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IBM Corporate Archives
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IBM Corporate Archives

LS 119 SOMC
Route 100
Somers, NY 10589

Contact: Paul C. Lasewicz, Corporate Archivist

An IBM archive facility

Telephone: 914-766-0611. Reference requests: 914-766-0612

Email: lasewicp@us.ibm.com

Website: http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history

Conditions of Access

Public access is limited and on a case-by-case basis, as resources allow.

Holdings

1890-present; bulk dates, 1920-1985

Volumes

13,000 linear feet of paper-based records, 300,000 still images, 5000 moving image titles, and more than 2,000 business machines and components.

Overview

Equipment in IBM's archive

The IBM Corporate Archives is an internally-focused heritage function with a mission to collect, preserve, and provide access to the information IBM needs to meet its long-term business, legal, and historical needs. The Archives supports a wide range of IBM’s domestic and international business activities, including communications, marketing and sales, client relations, litigation, and intellectual property. The Archives also manages the IBM History web site, which attracted more than 1.8 million visits for the year ending July, 2008.

The IBM Archives first began in 1964 when the company hired a single archivist to manage a large but loose collection of historical records as part of a larger records management initiative. A later white paper by an academic consultant recommended an even stronger emphasis be placed on preserving the company’s historical legacy, and spurred the decision to create a separate Archives department in 1974.

The Archives collection documents the growth and development of one of the world's leading technology companies. Strengths of the collection include the papers of Thomas J. Watson Sr. and Thomas J. Watson Jr., corporate communications materials (press releases, publications, advertisements), product documentation (marketing, technical manuals), photographs, and audio visual materials. Also of note is an extensive collection of precision business equipment ranging from 17th-century adding machines to 19th-century clocks to 20th-century computers. Current Archives focus is directed at increasing physical and intellectual control over the collection in order to improve proactive provision of archival content.

Commentary

IBM archive records

Much of what corporate archives do best is hidden under the covers. We are often like those old BASF commercials – "We don't make the product, we make the product better." That archival content provides value to corporate activities is unquestioned. But it's hard to quantify that value. And in the modern corporate environment, being unable to quantify the value a function brings to the table creates a dangerous exposure. Whether an archives survives that exposure comes down to a series of "depends." It depends on the company’s culture. It depends on where the archives is placed organizationally. It depends on the individual executive. It depends on the current business cycle. That's a lot of "depends."

Other kinds of institutional archives rarely have this exposure. Nobody ever says, why have a government archives? Nobody ever says, why have a university archives? Nobody ever says, why have historical society archives? Those archives have missions that are self-evident. They don't have to worry about the ‘depends’ routinely challenging their very existence.

But there is no self-evident reason why a corporation has to have an archives. And so, unlike its institutional cousins, a corporate archives has to defend its existence by word and deed. It’s a constant, even daily battle to demonstrate value, to win influential friends, and to avoid making influential enemies. And even then that might not be enough. In an environment where companies dump profitable operations that are not quite profitable enough, they don't think twice about eliminating non-revenue generating corporate functions...even if they are acknowledged as having value. It's not enough to demonstrate value in a corporation today...that value now has to be strategic. It has to be considered core to the institution. And frankly, very few corporations consider their history and heritage as core.

An area in IBM's archive facility

Now, there are a lot of ways a corporate archives can add strategic, core value. But the problem is that it is rarely funded well enough to contribute in all the ways it potentially could. Given that, a corporate archives is faced with two choices – first, to stretch its resources and try to do it all and justify its existence in every way possible, with potential negative impacts to effectiveness, quality of work, and staff sanity? Or try to focus on a few high visibility, high return objectives, thereby improving quality, enhancing reputation, adding value, and preserving sanity? Not surprisingly, the latter – a narrowed focus, a tactical application of skills and effort – is the path most corporate archives take. An informal survey of major corporate archives this summer identifies that their primary users are predominantly public-facing functions like Communications and Marketing, and deep pocket functions like Litigation and Intellectual Property. These are all functions where an archives can be legitimately positioned as core to their operations. So it's logical that so many existing corporate archives have hitched their wagons to these organizations.

But even these targeted strategies aren't fool proof. Even the best laid plans of the most viable corporate archives are subject to all those "depends" mentioned earlier - culture, organization, individual executives, and business cycles. These depends are subject to change without notice, so the well-prepared corporate archives must be ready to adapt to changing circumstances. They must be aware of a variety of value equations, and know how to swiftly change direction and adopt the strategy that best fits current circumstances. Ultimately, the end game for any corporate archives is survival. Because every time a corporate archives is eliminated, we all lose – the profession, the company, and the future.

COMMENTARY

Corporate Archives Are Different

Paul Lasewicz

Note: The author's views are expressly his own, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the IBM Corporation or the IT History Society.