Detail of a bank note for 1000 Tomans issued in the 1890s by the Imperial Bank of Persia (later the British Bank of the Middle East). Courtesy of HSBC Group Archives.
Archives Task Force Evidence Hearings
Submission by the Business Archives Council 1 August 2003
Resource: The Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries was established by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) in 2000 to provide strategic leadership for the museums, libraries and archives communities and advises the government on policies and priorities for these sectors.
Resource has been invited by (DCMS) to carry out an in-depth analysis and review of the state of the UK's unique and diverse archives. Resource explains the work of the ATF thus:
The Task Force willundertake a detailed investigation and analysis of the state of theUK's archives. We want to bring to the fore their immense capacity to changelives, and to make a realdifference and impact on individuals and communities. We are due to report to government and funding agencies in the winter of 2003. It's an ambitious agenda, but this work is essential. We need a strategy for nationalknowledge management: for saving and storing our present for future generations.
http://www.resource.gov.uk/action/taskforce/taskforce.asp
The AFT was keen to consult widely with the archive community and beyond and as part of this process invited the BAC to attend an 'Evidence Commission' to present our views. Our written submission to the Commission is presented below.
1. Introduction: Business Archives Council
2. Business archives: what are we talking about?
3. Business archives: dimensions
4. Business archives: characteristics
5. Business archives: outputs
6. Business archives: what problems do they have?
7. Business archives: how can things be improved?
8. Appendix: the work of the Business Archives Council
1. INTRODUCTION:BUSINESS ARCHIVES COUNCIL
The BAC, founded in 1934, advocates the preservation of business records of historical importance; supplies advice and information on business archives and modern records; encourages interest in and study of business history and archives; and provides a forum for the custodians and users of business archives. Membership includes corporate patrons, corporate members, institutional members (such as record offices, libraries and museums) and individual members.
In recognition of the UK’s special position in the history and archives of business, approximately 16 per cent of the membership is overseas, although the BAC’s core work is undertaken in the UK.
The BAC’s activities are undertaken by its trustees and members on an entirely voluntary basis.
2. BUSINESS ARCHIVES: WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT?
Business archives, whether held in the private or public sector, form a vital constituent of our national heritage. They reflect the history and significance of business in Britain, which has a unique place in the birth and development of industry and commerce.
‘Business archives’ take three forms:
- Collections that are held in-house by a business which provides public access and supports staff to manage the archive.
- Material of historical significance held by businesses that are unaware of the potential interest in or use of the papers.
- Collections in publicly funded record offices, relating to businesses that may or may not be trading.
This presentation is most closely concerned with the first of these categories and is mainly concerned with collections in England and Wales. However the Business Archives Council (BAC) is interested in the records in all three categories.
3. BUSINESS ARCHIVES: DIMENSIONS
Age: Business archives in the UK have a long pedigree. Some corporate members of the BAC established archives in the inter-war period, even before the appearance of many repositories in the public sector. Significant numbers of UK companies (estimated at 70) have established archives – and given access to their records - in the last 30 years.
Size: Business archives in the UK (in category 1) can be estimated at over 47.5[1]miles of shelf space. By comparison the London Metropolitan Archives, the largest local authority record office in the United Kingdom, has occupied shelf space of 32 [2]miles.
Finance: The entire cost of maintaining business archives in category 1 is borne by the businesses themselves. Business archives in category 3 are funded by national or local authorities, although an increasing number of business collections are also supported by business endowments and other maintenance payments.
Personnel: The BAC estimates that there are over 200 professional archivists and records managers employed in category 1, compared with only six in the late 1960s. In addition many archivists in the public sector have specific responsibilities for business collections.
4. BUSINESS ARCHIVES: CHARACTERISTICS
4.1 There are profound differences between business archives in the private sector and public archives in their evolution and operation. In essence the holdings of business archives are private property as distinct from those held by public and governmental bodies. The usage and destiny of the private property of business archives remains the private concern of the owner. The owner can choose to allow open access, refuse all access, sell the holdings on the open market, or indeed destroy all holdings.
4.2 The owner of the business archive incurs significant costs in maintaining the archive. The costs can be justified in terms of management information, legal and regulatory compliance, public relations, internal morale, enhancement of business marques, or the core values of the business. External users are usually a minority of users but their requirements are still a significant cost to the business.
