The archives of companies, organisations, and individuals are searchable in the search portal swisscollections.
swisscollections is your gateway to historical and modern collections in Swiss libaries and archives.

All the archives can also be found in the search portal swisscovery Basel. For orders, you will always use swisscovery.
swisscovery Basel is the catalogue of the Basel library network.

Search for a collection and its structure

An overview of the structure and order of the indexed archive collections can be found in the tectonics of archives in swisscollections. You can filter the search results by facets.

All archive collections can be found in our search portal SWA Search. Please use the facet "object type" ("Archivmaterial..."), und the facet "level". The facet "Hierarchy/Context" allows an overview of the structure and order of the archive collections.

Furthermore, the archival fonds can be found in the register of economic archives in Switzerland arCHeco.

Searching for a specific document

The search portal swisscollections allows for detailed searches.
You can use swisscollections for index searches e.g. for call numbers.

In the search portal SWA Search you can use the "Basic search" and filter the results using the facets. You can also search directly in the facets, e.g. for a firm or person.

Alternatively, you can use the search portal swisscovery.

State of indexing

The economic archives are recorded on the level of series or files/dossiers in their entirety in the search portal swisscovery and in swisscollections.
Newly acquired collections are at first documented as a whole at fonds level.

Digitisation

Selected economic archives, or parts of them, are available digitally on the platform e-manuscripta. The priority for digitisation conforms to specific criteria: frequently used holdings; historically important holdings holdings; holdings typical for the SWA; connection to Basel and relevance to the University of Basel; documents with dense or high information content; conservational aspects (protection of holdings, digitisability).

The focus of the digitisation is on older, small to medium-sized collections (typical for the SWA) which have a connection to Basel but are of interest well beyond Basel’s borders, e.g. collections from the textile industry or colonisation societies. Of the more recent or larger collections, core series with high information content – such as minutes – are digitalised.

Literature

Amstutz, Irene/Wiesmann, Matthias. Sammeln - Ordnen - Vermitteln: SWA - Schweizerisches Wirtschaftsarchiv: 1910-2010. Basel 2010. (PDF, in German).