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Pre-research:
locating archives
You've
decided upon your research project. It may be part of
a final year undergraduate dissertation, the main component
of a taught masters course or the beginning of a doctoral
thesis. You've read around your subject, and secondary
sources are no longer a sufficient source of information.
It's time to visit an archive to tackle primary source
material.
The
most pressing question is therefore where to begin looking
for relevant material. The answers lie below …
Secondary
sources
Standard textbooks and articles in journals should (though
not always) provide citations to documents that were
used to write the piece, and more weighty tomes often
provide a full bibliography of primary source material
and where to locate it. This will give you an indication
of which archives you will need to visit. Even if you
do not want to view exactly the same documents as cited,
they will probably come from a larger collection that
may be of use.
Furthermore,
you will often find that the documents are cited with
full archival references, which will save you some time
when you get to the archive. More advice on understanding
and interpreting references is given in the third part
of this tutorial.
Ask
your supervisor
Next, ask your supervisor where to begin - they should
be able to point you in the direction of the correct
archive, having prepared your course or discussed your
research with you.
Where
to look for material
Your chosen research topic will largely determine the
material you will view, and therefore which archives
you will need to visit. If you are working on a local
case study, you will probably need to focus on sources
created by private individuals or local institutions,
usually kept at county record offices or local study
centres.
If
you are studying government policy towards an event,
then official correspondence and registered files will
be relevant, and you will need to visit institutions
such as The National Archives. In addition, you may need to visit
specialist institutions such as the BL or Bodleian Library,
and many universities have special collections of manuscripts.
However you should bear in mind that relevant material
may reside in private archives that are not in the public
domain (for example the Chatsworth House archives of
the Duke of Devonshire) and can be difficult to access.
Locating
an archive
Two publications in your university library can help
you to identify relevant archives.
The
National Register of Archives is based in Chancery Lane,
London, and holds full archival lists and catalogues.
You can visit to search these in person, but phone requests
are not taken. However for those who live a distance
from London, you can conduct a basic search for archival
collections via a database on the website www.hmc.gov.uk/nra/
by person, family name, place or institution. You can
also access ARCHON, which can be searched by region
to identify the contact details of archives.
Where
to begin
It is probably best to start researching at local archives
and work your way up the hierarchy, as county record
offices have smaller collections and are therefore less
intimidating - compare this to The National Archives has over 9 million
documents on 170km of shelving! A tour of The National Archives can
be booked through this website by your tutor - for further
details, direct them to the tutor
home page.
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