie Walker Blue Label King George V in Madrid in 2008.

(click image to enlarge)

The case study demonstrates how with access to original source material, the Archive team can use their knowledge, passion and commitment to verify brand information and discover new brand truths giving sales and marketing teams a unique insight into the brand to support launches, celebrations and PR events by displaying and presenting materials from the Archive.

The full case study is available here and the other case studies here.

Case study: Tennent's - Celebrating and Marketing Your Heritage

2011-02-06T10:37:00.030Z

Tennent's lager has been made in Glasgow since 1885 and Tennent’s has a long and proud heritage which has been preserved in its business archive collection.

Since the 1980s Tennent’s have contracted out the storage and management of its archive, first to the Scottish Brewing Archive and more recently to the University of Glasgow Archive Service (which took on the management of all collections previously managed by the Scottish Brewing Archive). Through this arrangement, the University of Glasgow ensures the preservation of the archive in its archival repository and provides enquiry services for both Tennent’s staff and external researchers. In this way Tennent’s ensures the professional management of its heritage assets, utilises the archive to support its current business activities, and provides a research resource for the public. Details about the collection can be found here.

The postcard created for the launch feature an image of Hugh Tennent taken from the advertising material.

(click image to enlarge)

The case study discusses how the fantastic and true tale of the brand’s heritage and entrepreneurial young founder, Hugh Tennent, was celebrated by the brand throughout 2010 in a major national advertising campaign. Hugh’s innovative vision not only gave birth to Tennent’s Lager and new techniques for brewing in Scotland, but influenced a 125 year history of the brands creative and innovative advertising and sponsorships.

The full case study is available here and the other case studies here.

Case Study: The Ballast Trust - Understanding Technical Records

2011-02-03T11:35:00.001Z

The Ballast Trust is a charitable foundation that provides a rescue, sorting and cataloguing service for business archives with an emphasis on technical records such as shipbuilding, railway and engineering plans, drawings and photographs. Since its establishment in 1987 it has processed technical records on behalf of national and local archive repositories and museums and played a crucial part in the preservation of many business archive collections.

The postcard created for the launch shows a scene from the Joiner's shop at Lithgows, Port Glasgow where the Trust initially operated for nearly 4 years processing over 100 tons of material related to Scott Lithgow Ltd.

(click image to enlarge)

During processing the records continued to have business value and Scott Lithgow benefited from the organisation and management of the collection to allow them to answer legal and historical enquiries and settle administrative issues. The records are now held by Glasgow University Archive Services where they serve a variety of academic, enthusiast, and personal research purposes being one of the fullest collections from Scottish shipbuilding. It covers a period of over 120 years, spanning over 150 linear metres of storage and treasures include correspondence from a Confederate paddle steamer captain about blockade running during the American Civil War, nineteenth century photograph albums and a series of yard manager diaries.

The full case study is available here.

Today the Trust continues to believe business collections are essential in understanding Scotland’s rich industrial and economic past and that technical records provide important contextual information to aid in the understanding of these collections. We can support businesses and archive services to make the most of their business collections and improve their understanding of technical records through guidance, advice and our processing service based on many years of experience in handling such material.

British Steel Archive Project

2011-01-31T09:48:00.003Z

On Friday the British Steel Archive Project celebrated its successful launch in Middlesbrough. The project was an ambitious scheme to catalogue and celebrate the heritage of the steel industry on Teeside, which is still very visible today. The project involved the development of close working partnerships between a variety of different stakeholders to create an ongoing and sustainable improvement to a collection that was sitting in uncatalogued boxes. Although this wasn't a Scottish project (though some of the companies involved did have long-standing roots in Scottish industry) the planning and execution of it were very impressive, and it should stand as a model of what can be achieved in the business archives sector.

Through basing the work at Teeside Archives, the project has improved and enhanced existing facilities (including a new website and CALM catalogue) and set in place a structure, including a volunteer and friends scheme, that will ensure the initial work on the collection can be carried through to completion. I was also impressed with the outreach work performed in schools across the area. Attendance and participation levels were also much greater than anticipated (almost double the initial estimates)

All of which would not have been possible without an initial assessment of the value of the collection by David Powell, the then BACS Surveying Officer, that allowed Dr Joan Heggie (the project leader) to successfully apply for Heritage Lottery Fund money. Congratulations to Dr Heggie and her team on the completion of an impressive and valuable business archives project.

