The Memory of Society: Businesses
Lesley Richmond
Glasgow University Archives, United Kingdom
Introduction
The mission for archivists is to preserve, maintain and ensure the use of the material that they manage. The principles and responsibilities of the archivist are to "remember" for the institution that employs them and for prosperity. The archivist must remember selectively (as the resources do not exist for everything to be retained) and ensure the authenticity of what is remembered. Every society defines itself by what it chooses to remember and what it chooses to forget.
William Robertson, a great historian and figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, remarked in the eighteenth century that it was "a cruel mortification" that where as there are recorded "with minute and disgusting accuracy the desolating exploits of conquerors" and "the freaks of tyrants", oblivion has been the fate of the "discovery of the useful arts and the progress of the most beneficial branches of commerce". Such has been the fate of the world of business.
Business has had a major affect on human life since the early days of industrialisation. It has affected such things as health, population mobility, family life, the built environment, pollution, wealth holding, communications, politics, transport, etc. Early last century, the collection and preservation of business records began on a large scale in certain European countries such as Switzerland and the Netherlands, as well as the USA. These were followed by most other European countries, as well as Canada and Australia, by the middle of the century.
Development of business archives
During the last twenty-five years, business archives has developed as a speciality within the archive profession. The number of record repositories - national, regional or local - actively preserving or specialising in the collection of business archives, has dramatically grown as has the number of corporate archives under the care of professional custodians.
The growth of corporate in-house archives is attributable to increasing awareness by business managers of both the value of corporate history and archives to current trading, and of the need for strategic planning in the control of current and non-current records. The development of corporate archives has not been evenly distributed across all sectors of business activity and geographical locations. Generally, corporate and collecting archives have been established in the developed industrialised regions of the world, but within countries the development has also been patchy. Banking and other financial services are well represented with archive facilities, but other sectors remain relatively neglected.
The worth of business archives as a part of the memory of a region, nation or continent has grown as historians and other users have turned to business archives for their source material for labour, social, design, transport, architectural, technical, regional, local, urban and agricultural history. Users of business archives are not just academic economic historians. In an inclusive society, the wide-ranging value of business archives to individuals in terms of local history, environment, family or product is to be championed.
There are many players in the world of business archives
In-house corporate archives: The first in-house company archives of the modern era were established in Germany at the beginning of this century (Krupp in Essen in 1905, and Siemens in Berlin in 1907). During the 1930s, others, especially in the coal and steel sector, were established in Germany, while the Bank of England in the United Kingdom made provision for its archives. Some American corporations established archival programmes during the 1940s and 1950s, such as Kodak, Coca-Cola, Firestone and Sears, but it was not until the 1960s that the number of business archivists within business grew in both the UK and the United States. Throughout the rest of Europe, the phenomena began in the 1970s with the financial sector and have spread into the commercial, service and manufacturing sectors.
Regional and national business archives: Throughout the world, local public archives and university libraries have collected business archives. In Europe, repositories have developed that cater principally to business collections. The largest is Erhversarkivet in Århus, Denmark, established in the 1940s, which houses 7,000 collections of business archives - over 50 kilometres in total - covering all sectors and every size of enterprise. It has been a constituent part of the Danish State Archives since 1963. The Swiss Business Archives, founded in 1910 and now part of the University of Basel, has around 450 collections. The Centre des Archives du Monde du Travail (CAMT) in France, also acts as a national repository, while the Netherlands Economic History Archives, founded in 1914, holds about a hundred business collections extending to over 15 kilometres. In Germany, there are business archives associated with chambers of commerce in Rhineland-Westphalia, Saarland, Baden-Württenberg, Munich and Upper Bavaria. There are four regional business repositories in Sweden, and the Business Records Section of Archive Services at the University of Glasgow and the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick fulfil a similar role for the United Kingdom. The Australian National University at Canberra, the Baker Library at Harvard and the Hagley Museum and Library in Delaware, USA, are examples of regional business archives outside of Europe.
National/State Archives: Many state archives are the curators of large quantities of business records from the period when all or particular industries within their country were state controlled or owned by the crown. This varies greatly from country to country. In the twentieth century, most national archives became responsible for large collections of business records from sectors of the economy that were nationalized. The most extreme examples were in countries with central state-controlled economies that demanded the extinction of private enterprise. In other countries, nationalisation was less extensive, but has usually included vital sectors such as water supply, gas, electricity, telecommunications and railways, and other areas such as steel, coal and oil.
Business Archive Associations: Due to the universal neglect of business archives by "traditional archivists" and national archives around the world, business archive associations have been established in many countries. These associations consist of archivists, users (usually historians) and the owners of business records (representatives of the business themselves), and have dealt with many issues directly affecting business archives. They have developed standards of classification and description of business archives, provided training courses, produced journals and other professional literature, carried out surveys of records by industrial sector, provided a network for business archivists, and maintained registers of business records held by businesses and public archives.
