2025 Brass Program - Beyond the Ledger: Exploring Corporate Archives & Business Histories: Resources
The program, "Beyond the Ledger: Exploring Corporate Archives & Business Histories," will be offered during the American Library Association's (ALA) Annual Conference 2025 in Philadelphia. Monday, June 30, 2025 - 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM
Hershey Community ArchivesHershey Community Archives includes the history of the company, the town, and the man.
Baker Library Special Collections & ArchivesSpecial Collections & Archives collects and makes available the records of business dating from the 14th century to the present and the records of the Harvard Business School since its founding in 1908. These varied collections include corporate archives, manuscripts, account ledgers, rare books, broadsides, photographs, company annual reports, and audiovisual and digital materials, as well as works of art by a diverse range of artists from around the world.
The Hagley CenterThe Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society organizes scholarly conferences, research seminars, and administers research grants for the Hagley Library. With its focus on advanced study, the Center fosters a community of scholars that includes Hagley staff, faculty and graduate students, museum professionals, research fellows and associates, and visiting scholars from around the world.
Business Archives Projects
Legacy on 52nd StreetThis Black History Month, we collaborated with Rowhome Productions and Urban Art Gallery for a special celebration of 52nd street's history as a hub for Black-owned businesses in West Philadelphia. "Legacy on 52nd Street" highlights longstanding businesses on the corridor through audio pieces, coupled with pro-portraiture and a culminating debut exhibition at Urban Art Gallery.
Article by Gregory Markley: The Coca-Cola Company Archives: Thriving Where Dilbert, not Schellenberg, MattersIt’s unlikely that many of the more than one million visitors who experience The NEW World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta every year know that a small team of archivists helped bring the museum to life. Selecting historical materials to display and verifying the accuracy of exhibits are just two of the tasks faced by Coke archivists. In a high-order challenge, the small archives team—just six people, including two from the communications/ clerical staff—based at the company’s corporate headquarters across from Georgia Institute of Technology is charged with guardianship of Robert W. Woodruff’s image of the 123-year-old company. Woodruff, longtime chief executive of the soft drink company, insisted above all that no employee allow his company’s good name to be sensationalized, trivialized, or appropriated for uses that would place Coke in a negative light. Working closely with advertising and marketing teams, Coke archivists seek to put a positive face on their company by using historical artifacts in ways that will bolster the company’s profits. This article describes how Coke’s archives department works and how it presents an image that would make Woodruff proud.
Guide: Facilitating Academic-Archivist Collaborations in BusinessIt is a short and accessible guide with issues to consider and some tips for success. Each document section has an accompanying short film in which business archivists and researchers offer relevant experiences and advice.
Article: From transaction to collaboration: redefining the academic-archivist relationship in business collectionsABSTRACT
Collaboration has risen up the agenda for archives and universities in recent years, yet there is unrealized potential for co-productive modes of research between archivists and academics, with business collections facing particular obstacles. This article, co-written by an archivist and a historian, presents the findings of a project that aims to support business archivists to develop co-designed research projects that mobilize business collections in rigorous ways to meet present-day business priorities (and so demonstrate to parent organizations the value of their archives and expert archivists). The project involved a collaborative process of workshops, interviews and a survey, which has allowed the project network to develop guidance materials. The authors discuss three key themes that emerged from the process, reflecting the distinctive concerns of archivists working in organizational repositories and the factors that influence their pursuit of academic collaborations. There then follows an analysis of ‘mind-set’ barriers to collaboration: questions of professional culture and practice or intellectual stance that can influence attitudes to and pursuit of collaborative projects between historians and archivists. The authors argue for an open and dialogic approach to designing collaborative research, acknowledging the constraints and imperatives for archivists and academics and recognizing the complementarity of their expertise.
Advice & Case Studies: Managing Business ArchivesOur advice and case studies are for those new to business archives, as well as heritage practitioners and users. They are to help you manage and use business archives. Discover how to set up an archive, manage and preserve digital records, find funding, use records, collaborate with others, and seek advice.
Organizations
Society of American Archives Business Archives SectionThe Business Archives Section (BAS) comprises of archivists active in the work of the Society of American Archivists (SAA) with common interests in business archives management. The Business Archives Section includes corporate, business, and noprofit employees administering and providing access to historical or archival records.
Business Archives CouncilFounded in 1934, the objectives of the BAC are to:
*Promote the preservation of business records of historical importance;
*Supply advice and information on the administration and management of both archives and modern records;
*Encourage interest in the history of business in Britain.
Content on this site is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.