Quick update....

A quick progress update ahead of what's going to be a really busy week for the project.

The Powering the World exhibition has been signed off and the panels will be printed this week. It will be launched at Friday's workshop. It's hard to judge until I see them full size, but on paper they look great and I hope they promote the collections well. 

The pilot employability project has finished, with both students engaging with the business archives material and producing really interesting web-guides.  Both gave positive feedback on their experience, and particularly their change of opinion on business archives as 'dry' and 'daunting' to a source they would both happily use again. A full report to come in the next few weeks!

Finally, Friday is the day of the workshop ‘The Bottom Line:  The Value of Business Archives for Research’ at Swansea University. The delegates will be made up of students, academics and heritage professionals. I'm really pleased to see that we have undergraduate and postgraduate students from a variety of disciplines, including Arts and Humanities, Business and Economics, Engineering and Bio-sciences. 

We have some excellent speakers on the day, showing the quality, and variety, of research that can come from business records.

·         Dr Quentin Outram, Senior Lecturer in Economics, Leeds University Business School: 

‘A Real Victory: The First of its kind since 1926': Employer archives on the Emlyn Strike of 1934'

He is the co-author (with Roy Church) of Strikes and Solidarity: Coalfield Conflict in Britain 1889-1966 (Cambridge University Press, 1998) and ‘Class Warriors: The Coalowners’ in Industrial Politics and the 1926 Lockout: The Struggle for Dignity (University of Wales Press, 2004) edited by John McIlroy, Alan Campbell and Keith Gildart. 

·         Dr Tehmina Goskar: Research officer on the ESRC-funded Global and Local Worlds of Welsh Copper Project (until Sep 2011)

‘Putting Humpty together again: Reconstructing supply chain information from copper business archives'

See here for more information on this project which brought together academics, the heritage sector and local and global communities to tell the story of Welsh copper 

·         Richard Haines, PHD student at Swansea University:

‘An Embarrassment of Riches: Approaches to the Quantitative Analysis of British Shipping’ 

Received an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award to work in conjunction with Swansea University and the National Waterfront Museum. His research has examined Swansea’s shipowning community during the nineteenth century, focusing on issues such as investment in shipping, the crewing of vessels, and shipowners’ role in the social and urban development of the town.

For more information, or to register, please see here 

Thoughts on putting together an exhibition

Part of the 'Profiting from Powering the World' involves digitising images and putting them together for a travelling exhibition to promote the catalogued collections. It will be made up of 8 pull up banners and will be launched at the workshop on 27th January.

I'm now at the crucial stage of finalising my choices of images and text to send to Waters Creative to produce the final panels. This is my first dabble into producing an exhibition, and I have found it mostly interesting, but sometimes frustrating. I think the nature of this project means I've had to take some unique things into consideration:

Collaborative working: The project is an Archives and Records Wales project involving 11 different collections from 7 different archive services across Wales. I catalogued 6 of the collections so had a reasonable idea of the highlights. I had no idea what the other collections consisted of, and very little time to find out. Robert Evans, who catalogued the North Wales collections, helpfully provided some assistance with this. It meant communicating with archive services with different resources and priorities, arranging visits, becoming a rather demanding reader, requesting lots of scanning, and spending a silly amount of time on trains. Despite the odd lost email, all the services involved were really helpful. It also meant I got to see some lovely places in North Wales.

Design: I found the design work tricky at first. There are so many collections, from a number of different industries (coal, copper, engineering, slate, lager etc),that no particular colours or themes immediately stood out. It took an age to settle on colours and layout. The intention is that it all ties together as a full exhibition, but that each banner can also stand alone. Additionally, being a Welsh project, translation is a large consideration.

Archives: As for the records themselves, I was initially a little concerned about how suitable for an exhibition these collections were. I knew they had great research potential, but these are records produced by heavy industries. Some of them are literally still covered in coal dust. They don't contain a lot of attractive marketing material, the type that you might find in other retail or banking archives, and which lend themselves to exhibitions.  However, having now looked through all the collections I've been pleasantly surprised at the range of material available. My aim was to find a good mixture, combining the aesthetically pleasing with the more informative records.

