Consultation

The Consultation Draft of the National Strategy for Business Archives in Scotland is now available for comment. 

The Consultation Draft is available as a pdf file, if you require Adobe Reader it can be downloaded from here.

Responses can be submitted in the following ways:

• 
  
  Send general responses or comments to bacs@archives.gla.ac.uk
• 
  
  Complete the consultation response form online.
• Download and complete our consultation questionnaire and return it to:
  
  BACS Surveying Officer
  c/o Archives Services
  University of Glasgow
  77-87 Dumbarton Road
  Glasgow G11 6PW
  Email: bacs @archives.gla.ac.uk

Further information about the strategy and its development can be found on the BACS website and elsewhere on this blog.

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Cataloguing grant for Business Archives

Good news for business archive collections in the UK.  In support of the English and Welsh National Strategy for Business Archives, the Business Archives Council (BAC) has announced a new £2000 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 

More information can be found on the Managing Business Archives website and application forms can be downloaded from the Business Archives Council website.

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The consultation is coming...

... first thing next week.  We'll be making the consultation draft available for comments and suggestions from any interested parties.

You will be able to respond using an online survey, our consultation response form by email with general comments or also by leaving you comments on this blog.

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Managing Business Archives

One of the main resource outcomes of the English and Welsh strategy has been the Managing Business Archives website.  It provides examples of best practice in managing business archives and has lots of information to help businesses manage their collections.  It includes information on:

• Setting up an in-house Archive
• Key Records
• Exploiting the Archive (Including Case Studies)
• Sustaining the Archive - Modern Records Management
• Partnerships and Collaboration
• External Accreditation

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The Men In Grey

"Accountancy has a reputation for dullness but its history is the history of civilisation itself" according to this article in the BBC News online Magazine published on Friday. The article looks at the almost silent role of "grey" accountants in history. By looking at events such as the Holocaust and Highland Clearances, it demonstrates how the records created by these individuals are a key source for telling the stories of these events.

Financial records are an often neglected record type commonly found in business archives. I don't think this is so much because of a fear of maths or numbers but because of what can seem the baffling relationships between cash books, day books, ledgers and the double entry book-keeping system. So, this light-hearted yet informative article in the BBC News Magazine really brought home the value of these records and their potential.

Double entry booking can seem like a dark art to many, but if you speak to a historian of accounting (they do exist) they'll tell you that it is the most important development in the world. Ever.

Jolyon Jenkins will cover more on this subject in a ten-part series A Brief History of Double-Entry Book-keeping daily on BBC Radio 4 from Monday 8 March at 1545.

A couple of years ago, the Business Archives Council of Scotland ran a training day for archivists on financial records and the double entry system books of accounts. The training materials explaining the main books of accounts and tracing transactions through various documents from this day are available on the BACS website here.

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