Distilling the Past: Cataloguing the Records of Whyte & Mackay

Abstract

The Whyte & Mackay collection was accessioned in 2016 and is held as part of the University of Glasgow’s Archives and Special Collections’ Scottish Business Archive, which already managed a smaller number of Whyte & Mackay records deposited in the 1990s and has an ongoing agreement with Whyte & Mackay for the management of its corporate archive. The collection captures almost 200 years of distilling history in Scotland, and at the time of deposit ran to over 60 linear metres of material with records covering corporate governance; finance; sales; correspondence; staff; production; plant and property; promotion and public relations.  This article will outline the ways in which we utilised the functionality of our collection management system, EMu, to catalogue an extensive set of business records, covering multiple companies with complex interlinked relationships.