Corporate Archives

When you see the word corporate, what does it make you think of? It makes me think of a stuffy office and an organization focused only on a business and not the people. Would you be surprised to know there are corporate archivists? Today in my class, we had a speaker talk about working as a corporate archivists. When working as a corporate archivist, the archivist will focus on the corporate office they work for. For example, our speaker works for Nationwide Insurance so all of her work focuses on Nationwide. Through the archives, she is able to keep track of records from the beginning of the company. These records can include documents from company picnics to personal files to records. Because of all the archives, the archivists is able to create exhibits for the company. She set up an exhibit based off a facebook profile and used records from the 50s and 60s to set up the exhibit. This got her coworkers interested in the history of Nationwide and of Columbus, Ohio where headquarters is located. Along with creating exhibits, she has created an intra-office blog where she finds items from the archives that relate to events going on in the office. After listening to the speaker, it makes corporate archives sound interesting. Just another thing to consider as I work my way into a career.