Business Archives in 2010 - June

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.

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Business Archives in 2010 - May

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.

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Business Archives in 2010 - April

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

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Business Archives in 2010 - March

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

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Business Archives in 2010 - February

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.

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