Businesses

Preserving Scotland's Business History

When Sydney Checkland was appointed the University's Professor of Economic History in 1957, he began collecting historical business records before they were lost forever.  Among his earliest acquisitions were the records of William Dixon Ltd, coal and iron masters with mines all over the central belt and the shipbuilders, William Denny, who influenced so much of the world's engineering.

Checkland's prime motive in collecting was to support the University's academic research but he also wanted to ensure that Scotland's important contribution to world business would be forever remembered and documented.

The University is now custodian of over 5 linear kilometres of archives and employs a team of professionals to care for and make accessible these irreplaceable resources.  However our role has developed much further than Checkland could have anticipated.

We no longer just store records and give access to worthy professors - we provide all manner of archive services.  Our experienced staff have researched and published histories on behalf of a wide range of organisations (e.g House of Fraser, Barr & Stroud, Beardmores, Standard Life, Trustee Savings Bank, Glasgow Royal Infirmary and the University of Glasgow).

We have catalogued the archives of everything from sole traders to multinationals and provided a historical enquiry service for the academic and business communities, and the public and media alike.

We now work in partnership with the business community, University's Centre for Business History in Scotland, the Business Archive Council of Scotland and the National Archives of Scotland to ensure Scotland's written business heritage is documented for future generations.