About us
Founded in 1910, the Swiss Economic Archives (SWA) is today the national competence centre for economic archives and economic history. It is an archive and a documentation centre. It is part of the University Library Basel together with the University Business and Economics Library. It is supported by the Foundation for the Promotion of the Swiss Economic Archives (Stiftung zur Förderung des SWA).
Next events
Past events of the Foundation for the Promotion of the Swiss Economic Archives
27. June 2022: Urban Games: Vom Bubentraum zum erfolgreichen Techunternehmen - Gründer und CEO Basil Weber im Gespräch mit Marlon Rusch
8. Dec. 2021: Führung durch die Ausstellung "Handel im Wandel" - Dr. Daniel Nerlich vom Archiv für Zeitgeschichte AfZ
29. Nov. 2021: Basel im globalen Handel - Inputreferat von PD Dr. Andrea Franc und Gespräch mit Prof. Dr. Tobias Straumann
26. May 2021: Globaler Rohstoffhandel, Vortrag von Lea Haller und Diskussion mit Alexis Schwarzenbach
21. Nov. 2019: Der Verkauf von Syngenta an ChemChina - eine wirtschaftspolitische Beurteilung - Vortrag von Christoph Mäder
18. June 2019: Digitale Transformation bei Novartis – Medizin neu denken - Vortrag von Thorsten Rall / Digitalisierung von Kulturgut - Präsentation des SWA
5. June 2018: Europa und Globalisierungskrise - in memoriam Alfred Bürgin - Referat und Podium mit Rolf Niederhauser, Thomas Maissen, Rolf Soiron und Tobias Straumann
7. Nov. 2017: Zehn Jahre danach - Die grosse Finanzkrise und ihre Folgen - Vortrag von Daniel Zuberbühler
31. May 2017: Schweizer Finanzplatz ohne Bankgeheimnis - Podiumsdiskussion mit Aymo Brunetti und Claude-Alain Margelisch - Leitung: Tobias Straumann
17. Nov. 2016: Zur Rolle von Bildung und Forschung - Vortrag von Willy Schlachter in Baden
23. June 2016: Dialog zwischen Wirtschaftsgeschichte und Wirtschaftsarchiven - Vortrag von Martin Lengwiler
11. Nov. 2015: Die Schweiz und die EU: Wie weiter? Podiumsdiskussion mit Dieter Freiburghaus und Bruno Gehrig, Moderation: Tobias Straumann
10. June 2015: ETH – Ciba – Sandoz – ETH: Vortrag von Adrian Knoepfli über Robert Gnehm
Past theme evenings at the SWA
26. Oktober 2022: Produktionen für Propaganda, Produkte und Professionen: Blicke auf Schweizer Industriefilme
3. Februar 2021: 50 Jahre Frauenstimmrecht: Der Blick auf 100 Jahre Propaganda im Schweizerischen Wirtschaftsarchiv
18. Nov. 2020: Basler Geschichte im Zeitungsausschnitt - die digitalisierte Zeitungsausschnittsammlung des SWA und konkrete Forschungsfragen
31. Oct. 2018: Industriefilm - Ist das einzigartige Kulturerbe des 20. Jahrhunderts noch zu retten?
27. Sept. 2017: Bahnbrechende Erfindungen der Schweizer Wirtschaft
9. June 2017: Schweizer Archivtag im SWA zum Thema Verkehr
5. April 2017: David Ricardos „modernes Buch“ – eine kleine Retrospektive
16. Nov. 2016: Kartografierte Wirtschaft: Blick auf die schönsten Karten des Schweizerischen Wirtschaftsarchivs
18. Nov. 2015: Zur Architektur der Wasserkraft in der Schweiz
19. Nov. 2014: Kaufmännische Aufschreibetechniken und Datenträger von 1750 bis 2014
4. Sept. 2013: Finanzkrise und Energiewende bald Geschichte? Wirtschaftsgeschichte digital mit der neuen Online-Zeitungsausschnittsammlung des SWA
20. June 2012: Hotelarchitektur erzählt Wirtschaftsgeschichte: Präsentation eines einmaligen Architekturplan-Archivs im Schweizerischen Wirtschaftsarchiv
22. June 2011 Convenience Food im Archiv: die Hero AG im Schweizerischen Wirtschaftsarchiv (SWA)
22. Sept. 2010: Das Schweizerische Wirtschaftsarchiv feiert seinen 100. Geburtstag
29. April 2009: Die neue WWZ-Bibliothek und das Schweizerische Wirtschaftsarchiv im Jacob Burckhardt-Haus
Publications about business and economics archives and about the SWA
Amstutz, Irene. Eine Betrachtung über 360 Grad. Wirtschaftsarchive und die Massgaben zur Sicherung und Nutzung. In: Traverse 2023/1, S. 50-66.
Gisler, Johanna. Unternehmensgeschichte und Wirtschaftsarchive in der Schweiz. In: Archiv und Wirtschaft. Nr. 2 (2001), S. 61-71.
