NEWS FROM THE INQUIRE CAPITALISM TEAM
The Inquire Capitalism database seeks to collect and curate information about company archives and gather it in one place. As of the beginning of 2021, the library contains over 400 entries with information about companies’ historical archives. It documents the location of the business records, scholarship related to the companies’ history, and links to historical data that exist about those companies on the web. During Spring 2021 semester, two new interns have joined the team and are both curating previously collected data as well as conducting research online to expand the reach of the database (more on pages 2 and 3).
The Inquire Capitalism database is open for contributions. For more information contact Professor Sean Adams, director of the Inquire Capitalism Program at the University of Florida (spadams@ufl.edu).
Look forward to this blog’s next issue featuring Associate Professor of Management Marcelo Bucheli (Gies College of Business, the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) talking about his experience researching at the archives of Chiquita in Colombia.
ARTICLE ROUNDUP
In 1937 artists, writers, and musicians were part of the New Deal. Does the post-COVID recovery program need to include historians?
An Open Access book sponsored by the European Association of Banking History (eabh) Social Aims of Finance Rediscovering varieties of credit in financial archives
Connect with the h-NET & MSU Press forum Feeding the Elephant to know all about what it takes to publish and promote an academic book.
Internships in Digital Business History
Tamsyn Butler started her internship in Digital Business History in January 2021. She is part of the first cohort of undergraduate interns collaborating in the project. Tamsyn explains that she is “a second-year student at the University of Florida studying economics and history. Within my history major, I mostly focus on the cultural history of the 19th to 21st century United States and Europe, but I have recently been studying the revolutions and enlightenment histories of 18th century Europe.” Tamsyn’s first encounter with the study of capitalism in a historical perspective
was while enrolled in Professor Sean Adams’ History of American Capitalism course. There is where she also learned about the opportunity of interning for the project to create the database Inquire Capitalism. Tamsyn assures that her “interest in the internship grew as I studied more about corporate history and how companies have evolved throughout the various stages of American capitalism.”
Other reasons she got interested in pursuing this opportunity were her experience as “an Academic Course Designer for a television history course. In this position, I worked alongside a UF history professor and a team of students to research scholarship; devise course assignments, example essays, and modules, and create an informative and visually appealing course layout.”
Now she is excited to learn more about the “intricacies of data collection through archive research, data identification, and inputting various information into the database.” The internship in Digital Business History will also introduce Tamsyn to bibliographic research, conducting interviews and project
outreach, all useful skills to create other public and digital history projects and to succeed in the job market.
Jeffrey Hayden (JT) started his internship in Digital Business History in January 2021. He is also a double major at the University of Florida—he is “a senior in History and International Studies with a minor in Arabic Studies.” Regarding his academic interests and goals, after he graduates, he adds, “I love history and hope to teach Middle Eastern History at the university level after graduate school. I’m currently applying to Ph.D. programs in History and Middle Eastern Studies and plan to focus on modern Iraqi or Gulf history.” He applied to the Inquire Capitalism program internship after having worked in other “digital history projects for a Middle Eastern History course a few semesters ago,” where he used “tools like ArcGIS, Omeka, Storymap and Timeline.” He also worked with “SONGS on the “Border-walls, Sea-walls, Fire-walls” lecture series.” The skills he learned in this class and projects and his interest in gaining “experience with archive [digital] curation” made him apply.
The team of the Inquire Capitalism database project started reviewing information on company archives and access to business records during the first month of the internship. JT has been “looking up companies, double-checking available archives, and looking for every scrap of detail” about the history of some US corporations. In the coming months, he is looking forward to learning more about how a corporate archive comes about and some of these businesses’ history.