Business Archives in a University Setting: Status and.Prospect

Several surveys over the past twenty-five years have documented the failure of modern businesses systematically to preserve their historically significant records. If such records are to be preserved, therefore, it may fall to uni-versities to become more aggressively involved in collecting. This article summarizes results of a survey designed to determine which universities are collecting business records, how they began, and what problems they have encountered. After assessing the experience of these institutions, it suggests an acquisitions strategy to overcome the problems associated with collecting business records. BusiNESS HISTORY as an academic disci-pline is relatively new; so too are business archives. N. S. B. Gras introduced business history to Harvard University in 1927, where he pioneered the case-study ap-proach in his graduate courses. Business ar-chives in the United States are an even more recent development, beginning with the appointment of William Overman as ar-chivist for the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company in 1943. Both developments were a belated recog-nition of the increasing importance of understanding business history in order to understand American history. Archivists, whose responsibility it is to document human activity, are properly concerned that business activity be documented, but the record of performance over the last two decades indicates that not enough is being done. Problems apparently continue to out-run solutions. 1 Several surveys, conducted between 1955 and 1976 by individual researchers and the Business Archives Committee of the Society of American Archivists, indicate the dimen-sions of the problem of documenting busi-Nicholas C. Burckel is director, Archives and Area Research Center, and executive assistant to the chancellor, University of Wisconsin-Parkside. The research reported here was supported i