The Exchange

We are saddened to report the death of Michael Nash, director of the Tamiment Library at New York University and long-time chief curator of collections at the Hagley Museum and Library (1982-2002). Michael died unexpectedly of a heart attack on July 24, 2012. As his colleague at Hagley and BHC Secretary-Treasurer Roger Horowitz remembers, He touched many people in the business history world through his interest in history, and even more benefited (and continue to benefit) from his talents because of his extraordinary acquisitions of material for the Hagley archives. The major collections we obtained on Mike's watch included Avon, Seagram, Sperry-Univac, PSFS (Philadelphia Savings Fund Society), Remington Rand, RCA-Camden, the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, and MCI. He also recruited many smaller collections, and expanded our relationships with companies whose records continued to come here while Mike was in charge, such as DuPont a...

The Economic and Business History Society (EBHS) has issued a call for papers for its 38th annual meeting, which will take place in Baltimore, Md., on May 23-25, 2013. Proposals for presentations or complete panels on any aspect of economic or business history are welcome.     Proposals should include an abstract of no more than 500 words, a brief curriculum vita, postal and email addresses, and telephone and fax numbers. Submissions from graduate students and non-academic affiliates are welcome.    Proposals may be submitted through the EBHS website , by email to ebhs2013@ebhsoc.org , or to the program chair by postal mail: Dr. Duncan Philip Connors, Lecturer in Oil and Gas Management, Geography, Environment and Disaster Management, George Eliot Building, Coventry University, Priory Street, Coventry, England CV1 5FB The deadline for submission of proposals is February 15, 2013 . Please see the EBHS website for more details.

The program for the upcoming meeting of the European Business History Association , which will be held in conjunction with the Business History Society of Japan at the EHESS in Paris from August 30 to September 1, 2012, has now been posted. The theme of the conference is "Business Enterprises and the Tensions between Global and Local." With over 300 papers, the program is displayed by sessions, which can be expanded to see the individual paper titles and presenters. There is also an alphabetical list of participants , with their sessions noted.   The conference website also has a great deal of additional information: about registration, accommodations, travel, and so forth.

The European Association for Banking and Financial History (EABH) and the School of Economics and Business at the University of Sarajevo announce a workshop on "Business in between Cultures: The Development of Islamic Finance." The meeting will take place on November 15-16, 2012, in Sarajevo, Bosnia Herzegovina.    According to the call for papers, The rise of Islamic finance in modern financial markets offers an alternative vision for economic affairs, premised on the ethics and value system of classical Islamic law. Despite the seeming incongruity between modern financial markets and classical religious law, Islamic finance is largely seen as a viable and successful financial industry. Evidence of this success can be seen in the industry’s representation in over 105 jurisdictions across the globe, ranging from the Arab Gulf states to Malaysia and even into countries such as the United Kingdom, France, Luxembourg, and Bosnia, among many others. . . . This conference aim...

The Economic & Business History Society has recently retooled its website and journal, and has launched a presence on Facebook, Economic and Business History News . The "News" site is "an open access Facebook forum to publish news and calls for papers related to economic and business history." Readers must be Facebook members to access "News" content.    The EBHS journal, Essays in Economic & Business History , has a new editor, an expanded editorial board, and an open access policy for readers. Journal content is searchable or can be browsed by issue, author, or article title.    Those interested can learn more about EBHS activities on the Society's website. Hat tip to The Past Speaks (Andrew Smith)

The Business History Conference announces its search for editor of Enterprise & Society: The International Journal of Business History . Published by Oxford University Press, Enterprise & Society is one of the world's leading journals in business history. Interdisciplinary in approach and international in scope, it offers a forum for research on the historical relations between businesses and their larger political, cultural, institutional, social, and economic contexts.    The new editor will succeed the current editor, Philip Scranton of Rutgers University, whose final issue will be December 2014. The new editor's term starts in January 2015, runs for four years, and is renewable. Given the prevalence of electronic publication and electronic data-transmission tools (including the ScholarOne™ journal publication management system), applications from individuals outside of the United States are encouraged.    Prospective applicants are encouraged ...

