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History and evolution
Perspectives
Bibliography
The situation as it has been described up to now certainly isn’t definitive, and continues to evolve for many reasons. First of all, the number and variety of people who are involved are far greater than in the 1970s. It is taken for granted that business archives and archivists share with the rest of the national archival community the same social responsibility of preserving, managing and valorizing a significant part of the national archival heritage, although from within different institutional contexts.
A significant number of records produced mostly by private economic bodies has been preserved and made available to a wide range of users in the last 30 years. Users of business archives are no longer just professional researchers: they are increasing in quantity and variety.Thus, the archives addresses explanatory publications and other multimedia materials to the wider public.
The Internet reflects this growing interest as well. The number of websites dedicated to business archives is multiplying, while existing websites are changing from a static to a dynamic interface, with online public access inventories and databases.
In just a few years, new institutions with innovative organizational and management solutions have been conceived. Foundations
are a good example of this: directing a variety of cultural activities, including historical archives management and valorization. In many cases, both the provenance institution and the local administration participate in these initiatives, so that the archives maintain contact with the community and geographic area; in other words, the economic and social “roots” of the business. This kind of solution has turned out to be effective in ensuring necessary continuity to a business archives.
The outsourcing
of archival services is also gaining a greater share of the market. This alternative solution works well for semi-active records and paper archives management, but also for historical archives, that can hire archives specialists, cooperatives, and free-lance professionals for the traditional jobs of arrangement and description. Even those institutions of long-standing tradition – both public and private – choose outsourcing, mainly because oftight budgets. As a consequence, the classic profile of the company archivist, keeper of the company memory, is disappearing, with the risk that the archives becomes a sort of museum.
The dispersion of records and of anything that has little or no immediate use is a natural consequence in times of crisis and of resource reduction. One promising solution to the risk of records dispersion, based on the German model, appears to be the creation of territorial economic archives and collecting archives
. A trial project has just begun to operate in Milan, following an agreement between the Centro per la cultura d’impresa, Regione Lombardia, Politecnico di Milano and the Ministry of Cultural Heritage. Modern business is far more dynamic than in the past; frequent changes in headquarters, company name, size and ownership are common.
Because of frequent merging and incorporation, a further solution currently gaining credit in large companies is the transformation of archives, originally of a single company, into (historical) group archives. It is a considerable change, that implies completely re-thinking the function of archives. The most long-standing institutions, where both sensitivity towards historical matters and adequate professional skills are available, are experimenting with new organization and management solutions. Acquiring archives of defunct or absorbed companies means moving the records from their original provenance into a new head office. This action goes against the principle of continuous custody, generally held to be a basic rule for records authenticity. On the other hand, it reduces the risk of dispersion of at least the most important series, if not the whole archives. It should be pointed out, however, that this course of action is likely to cause some problems regarding the legal protection of archives in the custody of local Departments of Archives;and has already raised some confusion within the community of users. Further reflection on this question will surely prove to be fruitful.
