Events

Conference & AGM

2024 Conference – CfP

In 2024 the Business Archives Council of Scotland and the Business Archives Council will hold their joint annual conference in Glasgow.

The conference is being hosted by The Macallan and will take place on Thursday 7th November 2024 at the head offices of the Edrington Group at 100 Queen Street, Glasgow.

Online attendance will also be available.

Our theme is ‘Liquid Gold: realising the potential of your business archive collections’. Scotland’s most famous spirit and one of the nation’s greatest exports is affectionately known as liquid gold, and our conference seeks to explore the richness of business archive collections. This will include business archives as assets for their own corporate businesses but will also consider their wider value to society and potential for academic research and public engagement.

The Call for Papers is now live and we welcome submissions by 14th June 2024 for 20 minute papers delivered either in-person or online. Ideas for submission include:

• How archive collections support anniversary celebrations in an organisation?
• The growth of heritage marketing as a concept and the value of archives for this.
• Setting up an archive service in a corporate setting and understanding the reasons why a business invests in their archive.
• Ways in which business archive collections can be used for wider community engagement activities e.g. public exhibitions, storytelling and educational uses.
• The academic research potential within business archive collections, particularly examples of academic and corporate collaborations that explore collections.
• Looking to the archive as a source of inspiration for product development or to provide legal protection for brands.

Any questions should be directed to Business.Bites.Contact@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you.

2023 Conference 

The Business Archives Council of Scotland and the Business Archive Council held the first joint HYBRID conference on the 8th November 2023. Entitled The Digital Everyday Digital: Tools for Preservation and Access. Details here. We welcomed around 60 attendees on site at HSBC headquarters in London and 50 digital online attendees also.

2023 AGM

The 2023 AGM for the Business Archives Council of Scotland took place on Friday 8th December. This event was held at the National Library of Scotland and included a tour of their Treasures exhibition.

Papers are below:

• 2023 AGM Agenda
• 2022 AGM Minutes
• 2023 Annual Report & Accounts

Business Bites

Business Bites

Since 2023, the Business Archives Council of Scotland and the Business Archives Council have presented a joint programme of regular online webinars on subjects related to Business Archives.

Business Bites is the name of this initiative to encourage conversations, bringing together the small community of business archivists and custodians of business archives across the UK, many of whom work alone, to share our experiences.

**RESCHEDULED** The theme of the April event is – The Importance of Record Surveying. This event is open to ALL. Register here to take part. Due to difficulties with our booking system this event is RESCHEDULED to May.

Where: Online – via Zoom
When: Wednesday, 15th MAY 2024, 12.30pm – 13.30pm
How: To reserve a place, sign up using this link
What: The Importance of Record Surveying

The Surveying Officer will share recent success stories and partnerships to illustrate this this unique archive role in Scotland, as well as discussing the following questions:

• What tools do you need to carry out a records survey?
• What benefits can a survey bring to your archive service?
• What role does surveying play in current archive collecting procedures?

Our speaker will be Rachael Muir – Business Archive Surveying Officer for Scotland. Rachael is currently the eighteenth Business Archives Surveying Officer in Scotland, a role that has existed since 1977. Prior to surveying and consulting on business archive collections, Rachael has eight years corporate experience as an archivist at the Bank of England Archive. Additionally, she served as Chair of the Archive and Records Association’s Section of Business Records, and a judge on the Business Archives Council’s cataloguing grant.

Please direct any questions or comments to Business.Bites.Contact@gmail.com

Business Bites

In 2023, the Business Archives Council of Scotland and the Business Archives Council joined forces to present a joint programme of regular online webinars on subjects related to Business Archives. Business Bites is the name of this initiative to encourage conversations, bringing together the small community of business archivists and custodians of business archives across the UK, many of whom work alone, to share our experiences.

These will continue throughout 2024 and we will hold a Business Bites event every two months with the first event in February on Research Using Business Archives. The full programme will be shared below once confirmed. All Business Bites sessions are held on the last Wednesday of every second month. Events for 2024 are planned for February, May, June, September, December.

This new partnership means that our online events will be a mixture of member only events with 50% of events still open to all. Normally our regular in-person events are for BACS members who are business archivists or custodians of business archive collections. Not a BACS member already? Come along to see what BACS has to offer and become a member! (Annual membership starts from £10 for an Individual Member, £20 for Organisational Membership, £50 for Corporate Membership).

Corporate Connections‌

Corporate Connections was an initiative launched by BACS in 2017 (and which ran to 2023) to encourage face to face conversations, bringing together the small community of business archivists and custodians of business archives in Scotland, many of whom work alone to share our experiences. Regular social meet ups were held twice a year, with a rotating theme to kick start conversations and let you meet your peers. Anything and everything business archives was openly discussed among friends. From 2020, due to Covid-19 lockdown restrictions, our Corporate Connections events moved online. The BACS team invited those with an interest in business archives to these informal online talks where current challenges, successes and ideas were shared over virtual tea and biscuits (to be provided by the attendees!)