Podcast about National Strategy (E&W)

The fifth podcast from the Records Management Today series looks at the launch of the National Strategy for Business Archives in England and Wales.

In conversation with Elizabeth Oxborrow-Cowan and Sara Kinsey. Elizabeth Lomas discusses business archives and the launch of the strategy at the House of Lords.

Topics covered include:

• What were the highlights of the presentations by Professor Mervyn King (Governor of the Bank of England), Sir Stuart Rose (CEO M&S) and Dame Stella Rimmington?
• What do the Business Archives Guide and strategy hope to deliver?
• What are the issues for managing business records and archives - where do the challenges and values lie?
• What can the wider archive, records and information communities learn from the experience of the business archivist?

The Records Management Today series of podcasts are put together at Northumbria University's School of Computing, Engineering & Information Sciences. Further information about the podcast series is available here.

How to listen to the podcast: A podcast can be listened to on a computer or on any mp3 player—not just an iPod. It can also be burned to a CD and listened to using any CD player. To listen to this podcast simply click on the 'download' link and it should start to play automatically. If you want to save it and listen later, right click and select 'save target as'. This will allow you to save the mp3 file and listen later or download to your mp3 player.

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Developing a Scottish Strategy

A Scottish version of a National Strategy for Business Archives is essential to help improve and formalise existing practices for the care and management of business archives in Scotland.

The development of the strategy in Scotland is being taken forward jointly by the BACS and the Ballast Trust with the support of the National Archives of Scotland and the Scottish Council on Archives.

It is important that the strategy reflects the requirements and opinions of archivists, businesses and users. For these reasons a series of workshops are planned to gather information about how business archives are used, what problems exist, and potential changes that would help preserve and provide access to more business archives. Details of these workshops will be issued once they are confirmed and organised.

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Corporate Memory

To coincide with the launch of the National Strategy for Business Archives Corporate Memory - a guide to managing business archives has been released by the National Archives.

TNA state that it is "designed to help the business community maximise their own archives and records collections, and to use this business information asset effectively to improve performance, explore new markets and above all to succeed in today's competitive global markets."

The guide has eight case studies which give examples of how different companies have been able to make use of their archive collections for a variety of purposes. These vary from commemoration and awareness raising to marketing and product development.

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Launch of English and Welsh strategy

The National Strategy for Business Archives in England and Wales is being launched today. The strategy is available here and the launch now means that the Managing Business Archives website is also live.

The website is an excellent resource for businesses and provides examples of best practice to help owners of business archive collections manage their archives. "It's aimed at company personnel with no prior knowledge or expertise in archive management as well as business archive practitioners." However, the advice is equally useful for any custodians of business archive collections.

We look forward to seeing how the English and Welsh strategy is taken forward and identifying opportunities for joint action and partnership working.

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