n.a record created or received for business purposesTopham 1954, 113Next we have corporate records, which include articles of incorporation, bylaws, and similar papers.Van Camp 1982, 297Most, if not all, of the SAA Access Standards can be applied to corporate records. While few companies will view their records with the openness that a public library might, business records are not unlike those of a private citizen.Jones and Cantelon 1993, 41For the 20th century a more rational appraisal process has brought together important corporate records related to decision-making and operations.Jones and Cantelon 1993, 111In other words, obscure corporate records systematically organized can reveal the missing chapters of the company’s environmental history that corporate negotiators will need to reconstruct.Jones and Cantelon 1993, 186Despite a growing number of business historians in the United States—from a few dozen a generation ago to a few hundred today—precious few have had much direct experience with business, or even with internal corporate records.Jimerson 2009, 285–286Corporate records possess primary importance and value for the organizations that create and maintain them, but they also form part of the societal heritage of the broader communities within which the corporations operate.Van Ness 2010, 141As one business archivist points out, the principal users of corporate records tend to be the archivists themselves.Roke and Tillman 2022, 182Similarly, existing linked data models and ontologies can be used or adapted to model the complex relationships that make up a custodial history or describe a complex entity such as a family or corporate body. For example, corporate records may reflect multiple iterations of original order resulting from mergers of distinct companies into a single entity or holdings split across multiple institutions.