Now it's coming up to the Christmas break I have a little breather to reflect on the new skills I've gained during this process and the lessons I've learnt (so many!). Hopefully the final product will do the collections, the businesses, and the communities they affected, proud.

The Bottom Line: The Value of Business Archives for Research

 

Archives and Records Council Wales and Swansea University present ‘The Bottom Line: The Value of Business Archives for Research’, a free one day workshop kindly supported by the Economic History Society.


If you think business archives are too bulky, complicated or specialist then it’s time to think again! This one day workshop will bring together expert speakers to explore the value of business archives for a surprising variety of research.

Over lunch there will be a chance for delegates to meet archivists showcasing the wealth of business collections held by local and university archives across Wales.

The day’s events are free, but registration is required. Lunch and refreshments will be provided

Date: Friday 27 Jan 2012

Venue: James Callaghan Lecture Theatre, Swansea University

For a programme, registration form or more information see: http://www.swansea.ac.uk/lis/historicalcollections/archives/businessarchivesevent/ or contact archives@swansea.ac.uk

Expect the unexpected...

Following on from my post earlier this week on patents, I came across a collection dating between 1825-1890s in the records of Old Castle Tinplate Company.

They don’t contain much informational value, other than the name of the patentee, occupation, brief description of invention, money involved, time period and date. They are, however, visually very striking, written on large parchment, with decorative borders and attached royal seals. 

Surprisingly one of the letters patent was for a Gustav Scheurmann, music publisher of Newgatestreet, London for the invention of ‘improvements in printing music when type is employed’ in 1856. It was unexpected to find that the company would possess, and retain, this patent as it appears to have nothing to do with the business of tinplate. Our first thoughts were that Scheurmann could be one of the company directors, but there was no evidence of this. 

 After doing a little digging, we found reference to Guatav Scheurmann, in 1856, inventing a system of double printing of music, printing the staves and notes separately from moveable type.[1] So, we can presume that this system might have included tin in either the type or the equipment used for the printing.

Unfortunately, it seems the process never took off, and a few years later Gustav Scheurmann was facing bankruptcy: http://www.londongazette.co.uk/issues/22195/pages/4636/page.pdf

 

With some more research, I’m sure we could find out more about Scheurmann and his failed invention, but it does show how business collections have unexpected stories to tell.

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[1] Pg 68 Music engraving and printing: historical and technical treatise William Gamble. Ayer Publishing, 1972

Archives and employability

As part of the ‘Profiting from Powering the World’ project, we are exploring the use of business archives in learning and research and scoping the opportunities that might be available for building the use of business archives into courses. In light of the increased focus on student employability at universities, we are running a pilot project which uses business collections as its subject material. 

Two students are working in the archives for 6 half days over a 6 week period producing web-guides (aimed at other students) for a business collection of their choice.  It was advertised to a wide range of students, not just those who wish to become archivists, as a way to develop (and demonstrate) transferable skills such as time management, reflective analysis, critical thinking, computer literacy etc. The experiences can be used towards a new scheme recently launched at Swansea University called the Swansea Employability Award. We were amazed at the amount of interest we had, with 22 students attending an introductory session, 17 of whom applied, and eventually we interviewed 6 students for the 2 positions.

So far, it is proving a very positive, and mutually beneficial, experience. It strengthens the archive service relationship with university departments and adds value to our services to students and their research at their university. It should lead to a useful web-guide on a business collection, which would hopefully explore its research potential and could increase its use. On a personal level, I had my first experience of interviewing, designing application forms etc. It was a little daunting but I learnt a lot (for example how hard it is to get the right tone for something that lies somewhere between an informal chat and a formal interview)

The student will create a piece of work which may be chosen to feature on the University’s web pages. A large part of the opportunity involves producing a reflective portfolio (on Pebblepad) in which the student reflects on their experience, and the skills developed and gained. They can use it to work towards the Swansea Employability Award, which appears on their university transcript. All of this should have a positive impact on their CV and for future interviews.

