BUSINESS RECORDS FOR The FUTURE

There is a certain lack of reality about our approach to the preservation of business records. We are only too eager to discuss the academic, archival problems, but singularly reluctant to face the more pressing truth—that the overwhelming majority of business men have not the foggiest notion of the importance of these records to them, and consequently are quite unaware of the need to preserve them. Why should they show any concern? After all, a business man's interests lie in the present and the future, not in the past. His job is to grapple with new ideas, not with old papers. And, in any case, these old papers take up shelf space which becomes progressively more expensive as site values rise. Why keep all this lumber? To heave it all out is, at first sight, the cheapest solution. Consequently, as office accommodation becomes more valuable, the heaving process continues apace while the faithful discuss the technicalities of preservation on the quite unfounded assumption that most business men are becoming converts to preservation. We have got our priorities wrong. We should be spending much more of our time in trying to persuade the owners of business records that there is gain to them in keeping a carefully selected portion of their old papers for historical purposes. A great deal of evangelism is called for before we can spend the greater part of our time discussing just how these records should be preserved.