Toward a National Collecting Policy for Business History: The View from Baker Library

Abstract

In this article, the curator of manuscripts and archives at the Harvard Business School's Baker Library discusses the opportunities and difficulties confronting present-day archivists as they seek to establish rational collecting policies for their repositories. Ms. Lathrop first describes the past focus of Baker Library's collection decisions and the strengths to which those emphases have led. She then discusses some areas of less comprehensive coverage, as well as the general problems archivists face in dealing with twentieth-century materials. She points out that collecting gaps tend to be replicated among other repositories, a situation leading her to believe that a national collecting policy, developed by both historians and archivists, is necessary to ensure the widest possible documentation of the varieties of American business history.