Chairman's Statement 2011-2012

Chairman's statement to the 2012 AGM, November 2012

The Business Archives Council and the Strategy for Business Archives

The Council is continuing its role in promoting the National Strategy for Business Archives, in association with The National Archives, ARA, and others. We continue to manage the strategy website, www.managingbusinessarchives.co.uk. A case study from Coutts Bank was incorporated, and an events page added. Over 5,000 visits to the site were made. I should like to thank Moira Lovegrove and Claire Twinn for their work in this area.

The Council also published a marketing leaflet designed to promote its support for companies interested in managing and exploiting their archives, and to raise awareness of the Managing Business Archives website. My thanks to Katey Logan, Moira Lovegrove and the corporate members who made their case studies available.

The Council continues to support the work of the Crisis Response Team by providing two members - Peter Scott and Richard Wiltshire. Several examples of the material saved are provided in the trustees report for the year.

Over the course of the year we lobbied both government departments and businesses on the need to safeguard business archives, taking full part in the campaign to preserve the Wedgwood Archives and Museum.

Our cataloguing grant for business collections attracts high quality applications and remains one of our major initiatives. In 2011-12 the grant was awarded to Norfolk Record Office, to facilitate the cataloguing of the records of Gaymer's, the cider makers of Attleborough. My thanks to Mike Anson, Sara Kinsey and Richard Wiltshire for acting as judges.

The Business History Explorer: a Bibliography of the History of UK Businesses and Industries, edited by John Orbell, and compiled by John Orbell, Richard Storey and Francis Goodall, had made good progress by the end of the financial year and is now being published.

The Architecture, Building and Construction Survey for England & Wales, mounted in collaboration with The National Archives, was fully up and running after the appointment of Annabel Welsh (formerly Peacock), as the Resource Discovery Officer in September 2011. Contacts were made with the industries concerned, and the surveying work started. Annabel's work was assisted by an advisory board, with representatives from TNA, BAC, the Institute of Civil Engineers, the Institution of Structural Engineers, English Heritage, RIBA and the Construction Heritage Society.

Publications

Numbers 102 and 103 of our journal Business Archives were published. The journal reverted to its pre-1987 format, without the subtitled Principles and Practice and Sources and History, and was edited jointly by Mike Anson and Mariam Yamin. In Number 102, there were articles by Andrew Newnham on 'The John Player's Project: a knowledge transfer partnership between Nottingham City Museums and Galleries and the University of Nottingham'; Alan Renton on 'Connecting Cornwall: a collaborative research project'; Susan Snell on 'Economic and social apron strings: an introduction to resources available for researching business and social networking at the Library and Museum of Freemasonary'; and Vicky Stretch on 'Network Rail: managing railway records in the twenty-first century'.

This journal also included an obituary of Tony Cole by Angela Cole and Jeannette Strickland, and the select bibliography of new publications in 2010, compiled by Mariam Yamin and Hannah Jenkinson and edited by Mariam Yamin, and book reviews, edited by Moira Lovegrove. In Number 103 there were articles by Adrian R Bailey on 'Regulating the supermarket in 1960s Britain: exploring the changing relationship of food manufacturers and retailers through the Cadbury Archive'; Alexander L. Bieri on 'Roche: a Swiss pharmaceutical company in the United Kingdom'; Caroline Dakers on 'The Morrison Archives'; Patrick Russell on 'From acorn to oak: industry and corporate films in Britain'; and Jonathan Silberstein-Loeb on 'Puff pieces and circulation scams: middlemen and the making of the newspaper advertising market, 1881-1901'. The journal also contained an obituary of our former office manager, Sharon Quinn-Robinson, by Edwin Green; the 2010 edition of the bibliography in business history, compiled by Richard Hawkins; the list of business reords deposited, compiled by Mike Anson and book reviews, edited by Roy Edwards. We are grateful to all the editors and contributors for their work.

During the year Mike Anson intimated that he wished to retire as one of the journal editors. I am sure you will want me to thank him for his efforts in regenerating Business Archives since 2004. And I am pelased to announce that Mike has been suceeded by Professor Stefan Schwarzkopf, of Copenhagen Business School.

Once again, four editions of the Newsletter were produced by Alan Gall. Our own website was further enhanced thanks to the work of Claire Twinn and the oversight of Moira Lovegrove. My thanks to Moira, Alan and Claire.

AGM and Conference 2011

The AGM and Annual Conference were held on 10 November 2011 at Unilever House, Blackfriars, thanks to the generous support of Jeannette Strickland, Unilever Archivist, and Unilever PLC. The theme was 'Business Archives Sans Frontieres'. Here the focus was on the management of international business archives both in the public and private sectors. In an entertaining conference attended by over 60 people, Jeannette started the day with a presentation on 'Local versus Global', drawing on Unilever's experience. She later introduced examples from Unilever's extensive film collection. This was followed by papers from Henning Morgen (A.P. Moller-Maersk), on 'Local records in a corporate retention schedule'; Tina Staples (HSBC), on 'VCs and PJs: expanding the archives of HSBC'; Richard Wiltshire (LMA), on 'Copy to London: exploring international business archives at London Metropolitan Archives'; and Michael Rowlinson (Queen Mary, University of London), on 'Corporate history: whether to make or buy?' The conference, which was chaired by Mike Anson, opened and closed with useful workshop sessions. Our thanks to Lorna Williams and Judith Wright for planning and organising such an interesting day, and to our generous hosts.

Wadsworth Prize for Business History 2010

The Council's Wadsworth Prize 2010 was awarded to Sir Geoffrey Owen (LSE) for his book The Rise and Fall of Great Companies: Courtaulds and the Reshaping of Man-Made Fibres Industry (published by Oxford University Press). The prize was presented by your Chairman at a reception held at Unilever House, following the conference. Our thanks to Jeannette Strickland and Unilever for their hospitality, and to our independent judges - Martin Vander Weyer, Professor Michael Moss, and Professor Peter Jones - for their hard work.

Bursary 2010

The winners this year were Professor Josephine Maltby and Dr Linda Perriton of York University Management School, who planned to use savings bank archives to assess savings by working-class women in 19th century and 20th century England. The award was presented by your Chairman at the annual conference of the Association of Business Historians in Reading in July 2011.

My thanks to Roy Edwards for organising the Wadsworth Prize and to Peter Scott for organising the bursary judging.

Other Activities

Our contribution to training continued in 2011-12. We organised a further session of our successful 'Meet the Archivists' series at the Rothschild Archive in November 2011, hosted by Melanie Aspey and organised by Michelle Blagg, and with presentations by Roy Edwards and Valerie Johnson. We also put on a business archives training day, in association with the Business Records section of ARA. The event was hosted by the Baring Archive in January 2012, and was attended by over 40 students from University College London, Aberystwyth and Dundee. I should like to thank all concerned for making these events such a success.

Vote of thanks

Our thanks to Clara Harrow, Lara Webb, Moira Lovegrove, the Baring Archive and ING for generously hosting both the AGM and the Conference, and later on in the day, the Wadsworth Prize reception.