Legal state of business archives
Very little legislation exists anywhere in the world that secures a public responsibility for business archives. It has been, is, and will continue to be, very difficult to achieve this goal as few national governments have control over the large powerful conglomerates called multi-nationals. There is very little legislation around the world to ensure that substantial and very significant parts of the memory of a country (industrial/commercial/business heritage) stays in that country. [See the case of the HSBC group archives returning to the UK from the country of creation (China) in Green, ‘Multinational, Multi-Archival’ in The American Archivist, 60, 1997, pp.100-110]. Where it does exist, it is often ineffectual. Norway is a notable exception – even multinational oil companies have handed over archives of value to the economic, social and cultural understanding of the country to the State Archives.
Collecting Strategies
What has been accumulated up to now in public repositories, both national and local, have been the failures caught up in court proceedings, or what archivists have been grateful to receive or rescue from destruction. As non-business archivists often have little experience in either appraising or listing business records, they are eager to take anything that is offered. Little selection is carried out during times of crisis - recessions, downsizing, relocation - and what is undertaken is haphazard, rather than part of a careful documentation of a representative sample of regional or national industries, or the documentation of a company of regional, national or international importance. Much material held by collecting repositories should be reappraised in light of a collecting strategy and de-accessioned if required. [See the De-accessioning section of Lesley M. Richmond (ed.), ‘Pioneering New Frontiers’: An International Exploration of Current Initiatives in Business Archives, Proceedings of the Annual Conference 1997, Business Archives Council (1998); Mark Greene, ‘Documentation with Attitude’ in James M. O’Toole, The Records of American Business (SAA 1997) and J. Fink and H. Fode ‘The Business Records of a Nation: the Case of Denmark’ in The American Archivist, 60, 1997; or Fisher, van Gerwen & Reudink, Macro-selection Methods in The Battle of the Bulk (NEHA, 1998)].
Education of business archives
The education of archivists in the diplomatic and requirements of business records is improving, but more still requires to be done. Much of the lack of training in business archives apparent in L. Richmond’s Overview of Business Archives in Western Europe (ICASBL, 1996), has still not been rectified. More self-help has been developed in the forms of networks and discussion lists, but the average archivist in a state or local city archive repository has little practical training in business archives. It is a recent feature in many archive schools, if it is included at all, and it is often left to associations of business archivists to provide training.
Surveys of records
In Chapter 8 of Archives in the European Union: Report of the Group of Experts on the Coordination of Archives (EC, 1994), one of the measures specifically recommended for ensuring the preservation of and access to private archives is by preparing inventories and registration of collections. This has a strong tradition in Europe. Since 1983, the Netherlands Economic History Archives has maintained the Business Archives Register in collaboration with the Central Register of Private Archives and the Dutch Association of Business Archivists. ELKA, the Central Archives for Finnish Business Records, set up in 1981, maintains a similar register. The Business Archives Council in the UK has produced contextual survey guides to the records of the banking, brewing, shipbuilding and pharmaceutical industries, and the professions of accountancy and veterinary medicine (forthcoming). Such surveys act in a two-fold way: indicating to potential users material which exists and enabling access to that material, and bringing to the attention of the business concerned that their historical records have a value beyond the company to the local region, nation, or world arena.
The Future
The world in the twenty-first century is a global market place and the traders are large multinational corporations. Global multinational companies have more power and influence than many small nations, and they affect and shape the archival heritage of many nations. The problem of multi-national mergers and the takeovers of inward investment is an issue that affects the memory of many countries. Many parts of the globe shiver when one of these conglomerates sneezes. Much of life and thought is influenced by the vagaries of the world economy that affects everyone’s lives. Glasgow University Archive Services is responsible for major international collections of business archives within a country which has both been part of a corporate colonial empire and of rapid industrial decline. This has been followed by global investment, which will affect the cultural heritage of the nation. The means to ensure the preservation of that cultural heritage is an unknown which I hope we can discuss further.
Lesley Richmond
Lesley Richmond is currently Acting Director of Archive Services at the University of Glasgow where major collections of internationally renowned business records are maintained. She has been actively involved with business records throughout her archive career from surveying the records of UK companies in situ to editing and authoring guides to business archives, including Studies in British Business Archives. She is a member of the executive of the Business Archives Councils in the UK and is the Secretary of the Section on Business and Labour Archives of the ICA.
The major sectors in business archives in the world are US, Europe, Australia and the rest of the world. This is by influence. Looking at membership figures for SBL there is (161) 7% African, 17% American, 8% Asian, 63% European; and 3% Australasian.