Gisler, Johanna; Stettler, Niklaus. Hinweise zur Bearbeitung eines Firmenarchivs und wichtige konservatorische Massnahmen. Basel 2002.
Lüpold, Martin. Ein gut konserviertes Archiv. In: Koellreuter, Isabel; Lüpold, Martin; Schürch, Franziska. Hero - seit 1886 in aller Munde. Von der Konserve zum Convenience Food; hrsg. von der Stiftung Museum Burghalde und dem Schweizerischen Wirtschaftsarchiv. Baden 2011, S. 136-145.
Schweizerisches Wirtschaftsarchiv/Verein schweizerischer Archivarinnen und Archivare (Hg.). Unternehmensarchive – ein Kulturgut? Beiträge zur Arbeitstagung Unternehmensgeschichte und Unternehmensarchive. Baden 2006. Darin enthalten:
- Gisler, Johanna. Oeffentliche Archive und die Sicherung von Unternehmensarchiven, S. 62-78. (pdf)
- Wiesmann, Matthias. Vom Aufspüren gefährdeter Firmenarchive. Beispiele aus dem Schweizerischen Wirtschaftsarchiv, S. 88-92. (pdf)
Literature on the holdings
Gisler, Johanna; Wiesmann, Matthias (Hg.): Fundus. Schweizerisches Wirtschaftsarchiv. Basel 2004.
Joris, Elisabeth; Knoepfli, Adrian. Eine Frau prägt eine Firma. Zur Geschichte von Firma und Familie Feller. Zürich 1996.
Kaiser, Peter; Meier, Bruno. 100 Jahre Usego. Eine Spurensuche. Baden 2007.
Koellreuter, Isabel; Lüpold, Martin; Schürch, Franziska. Hero - seit 1886 in aller Munde. Von der Konserve zum Convenience Food. Hrsg. von der Stiftung Museum Burghalde und dem Schweizerischen Wirtschaftsarchiv. Baden 2011.
König, Mario. Von der wahren Nationalität der Waren. Schweizerische Wirtschaftspropaganda im 20. Jahrhundert. In: Pellin, Elio; Ryter, Elisabeth. Weiss auf Rot. Das Schweizer Kreuz zwischen nationaler Identität und Corporate Identity. Eine Publikation der Hochschule der Künste Bern HKB. Zürich 2004, S. 129-141.
Schweizerisches Wirtschaftsarchiv (Hg.). Mode, Macht & Marketing. Propaganda-Aktivitäten der Basler Seidenbandfabrikanten anfangs des 20. Jahrhunderts - eine Ausstellung zum 100jährigen Jubiläum. Text: Roman Wild; Red.: Matthias Wiesmann. Basel 2010.
Stettler, Niklaus; Haenger, Peter; Labhardt, Robert. Baumwolle, Sklaven und Kredite. Die Basler Welthandelsfirma Christoph Burckhardt & Cie. in revolutionärer Zeit (1789-1815). Basel 2004.
Stettler, Niklaus. Archivbestände des Schweizerischen Wirtschaftsarchivs zu den Beziehungen Schweiz - Dritte Welt. In: Traverse 1998/2, S. 134-138.
Wiesmann, Matthias. Übersicht über die Bestände des SWA zur Seidenbandindustrie in der Region Basel. Basel 2003.
The SWA has existed since 1910. The title "Sammeln - ordnen - vermitteln: SWA Schweizerisches Wirtschaftsarchiv 1910-2010", a handy and beautifully illustrated festschrift, provides a historical overview. The festschrift recounts why a Swiss economic archive was founded in 1910 and what challenges the employees have faced over the past 100 years. The intensive support of users, the acquisition of new holdings and space problems are the most important constants of this development.
Why a Swiss economic archive?
Founded in 1910 by Basel personalities from business, politics and culture, the Swiss Economic Archives (SWA) fulfilled two functions from the start: providing business and the public with current business and economic information and the collection of archives from private business.
The "Archiv für Schweizerische Wirtschaftskunde und Wirtschaftsgeschichte" was founded on 12 October, 1910 by resolution of the government council of Basel-Stadt under the abbreviated name "Schweizerisches Wirtschaftsarchiv (SWA)" as a department of the State Archives. The State Archivist Rudolf Wackernagel had, however, also taken on non-state archives since 1877 and created an extensive collection of printed matter, which was the starting point for the current document collection.
Independence
Under the first full-time head of the SWA, Prof. Dr. Fritz Mangold (1871 – 1944), full professor of statistics and a member of Basel’s government council, the SWA was separated from the state archives in the early 1920s. However, it remained in the Department of the Interior of the Canton of Basel-Stadt.
Even after the move to the newly built Kollegienhaus of the university in 1939, there was still an acute shortage of space for users and holdings. In order to better facilitate its mission in the education and research sectors, the SWA was separated from the Department of the Interior in 1943 and was placed under the Department of Education. As a result, the SWA became less and less an archive in the traditional sense. The company and association archives lost their importance, and the focus of activity shifted increasingly towards becoming a documentation centre and special library.
