Events

Conference & AGM

2024 Conference

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

The conference was hosted by The Macallan and sponsored by TownsWebArchiving, Preservica and Naomi Korn Associates. It took place on Thursday 7th November 2024 at the head offices of the Edrington Group at 100 Queen Street, Glasgow and online attendance was also available.

Details about the venue, travel to Glasgow and accommodation are available on this page.

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.

We had a great response to our Call for Papers and the programme is now available and detailed below.

Information about our conference sponsors can be found by clicking on their logos.

PROGRAMME

Liquid Gold: realising the potential of your business archive collections

Session A ‘anniversaries’
This session will feature the following talks:

• Welcome. Cheryl Traversa, Global Archive Manager, The Macallan
• The Macallan. Felipe Ferrari, Senior Marketing Manager, The Macallan
• Unfinished business: The archive’s role in celebrating 200 years of The Guardian. Philippa Mole, Head of the Guardian News & Media Archive
• More than half a ‘Sun-tury’ – how The Times flies when working on anniversaries. Anne Jensen and Michael-John Jennings, News UK

SESSION B ‘outreach, collaboration & partnerships’ 
This session will feature the following talks:

• Gold Stories From the Levi’s Archives: Lessons on Using Business Archives. Tracey Panek, Historian & Director, Levi Strauss & Co. Archives
• Creating a social memory through the business archival collection. Kitty But, Head of Archives, Hongkong Land Corporate Archives
• AI at the service of history: The Hennessy example. Christopher Kermovant, Teklia and Fabienne Moreau, Head of Heritage, Hennessy

Session C ‘different routes’
This session will feature the following talks:

• “They’re gold”: the value of local newspaper archives to communities. Dr Rachael Matthews, Associate Director for Research & Engagement at Coventry University
• From Surviving to Thriving: How Reckitt Heritage Built a Business Case. Dr Grace Chapman, Heritage Advisor, Reckitt
• Realising the Commercial Potential of a Business Collection: A Case Study of Clarks Shoes. Tim Crumplin, Business Archivist, Alfred Gillett Trust/Shoemakers Museum
• Design in Colour: The Bernat Klein Collection & Archive at National Museums Scotland. Lisa Mason, Assistant Curator of Modern & Contemporary Design at NMS

Session D ‘assets and value of business archives’
This session will feature the following talks:

• Preserving business history as a business itself – in the public interest. Anders Sjöman, Head of Client Projects and Communication at the Centre for Business History in Stockholm
• ‘Great and Ancient,’ Creating Value Through Custodianship of the Swire Archives. Matthew Edmondson, Senior Archivist, Swire Archives
• Goldmine: The RSHP Archive as Design Refinery Aymée Thorne Clarke, Archivist, RSHP / Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners
• Adventure in collaboration: unlocking potential of early TV advertising films for public and commercial good. David Powell, DC Thomson & Co Ltd and Kay Foubister, NLS Moving Image Archive

Evening drinks reception (from 17:45 includes whisky nosing and tasting with canapes)

Conference Bursaries

The Business Archives Council of Scotland and the Business Archives Council awarded three bursaries to attend their joint conference ‘Liquid Gold: realising the potential of your business archive collection’ on 7th November 2024.

Four bursaries were offered and were open to members and non-members of the BAC and BACS. Applicants for the bursaries needed to meet one of the following criteria:

• Be a student or
• Be a recent graduate (in the last 3 years ie graduated by July 2021) or
• Be a qualified archivist, currently out-of-employment (this excludes consultants and freelancers) or
• Be retired from the archives profession or retired with an interest in business history

The bursary covers full conference attendance, including up to £150 for travel & accommodation expenses (receipts will be required ahead of reimbursement.) The following should also be noted:

• Applicants must confirm that any costs they claim will not be paid by their employer, and that their employer has not already registered them as a delegate at the Conferences.
• Successful applicants will be asked to provide a short report on their experience at the conference to be used in various BAC & BACS communications and encouraged to contribute to the reporting of the conference through social media while the conference is taking place.

2024 AGM

The 2024 AGM for the Business Archives Council of Scotland took place on Thursday 20th June at the AK Bell Library in Perth.

The papers discussed are below:

• 2024 AGM Agenda
• 2023 AGM Minutes
• 2024 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.

Business Bites: Cataloguing Business Archives

Our first Business Bites session of 2025 is now open for bookings. This event is open to all but future events may be members only. For more information on joining BACS please see here.

Theme: Cataloguing Business Archives
Where: Online – via Zoom
When: 26th February 2025, 12.30 – 13.30
Speakers: Emma Blowers and Kath Roper-Caldbeck
What: Cataloguing is a main component of an Archivist’s work. But there is no one size fits all process, and the subject matter of a collection can dictate the way it is catalogued and made available. This is particularly true of Business Archive collections, where not only the subject matter, but also organisational pressures, processes and understanding of archives can all impact on how collections are catalogued. The source of the funding used to catalogue the collection can also have an impact on process.

Business Archive Council Cataloguing Grant winners, Dorset History Centre, will be talking about their experience of cataloguing The Yellow Buses Archive. The Yellow Buses collection is the largest transport collection held at the DHC and is unique in its size and breadth.
The Whyte & Mackay collection is held as part of the University of Glasgow’s Archives and Special Collections’ Scottish Business Archive, which has an on-going agreement with Whyte & Mackay for the management of its corporate archive. This large collection captures almost 200 years of distilling history in Scotland, including corporate, financial, sales, production and promotional records. This talk will outline the ways in which we utilised the functionality of our collection management system, EMu, to catalogue an extensive set of business records, covering multiple subsidiary companies with complex interlinked relationships.

Speakers: 

• Emma Blowers, Dorset History Centre

Emma Blowers has worked in Dorset Council’s Archives and Records Service since June 2023. She is currently working in two roles as Digital Preservation Archivist and on the cataloguing projects for the business archives of Yellow Buses (Bournemouth Transport Ltd) and Wessex Water.

Dorset History Centre is the archives service and local studies library for Dorset including Bournemouth, Christchurch, and Poole. We hold the archives of Dorset ranging from Council records, to businesses and personal collections, as well as books and other publications.

• Kath Roper-Caldbeck, University of Glasgow

Kath Roper-Caldbeck has been an Archive Cataloguer at Archives and Special Collections (ASC), University of Glasgow since 2019, after starting as a volunteer in 2018 whilst completing her MSc in Information Management and Preservation at the same institution. Prior to this she was Archive Manager at The Modern Institute, Glasgow, a contemporary art gallery. Her work at ASC has a focus on the Scottish Business Archive, with most recent collections including the brewing and distilling industries.

Book your free place to attend here.

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 2025 and we will hold a Business Bites event every two months with the first event in February on Cataloguing 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.

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!)