The Evolution of Recordkeeping at the Hudsonâs Bay Company

Archivaria 66 ness, particularly in terms of its longevity, its national impact, and its devotion to its records.The company has maintained a coherent records system for over three hundred years, systematically creating, managing, and preserving its records.Many of these records have been preserved thanks to the policies of early management, who created and kept records because they were considered essential for doing business, and successive generations of management who continued to centralize and safeguard the Company' s records.The resulting archival legacy consists of more than three thousand linear metres of textual records, one hundred and thirty thousand photographs, twelve thousand maps, charts and architectural plans, approximately 1,350 prints, drawings, paintings and calendars, as well as sound recordings and moving images.Recording the involvement of HBC in the fur trade, in North American exploration, in the development of Canada, and in the growth of its Canadian retail empire, these records document the company' s decisionmaking, communications, accounts and transactions, and employees.They also provide valuable information about the various territories in which it operated and the people with whom it came into contact.The world significance and uniqueness of the Hudson' s Bay Company Archives (HBCA) is evidenced by their recognition and inclusion in the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Or ganizations Memory of the World Registry. 1 The story of HBC' s lengthy ef fort to develop record-keeping and archival policy, illustrates the evolution and growing challenge and complexity of recordkeeping, particularly over the course of the twentieth century, as well as the evolving relationship of records management and archives.It also reflects an emer ging awareness of the separate but interconnected records management and archival functions.It is a fascinating story , and one that has been approached from a variety of perspectives and degrees of detail, beginning with a series of articles in the 1930s written by HBC' s first archivist and published in the Company' s newsletter, describing the creation and or ganization of the archives, and culminating in Deidre Simmons' s exhaustive and detailed treatise on the history of the Hudson' s Bay Company Archives.2 The various articles produced by archives staf f about the Company' s archives, 1 In 2006, 2,670 researchers used the archives on-site in addition to the twelve hundred mail and Internet reference questions received by the archives.The HBCA library contains over ten thousand titles on HBC. 2 R.H.G.Leveson Gower , "The Archives of the Hudson' s Bay Company ," The Beaver (December 1933), pp.40-42, 64; Arthur S. Morton, "The Business Methods of the Archives of the Hudson's Bay Company," Annual Report (Ottawa, 1938); Joan Craig, "Three Hundred Years of Records," The Beaver (Autumn 1970), pp.65-70; Alex Ross and Anne Morton, "The Hudson's Bay Company and Its Archives," Business Archives 51 (1985), pp.17-39;Archivaria, The Journal of the Association of Canadian Archivists -All rights reserved initially served to provide internal awareness of the archives but later informed researchers and the archival community about the scope and research potential of the holdings.In 1970, on the occasion of the Company' s tercentenary, HBC archivist Joan Craig produced the first, brief historical overview of the creation and management of HBC's archives to illuminate the Company's announcement that it was making all of its records up to 1900 available for research to accredited students (previously , only records up to 1870 had been accessible).More recent studies have added to archival scholarship through documentary analyses, administrative histories, public program assessments, and the role of archives in public relations.3 Deidre Simmons's most recent work about the Hudson' s Bay Company Archives, Keepers of The Record, situates the development and function of the Archives within the broad context of the history of HBC, Canada, and Great Britain.She paints a vivid picture of record-keeping practices in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, explains why the Company created and maintained records for more than three centuries, and gives insight into the growing recognition of the historical significance of the Company' s records and the resulting shift in attitudes toward access and use.Even though much has been written about the history of HBC and of the development and use of the Hudson's Bay Company Archives, there has been little discussion about twentieth-century records management practices at HBC, or for that matter , similar practices within the Canadian private sector .Therefore, this paper focuses on the evolution of the modern records management program at HBC, illustrating the growing challenge and complexity of recordkeeping in the twentieth century and the barriers to implementing solutions.

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