Archival research
Encyclopedia

Basic Definition

An archive
Archive
An archive is a collection of historical records, or the physical place they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organization's lifetime, and are kept to show the function of an organization...

 is a way of sorting and organizing older documents, whether it be digitally (photographs online, E-mails, etc.) or manually (putting it in folders, photo albums, etc.). Archiving is one part of the curating process which is typically carried out by a curator
Curator
A curator is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution is a content specialist responsible for an institution's collections and involved with the interpretation of heritage material...

. The art of searching for archives consists of four main step:
1. Thinking about questions to find the archive in mind. Ask oneself:
* Do I need specific information or am I just curious about a broad topic?
* What is my topic of interest?
* Should I be using an archive or a library?
2. Get the basic facts about the topic of interest.
3. Use websites associated with the particular archive building to search for the archive.
4. Decide if one should visit the archive building for further assistance.

History of Archival Research

Many archives have been around for multiple hundreds of years. For instance Vatican Secret Archives
Vatican Secret Archives
The Vatican Secret Archives , located in Vatican City, is the central repository for all of the acts promulgated by the Holy See. The Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, having primal incumbency until death, owns the archives until the next appointed Papal successor...

 was started in the 17th century AD and contains state papers, papal account books, and papal correspondence dating back to the 8th century. Most archives that are still in existence do not claim collections that date back quite as far as the Vatican Archive.

However, many national archives were established over one hundred years ago and contain collections going back three or four hundred years ago. The United States National Archives and Records Administration
National Archives and Records Administration
The National Archives and Records Administration is an independent agency of the United States government charged with preserving and documenting government and historical records and with increasing public access to those documents, which comprise the National Archives...

 was established originally in 1934. The NARA contains records and collections dating back to the founding of the United States in the 18th century. Among the collections of the NARA are the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and an original copy of the Magna Carta. Similarly, the Archives nationales in France was founded in 1790 during the French Revolution and has holdings that date back to AD 625.

Universities are another historic venue for archival holdings. Most universities have archival holdings that chronicle the business of the university. Some universities also have cultural archives that focus on one aspect or another of the culture of the state or country in which the university is located. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has archival collections on the subjects of Southern History and Southern Folklife. Boston University
Boston University
Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...

's Howard Gottlieb Archival Research Library has collections dedicated to chronicling advances and famous moments in American art, drama, and public/ political life.

The reason for highlighting the breadth and depth of historical archives is to give some idea of the difficulties facing archival researchers in the pre-digital age. Some of these archives were dauntingly vast in the amount of records they held. For example, The Vatican Secret Archive had upwards of 52 miles of archival shelving. In an age where you could not simply enter your query into a search bar complete with Boolean operators the task of finding material that pertained to your topic would have been difficult at the least. The Finding aid
Finding aid
A finding aid is a document containing detailed information about a specific collection of papers or records within an archive. They are used by researchers to determine whether information within a collection is relevant to their research...

 made the work of sifting through these vast archives much more manageable. A finding aid is a document that is put together by an archivist or librarian that contains information about the individual documents in a specific collection in an archive. These documents can be used to determine if the collection is relevant to a designated topic. Finding aids made it so a researcher did not have to blindly search through collection after collection hoping to find pertinent information. However, in the pre-digital age a researcher still had to travel to the physical location of the archive and search through a card catalog of finding aids.

Pre-Internet Data Storage

Organizing, collecting, and archiving information using physical documents without the use of electronics is a daunting task. Magnetic storage
Magnetic storage
Magnetic storage and magnetic recording are terms from engineering referring to the storage of data on a magnetized medium. Magnetic storage uses different patterns of magnetization in a magnetizable material to store data and is a form of non-volatile memory. The information is accessed using...

 devices provided the first means of storing electronic data. As technology has progressed over the years, so too has the ability to archive data using electronics. Long before the internet, means of using technology to help archive information were in the works. The early forms of magnetic storage
Magnetic storage
Magnetic storage and magnetic recording are terms from engineering referring to the storage of data on a magnetized medium. Magnetic storage uses different patterns of magnetization in a magnetizable material to store data and is a form of non-volatile memory. The information is accessed using...

 devices that would later be used to archive information were invented as early as the late 19th century, but were not used for organizing information until 1951 with the invention of the UNIVAC I
UNIVAC I
The UNIVAC I was the first commercial computer produced in the United States. It was designed principally by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, the inventors of the ENIAC...

