Family and local history

A recent enquiry reminded me of the usefulness of company magazines for both family and local history research. Many businesses and industrial companies produced in-house publications aimed at staff and customers and the Library has rich and varied collections of these. The example shown here describes itself as ‘An illustrated social magazine for the workers and staff of the Burntisland Shipbuilding Company, Limited’. As well as providing a snapshot of the shipbuilding industry at the time in the form of technical articles about ship design and commentary on the state of the industry, it also chronicles the achievements of the many shipyard sports clubs such as the football, cricket and badminton teams. This is typical of this type of publication which often contain articles about company events, sometimes including photographs, as well as articles about individual staff achievements.  Coal, the magazine of the former National Coal Board in the UK, is another example. The articles in this publication range from accounts of mining disasters to descriptions and photos of company events such as colliery brass band competitions. If you have a family member who worked for a particular company then you may want to check our catalogue http://www.nls.uk/catalogues to see if we hold any publications relating to that company.