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May I put the opposing point of view to Peter Emmerson? A national or multinational company that is built up out of the merger and amalgamation of smaller and more local enterprises inherits archives which are exactly like those of other businesses which stayed local and which are traditionally placed in a County Record Office. Whitbread's predecessor firms were an integral part of the local economies of the areas where they function, and Whitbread's itself was a significant part of the London economy from the 18th century onwards. Locating the archives of predecessor companies in the areas to which they relate makes them available for study alongside other records which complement them and explain their social and economic context. In the specific case of Whitbread, we already hold other records from many of the predecessor companies from other sources, so the local deposit of their records would reunite fractured archives, and I would guess this is likely to be true elsewhere. By contrast, where they are gathered together in a specialist repository, they may be alongside other records from the same industry, but this is often less significant than a context of other records from the same area. Whilever a company is willing to look after its own records, there are advantages to this, but if it is no longer able or willing to do so, and the archive can be conveniently and logically broken down into the distinct archives of constituent parts, this seems to me a valuable and healthy resolution of the problem. Records relating to a firm after it becomes a conglomerate obviously cannot be broken down in quite the same way, and it seems logical to me for these to be kept with the records of the core business in the area from which the core business sprang, or where its headquarters is situated. Local record offices justify the preservation of archives from the communities they serve on the basis that they are of cultural value to those communities. Collectively, they also form a national network that is of national cultural value. I see no particular reason why the archives of businesses should be treated differently to the archives of other forms of local organisation: do they not pay business rates just as individuals pay Council Tax? Are their records any less worthy of preservation in the public interest? Furthermore, areas of the country with a concentration of the headquarters of national or regional organisations are benefiting from higher business rate income as a result, and it seems not unreasonable that they should bear a proportionately greater share of the cost burden as a result. Certainly this was a view I was happy to live by when I was City Archivist in Birmingham and on the 'receiving end' of the argument. Obviously if a company is in buoyant times and simply chooses not to run an archive, a repository which accepts its records may wish to seek support for the costs those records bring; but that is not an argument I would apply only to corporate depositors. Nick Kingsley ============================== "This e-mail and any attachments are strictly confidential and intended for the addressee only. If you are not the named addressee you must not disclose, copy or take any action in reliance of this transmission and you should notify us as soon as possible. This e-mail and any attachments are believed to be free from viruses but it is your responsibility to carry out all necessary virus checks and Gloucestershire County Council accepts no liability in connection therewith."