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ARCHIVES-NRA  February 2013

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Subject:

Re: MA Students using archives for the first time: where to begin!

From:

"Susan Davies [sud]" <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Susan Davies [sud]

Date:

Wed, 6 Feb 2013 20:26:48 +0000

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Hello all who are following this thread.

I responded to Jane earlier this afternoon but the subsequent wealth of contributions has prompted me to share my thoughts more widely. My experience comes from a long teaching career in archival training but also helping to prepare postgraduate students in humaninites, archives, records management  and ILS for dissertation research and the use of different kinds of sources.  Through external work in the culture and heritage field I have also found it necessary to explain 'archives' to trustees etc. who usually have useful understanding of museums and libraries but very little about archives - or the 'documentary heritage', which has proved a useful term in this context and accords with UNESCO!  

The following comments are worth adding to those already made in this discussion.

It is important to ask the students whether they have a clear understanding of the difference between primary sources, which are contemporary with the events of the time, and secondary sources, in which subsequent authors have studied and 'digested' the primary sources and set out their conclusions. Not surprisingly, many are not clear about this distinction, so it is a good starting point. 

It is also useful to ask about their academic background; if, for example it lies in Social Science, they will be expecting to 'create' their primary data through e.g. questionnaires or interviews. If they have are taking a historical approach they will need to search for, locate and use whatever primary sources have survived - i.e. a very different approach.  A literary or ‘creative’ background will introduce other concepts in terms of approaches (literary criticism) to written texts and sources, yet all students will need to understand that archives have particular qualities, that they reflect their particular purpose and the time in which they were created, and that their evidential nature is significant. Archaic language and the formal phraseology required for legal validity in formal documents is a necessary hazard!

It is useful to ask about their ideas for assignment or dissertation topics, e.g. are they looking at something that happened in the past or a current issue? You can then explore what kind of primary sources might be relevant to that topic, and it is best to make this a group discussion because each student will benefit from what is said to others as well as information specific to their own interests. If they are interested in a historical period and context, they will find it useful to think about who would have been writing down information at that time - and this means an excursion into administrative history etc. which is rarely encountered in historical studies today but is not nearly as dull as some would claim!

Another significant point when introducing archives as a new field is that some of the terminology is genuinely confusing.  Most archivists are familiar with traditional definitions of archives as documents and have accepted the fact that the same term has more recently been applied to archive repositories – but the uninitiated find this confusing and question the logic!  Loose use of ‘archiving’, often in an IT context to mean moving something out of general use, has further complicated popular understanding.  Even the term ‘community archives’ is mysterious to some, especially when the ‘archive’ exists in ‘virtual’ rather than tangible format.  My own response these uncertainties is to revert to basics and traditional understanding, namely to define archives as the written product of day to day activities over time, whether by government, business or individuals.  Material that has been actively collected to represent a theme or special interest can be described as a special collection.

A further aid to understanding comes from considering the differences between archives and books. Of course, unlike most books, they are unique, but – as highlighted by Caroline Williams in ‘Managing Archives’ (p.74) - they are also ‘aggregates’, so the inter-connections between individual items must be represented in how they are catalogued to enable users are to understand the context of their source material and use it to best effect.  This introduces the fact that archival ‘finding aids/catalogues differ from library catalogues.  Also, they are not designed to make life difficult but to be helpful.  The ‘collection’ of inter-related material is the principal unit, and the ‘levels’ of description are designed to reflect the inter-connections.
 
The suggestion that all students should talk to an archivist in their university, this is useful - except that some universities/colleges do not have an archivist. However, it is always worthwhile to guide them to ARCHON (the directory of archive services) via TNA's website, and encourage them to locate some repositories in a geographical area they know, and follow links to the websites of those repositories to find out more about the collections they hold and type of services they offer.

As for useful sources of support, I suggest the following two items as particularly good for students:

1) The 'Archives Wales' website, using the topic list in the left hand margin to find ‘what are archives’ and using archives for different purposes such as university and college research. See:
http://www.archiveswales.org.uk/?no_cache=1

2) Christopher Kitching’s, ‘Archives, the Very essence of Our Heritage’, (Phillimore 1996) offers an excellent perspective on different kinds of archives, especially for students.

3) Caroline Williams’s ‘Managing Archives’ (Chandos 2006) is full of information that would be useful in preparing for student groups and answering questions in a very readable format – and includes international differences in terminology.

I hope these thoughts are useful. Today's postgrad students have a hard time because there is so much that is unfamiliar to them (and their supervisors!) and so much unmediated information.  

Susan Davies

________________________________________
From: Archivists, conservators and records managers. [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Jane Stevenson [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 06 February 2013 10:08
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: MA Students using archives for the first time: where to begin!

Hi all (me again!),

I gave a short talk to MA students yesterday about strategies for searching for archives. I talked about what archives are, tips for using archives, visiting reading rooms, using the various aggregators, etc etc.

However, in the hands-on what struck me is that they were asking me what to actually do with the archives. That is, how do they use them in their research. They seemed a bit overwhelmed with these huge descriptions they were finding and didn't know how to start thinking about ways to bring the archives into their dissertations.

I wondered if anyone knows of any advice out there that I can either point students to, or maybe utilities in order to create a few pages on the Hub about 'first steps in using archives for your dissertation'.

There are some great educational resources on TNA's Education pages, but they are more focussed on exercises using archives, and present exercises that are already worked out, they are not so much aimed at students at an MA level and how they work with the kinds of evidence that archives provide (although I might have missed something here - please let me know).

cheers,
Jane.



Jane Stevenson
The Archives Hub
Mimas, The University of Manchester
Devonshire House, Oxford Road
Manchester M13 9QH

email:[log in to unmask]
tel: 0161 275 6055
website: archiveshub.ac.uk
blog: archiveshub.ac.uk/blog
twitter: twitter.com/archiveshub

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