- About Archives
- About SAA
- Careers
- Education
- Publications
- Advocacy
- Membership
The Business Archives Section (BAS) comprises of archivists active in the work of the Society of American Archivists (SAA) with common interests in business archives management. The Business Archives Section includes corporate, business, and noprofit employees administering and providing access to historical or archival records. The conduct of business for this section is guided by the standing rules maintained on this site.
Business Archives in North America: Invest in Your Future, Understand Your Past provides a brief explanation of business archives and the archivist's role in developing, collecting and maintaining the records of business entities. If you are interested in business archives, this article is a good place to start.
Your settings for receiving emails from the BAS Listserv may have defaulted to 'Daily Digest in April when SAA implemented updates. If you would like to change that to 'Real Time' or 'Weekly Digest' please use the link: https://connect.archivists.org/network/members/profile/myaccount/my-settings?section=subscriptions
2024/2025 Election Results
Vice Chair/Chair Elect: Alison Quirion, Santa Monica Studio
Vice Editor/Editor Elect: Sam Citarella, Tiffany & Co.
Secretary: Stephanie Branas, Best Friends Animal Society
Education Chair: Samantha Bradbeer Stephens, Hallmark Cards, Inc.
Member at Large: Michael Bullington, McDonalds Corporation
Other Steering Committee members include:
Past Chair: Jennifer Henderson, Hershey Community Archives
Chair: Dave Moore, Carhartt
Editor: Jennifer Steinhardt, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
The BAS Steering Committee is pleased to publish the first version of the "Advocating for Business Archives Toolkit". Advocating for one's self and archival collection is a constant effort, and unfortunately there's no silver bullet that will work for every business archives every time. As stated in the 2013 defense of the Georgia State Archives, "Too often, advocacy is effectively crisis management, responding to specfic events. Proactively developing a plan allows time to consider a range of options, find ways to refine the message, and identify and educate a broad range of stakeholders."
Therefore the intent of this page is to provide Business Archives Section (BAS) members with a resource center to allow development of individualized advocacy plans to avert future issues, and if necessary to successfully "win the day". There is a wealth of advocacy information available, and this list is not exhaustive but merely a starting place for you develop your own policies. Materials listed and provided are not endorsed by BAS, but rather provide solid examples for you to consider leveraging.
We welcome your suggestions and additions! Send them to bascontent@gmail.com.
BAS has pages on Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter! Join the conversation and network with your colleagues over social media! Please use these sites to post any stories, articles, job postings or content related to business archives that you run across the web and want to share.
We kindly ask not to use these sites as a platform to solicit or sell products or services.
BAS Newsletter Welcomes Submissions!
The Business Archives Section Quarterly welcomes feature articles of any length exploring the theme-related issue of each quarter as well as any news of events, exhibits, new hires, retirements, or any other news pertinent to BAS members.
| Issue Themes | Submission Deadline |
| Corporate Memory | https://basnewsonline.com/bas-quarterly-vol-1-no-1 |
| Business as Popular History | https://basnewsonline.com/bas-quarterly-vol-1-no-2 |
| Outside of Business (External Audiences) | https://basnewsonline.com/bas-quarterly-vol-1-no-3 |
|
Archival Theory & Business Reality |
|
|
Business Archives on Display |
|
|
Archives in a Pandemic |
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| 2020 BAS Standing Rules | 126.13 KB |
| 2020 Recommended Changes to BAS Standing Rules | 100.31 KB |
| BAS Industry Call on Exhibitions Transcript - April 27, 2020 | 145.05 KB |