ABSTRACT
Business records are rarely generated for the purpose of building a historical archive. A series of decisions and actions must be taken if records are to be preserved as archives for the long term. Once potential historical records have been identified, they must undergo accessioning, appraisal and cataloguing to enable their future use. This chapter focuses on the key activities of deciding which records should be kept, and which should be consigned for disposal, and of influencing others to ensure that comprehensive, high quality archive collections survive to bear witness to past business activities. It then covers the art of describing business archives to professional archival standards, within the context of a corporate or collecting archive. All actions undertaken in acquiring and cataloguing archives should adhere to the archive profession's recognised international code of ethics. The chapter also focuses on the main steps in the creation of catalogues and indexes.
