Archives Mean Money: How to Make the Most of Archives for Public Relations Purposes—The Yapi Kredi Bank Example

Most archivists face the challenge of justifying their existence, and this challenge is especially difficult in a corporate setting. To promote archives and affirm their value to the organization, archivists can use techniques developed by the public relations industry, especially the "commercial equivalent" concept. The archivists at Yapi Kredi Bank (YKB), Istanbul, Turkey, used this method to show that a corporate archives can create surplus value of up to a million dollars a year. Furthermore, attaching an archives to a public relations department can bring other benefits, albeit with unusual challenges.