Digitising archival records : Benefits and challenges for a large professional accounting association
- Authors: Keneley, Monica , Potter, Brad , West, Brian , Cobbin, Phillip , Chang, Steven
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Archivaria Vol. 2016, no. 81 (2016), p. 75-100
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: With antecedents extending to 1886, CPA Australia is one of the world’s most significant professional accounting associations. Reflective of its long history and widespread influence, the organization holds an extensive and diverse archive that evidences both its own development and the general evolution of accounting and business practices. This article presents a case study of a project to digitize selected aspects of this archive. Informed by perspectives on managing archives in the digital era, the benefits and challenges of digitization are presented. A key benefit was enabling access to digital images while preserving rare and fragile original records and documents. However, challenges arose in prioritizing the items for digitization, and this necessitated the development of a model, taking the form of a decision matrix. The CPA Australia case study will be informative for other organizations seeking to use digitization as a means to overcome the dilemma associated with providing access to archival materials while also ensuring their preservation. © 2016, Association of Canadian Archivists. All rights reserved.
Enhancing the accessibility of accounting and business archives: The role of technology in informing research in accounting and business
- Authors: Cobbin, Phillip , Dean, Graeme , Esslemont, Cameron , Ferguson, Patrick , Keneley, Monica , Potter, Brad , West, Brian
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Abacus-a Journal of Accounting Finance and Business Studies Vol. 49, no. 3 (September 2013), p. 396-422
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: The application of advanced digitization technologies to accounting and business archives has created new opportunities for accounting and business historians. The joint American Accounting Association and European Accounting Association Task Force (2006-2010) that examined digitization confirmed this. This paper explores these opportunities, along with some attendant challenges and cautions, with reference to the digitization of two significant archives located in Australia. The first is the archive of CPA Australia, a professional accounting association that has its beginnings in 1886 and which today has over 132,000 members. The second is the archive accumulated by the pre-eminent accounting scholar Raymond Chambers during his long and extraordinarily productive tenure at the University of Sydney. Studies of surviving business records, biography and institutional history provide examples of scholarship that is enabled by digitization technology and which has the capacity to inform contemporary issues and debates.
- Description: C1