4.3 A business archive retained in the environment in which it is created has a close organic relationship with the source of the archive material. As such its custodians will have developed a knowledge of, and sensitivity to, the way its host operates and evolves. This is invaluable to users of archives, whether internal or external, and enhances exploitation of the collection. The custodians are much more likely to interpret the archives for users than those in publicly funded bodies.
4.4 The existence of a business archive ensures that the ongoing record of the company and its activities continues to feed through to the archive. It ensures that ‘history does not stop’ as is so often the case when orphaned business papers find their way into the public archives sector.
5. BUSINESS ARCHIVES: OUTPUTS
5.1 The primary purpose of the business archive is to service the requirements for management information, legal and regulatory proof, public relations, marque enhancement, and staff relations of the parent company.
5.2 Many business archives are also proactive on behalf of the company by:
a) allowing access to outside researchers who meet their admission criteria, from school students to the most senior academic levels;b) providing group visits to a diverse range of interested parties;
c) loaning material to outside exhibitions; d) publishing guides to their collections and a wide range of publications on business history and business archives;
e) constructing web sites/pages with a specific educational content.
5.3 Many business archives also ensure that they are used and enjoyed by staff, pensioners their families. Work is an essential human need and people spend most of their adult life in the workplace. The record of that time and effort is an important non-academic contribution that the business archive can provide for a completely new constituency of user. Archivists in business maintain contact with retired staff and their descendents and participate in induction days, open days, family days, in-house exhibitions and oral history programmes.
5.4 Within the profession business archives also create a pool of expertise among staff who are used to working in a commercial environment where the pressure is always to find new ways to make the archive relevant to the parent company. This acts as a wellspring for new ideas and solutions in the wider archive world.
6. BUSINESS ARCHIVES: WHAT PROBLEMS DO THEY HAVE?
6.1 Business archives are burdened with the perception that because they are part of a business they have infinite funds to draw upon whereas the reality is that as a non-profit department within the company they are constantly forced to justify their meagre budgets and continued existence. They have not, as yet, been able to tap into any public funds to make collections more available.
6.2 They often do not receive appropriate recognition and respect by the wider archive community: they are often seen as transitory and liable to be sold or disposed of at any time. This could affect attitudes to public funding and has very real repercussions, particularly in the arena of collection development where papers which are by right part of a business archive - or, more strictly speaking, a business - regularly find their way into public or university archives with the tacit approval of the archivists concerned.
6.3 There is a widespread belief that a business archive is best served when the company donates it to a public body. Although this is obviously preferable to the archive being broken up and sold on the open market, it is far better that the business archive continues to exist in-house in order to ensure that it is built upon and continues to “bear witness” to the ongoing history of that business. Donation to a public sector archive requires goodwill (possibly with a dowry attached) or legislation to force the handing over of the material.
6.4 Although the picture has significantly improved in the last 30 years, only a relatively small percentage of businesses in the UK maintain an in-house archive service. Hundreds of businesses which keep records have featured in the BAC’s surveys (see Appendix). However we do not know categorically if more archive collections exist, and if they do, whether they are mouldering away in basements and warehouses, or if deliberate action has been taken to dispose of them. 6.5 Business archives, where they do exist, are dominated by one sector of the economy: the financial sector. They are also dominated by London-based companies; these companies often hold records of regional significance but are excluded from regional initiatives such as access surveys.
7. BUSINESS ARCHIVES: HOW CAN THINGS BE IMPROVED?
7.1 Government should consider how it can encourage more businesses to maintain archive services.
7.2 Financial support could be offered to businesses that maintain an archive - tax incentives, for example, could be considered.
7.3 Government could also encourage businesses and provide incentives to set up trusts for their archives to ensure their integrity, their continuity and their growth.
7.4 In those instances where business archives are being jettisoned by the parent company (as a result of takeovers, financial reorganisation, cessation of business etc.) a structure should be established for the assessment and allocation of such archives. The National Archives is an obvious leader.
7.5 Encouragement should be given to those charitable bodies, such as the BAC and its sister body in Scotland, which have performed Trojan work in recent decades in ensuring the welfare and survival of many business archives. With resources at their current level, these survey and rescue services cannot be performed by these bodies; these activities, primarily for public benefit, at present have little or no support from central government.