Weir celebrates 140 years of innovative engineering

2011-01-27T18:08:00.001Z

From Shrewdd News: Weir celebrates 140 years of innovative engineerin...: "2011 marks the 140th anniversary of FTSE 100 engineering company, The Weir Group PLC. It was in 1871 that brothers George and James Weir set up the engineering firm of G & J Weir and joined the booming industrial scene in the west of Scotland at the height of the great Victorian era of industrial innovation."

The records of G & J Weir are held privately and the University of Glasgow holds the records of William Douglas Weir. Details about both collections are available here.

Capturing the records of failed businesses

2011-01-22T10:46:00.001Z

The Scotsman reported last Thursday that record numbers of Scottish businesses are failing. News like this makes the strategy even more relevant as its important for us to build strong relationships with the liquidators and insolvency companies to ensure that the important records of failed business are not lost as well.

One of the actions for the implementation group this year is to contact insolvency practitioners and inform them of the strategy and create a network of contacts so that archivists can work with them to capture important business archive collections.

Case Studies - Business Archives as Business Assets

2011-01-21T12:16:00.016Z

As part of the launch preparations we were fortunate to get eight great case studies that covered a wide variety of business sectors and organisations. We prepared postcard versions of them featuring an image and quote from the full study.

The eight case studies available to download on the Business Archives in Scotland website are:

The Ballast Trust - understanding technical records
Capturing the Energy Project - future-proofing industry
Diageo PLC - brand passion and integrity
Lloyds Banking Group - identity and engagement
The Scottish Business Archive - supporting business to secure its heritage
Sir Basil Spence Archive at RCAHMS - creative use, interpretation and community engagement
Tennent's - celebrating and marketing your heritage
G. L. Watson & Co. Ltd - investing in your brand and archives

We'll be adding to them throughout the year to create a resource that is of use to businesses and archivists in showing them the best examples of business archive collections being used as business assets.

Strategy Launch

2011-01-20T09:09:00.009Z

Today is the launch of the National Strategy for Business Archives in Scotland!

As readers of this blog will know the Strategy has been developed by the Business Archives Council of Scotland and the Ballast Trust, with the support of the National Archives of Scotland and the Scottish Council on Archives.

It aims to make business archives in Scotland valued, representative of economic activity and innovation and accessible to all in order to ensure the survival of the nation’s important business records and industrial heritage.

Historical records are a unique and powerful business asset and the implementation of the Strategy will help businesses to promote, manage and exploit their archives and records effectively. We have eight case studies which provide great examples of business use of archive collections.

We've prepared postcard packs featuring our eight case study organisations;

Tennent's
The Scottish Business Archive
G. L. Watson & Co. Ltd
Diageo
The Ballast Trust
Capturing the Energy project
Lloyds HBOS
The Sir Basil Spence Archive at RCAHMS

You can read the case studies here.

Each attendee will be getting a launch pack which has a copy of the strategy and postcard pack as well as leaflets from some of the organisations involved in developing the strategy.

Business Archives in 2010 - December

2011-01-19T08:29:00.020Z

Diageo
Diageo celebrated it's 20th anniversary. In 1990, United Distillers Ltd established an archive which was one of the first in the industry. Today the Diageo Archive holds records relating to more than 1500 brands past and present, from those long established such as Johnnie Walker Scotch Whisky, Smirnoff Vodka and Tanqueray Gin to more recent innovative brands such as Baileys Irish Cream.. The collections span 402 years of history with brands such as Bushmills Irish Whiskey having heritage and history dating back to 1608 and they tell the rich histories of these brands as well as distillery sites, companies and people.

The Archive is commemorating it's anniversary by creating a bespoke display showcasing the wealth of materials held by Diageo. This display is being used to raise awareness of the Archive as a business asset within Diageo as well as the colourful and rich history of Diageo’s brands by travelling to various sites within the business. The Archive is used as an asset to support the business in a variety of ways through brand passion and integrity, product innovation, brand building, media activity, launches & PR events, design & gifting, and protecting legal & intellectual property.