Affiliation to the University Library
In 1976 the SWA became affiliated to the Public Library of the University of Basel (UB) while maintaining its independence. In 1988 it merged with the departmental library for economics and social sciences, which was located in the newly-opened Wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Zentrum of the University of Basel (WWZ) at the Rosshof on Petersgraben. The new institution operated under the double name “WWZ-Bibliothek/Schweizerisches Wirtschaftsarchiv".
Since then, the historical archives have again gained in importance, which has led to a doubling of its holdings since 1993. In addition, the individual titles in the document collection could be re-catalogued for online access, as were old periodicals, and access to the subject documentation was modernised thanks to a new classification scheme.
In February 2009, the WWZ-Bibliothek and the SWA moved together with the Faculty of Business and Economics from the Rosshof on Petersgraben to the Jacob Burckhardt-Haus near the Bahnhof SBB. As part of the standardisation of the names of University Library branches, in 2013 it was renamed "Universitätsbibliothek Wirtschaft - Schweizerisches Wirtschaftsarchiv" (University Business and Economics Library – Swiss Economic Archives) or abbreviated, "UB Wirtschaft - SWA".
Founded over a hundred years ago, the SWA today constitutes a branch of the University Library together with the special library for economics and social sciences (University Business and Economics Library). The Foundation for the Promotion of the Swiss Economic Archives (Stiftung zur Förderung des Schweizerischen Wirtschaftsarchivs), established in 1963, functions as an interface to private business and helps secure private archive collections.
The collection and mediation mandate of the SWA, which is based on the 1938 regulations for the use of the Swiss Economic Archives in Basel, is derived from the tasks of the sponsors (University of Basel, Basel University Library) and their strategies.
Digitisation initiative
Since the 2010s, there has been a digitisation push. Firstly, digital documents have since been collected for the economic documentation. Secondly, the retro-digitisation of older holdings was started. Thirdly, online search tools were developed, and all holdings, especially the economic archives, were systematically indexed electronically.
Digital collections and retro-digitisation
Online publications were already collected for the thematic documentation from 2008, this innovation also took place in documentation on companies and organisations in 2013.
Since 2013, the newspaper clipping collection has been kept electronically. The newspaper articles were clipped from the e-papers and made available online; later on, the clippings were selected from the swiss media database. Following this, a long-term project started in 2017: the retro-digitisation of the approx. 2.5 million historical newspaper clippings (period 1850-2012).
As part of the "Web Archive Switzerland" project, the SWA has been reporting websites of companies and business associations to the National Library for archiving since 2014.
Starting in 2014, selected individual documents, files or entire holdings from the economic archives (private archives) are being systematically digitised. They are made accessible via the catalogue and on the e-manuscripta platform.
In 2018, a project was launched to preserve and digitise the unique collection of industrial films. By 2023, around 75 industrial films are accessible on the Memobase platform.
In 2019, journals from the SWA were digitised for the first time.
Online search interfaces
The development of new search interfaces for the economic documentation and the economic archives (2010) as well as a search portal for the newspaper clipping collection (2013, 2020) were important developments in the mediation of the holdings. The Standard Thesaurus Wirtschaft (STW) was introduced as vocabulary and systematics. Since 2016, all document collections from the economic documentation and the records from the economic archives can be ordered online.
Since 2010, the economic archive holdings have been recorded in a special database within the library system of the IDS Basel Bern network already in use; from 2012, this database was further developed into the Switzerland-wide HAN catalogue (Manuscripts, Archives and Bequests) under the leadership of the UB Basel; by 2020, the SWA had integrated its old, typewritten finding aids and more recent indexes into this catalogue.
The SWA helped to develop the archival portal arCHeco for business archives in Switzerland as early as 2000. In the meantime, arCHeco has already been fundamentally renewed twice (2009-2011 and 2019). Currently, it is available in the open-source software AtoM for comprehensive research and also provides information on company archives that are not located in public institutions.
In 2020, the website, which dates back to 2008, was renewed; websites are fundamental communication tools for information service providers such as archives. The SWA was given its own site, independent of the UB Wirtschaft. The first website of the WWZ library and the SWA went online in 1995.
From the end of 2020, the entire catalogue data of the SWA has its home in the new, country-wide library system of SLSP with the swisscovery catalogue interface. The HAN catalogue is replaced by the swisscollections metacatalogue in 2021.
Almost even more important for the SWA are its own search tools: The search portal for newspaper cuttings makes the digitised and the digitally collected newspaper cuttings accessible (since 2020). As of 2023, already half of the phyisical newspaper cuttings have been digitised.
Since 2023, the new search portal "SWA Search" allows searching for all SWA holdings under one interface and complements the swisscovery catalogue and the swisscollections metacatalogue.
Last but not least, the SWA will be able to use the digital long-term archive of the University Library of Basel from 2023.