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.
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.

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).

Archive documents can generally be ordered directly from the search portal swisscovery.
You will need a swisscovery user account for ordering.
When placing your order, please state when you would like to consult the documents.
Orders made before 16:00 are usually available at the Special reading room of the University Business and Economics Library - Swiss Economic Archives after 30 minutes.

There may be use restrictions. Where this is the case, there is no order button in the catalogue. For questions about these documents, please contact us.

Use restrictions

The basis for the use of the archives are the user regulations (PDF, in German). The terms of use comply with the "Archivgesetz" of the Canton of Basel-Stadt (in German) and the accompanying archive regulations (in German); individual contractual terms remain reserved.

Unlike the material in the economic documentation, the economic archives contain internal business documents which have never been intended for the general public. Because of that, there is a protection period of 30 years after closing the files for the most recent archives. Special protection periods are applied to documents with personal data.

Use restrictions are only summarily provided in the catalogue. Users are responsible for their own compliance with the restrictions regarding copyright and protection of privacy laws.

Reproduction

You are allowed to take photographs of the archives (without using a flash); photocopies are not permitted.

Contact us for professional reproductions of documents from the economic archives. Fees set by the digitisation centre of the University Library Basel apply; die Rechnungsstellung erfolgt direkt über die UB.Reproductions of plans of the Suter + Suter (CH SWA PA 510) portfolio are created by an external repro-service provider.

Publication

For the publication (print or online) of images or documents from the SWA, the repro guidelines at the Universiry Library Basel (PDF, in German) apply.

Citing from SWA holdings

Please note the citation guidelines (PDF, in German) for documents from the SWA.

Loans for exhibitions

For loans, please conctact us.