This panel brings together scholars and professionals working in the field of business history who also have experience processing or working at corporate archives to explore the opportunities that collaborative work can generate and the transformations that digital technology is bringing to both archives and historians of business. The presenters focus on the state of this collaboration and the perceptions from scholars and corporate leaders on what a corporate archive should look like.
The academic market is drastically shifting, and graduates meet multiple challenges to diversify their careers and succeed with a Ph.D. in History. Many historians work at archives, an environment in which they generally move extremely well because of their understanding of the value of the content of sources, though less so because of their experience with technical issues related with archival procedures or the management of information. However, these two skills combined, promise to develop even more fruitful collaborations and conversations. And if digital specialists join the conversation better documented and searchable collections will be the end result.
The four presentations of this panel draw upon different experiences writing about and studying businesses heritage and archives. Benito Peix Geldart examines what’s at stake among corporate leaders that recognize the benefits and strengths that historical research of their records can bring to their own organizations as is the case of Electrolux and other Sweden multinationals that have deposited their archives at the Center for Business History in Stockholm. Erik Rau examines the specificity of processing and documenting corporate archives and Hagley’s efforts to connect corporate stakeholders vision of preservation with scholars and archivists perceptions and goals. James Cortada considers the case of IBM and the different narratives, both commercial and academic histories, that have resulted from research at the company’s archives. Paula de la Cruz-Fernández will present about a Digital Humanities project entitled Inquire Capitalism, a searchable index of corporate archives that includes both information about archives and scholarship produced in business archives in the United States.