.

UNIVAC I
UNIVAC I
The UNIVAC I was the first commercial computer produced in the United States. It was designed principally by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, the inventors of the ENIAC...

, which stands for Universal Automatic Computer 1, used magnetic tape
Magnetic tape
Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic recording, made of a thin magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic. It was developed in Germany, based on magnetic wire recording. Devices that record and play back audio and video using magnetic tape are tape recorders and video tape recorders...

 to store data and was also was the first commercial computer produced in the United States. Early computers such as UNIVAC I were enormous and sometimes took up entire rooms, rendering them completely obsolete in today's technological society. But the central idea of using magnetic tape to store information is a concept that is still in use today.

While most magnetic storage devices have been replaced by optical storage devices such as CDs, USB flash drives DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

s, some are still in use today. In fact, the floppy drive is one example of a magnetic storage device that became extremely popular in the 1970s through the 1990s. Older 5.25" floppy discs have not been used for quite some time but the smaller 3.5" floppy discs aren't obsolete yet. The 3.5" discs hold approximately 1.44 mgs of data and for years have been used by millions of people to back up the information on their hard drives.

Magnetic tape has proven to be a very effective means of archiving data as large amounts of data that don’t need to be quickly accessed can be found on magnetic tape. That is especially true of aging data that may not need to be accessed again at all, but for different reasons still needs to be stored “just in case”.

Internet Age Archiving

With the explosion of the internet over the past couple decades, archiving has begun to make its way online. The days of using electronic devices such as magnetic tape are coming to an end as people start to use the internet to archive their information.

Internet archiving has become extremely popular for several reasons. As mentioned earlier, the attempt to have as much information take up as little space a possible is very helpful for many archivers. Using the internet to archive allows for this to be possible as well many other benefits.
There is no limit to how much information one can store online in their archive. Internet archiving can be used to store as little information needed for a single person, or for as much information needed for a major company. Internet archives can contain large-scale digitization as well as provide long term management and preservation of the digital resources similarly to the electronics used in the pre-internet data storage era.
Along with the idea of storage benefits, archiving via Internet ensures that ones information is safe. There is risk of misplacing your information, or having it get destroyed by water or fire etc. Those are problems that may occur when archiving using floppy discs, hard drives, and computers
Lastly, the ability to access the information from almost anywhere is one of the main attractions to online archiving. As long as one has access to the internet they can edit and retrieve the information they are looking for.

Most institutions with physical archives have begun to digitize their holdings and make them available on the internet. Notably the National Archive and Records Administration in Washington, D.C. has a clearly defined initiative that was started in 1998 in an attempt to digitize many of their holdings and make them available on the internet.

American Archives Month

October is officially noticed throughout the United States as American Archives month, with the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland noticing the event as well. The month was founded in 1969 by the Michigan State University Archives & Historical Collections, but now Archives Month is a collaborative effort by professional organizations and repositories. Their main point of American Archives month was and is to celebrate the importance of archives and to raise awareness about the value of archives. Lessons of how to preserve certain photographs and documents are also provided for each state. Each state normally celebrates the affair through a series of week-long events. The majority of the states get involved and plan out different sorts of activities that pertain to archiving. There is also a guide that goes into detail about planning for the event. For the most part, each state coins a phrase each year to describe their interest in archiving. For example:
  • Georgia: "Quench your thirst for History."
  • North Dakota: "That's Entertainment."
  • North Carolina: "Celebrating the NC Record."

Wisconsin was the most recent state to join National Archive Month, joining in 2009, coining the phrase "Scrapbook Wisconsin." One of the major events is hosted by the staff at the University Archives & Historical Collections. They contribute to American Archives month by hosting a contest about trivia questions pertaining to archives, but it is only open to MSU faculty, staff and students, MSU alumni, and the greater Lansing community.

External links

National Archives and Records Administration http://www.archives.gov/
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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