Donating an item to us

SSE’s Heritage team will conduct a significance assessment on all items being offered and appraise potential acquisitions for both the object and archive collections.

The priorities for new acquisitions to the SSE Heritage Collection are:

• Items from colleagues, ex-colleagues and private individuals that will expand the existing collection; and
• Items relating to SSE and predecessor companies that may be held in other archive

The type of acquisitions that are of interest (but not exhaustive) include items relating to:

• The development and operations of SSE’s predecessor organisations.
• Prominent figures involved in the management of SSE and its predecessors.
• Working lives of staff and contractors, past and present.
• The development of company policies, principles, and culture.
• Key processes and innovations made within the company.
• Key projects undertaken by SSE and its predecessors.
• Sites owned and operated by SSE.
• Events which affected SSE’s key operations (major storms, floods etc.)
• Advertising and marketing materials, past and present; and
• Material with a minimum of restrictions to access. We will seek to obtain copyright and intellectual property rights that may exist in the material being donated to the collection.

Records of any age, format (physical or digital) will be considered provided that the facilities are available to catalogue and preserve them. Should the required facilities not be available then the material will be referred to a more appropriate facility.

Records should:

• Contribute to our understanding of the company’s history (documents

from other organisations should only be considered if they are in context with other aspects of the collection);

• Complement and enhance existing archive holdings and collection strengths; and
• Enhance and contribute to SSE’s current functions and objectives, specifically regarding sustainability and community engagement.

Before donating any new items, the donor must ensure the following:

• The item is no longer required by the original owner;
• They are authorised to transfer the item;
• A donation request form has been completed;
• They can provide the item’s historical/archival value;
• The item is still in reasonable physical condition; and
• They understand all terms of gifting an item to the collection.

SSE won’t:

• Collect material that wasn’t created by SSE or its predecessor organisations, or have provenance in SSE or its predecessors, unless they provide reasonable and adequate context to material which meets these criteria;
• Accept internal documents which are still ‘operational’ in some capacity or are still required for use on a regular basis. These will be retained within SSE’s records management system;
• Acquire collections that are so voluminous as to be deemed impractical to store, catalogue and preserve. In these circumstances, material may be selected from the collection to be retained and the remainder disposed of with the depositor’s permission or returned to the depositor;
• Offer payment for donations nor seek to purchase items for the collection unless it should make an exceptionally significant contribution to the archive;
• Purposely collect duplicates of material currently held either internally or with external repositories unless there are exceptional reasons for retaining them (such as for reference use alongside existing collections);
• Acquire new heritage objects presenting unacceptable Health and Safety hazards, with particular reference to the safe control of asbestos and mercury;
• Collect extensive, large, or numerous series of objects (such as test equipment) with limited meaning to the great majority of people outside a highly specialised professional field of electrical engineers;
• Collect or retain an exhaustive and fully comprehensive set of all types of electrical appliances or tools unless the item is unique, or very rare, or accompanied by a story/provenance;
• Collect numerous minor variants of objects which are essentially similar in type; or
• Collect dismantled parts of objects or spares.