The Library of the London School of Economics and Political Science has digitized a number of its holdings to create on-line exhibitions . Highlights include materials on Beatrice and Sidney Webb ( "Webbs on the Web" ), which feature Beatrice Webb's diary, papers of the Fabian Society, and a number of photographs; text and photographs from Street Life in London (John Thomson and Adolphe Smith, 1877), detailing the lives of the London poor; and Political and Tariff Reform Posters , a collection of 88 posters from 1892 to 1910.    The LSE site is also the home of the Charles Booth Online Archive , containing the original records from Booth's survey into life and labor in London, 1886-1903.    The LSE Archives publishes a blog, "Out of the Box," devoted to news of its holdings and updates on digitization projects

From the EABH: Because a common urgency for harmonisation of international legislation on financial archiving preservation has arisen, the European Association for Banking and Financial History (EABH) will organize a series of workshops to compile a survey on a European level regarding this subject. The general topic of the first workshop will place special emphasis on the legal periods for data retention and information of the financial sector in Austria, the Benelux countries, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Poland, Slovakia, and Switzerland. Further workshops, which will elaborate on Great Britain, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Malta, Cyprus, Turkey, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Iceland, the Baltic Republics, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Slovenia, are scheduled to take place in 2013. The series of workshops will provide the groundwork for a comparative approach for a Conference on Archival Legislation Harmonisation in Europe in 2...

The journal Business History has issued a call for papers for a special issue titled "New Business History?" to be guest edited by David Higgins of the University of York and Abe de Jong of Erasmus University. The call for papers states, This special issue aims to invoke a discussion about empirical research in business history. We advocate that the current typical approach in business history – dominantly case study analysis – maintains its prominent position, but the purpose and relevance of this type of research in the scientific method for business history is made more explicit. Moreover, we propose the application of additional empirical approaches in business history, which specifically aim to develop theory and test hypotheses. . . . We perceive opportunities for scientific explanations in business history, which are enhanced by considering the circle of knowledge creation where theory is confronted with empirical evidence and empirical observations feed into theor...

The Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) has now posted the program for its next annual meeting, which will take place at the Copenhagen Business School on October 4-7, 2012. The program is available in both summary form (session titles) and in greater detail . Among the many business historians on the program are Philip Scranton, Thomas Haigh, Daryl Hafter, Timo Myllyntaus, Lee Vinsel, Jonathan Coopersmith, David Hounshell, Lars Heide, Courtney Fullilove, and Eric Hintz.    The SHOT meeting website also includes links for on-line registration, hotel information, special events, and a wealth of detail about Copenhagen.

" The Chamber of Commerce of New York " is a public online exhibition created by Columbia University's Rare Book & Manuscript Library (RBML). As they describe it, This exhibit provides a rich visual guide to the New York Chamber of Commerce and Industry Records collection in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Organized thematically, it showcases the varied business that occupied the New York Chamber of Commerce over its more than two hundred years of operation. The Chamber's promotion of New York industry and infrastructure, role in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, attempts to shape outreach by sponsoring civic memorials, conservation work it undertook in the Adirondacks, and many other activities are all represented here. Letters, photographs, maps, internal records, and publications produced by the Chamber and its functionaries are augmented by extensive commentary to illustrate a story that touches on most aspects of New York State's business a...

The Newberry Library in Chicago is the repository for important U.S. railroad records such as those of the Chicago, Burlington, & Quincy Railroad Company and the Illinois Central Railroad Company, as well as the Pullman Company Records. With a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the library is in the process of cataloging and digitizing the massive CB&Q records. They have created a blog to chronicle the progress of this effort, featuring a large number of documents and images. Entitled "Everywhere West: Preserving and Enhancing Access to the Records of the Chicago, Burlington, & Quincy Railroad Company," the blog presents segments of the collection with commentary by the curators working on the project, as well as occasional guests.    For more information about railroad archives at the Newberry, see their research guide on the subject.   

"Muck and Brass: Money and Finance in Victorian Britain," a collaborative event sponsored by the British Association for Victorian Studies, the Economic History Society, and the Social History Society, will be hosted by the Leeds Centre for Victorian Studies on November 10, 2012.    Papers from social, cultural, and economic historians and literary scholars on most aspects of Victorian finance, commercialism, economic activity, materialism, and money will be welcome. For a complete list of suggested themes, please see the full call for papers .    Keynote speakers will be Ranald Michie and Jannette Rutterford.    Those interesting in presenting papers should send an abstract of 250-300 words to Donna Loftus ( d.loftus@open.ac.uk ) and Rosemary Mitchell ( r.mitchell@leedstrinity.ac.uk ) by July 13, 2012 .