This podcast looks at the background to company archives and the recent development of national strategies to promote business archives more widely. The talk focuses on individual projects under way to improve storage and access to the records of companies, such as Marks & Spencer and Clarks Shoes and gives an update on the current architecture, building and construction survey.
Alex Ritchie is the Business Archives Advice Manager at The National Archives. He has had a long involvement with business history and archives at both The National Archives and the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts. He is best known as the author of The Shipbuilding Industry: a Guide to Historical Records (1992) and has been a major contributor to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.