Preserving the History of Supply Chain and Business Technology Management

Archivists are always concerned when they realize that an administrative unit or an academic department has never transferred any records to the archives. We worry about the institutional memory of Concordia University: in a distant future, what will remain of these units and departments? Of course, one can always find traces of their existence in some meeting minutes (from the University Senate, Board of Governors, or the different Faculty Councils), and they are also mentioned in the University Calendars. However, important questions arise: why have they never deposited anything with us? And are their historical records still sitting in their offices?

In 2023, Records Management and Archives (RMA) reached out to academic departments within the John Molson School of Business from which we had never directly received transfers of records. One of our records management analysts sent a general offer of service: “We’ve noticed that you’ve never deposited your records with us — would you need help doing so?”

One thing we want to disclose: archivists realize that records management can be seen as a real chore. Time and effort are required to sort files, place them into boxes, and inventory them and some small academic departments operate with limited resources and would rather devote them to support faculty members and students. However, RMA has the resources to help them through each of the steps mentioned above - hence our offer of assistance.

The Department of Supply Chain and Business Technology Management was one of the academic departments that responded positively to our outreach appeal campaign. The only item we previously had in our collections from them was a (very cool, Peanuts-themed) course guide dating from 1979. At the time, the department was called the Department of Quantitative Methods (its name changed for the Department of Decision Science and Management Information Systems in 1986 before becoming the Department of Supply Chain and Business Technology Management in 2013).

Our records management analyst facilitated the transfer of departmental meeting minutes dating from 2001 onward, as well as course outlines (syllabi) from 1997 to 2025. Both types of records have high informational and historical value: the course outlines testify to the care Concordia faculty members devote to teaching, while the departmental meeting minutes shed light on the evolution of the department through the administrative decisions made over time. Roughly 2900 digital files (1.2 GB of records) were transferred to our digital vault as well as half a box of paper records.

Of course, archivists always want more: where are the brochures, publications, and other promotional materials produced by the department? What about the photographs taken during the various events organized over the years? The remaining course guides, the newsletters, the annual reports? All these types of records also hold a great historical value and that should be archived regularly. 

However, our approach is a progressive one: now that we’ve established a line of communication with the department, we will work more closely with them in the future and hopefully get more regular deposits of records from them. With this first transfer from the Department of Supply Chain and Business Technology Management to their fonds, we are pleased that there is finally a trace of the records they have produced within our holdings.

Many people underestimate the historical value of the records produced by their unit or department, which is one reason why some records are never deposited in the archives. We can only hope that these important records are still sitting in offices because staff continue to use them. We have also fallen short, in part, by not reaching out sooner to some units and departments from which we’d never received any transfer of records in the past, and by not making the Concordia community more aware of our mission and services. To this day, some units and departments are still unaware that RMA can help them with their archiving. Part of the reasons behind the creation of Boxes and Bitstreams is the improvement of our communications with our various partners and community of researchers.

But we plan on reaching out to more administrative units and academic departments in a near future, hoping they will transfer their historical records. Not only is it RMA’s mission to preserve Concordia’s institutional memory, but our vaults — both physical, and digital (through the Archivematica system) — are also the most secure places to ensure the long-term preservation of records according to best practices.

If you need help with preparing a deposit of your unit’s historical archives or sorting that you have in your cabinets or on your departmental drive, please reach out to us: archives@concordia.ca

Special thanks to Esther Ste-Croix and John Richan for their insight. 

- Eric Côté, Archivist

ChatGPT was used to review some of the syntax of this text.