introduction to archival research
DESCRIPTION
Presentation given for Preservation Week 2014.TRANSCRIPT
AN ARCHIVE IS NOT A LIBRARY
AN ARCHIVE IS NOT A LIBRARY
•An archival collection is made up of the things people produce over the course of their lives.
•The formats and subject matter of a single archival collection can vary greatly
ORDER OUT OF CHAOS
•Provenance1 is a fundamental principle of archives, referring to the individual, family, or organization that created or received the items in a collection. The principle of provenance or the respect des fonds dictates that records of different origins (provenance) be kept separate to preserve their context.▫Society of American Archivists, Glossary or
Archival and Records Terminology
FINDING AIDS
•Because archival collections are different from books, archivists use different tools to describe archival collections.
•There may be entries for collections in a library catalog, but they will not be as robust as a finding aid
FINDING AID EXAMPLES
• Family▫Cunningham Family Papers http://
www.masshist.org/collection-guides/view/fa0352?terms=family
• Individual▫Caroline Wells Healey Dall Papers http://
www.masshist.org/collection-guides/view/fa0270?terms=family
• Organization▫Apollo Club (Boston, Mass.) Records
http://www.masshist.org/collection-guides/view/fa0364
ANATOMY OF A FINDING AID
•Title – Derived from the provenance of the collection
•Dates – Gives the years of the collection, in terms of inclusive and bulk dates
•Extent-Volume of material in terms of space or number of boxes.
•Scope and Content- Full text describing the formats and subjects in the collection.
WHERE ARE THE FINDING AIDS?• Unfortunately it isn’t as easy as googling
▫Multiple resources drawing on the same pools of information.
• Worldcat – Includes library material as well archival material. https://www.worldcat.org/
• Digital Public Library of America – Contains only digitized items, http://dp.la/
• Digital Commonwealth - A targeted collection of digitized items from 130 Massachusetts institutions. https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/
ARCHIVEGRID
•Based on Worldcat data, but does a better job of filtering non-archival material
•http://beta.worldcat.org/archivegrid/
ARCHIVAL SEARCH IN THE FUTURE•Linked Data and the Semantic Web
•Archives Hub- •http://archiveshub.ac.uk/
Credits
•Image of Archive http://www.doaks.org/library-archives
•SAA Glossary http://www2.archivists.org/glossary/terms/p/provenance