7.6 Efforts should be made to ensure that liquidators and receivers are aware of the potential academic value (not just monetary value) of business archives, so that they can report their existence to a designated body. The BAC has attempted this sort of rescue work in the past, but its resources have never permitted a comprehensive approach. 7.7 In view of its experience and its members’ expertise, the BAC wishes to join any dialogue over policy affecting business archives (and particularly the collections of its members).
8. APPENDIX: THE WORK OF THE BUSINESS ARCHIVES COUNCIL
8.1 PUBLICATIONS
The BAC’s journal published twice a year: Business Archives Principles and Practice in May and Business Archives Sources and History in November. The journal has no real rival in its field in the UK or abroad.
Recent articles from Business Archives Sources and History:
- Football archives and the historian
- From cement mixers to nuclear submarines: some extracts from the post-1945 history of Chatham Dockyard, Kent
- Cataloguing mail order’s archives
- Making leisure pay: the business of tourist marketing in Great Britain 1880-1950
- Asylum records as business archives: building, maintaining and sustaining a nineteenth century county lunatic asylum
Recent articles from Business Archives Principles and Practice:
- Connecting with schools: corporate archives as providers of educational resources [Royal Bank of Scotland]
- It’s all good practice: scientific archives and information management
- Keeping a database alive: ensuring the survival and future understanding of the first emerging market index
- The discovery of Jewish assets: recent developments in the banking archives of France
The following list of publications is taken from the web site of the Guildhall Library The Printed Books Section of Guildhall Library holds a fine collection of business histories. The following reference works, are also held at the Manuscripts enquiry desk, and provide further information on the survival/location of business records:-
LesleyRichmondandAlisonTurton: Directory of Corporate Archives (Business Archives Council4th edn. 1997)LesleyRichmondandBridgetStockford: Company Archives. The Survey of the Records of 1000 of the First Registered Companies inEnglandandWales(Gower, 1986)
H.A.L.CockerellandEdwinGreen: The British Insurance Business - A Guide to its History and Records (Sheffield Academic Press, 2nd edn. 1994)
JohnOrbellandAlisonTurton: British Banking: A guide to historicalRecords(Ashgate, 2001).
Wendy Habgood: Chartered Accountants inEnglandandWales, A guide to historicalrecords (Manchester University Press, 1994)
J. Foster and J. Sheppard: British Archives, A Guide to Archive Resources in theUnited Kingdom (Palgrave, 4th edn. 2002) Survey of HistoricalManuscripts in the United Kingdom: a Select Bibliography, (Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, 3rd edn. 1997) p.4
The following provide information about the nature of business records and how to trace the history of a business:
JohnArmstrong: "An introduction to archivalresearch in business history", in Business History, vol.33 no.1, January 1991JohnOrbell: A guide to tracing the history of a business (Gower, 1987)
A. Turtoned: Managing Business Archives (Butterworth Heinemann, 1991)
N.B. Items in bold text are the work of the Business Archives Council and its trustees.
8.2 SURVEYS
Industry-wide record surveys have been produced by the BAC over the last three decades. This work has identified records in public and private hands, and has led to the deposit of a great many valuable collections with public repositories. The published results are essential reading for students wishing to understand the nature of an industry, its history and the records it produced.
Surveys include: shipping (1971), shipbuilding (1980), the earliest 1000 registered companies (1986), accountancy (1994), banking (1985 and 2001), and pharmaceuticals (2003)
8.3 EDUCATION AND TRAINING
The Business Archives Council has developed a business archives training module for the University of Liverpool’s postgraduate archive programme. The programme is delivered by Council members.
The European Association for Banking History has commissioned the BAC to devise and manage two residential courses for archivists in banking and business archives in Europe. The courses have been well received and have formed the model for similar events run in France.
8.4 ENCOURAGING THE STUDY OF BUSINESS HISTORY The Council’s Wadsworth Prize for Business History has been awarded over the last 30 years. 'This is a unique prize -- and one which has, as one would expect, produced a strong field of contenders. It is good to see that business history is alive and well.'
(Oliver Letwin, MP, member of the judging panel, Wadsworth Prize 2001).
The BAC also awards a bursary to encourage research students to visit and study business archives.
[1]Directory of Corporate Archives, 4th edition, compiled by Lesley Richmond and Alison Turton, Business Archives Council, 1997. Based on 66 of the 88 entries in the directory