Search for Archival Materials - Prep

Introduction | Prep | Presentation | Activity

Review general methods (15 minutes)

Read What is an Archive? What is a Finding Aid? on Dorothy Berry's The Hows and Whys of Finding Aids

On the Research Travel Checklist, read:

• Where's the biggest or most interesting collection?
• Have the materials been microfilmed, digitized, or published?

Get to know the Harvard guide (10 minutes)

Take a few minutes to explore the Library Research Guide for Finding Manuscripts and Archival Collections and understand how it's organized. There's a lot of information here! Focus on the parts of the guide that are of most interest to you.

• Guides: Researchers often miss overviews and inventories to sources in their general topic area.
• Guides to sources held in the U.S.
• Guides to sources held outside the U.S.
• Understanding the major databases: On the Finding Collections in U.S. Repositories page:
• Skim "Introduction" and "Four main databases containing AM collection records"
• Try out one of the four main databases!

Preview the Flowchart (5 minutes)

Get a basic overview of archival collections in the U.S. by reviewing the following flowchart.

We will discuss this flowchart in detail on the next page.

Download the flowchart Links to an external site. or go to the presentation page.

Introduction | Prep | Presentation | Activity