Business Archives in 2010 - November

2011-01-18T08:23:00.002Z

Guardians of Heritage
The New York Times rans a series of articles about luxury brands and how they use their archives. It was a great example of the many different ways business archives can be assets and demonstrated the value of safeguarding business heritage.

The overview is here and discusses how business archives and archivists can reinforce key marketing messages, perpetuate brand myths and create PR narratives with UK examples from Pringle and a case study on Liberty - whose prime users are their fabric design studio and the company are keen to use the archive for brand heritage but not be enslaved by it.

Saville Row archives

2011-01-17T22:04:00.002Z

The BBC had a programme on its Inside Out London show tonight about the archives of Saville Row. You can see a clip here and I'm hopeful that the full programme will appear on iplayer soon.

**Update** its available here until the 25 January so get watching.

Just watched it and the programme looks at the archives of Henry Poole & Co. Ltd and Gieves and Hawkes and stresses the value that the different archive collections hold if correctly interpreted for modern tailors who can benefit from past knowledge allowing them to continue to provide those unique skills. It is a great example of business archives being great business assets.

Scotland's Hundred Oldest Companies Update

2011-01-17T12:26:00.003Z

It's been a busy month, but currently the project wiki is up and running, and the BACS officer is more than happy to field any comments or questions either through the discussion pages of the wiki, through this blog, or via email.

So far I've identified and contacted the archival institutions that hold records of the oldest limited companies (see the wiki for more specific details). The plan over the next couple of months is to contact those companies whose records do not appear to be in an archive at present. Hopefully the project will be able to increase the visibility and accessibility of these resources, and help their holders to make the best possible use of them.

Business Archives in 2010 - October

2011-01-17T08:14:00.003Z

United Turkey Red Co. Ltd

As part of Black History Month, the University of Glasgow's Archive Services held an exhibition entitled 'Vale of Leven to Hills and Valleys of South Asia – Copying Designs and Images of the Sub-Continent.'

On display were the Turkey red fabric made in Scotland, which was exported to Asia for use as saris, sarongs and shawls. Designs included abstract, geometric, floral, animal, or imitated local patterns. Each was created for a specific market and every bundle carried a colourful label giving insight into local customs, beliefs and scenery.

United Turkey Red Co. Ltd was by far the largest firm in the bleaching, finishing, dyeing and printing industry in Scotland. It was formed during the 1890s, growing naturally out of a number of occasional associations between dyeing firms in the West of Scotland, set up to deal with difficulties encountered by the industry as a whole. The collection of records contains administrative, staff, financial and production records.

Business Archives in 2010 - September

2011-01-16T08:51:00.002Z

Glasgow University Archive Services

The University of Glasgow Archive Services put together this great video about their collections. It includes information about the the Scottish Business Archive and some of the 400 collections this contains.

Business Archives in 2010 - August

2011-01-15T08:44:00.018Z

Pringle of Scotland
In the year of their 195th anniversary, Pringle held a 'day of record' at the site of their former factory in Hawick. It is part of an appeal to the public to help it create an archive of its 195 year history. A review of the day appears here.

Excise Records
The NAS announced that a letter from Robert Burns was discovered in a collection of papers belonging to a Commissioner of the Scottish Excise.

Glenmorangie Company Ltd
Glenmorangie celebrated 100 years in Colorado with a series of events. The celebration is based on an Operations Register, 1908-34 held by the archives that provides details of customers’ orders for Glenmorangie single malt Scotch whiskies during that period, and the recipes for the different expressions of Glenmorangie that were created to suit the customers’ preferences.

The Register included details of orders for Glenmorangie placed by the famous Brown Palace Hotel in Denver, Colorado, beginning in 1910 and continuing until business was disrupted by the First World War.

[Image copyright of Glenmorangie]

Colorado is a key market for the brand in the USA, and information about Glenmorangie’s historic links with Colorado gleaned from the Register and from other sources was used as the cornerstone for a publicity campaign and a series of promotional events entitled “Glenmorangie: 100 years in Colorado”. The campaign culminated in a100th Anniversary Gala Dinner at the hotel in August 2010, attended by some of Denver’s leading business and political figures, and the ledger was flown first-class to the US to be displayed in a special display cabinet throughout the month.

