Burson-Marsteller

Project was to organize Founder Chairman ‘personal’ papers and to make them accessible

The Burson-Marsteller Archives grew out of a small, tightly focused project that was initiated in 1989. Harold Burson, now the Founder Chairman, planned to write his memoirs and the goal of this project was to organize his ‘personal’ papers and to make them accessible. The processing work initially was contemplated to be a short, four-month project, but proceeded as Burson's continuing work accumulated additional documents. Space was identified, and the Archives was set up and equipped, and a world-wide collecting effort was initiated. What was thought to be a four-month project has continued more than for 25 years.

PRWeek acknowledged Burson as ‘the century's most influential PR figure’ in 1999. He describes the Archives as ‘likely, the most comprehensive public relations archive in the world.’ The Archives is a well-used resource for documents, images and information about the company and its work. Recent work includes:

• images for an updated timeline celebrating the 60th anniversary of Burson-Marsteller (2013) (http://www.burson-marsteller.com/who-we-are/our-history/)
• research and images for a series of articles about the evolution of Burson-Marsteller during its 60th Anniversary year, distributed to employees worldwide on the company intranet, B-M Source
• images and resource for content for haroldburson.com, the personal website of the Founder Chairman of Burson-Marsteller.