Translations:BSH Konzernarchiv/19/en
Objects are a further important area of collaboration, with both Bosch and Siemens. Because the BSH Corporate Archive doesn’t have its own collection of objects, any offers or requests regarding such items, either external or internal, have to be passed on to the corporate archives of Bosch or Siemens. These archives check if the object in question is already part of the collection. If not, they decide whether or not it is interesting enough to be added or acquired.
In the short period since the BSH Corporate Archive was established, it has already responded to several hundred internal and external queries. It was also a key internal service provider for BSH’s 50th anniversary celebrations in 2017. On top of this, it has taken over long-term storage activities for important areas of the company, ensuring efficient archiving and rapid retrieval whenever necessary. At the end of 2015, also with the upcoming 50th anniversary of BSH in mind, the first steps were taken toward setting up a “BSH history wiki”. The aim was to make it a key part of the company’s communications activities. All relevant information on the history of BSH and its brands was to be made available in this wiki, in both a German and an English version. It was intended to act as a “shop window” for the BSH Corporate Archive. The BSH history wiki went live in February 2016 and can be viewed by following this link: https://wiki.bsh-group.com/en/wiki/Main_Page By March 2019, the site had already received around 250,000 visits, showing the high level of interest in the company’s history. Much of the wiki’s content was made possible by the thorough preparatory work carried out on the corporate archive. Four years down the line from its first inception, the BSH Corporate Archive has become an important pillar in the company’s corporate communication. It now has an established position within the company, as a service provider and as a guardian of BSH’s company history. All the time and effort devoted to the project since 2014 have been well worthwhile. Alongside ongoing archiving activities and internal service provision, future activities will focus on long-term digital archiving. This topic will become even more important over the coming years and needs to be addressed from both the hardware and software perspectives. The BSH Corporate Archive will use further steps planned at the Bosch corporate archive as a model, taking advantage of any insights gained there. Recording the history of BSH’s international sites could be a further interesting field of activity for the BSH Corporate Archive. At the moment, however, the available resources are inadequate to deal with the intensive on-site research that would be necessary at the various locations. So it would appear that there is no lack of interesting tasks ahead of us.