Financial Times
The Financial Times ran an article about the benefits of business archives and the advantages of employing a professional archivist. The news is not all bad. It commented that "in defiance of the downturn, businesses as diverse as Bulgari, Marks and Spencer and Audi are using milestone anniversaries to celebrate their heritage. Other companies are delving into their archives to learn from past recessions, inspire new products and arm lawyers with evidence to win trademark disputes." Read more here.

BAC Cataloguing Grant Winners - Full steam ahead
The Business Archives Council announced that the winning applicants of the BAC cataloguing grant for business archives were to be the Dorset History Centre (Dorset County Council) for cataloguing of the archives of Cosens of Weymouth, Paddle Steamer Company (ref: D/COS), and the National Railway Museum for cataloguing of small railway engineering and business collections.

Business Archives in 2010 - July

2011-01-14T10:36:00.000Z

Royal Bank of Scotland Group
UNESCO announced the inaugural inscriptions to its new Memory of the World (UK) Register, which included the Royal Bank of Scotland's records of the Company of Scotland trading to Africa and the Indies, also known as the Darien company.

The inscribed archives relate to the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies. Dating from the 1690s, they tell the story of a failed Scottish attempt to build a trading colony at Darien, in present-day Panama. The scheme’s catastrophic failure prompted an economic collapse that was instrumental in forcing Scotland towards political Union with England, finally enacted in 1707. As a result the archives are uniquely significant in documenting the economic circumstances underlying the foundation of modern Scotland.

Business Archives in 2010 - June

2011-01-13T08:57:00.036Z

Tennent's
Tennent's Lager celebrated a 125th anniversary with a series of advertisements based on their heritage and the work of Hugh Tennent.

More videos can be viewed on their website and youtube channel.

The University of Glasgow Archive Services hold the collection on behalf of the company and details about it can be found here.

Canongate Books
Canongate announced a partnership with the University of Dundee to create a 'living archive' of their business records. The University's Archive Services will work with the company and Jamie Byng, Publisher and Managing Director of Canongate Books said that "having the expertise and knowledge of the University’s Archive Services to help us record and document our past, present and future is a generous gift and a wonderful opportunity." More details about the project here.

Business Archives in 2010 - May

2011-01-12T12:55:00.001Z

BT PLC
BT PLC launched Telefocus - their new BT Archives Image Gallery containing over 1,000 historic BT Archive images from the 1860s onwards. This image gallery is the first time the images have been open to the public online.

They also got 10 experts to explain why the images that make up part of the Archives are so significant. Social history specialist, Professor Jack Lohman, Director of the Museum of London, Dr. Tilly Blyth, Curator of Computing and Information at the Science Museum whose specialty is telecommunications and design expert Professor Teal Triggs, at University of the Arts London have been chosen as leaders in their respective fields.

Each expert has selected their own personal top 10 images from the BT Telefocus photo gallery, explaining why these images are so significant in illustrating the progress and innovation within their respective fields. These selections and their rationales can be viewed here. Members of the public can also upload their own 10 favourite images onto the website.

Barings PLC
The Baring Archive hosted an exhibition called re:Searching: playing in the archive. This exhibition was the result of a collaboration between the Baring Archive and the University of the Arts London and enabled artists and researchers to select artefacts in the archive to create a new piece of work in response to them.

Although it is current practice for artists to produce work in response to collections and archives, re:SEARCHING is unusual in that the artists are reacting to a financial archive which is more often used by historians. Practitioners responded to a range of items, including a sketch by Sir Thomas Lawrence of Sir Francis Baring, the firm’s founder; the prospectus for the financing of the Louisiana Purchase; Russian bearer bonds (which ceased to pay interest following the Revolution); and material relating to the Buenos Aires Water Supply & Drainage Company.

The Baring Archive comprises the business papers of Baring Brothers & Co, latterly known as Barings PLC. It is among the finest archives of a financial institution and contains material of international significance dating from the founding of the firm as a partnership of merchants in 1762 to its acquisition by ING in 1995, by which time Barings was a global investment bank.

