Using Business Archives for Family History

Last night David and I held the last of our focus groups.  This one was for users of business archives and particularly members of family history societies.  It was a very useful session from our point of view in getting information about the user experience of business archives and finding out what the general level of awareness is currently.  At the moment business archives seem to have quite a low profile with family historians.  This is unfortunate, particularly as family history is often the main reason for users to visit an archive (according to the 2007 survey of visitors by the NCA 73% of visitors were carrying out family history.)

However, hopefully the National Strategy will be able to develop and implement actions that will help raise the profile of business archive collections and make them easier to access.

We produced a handout for the evening which listed the types business records that are held by archives in Scotland and provided the links to various online catalogues to help with searches.  This can be downloaded as a pdf file here.