Business archives - its personal

Business archives are not usually the first place researchers turn to for personal detail. One of the aims of the business archive strategy is to raise awareness of the variety of business records and the different research purposes they can help with.

In actual fact, business archives can provide more personal records as well as the standard financial ledger. One example of this can be found at the University of Dundee. Their Archive Services have recently transcribed the diaries of Thomas Handiside Baxter, a grocer and dry goods merchant in Dundee in the early 1800s. The diaries give an insight into the life of a Scottish businessman in the early 19th century.

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Consultation focus group - Heritage & Information Professionals

A focus group for organisations and individuals in other heritage and information professions with an interest in business archives and industrial heritage in Scotland is being held on Thursday 24 September.

The session will be held at the National Archives of Scotland on Thursday 24 September 2009 from 1400 until 1600.

This focus group is your chance to feed your ideas and thoughts into a National Strategy for Business Archives in Scotland. The focus group is an opportunity to:

• find out the purpose of the proposed strategy in a UK context
• help identify the issues that you feel affect custodianship of business archives and access to them
• identify links and partnerships that could be created to raise the profile of business archives
• identify actions that could be undertaken to ensure business archives are captured, preserved and made accessible to as wide an audience as possible

If you would be interested in attending, please contact David Powell d.powell@archives.gla.ac.uk or Kiara King at k.king@archives.gla.ac.uk

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Consultation focus group - Archivists and Records Managers

We would like to invite archivists and records managers in Scotland who work with or care for business archives to attend a focus group session.

The session will be held at the National Archives of Scotland on Thursday 24 September 2009 from 1030 until 1230.

This focus group is your chance to feed your ideas and thoughts into a National Strategy for Business Archives in Scotland. The focus group is an opportunity to:

• find out the purpose of the proposed strategy in a UK context
• help identify the issues that you feel affect your custodianship of business archives
• identify links and partnerships that could be created to raise the profile of business archives
• identify actions that could be undertaken to ensure business archives are captured, preserved and made accessible to as wide an audience as possible

If you would be interested in attending, please contact David Powell d.powell@archives.gla.ac.uk or Kiara King at k.king@archives.gla.ac.uk.

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Consultation focus group - Academics and Students

The first of the consultation focus groups will be held on 7 September and is aimed at academic users and custodians of business records. The seminar will be an opportunity to find out more about this developing strategy and to take an active role in ensuring that it incorporates the needs of academics and students as well as those of businesses, archivists and users.

The seminar "Towards a Business Archives Strategy for Scotland" will be held at the Centre for Business History, Seminar room 201, Lilybank House, University of Glasgow on Monday 7 September 2009 between 2-4pm.

Please email C.Leslie@socsci.gla.ac.uk if you wish to attend by Wednesday 2 September.

If you would like to publicise the event please print and display this leaflet.

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A Strategy for Scotland

As mentioned before Scotland does not currently have such a strategy although in 2006 Elements of a Policy on Business Archives in Scotland was published by the National Archives of Scotland and the Business Archives Council of Scotland (BACS).

In partnership with the Ballast Trust, the BACS with the support of the National Archives of Scotland and Scottish Council on Archives are developing a Scottish strategy. As a sister document to the English & Welsh strategy, its main themes are likely to be the same, yet the strategic actions to be taken will be different, reflecting the issues of devolution and previous work undertaken by the BACS and Scottish records community.

In order to kick-start the strategy’s development, we will be holding a series of short focus group meetings with different stakeholders during September 2009. These include:

• Academics and students (7 September, Centre for Business History, Glasgow University)
• Archives and Records professionals (24 September, NAS, Edinburgh)
• Heritage and information professionals and Trusts (24 September, NAS, Edinburgh)
• Non-academic users and family historians (29 September, Mitchell Library, Glasgow)

These meetings will be advertised through various listservs and archives, but if you would like to take part in any of these please email d.powell@archives.gla.ac.uk to book a place.

It is hoped that a draft strategy will be available in October for full scale consultation and comment and that a final version of the strategy will be agreed by the end of 2009.

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