A State-By-State History of Race and Racism in the United States [2 Volumes]Primary sources are records that provide first-hand testimony or evidence of an event, action, topic, or time period. Primary sources are usually created by individuals that directly experience an event and record their experience through photographs, videos, memoirs, correspondence, oral histories, autobiographies, or official organizational records. These sources may be recorded during the event or later on by a participant reflecting upon the event. In some cases, it may be difficult to obtain the original source, so you may have to rely on copies (photocopies, microfilm, digital copies). Copies or transcriptions of a primary source still count as a primary source. You will find that most archival collections contain primary sources.
The first step for any research project is to select a topic. You may not know exactly what your final project will be when you begin but it is a good idea to start with a broad topic which interests you. Ask yourself questions related to your topic:
In order to gather more information about your topic and to help you develop your research question you will need to do some background reading from general sources. These could be readings you have covered in class or general overviews found online or in books and may be referred to as reference sources.
Reference sources can offer general information about a specific topic which then will help you narrow the focus of your research. With these types of reference sources you may discover sub-topics within your research interest and key authors or persons related to your topic.
Learning as much as you can about a topic before you begin your archival research can be a very useful way to make the most of your time in the archives. Background reading will help you:
By knowing these things before you encounter them in the archives, you will already have the crucial contextual information needed to make sense of the document that you are looking at.
Developing a research questions for archival research is the same process as developing a research question for an essay or project. Your research question should be open ended yet answerable (or close to it) through your research.
The authors of The Craft of Research devised a three-step formula you can use to develop research question worth answering. Without a good question, you'll just be gathering data.
1. Topic: I am studying _____
2. Question: because I want to find out what / why / how _____
3. Significance: in order to better understand _____
Be prepared to revisit your research question throughout the process.
As you will find, the archival research process can be challenging. You may often discover that the information that you have is not the information that you originally wanted. The most important part of good research is to follow what the evidence says, not what you want it to say.
Archives are unique materials and through your research you may find that some sources will help answer your research question and others will inspire more questions. Other times you may not be able to identify the information you want, simply because that information does not exist. It may never have been written or it may have been destroyed, lost, forgotten, etc. This is especially true when you are looking for materials related to or written by historically marginalized people. It is important that when you are thinking about what sources you hope to find that your are flexible and allow for the materials to shape your argument.
Throughout the information gathering phase make sure to ask yourself:
Once you have an idea of what kind of documents you are interested in finding, ask yourself:
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