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- Archives and Archival Research
THIST 101 Introduction to History Methods - Sundermann: Archives and Archival Research
What are archives?
- Materials in an archive are often unique, specialized, or rare objects, meaning very few of them exist in the world, or they are the only ones of their kind.*
- Archived materials can include manuscripts, letters, photographs, moving image and sound materials, artwork, books, diaries, artifacts, and the digital equivalents of all of these things.*
- Only a small percentage of items in archives are available online or in digital formats. At the Smithsonian, only 52% of the items in their archives are eligible for digitization, and only 11% of eligible items have been digitized.
- Archives are used by students, researchers, novelists, artists, filmmakers, journalists, architects, among others!
* derived from: Schmidt, Laura, "Using Archives: A Guide to Effective Research," Society of American Archivists, 2017, https://www2.archivists.org/usingarchives.
Types of archives
Archives are managed by a variety of types of institutions and the materials they collect differ. Familiarity with different kinds of archives is helpful for finding resources that are most appropriate for your research.
- College and university archives: typically preserve materials related to the university or college.
- Corporate archives: manage and preserve records of that business.
- Government or national archives: may collect materials related to all levels of government.
- Historical societies: preserve materials related to a specific interest, such as a region, event, or industry.
- Museum archives: maintain diverse collections that typically consist of artwork or artifacts relevant to the type of museum. Items are often displayed.
- Religious archives: collect and preserve materials related to a faith, denomination, or individual place of worship.
- Special collections: a collection of items, usually in a library, that are either irreplaceable or rare. These items are kept separate from regular library collections.
Featured archive
- The National ArchivesThe official archive for the UK government with over 1,000 years of iconic national documents.
Tips for finding archives
Tips for finding archives:
- Look at bibliographies and works cited sections in secondary books and articles to find out where they found their information.
- Visit other history research guides. Find a list of them here.
- Look for websites related to your topic.
- Use an online search engine such as Google and use Advanced Search options to limit by domain
- Ask an expert in the field or consult a reference librarian.
- Narrow results by using Advanced Search options
- Limit by domains
- Examples: .edu, .org, .co.uk
- Try different search engines
- Do a search in Google but then repeat it in DuckDuckGo
- Go beyond the first page of results
Find an archive in the UK using databases
- Archives Hub
This website enables you to search for archives at over 300 institutions in the United Kingdom. Includes online resources.
- Find an archive
A service of The National Archives. You can search for archives in the United Kingdom by country and region, as well as worldwide.
- ArchiveGrid
Contains archive collection descriptions from over 1000 archives worldwide. You can search by keyword or scroll to "United Kingdom" in the "Search by location" box to search UK archives.