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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 June 2012
The preservation and study of unpublished business records has long been one of business history's most distinctive contributions to scholarship. To provide a forum for archivists and historians to share their knowledge of specific archival collections, the Review has commissioned a series of essays on archival history and research opportunities. In this essay, the first in the series, Ms. Florence Bartoshesky, curator of manuscripts and archives at the Harvard Business School's Baker Library, reviews the history of this major collection of business records.
1 Harvard Business School Visiting Committee, Minutes, 11 Jan. 1909, Baker Library Manuscripts and Archives Department (BLMA), Harvard Business School (HBS).
2 Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration, Gay, Edwin F., Dean's Report, 1910–1911 (Cambridge, Mass., 1911), 115–21.Google Scholar
3 Ibid., 1908–1909, 152.
4 Cole, Arthur H., “The Impact of a Large Collection of Business Literature,” Harvard Library Bulletin 15 (April 1967): 181–83Google Scholar; Cole, and Cochran, Thomas C., “Business Manuscripts: A Pressing Problem,” Journal of Economie History 5 (May 1945): 43–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cole, , “Notes on My Early Experiences with the Library of the Harvard Business School,” unpub. MS (12 Nov. 1960)Google Scholar, BLMA; Martin, Thomas P., “The Harvard Commission on Western History,” Harvard Alumni Bulletin 18 (22 March 1916): 468–71Google Scholar; Cole, , “Business Manuscripts: Collection, Handling and Cataloging,” Library Quarterly 8 (Jan. 1938): 93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5 Folders “Library” and “Business Historical Society,” boxes 8 and 26, HBS Administration Subject Files, BLMA; Harvard University, A Survey of the National Campaign for Harvard, 3 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1924)Google Scholar, 1:I-A-1, 2:IV-KA-4.
6 Business Historical Society, “Articles of Agreement” (13 July 1925), 2, Business Historical Society, Inc., Record Book, BLMA.
7 Gras, Norman S. B., “Past, Present and Future of the Business Historical Society,” Bulletin of the Business Historical Society 24 (March 1950): 1–2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8 “Business Historical Society,” Business School Alumni Bulletin 2 (25 Feb. 1920): 75–76; Membership Record, Dec. 1926, Business Historical Society Financial Records, BLMA.
9 Business Historical Society, Inc., Record Book, various board meetings.
10 Cole, Arthur H., “Some Details on the Determination of the Proper Areas of Collecting Activity at Baker Library,” unpub. MS (1960), BLMA.Google Scholar
11 Bulletin of the Business Historical Society, generally throughout the 1920s and 1930s.
12 For a discussion of Edwin Gay's impact on both business history and economic history, see Sass, Steven, “Entrepreneurial Historians and History: An Essay in Organized Intellect” (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1977).Google Scholar
13 Hidy, Ralph W. and Hidy, Muriel E., “Henrietta M. Larson: An Appreciation,” Business History Review 36 (Spring 1962): 6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14 Business Policy—First Half-Year,' Official Register of Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration 24 (31 May 1927): 40; Gras, Norman S. B. and Larson, Henrietta, Casebook in American Business History (New York, 1939).Google Scholar The latter has been superseded recently by Chandler, Alfred D. Jr, and Tedlow, Richard S., The Coming of Managerial Capitalism; A Casebook on the History of American Economic Institutions (Homewood, Ill., 1985).Google Scholar
15 Journal of Economic and Business History, verso to title page of bound volumes.
16 Gras, “Past, Present and Future,” 4.
17 Cole, “Business Manuscripts: Collection, Handling and Cataloging,” 92–114.
18 Hower, Ralph M., “The Preservation of Business Records,” Bulletin of the Business Historical Society 11 (Nov. 1937)Google Scholar, reprinted as a separate pamphlet by the Business Historical Society, 1940 and 1941.
19 Cole, Arthur H., “The Evolution of the Baker Library at the Harvard Business School,” unpub. MS (1967), 9, BLMA.Google Scholar
20 See, for example, Lovett, Robert W., “Business Records,” Harvard Business Review 29 (March 1951): 127–30Google Scholar; “Some Changes in the Handling of Business Records at Baker Library,” American Archivist 19 (Jan. 1956): 39–44; “Storekeeping in a Maine Seacoast Town: Records of the W. G. Sargent Company,” Business History Review 27 (June 1953): 121–23; “Business Manuscripts at Baker Library,” Business History Review 34 (Autumn 1960): 345–55; “Business Manuscripts at Baker Library, 1969–1979,” Business History Review 53 (Autumn 1979): 386–91.
21 For discussions of corporate careers in business history and business archives, see the special issue of The Public Historian 3 (Summer 1981).
