EABH Cultural Heritage Prize

Introduction

The Cultural Heritage Prize was established in 2008 in order to acknowledge the efforts of banking and financial institutions in preserving the cultural memory / heritage of their institutions. Banks and financial institutions may nominate themselves for this prize, or may be nominated by a third party. Banks will have to fulfil a number of criteria to qualify for the prize.

Judging Criteria

Following the criteria set by the EABH Steering Committee:

• Accessibility of the Archive
• Archive Collection
• What makes the archive special? (reopening, creation from scratch, safety of archive assets after a merger, floods, full accessibility, etc)
  

Upon suggestion of the jury members, the following should be also taken into consideration:

• What makes an archive special: preservation of oral records and participation of historians in analysing and assembling the archive.
  
  
• Use of archives: a) Outreach to the wider community (initiatives with schools, undergraduate study, bank pensioners, minority groups etc.). b) Internal exploitation (make the archive of direct practical relevance to the bank’s day to day business).

• Organization of archives: establishment of independent archive trusts to preserve archives after mergers and acquisitions, use of technology (eg. digitisation), introduction of more liberal access rules and appropriate storage facilities.
  

Jury Members

The Jury is chaired by Dr. Rolf E. Breuer, former Spokesman of the Board of Managing Directors and former Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Deutsche Bank AG who was joined by Prof. John Orbell, ING Barings, Sir Peter Middleton, Camelot Group plc and Prof. Peter Mathias, Downing College Cambridge.

Award Ceremony

The 2008 Cultural Heritage Prize was awarded to Banca d'Italia. Click here for more information. The next Prize will be awarded at the EABH Annual Conference taking place in Nicosia, Cyprus in 2009.

Deadline for submissions will be Friday, 16th January 2009.