Business Archives in 2010 - April

2011-01-11T09:14:00.012Z

Capturing the Energy
The Capturing the Energy project marked its 4th anniversary with a seminar and film evening in Aberdeen. The project was established to promote wider recognition of the technical and cultural importance of the offshore oil and gas industry to the UK and its business partners include Total E&P, Shell, BP, Mearns & Gill, Conoco Phillips and Oil and Gas UK.

The project has worked to encourage companies to make provision for keeping the most important records as their operations evolve, ensuring that they can be safely stored, in an archive repository, so that they can be made accessible for current research, both within the sector and in the wider community, and for future generations.

BAC Cataloguing Grant
The Business Archives Council announced the availability of a £2000 cataloguing grant in support of the National Strategy for Business Archives (England and Wales). The aim of the grant, in funding the cataloguing of a business collection in either the private or public sector, is to:
• provide financial support for institutions/businesses that manage business archives
• reach collections that have not yet been prioritised but have potential academic or socio-historical value
• create opportunities for archivists, or para-professionals/volunteers to gain experience in listing business collections
• make more business collections accessible

Business Archives in 2010 - March

2011-01-10T12:58:00.001Z

The Ballast Trust
Was awarded archive pace setter status* for our project to create electronic catalogues using the Archvists' Toolkit for cataloguing the technical records of the Montague Smith collection of railway drawings and plan.

Further information about the project is availble on their blog and you can read about the other pace setters here.

*The Archive Pace Setter scheme aims to encourage innovative projects within the UK archive sector. It is led by the National Council on Archives in partnership with a range of strategic bodies working with the archive sector including the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, The National Archives, the Scottish Council on Archives, the Society of Archivists and the Welsh Assembly Government. The scheme runs from October 2009 to April 2013 and successful organisations are required to demonstrate that a specific project will deliver the following outcomes:

new users are encouraged to use their service and archive users have access to new ways of engaging with archives
and/or record keeping is improved through new methods of management and collections care.
archive services will have demonstrated their adherence to good practice in relation to project planning, management and evaluation

Business Archives in 2010 - February

2011-01-09T10:14:00.002Z

Barclays Bank PLC
The Times ran a story about Lewis Carroll's bank account and the personal revelations they contain about his spending habits. The bank accounts are part of the collections held by Barclays Group Archives and demonstrate how dry accounting and financial records can have more to reveal.

Business Archives in 2010 - January

2011-01-08T21:07:00.001Z

2010 was a busy year for business archives in Scotland and the UK, there were many examples of companies using their heritage for marketing and product innovation, a new cataloguing grant scheme for business archives from the BAC and the development of the Scottish Strategy.

In the run up to the launch of the strategy in 12 days, I'll be posting a review of each month here starting with January.

Stoddard Templeton
The University of Glasgow announced that they had secured funds from the National Archives Cataloguing Grants Scheme to catalogue the design archives of Stoddard - Templeton.

The design archive is a record of the complete carpet-making process from initial design drafting, through the agreement of colour and pattern, to manufacture and sale, and was the product of Scotland’s leading carpet manufacturers, James Templeton & Co Ltd (est. 1839, Bridgeton) and Stoddard International PLC (est.1862 in Elderslie).

Updates on the project can be found on their blog and images from the collection on their flickr pages.

Macmillan & Co Ltd and Longman Group Publishers
Another two business archive collections also received an award from the same cataloguing grant, the Macmillan and Longman publishing archive collections held at the University of Reading.Special Collections.

Launch of the National Strategy for Business Archives in Scotland

2010-12-27T10:42:00.001Z

We are pleased to announce that the launch for the National Strategy for Business Archives will be held on 20th January at 5pm in Edinburgh.

The invitations have been sent and we've had a great response to our requests for case studies and will be unveiling them at the launch.

We have been fortunate to be offered the use of the Museum on the Mound by Lloyds Banking Group Archives as the venue which makes a great location to showcase business use of archives and museum objects. Directions to the Museum are available on their website here.

Scotland's Hundred Oldest Companies Project

2010-12-20T16:08:00.007Z

Over the next three months the I'll be working on a project to identify the record holdings of the 100 oldest Scottish companies still registered with Company House in Edinburgh.

