AS HISTORICAL AND RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS GO, business archives are a relatively recent phenomenon. One hundred years ago, when business and industry in the United States had left the havoc of the Civil War behind them and were growing at a tremendous pace, there were no business archives. Three decades later, the call to the United States to help friendly nations put a stop to the ambitions of Kaiser Wilhelm in Europe led to a major growth in industries preparing war materiel, but still no business archives were established. Two more decades passed before an industrialist had the foresight to begin saving his company's historical files in systematic fashion.
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I can speak from personal experience about Walt Disney Productions. The company had been thinking about what to do with its historical files in 1969. Overtures were made by UCLA to have the records deposited in their library, but this was deemed unfeasible. Not only was there more material than UCLA could possibly handle, but the company needed constant access to the material and needed also to maintain the confidentiality of business secrets. I was hired by Disney as a consultant, and I made good use of the just-published Directory of Business Archives to send inquiries about procedures and policies to other archivists. Out of this work came a proposal for setting up an archives within the company, which was soon implemented.
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