n.a repository that holds records created or received for business purposesLewis 1969, 21Which business records should be retained? Which business records should be discarded? Every business archives with a space problem has appraisal criteria, formal or informal, for maintaining and disposing of materials. Every business archives threatened by a space shortage inevitably must develop such criteria.Hives 1986, 56If past attempts to justify the establishment of corporate archives primarily as a tool for historical study have met with only limited success, then surely archivists must look beyond the purely historical justifications and consider other tangible contributions which might be made to the current operations of the corporation. While certainly not unimportant, the cultural aspects of business archives should be combined with other potential administrative functions. This is not, however, to suggest that corporate records should be maintained exclusively for the use of the company. For the value of preserving corporate material would greatly diminish if it were not ultimately made available for outside research.Jones and Cantelon 1993, 7A number of corporate archives are the product of anniversaries, but others seem to have resulted from emergencies—a crisis in which key records had to be rescued. And as the reasons for their existence vary so, too, do the nature and scope of specific business archives—as well as their mission and place in the organizational structure.Jones and Cantelon 1993, 9Germany’s Krupp Company established the first business archives in 1905 when that firm was preparing a formal history.Fode and Fink 1997, 80Of course we are trying to make sure that records which are not worth keeping are not kept. Whenever we find large series of routine material we try to reduce the amount by keeping only part of it. We use several techniques in that connection: keeping only every fifth or every tenth year, keeping only certain months in those years, keeping only records from certain locations, and so on. We probably do what all business archives do in this respect.Goldstein 1997, 41Business archives are a repository of the corporate memory, preserving documents that are needed for administrative, legal, and fiscal purposes and can be used for strategic planning, advertising, public relations, research and development, and litigation support.Carpenter et al. 2011, 18As an extension of the business, the intersection of company proprietary information and researchers’ access needs puts the corporate or business archives in a unique position of balancing these two forces.Green and Lee 2020, 34Third: we use the term ‘business archives’ inclusively. Many organizational repositories—in universities, charities, cultural institutions and so on—will have much in common with those held by commercial companies, in terms of their operational structures and constraints and their priorities, audiences and accountabilities; indeed, the archivist co-author works for a national arts organization.SAA 2024Systematic preservation of corporate memory and documentation becomes all the more vital in such business environments. A business archives creates a reliable internal information system. It manages the information and significant records concerning a company’s key strengths—and its weaknesses. Without the ability to select and retrieve archival materials and information, a company forfeits access to its own history lessons. With an archives, that same company gains the advantage of remembering what others forget.records created or received by a commercial enterprise and preserved because of their continuing valueHolmes 1938, 183Whether our business archives are saved by business itself, by libraries and historical societies, or by government there should be, to return to the original theme of this paper, intelligent selection. It would not be difficult to agree upon the record categories that deserve to be retained. Most of the more important records, such as minute books, and contracts, are not bulky, and the camera might be used to handle those that were. The camera should also be used for sampling administrative control records and operative records.Benedict 1992, 8Brief history of the Australian Agricultural Company and description of how the records of this company came to form the foundation for the Business Archives Collection at the Australian National University in Canberra.Linard and Sverdloff 1997, 98In the over seventy years Baker Library has been collecting rare and historical materials, the field of business history has grown into a full academic discipline represented in many colleges and universities. Correspondingly, business archives is now a recognized collecting focus of institutions around the world.O’Toole 1997, viThe opportunity to bring together the two institutions with the largest holdings of business archives in North America—and thus the greatest impetus to refine and redefine the appraisal and use of corporate records—has been one of the benefits of the RAB Project. The complementary but not always overlapping interests of the Hagley Museum and Library and the Minnesota Historical Society have enriched the project’s discussions and informed its conclusions.Green and Lee 2020, 42Concerns about restrictions on academic freedom to access and use documents can contribute to a scepticism about the scholarly value of business archives.