The central outcome will be the development of a guide to the records of all the companies, including notes on the history and terms of use and access (this guide will be made available on the BACS website when complete). The companies on the list represent a cross section of Scottish business life, ranging from the companies managing community halls to large multinational firms, and this project will celebrate the richness of this diversity and heritage.

The purpose of the project is to create a valuable resource for future users and researchers of business archives; establish a project that can be used to increase the awareness of business archive use; and to reach out to businesses that may have valuable records and have not previously been approached by the BACS. The project will also be used to tie in with the launch of the Strategy for Business Archives in Scotland in January, raising the profile of business archives amongst record holders and record users alike.

I'll also be regularly posting my progress on here as the project launches early next year. I hope that I'll be able demonstrate some solutions and actions that can make use of the trapped value in business records, and perhaps put the spotlight on some previously under-appreciated collections.

I welcome any comments and suggestions...

Crisis Response Team

2010-12-17T08:41:00.003Z

A Crisis Response Team was established by the Business Archives Strategy for England & Wales in 2009. This small team was been established to help co-ordinate rescue work and offer help and advice where business enter into receivership liquidation so that archives can hopefully be saved for the nation. The team works closely with local archive repositories and other organisations with an interest in business heritage.

At the first Implementation Group meeting of the Scottish Strategy is was decided that Kiara King (Ballast Trust Archivist) should become the new representative for Scotland.

If you are aware of any business that may be going into receivership or ceasing trading then please contact Kiara (Kiara.King@glasgow.ac.uk) with information and the details will be circulated to the Crisis Response Team so that the appropriate action can be taken.

New BACS Surveying Officer

2010-12-14T14:45:00.003Z

David Luck has been appointed as the new BACS Surveying Officer, and will be updating this blog in the forthcoming months. Like David Powell, David will be based in Glasgow University Archive Services, and can be reached on the BACS address or at David.Luck@glasgow.ac.uk .

Guardians of heritage

2010-11-14T15:35:00.002Z

A great series of articles in the New York Times this weekend about luxury brands and how they use their archives.

The overview is here and discusses how business archives and archivists can reinforce key marketing messages, perpetuate brand myths and create PR narratives with examples from Chanel, Tiffany, Gucci and Pringle.

There are also individual detailed case studies from:

Aquascutum - whose Archivist states that “society has a new perception of the relevance of history nowadays. My part is bringing that to life within Aquascutum.”
Christian Dior - their collection includes original haute couture samples as well as personal items belonging to Mr Dior such as travel albums and his handwritten collection of cooking recipes.
Liberty - whose prime users are their fabric design studio and the company are keen to use the archive for brand heritage but not be enslaved by it.
Patek Philippe - whose archivist believes that she has "more resources and that my work has a more active role in keeping the heritage alive.”
Salvatore Ferragamo - where the eldest of the Ferragamo children, Fiamma recognised the importance of the archives and "considered culture to be an essential element for the elaboration and understanding of company strategy... and besides being a system of records, the archive is also a place for memory in the dynamic sense.”

BACS Surveying Officer

2010-11-02T10:02:00.000Z

The post of BACS Surveying Officer has been advertised here.

Business Archives website

2010-10-28T11:19:00.000+01:00

The SCA have kindly offered to provide web space for information about Business Archives in Scotland.

I will still be posting here with news and items of interest but the website will be where the case studies will go up on and any other resources that we develop.

Business Archives for Family History

2010-10-15T14:26:00.002+01:00

On Wednesday this week I gave a presentation to the Central Scotland Family History Society about using business archive collections for family and local history. My slides are available on slideshare and below:

Using business records for family history

View more presentations from Kiara King.

Implementation News

2010-10-07T17:09:00.002+01:00

The first meeting of the Implementation Group is happening next week on Tuesday. We are going to be discussing the first year action plan and the launch so that should mean that I will be able to report on some progress this time next week hopefully!

Business Archives at the University of Glasgow

2010-09-16T16:55:00.002+01:00

The University of Glasgow Archive Services have put together this great video about their collections. It includes information about the the Scottish Business Archive and the collections this contains.