Doing Research in an Archives
Learning to Do Historical Research: A Primer for Environmental Historians and Others
A fantastic website by Dr. William Cronon (University of Wisconsin, Madison) that covers all the aspects of historical research in archives and libraries. Particularly useful is the section entitled, The Pleasures of Note-Taking. Although written from the perspective of environmental history (Cronon’s speciality), the methods and examples are applicable to the broad spectrum of historiography.
Note-taking Using Tropy
Tropy is free, open-source software that allows you to organize and describe photographs of research material. Once you have imported your photos into Tropy, you can combine photos into items (e.g., photos of the three pages of a letter into a single item), and group photos into lists. You can also describe the content of a photograph. Tropy uses customizable metadata templates with multiple fields for different properties of the content of your photo, for example, title, date, author, box, folder, collection, archive. You can enter information in the template for an individual photo or select multiple photos and add or edit information to them in bulk. Tropy also lets you tag photos. You can also add one or more notes to a photo; a note could be a transcription of a document. A search function lets you find material in your photos, using metadata, tags, and notes.
Easy to navigate online guide to using Tropy.
Tropy Instructional Webinar (YouTube)
Excellent pre-recorded webinar that introduces Tropy to first time users. Easy to follow and understand with excellent examples.
Reading old Handwriting
Nineteenth century and early twentieth century handwriting can be difficult to read, particularly nineteenth century material available on microfilm. Paleography is the study of old handwriting.
How to Decipher Unfamiliar Handwriting: A Short Introduction to Paleography
An excellent guide to deciphering difficult handwriting in old documents with excellent examples and tools.
Paleography: A Practical Guide
An online tutorial from the National Archives of the United Kingdom.
How to Cite Materials from Archival Collections
Chicago Manual of Style (Generally used for all historical citation work)
Your main goal when citing archival materials is to enable a reader to locate the item you’re citing. Most historians use The Chicago Manual of Style’s notes and bibliography, a standard citation style for historical research. In practice, the structure of an archival citation can be ambiguous. The Chicago Manual of Style does not include series, box, and folder numbers in its examples of notes citing archival materials, but it is best practice to include that information anyway—and to do so consistently across all citations.
Footnotes or Endnotes using the Chicago Manual of Style
In the notes, first cite the specific archival record, followed by the date (day, month, year), identifier (box/folder/item number), name of collection, name and location of repository.
Letter
Correspondence from John Doe to the Marquette County Board of Commissioners, 24 October 1956, MSS-999, Box 15, Folder 9, Marquette County records, Central Upper Peninsula and NMU Archives, Marquette, Michigan.
Textual document
Typescript of short story Brothers and Sisters by Budge Wilson, 2000, MS-023, Box 3, Folder 9, Budge Wilson papers, Central Upper Peninsula and NMU Archives, Marquette, Michigan.
Photographs
Photograph of Jane Doe’s installation as Northern Michigan University president, February 1981, MSS-250, Box 74, Folder 7, Dr. Jane Doe papers, Central Upper Peninsula and NMU Archives, Marquette, Michigan.
Graphic material
Watercolour painting, 197-, MS-2-656, Box 12, Folder 6, Catherine Creighton and family fonds, Dalhousie University Archives, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Ephemera
Poster for Northern Michigan University Student Union event, "What’s with All the Snow!" 1986, MSS-009, Box 16, Folder 27, Associated Students of Northern Michigan University (ASNMU) records, Central Upper Peninsula and NMU Archives, Marquette, Michigan.
Bibliography
John D. Voelker papers, MSS-039. Central Upper Peninsula and NMU Archives, Marquette, Michigan.
Women’s Center records, MSS-348. Central Upper Peninsula and NMU Archives, Marquette, Michigan.