Chairman's Statement 2005-2006
The Chairman's Year 2005-2006
Business Records Development Officer
In May the first ever Business Records Development Officer, Robert Brown, took up his post. You will remember that the BAC was instrumental in putting together the funding package for his post, and Robert is now hard at work. His major challenge is to develop a strategy for business archives, and I know that he has met or talked to many of you here about this. He has also been busily engaged in rescue work, finding homes for the archives of William Duckworth of Manchester, the Confederation of Paper Industries and Typhoo Tea. He has also been active in following up cases of business collections which may be at risk. He will be continuing this work next year by reaching out to businesses to persuade them of the value of their records and archives. Robert is based at the National Archives, and his partly funded by them and partly by ourselves, with other generous contributions from the society of archivists, MLA, CyMAL, the Economic History Society and the Association of Business Historians. We wish him well in his work.
Important as this initiative undoubtedly is, we should not forget that over the year your Council has continued to enhance its core activities:
Publications: Journal, Newsletter, Web
Business Archives Volume 90 (‘Sources and History’) contained 3 articles, Catherine Harbour’s piece on newspapers as a source for the music business in the early modern period, an article on women in BP (Valerie Johnson), and a contribution from one of our bursary winners, Stefan Schwarzkopf, on UK advertising, exploiting the archives of the History of Advertising Trust. Volume 91 (‘Principles and Practice’) contained 5 articles, ranging from Black Country Business records (Cheryl Bailey); the conversion and digitisation of the Ionian Bank collection at LSE (Zoe Browne and Sue Donnelly); the Shibusawa Shashi project and sharing information on business archives in Japan (Yuko Matsuzaki); an overview of the Bank of England Archive (Sarah Millard, Jenny Ulph, and Hayley Wilding); and Michael Moss’s thought-provoking article on ‘The archives of business and the business of archives’, which was read to our conference last year. Jane Waller’s four Newsletters kept members up to date on our activities, while providing a forum for others involved in the business archives world. The Council’s website was further enhanced, and it is now possible to access a ‘members area’, which includes on-line articles from Business Archives for 2002-5. Once again, I record my sincere thanks on your behalf to everyone concerned in these ventures.
Conference 2005
On 8 November 2005 we held another successful conference, which was generously hosted by the John Lewis Partnership at its Peter Jones store. This time the theme was ‘From Family to FTSE’, and the event was organised by Judy Faraday. The conference examined the relationship between families, business history and business archives. The keynote address was given by Michael Moss, who spoke on ‘The Business of Archives and the Archives of Business’, and the other speakers were: Jim Bolton, from Queen Mary College, who introduced the Borromei Bank project; Lucy Newton, from Reading University, who presented her research on continuity in the transition from private banks to joint stock banks in England; Edwin Green, our treasurer and HSBC Group archivist, who emphasised the importance of the HSBC archive as a source for family historians; Andrew Alexander, from Surrey University, who explored the role of small businesses in retailing; Judy Faraday, JLP archivist, who demonstrated how the JLP archive was such a fertile source of social history and corporate culture; and Richard Wilson, who explained how until very recently brewing has always been synonymous with family enterprise. A concluding summary was provided by Oliver Westall of Lancaster University.
Our Conference for 2006, ‘Managing Business Archives: a Global Perspective’, was, of course held in Edinburgh three weeks ago. I will report on it more fully next year, but I understand that the event, which was hosted jointly with the Business Archives Council Scotland, the Business Records Group of the Society of Archivists, and the Business and Labour Archives section of the International Council on Archives, was well attended and was a great success.
Wadsworth Prize 2005
The Wadsworth prize reception was also held at Peter Jones, immediately after our conference. Our thanks to Judy Faraday for organising a very successful event. The 2005 prize was won by Professor Robin Pearson of Hull University, for his book Insuring the Industrial Revolution: Fire Insurance in Great Britain 1700-1850 (Ashgate, 2004). The award was presented by our President, Sam Twining, and Sir Ian Hay Davison, a member of the Prize panel.
Bursary 2006
Following successful awards to Stephan Schwarzkopf and Hiroki Shin, I am delighted to announce that we have another worthy winner, after a competitive round of judging. Ms Bridget Williams from Reading University has won this year’s bursary. She will use the funding to research ‘title’ , with particular reference to Sainsbury’s sales data and the pioneering efforts in self-service retailing of the Portsea Island Mutual Co-operative Society. Bridget was Sainsbury Group archivist and historian, and has been a loyal supporter of the Council; we wish her all the best with her endeavours.
My thanks to Peter Scott, and our judges for the Wadsworth and Bursary awards, for their work in identifying our worthy winners.
I conclude by thanking our hosts at Barclays for their generosity in hosting our AGM, and the Wadsworth Prize reception, which is to follow.