Rachael Thomas, one of the students, was ‘pleasantly surprised’ by how interesting the business records were, and found them ‘less daunting’ than she thought she would. Both students have engaged with the documents really well, and have started drawing out themes such as women and finance, industrial disputes and the effect of the demise of a company on the local environment/community. They are working on the records of Old Castle Tin-Plate Company and records of Pascoe Grenfell and Sons (Copper). As they both have different academic backgrounds and research interests, I am really looking forward to reading the web-guides they come up with.  

Patents

At the beginning of this project, I didn't know very much about patents having never had any flash of innovative brilliance myself. I'd also never read Charles Dickens' A Poor Man’s Tale of a Patent. I have read it now; it's a damning insight into the patenting procedure and costs in the Victorian era. I'm still waiting for my flash of brilliance though....

Very basically, a patent gives sole right to a process or invention for a stated period of time (14 years until 1920, 16 years after 1920). It protects the patentee from others using or selling the invention without permission.  

I didn’t think they would have much research potential as I presumed that they would only contain minimal details, to protect from imitations. However, as I started to do more reading, and had a look at some patents, I realise they could be very interesting. The history of patent law is, in itself, fascinating (see http://www.ipo.gov.uk/p-history.htm for a general overview).

Their value, obviously, lies in scientific or technical research, for example tracing the development of a particular technology. They could also be used for family or local history, to find out about particular inventors (patents can generally be searched by number or name).The Intellectual Patent Office adds patent specifications to the Esp@cenet database, so far this dates from 1890 (but not full coverage). The British Library has produced a guide to searching Esp@cenet here. See also the National Archives' pages on 'Inventions: patents and specifications' for where, and how, to search.

DD YIM/3/1/3: No 3695. Date: 15 Sep 1879 Letters Patent: Charles Madge for 14 years 'Improvements in the manufacture of retorts, muffles and pots for reducing zinc and other ores and in the means of protecting the same from the destructive action of heat and slag or ore'

The patents of most interest to me are the ones which have survived in business collections. These are the ones which the business had a particular interest in keeping, most likely because they worked the invention. Alongside financial papers, licenses, minute books etc, they can be a real insight into the technological processes which a company chose to use, areas of special concern at particular times, and the effect the patent had on the company (e.g. monopoly over certain processes, increased productivity or profit).

The records of Vivian and Sons Limited, held at West Glamorgan Archives (the first collection catalogued for Powering the World), contains a few letters patent kept by the company (ref no D/D YIM/3/1) one of which is the image above. The Richard Burton Archives also holds a number of letters patent, patent specifications and related correspondence in the records of Old Castle Tinplate Company (ref no LAC/87/G) and Yorkshire Imperial Metals (ref no LAC/126/F). 

I found the chapter on patents in 'Business Documents: Their origins, sources and uses in historical research' (John Armstrong and Stephanie Jones, 1987) really useful. It details the background behind patents, their uses, limitations, examples of works using them, and how they can be cross referenced with other documents.

Wrexham Lager Company

Interesting story today on the BBC website about the sale, on Ebay, of a Victorian brewery chimney once belonging to a Wrexham brewery company.

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-north-east-wales-15474230

Wrexham was known as a 'lager town' dues to it's good supply of mineral rich water, in the 1860s it was home to 19 collieries. The most famous was the Wrexham Lager Company, registered in 1881, which exported lager around the world. Allegedly, a stock of Wrexham Lager Bottles were found as far away as Khartoum in the Sudan, discovered in General Gordon's palace.

The company was also recently in the news as the lager is set to make a comeback in a new micro-brewery

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/local-news/wrexham/2011/07/15/wrexham-lager-set-to-be-brewed-again-91466-29056513/

The records of Wrexham Lager Company were catalogued as part of the Powering the World project and are available to the public at Wrexham Archives. Highlights include brewing books and promotional material. For more detailed information on the contents of the collection see an earlier post here by Robert Evans who worked on the collection.