This has been a really interesting thread. As an archivist now teaching
history undergraduates part-time, I thought I would add my thoughts too.
Peter is right about some people feeling shy about using record offices.
When I started teaching (having been a professional archivist for 20+ years
by then), I was surprised at just how many younger students especially said
they felt very intimidated by Record Offices, as they felt they knew so
little about archives themselves, and the 'etiquette' of using the
repository. To help take away some students' initial fear of even walking
into a Record Office, introductory videos, such as Essex Record Office's
Youtube videos (see links at http://seax.essexcc.gov.uk/, especially the
more light-hearted one on document production) are invaluable.
I don't know what other universities do, but our second-year history
students have to do a mandatory module, Researching History, covering all
aspects of a research project. All members of the History lecturing team
take part in the teaching, covering their own particular specialist areas,
but in a source-based format (secondary sources, print culture, primary
sources via international, national and government archives, British
Parliamentary Papers, local archives, artistic representations, physical
objects etc.). We also have practical help on literature searching from our
University Library staff. The emphasis is on both the practicalities of
finding relevant material as well as understanding, interpretation and use
of it in a final assessed research project proposal. We aim to show the
students how different sources have been used by historians, and how they
might be interpreted and used for their own student dissertations in third
year. None of our history students would be looking at archives for the
first time for an MA, therefore, and we do our best not to send them to an
archive with no preparation.
In my experience, many students initially find it difficult to understand
why archives aren't simply arranged according to subject, as in a library
catalogue. We therefore have to start off with some basic coverage of
archival provenance and cataloguing standards, and why archivists produce
finding aids the way they do. This clearly comes as something of a
revelation to many students. Maybe as archivists, we sometimes take it for
granted that people will just intuitively know the principles of a catalogue
and where to find records according to provenance - to us, it's obvious that
the estate records of Gradgrind House in Loamshire will be with the archives
of Lord Duckworthy's main residence in Woodburyshire, since his family owned
both seats, but we shouldn't assume it's as obvious to non-professionals
(and maybe this is where we can sometimes seem intimidating, because we
think it's obvious and they don't see it at all?). I don't think you can
teach anyone to interpret a document if they don't understand the context(s)
in which it was produced, preserved and got to where it is now for them to
use. How far this is something the lecturers should be doing for their
students, and how far the lecturer can or should leave this to the archivist
in any given case is perhaps a moot point?
As one of my lecturing colleagues observed, in her day (not so long ago!)
post-graduate students were somehow expected to absorb researching skills as
if by osmosis. Going back to Jane's original question, I think students need
to know how to frame a research project from the very beginning, before they
start looking for primary sources. It's no good students just looking at a
mass of archives and wondering how to use them. They need to pick their
subject first, then frame their research question, refine it in the light of
initial reading and research, and see what there is out there that they can
use. Otherwise, they are just floundering in a sea of too much unfocussed
information, like Peter's Bomber Command student, or Sarah's, looking at
"eighteenth century crime". Although aimed at students of American
environmental history rather than UK history students using UK archives,
there is some excellent advice on the general principles of initiating and
progressing historical research at Professor William Cronon's website at
http://www.williamcronon.net/researching/index.htm - as it's aimed at
non-historians, it takes nothing for granted, so can be especially useful
when considering how students should be thinking about research more
generally, and how archivists can present material to students in a research
context.
Having said this, the students need to have familiarised themselves with how
to read and interpret individual primary sources before the big research
project comes around. When it comes to this kind of access to records, I
always take my students into the Record Office myself, wearing both my
archivist's and lecturer's hat, and I try to chose introductory materials
which will tell a story or coherently illustrate a particular theme for the
students. Keeping it tight, and getting the students to pursue a mini-piece
of research (like a document commentary) gets the student used to
interpreting the whole document, provenance, content, 'unwitting testimony'
and all. After a brief introduction mainly to contextualise the material, I
then let them get to work themselves to ferret out what meaning they can
from the documents, asking as many questions about it as they can, and then
sum up their interpretations at the end. Sometimes, they get much more out
of the documents than I might have originally envisaged: a Quarter Sessions
prosecution for an attempted suicide (intended to produce 'unwitting
evidence' of the local community going about its daily business in the
depositions) produced strong circumstantial evidence for plea bargaining
with Poor Law questions in play, in one case, which I hadn't spotted when I
first chose the document. In another, a sensationalist newspaper front page
concerning the murder of an attractive young woman who turned out to be
pregnant with her lover's child had a very subtle advertisement for an
abortion medicine tucked into a corner. Getting them to tell the story
behind the document, as well as telling the story of the content of the
document itself, gets them to think about the ways they can use the document
to present an argument, or illustrate some point or theme in assessed work.
To get the most out of archival research, I think the ideal is for the
archivist and lecturer to really get together and discuss in some depth in
advance of any student visit what the students really need and what the
archives can offer. I'm in the lucky position of seeing things from both
sides of the enquiry desk (though "once an archivist ." even so!), but
students need input from both lecturers (who I think should be preparing the
way and teaching the skills the student needs to interpret the sources) and
the archivists (who best know their own records and their contexts, and how
they might best be used for particular purposes).
Look forward to seeing all this thread's information put together, Jane -
thanks for starting it!
Vivienne
Vivienne Aldous
Lecturer (Part-time)
Department of History
School of Arts and Humanities
University Campus Suffolk
Waterfront Building
Neptune Quay
Ipswich
IP4 1QJ
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Visit the History website - for details of our programme and events
www.ucs.ac.uk/history
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jane Stevenson" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2013 10:08 AM
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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