Week 4

Question 1

Archival Research

Answer 1

• Primary sources
• Government records held in public archives
• Company records and private papers
• Documents
• Maps, photographs

Question 2

Conducting Archival Research

Answer 2

Before the archive

• • Familiarity with the existing literature
• Write to the archives you intend to visit.
• Outline your research
• Archivist
• Not a library

At the archives
* Meet the archivist
* User card
* “pencil only”
* “documents”
* Note taking strategies

Analysis
* Power relations
* Colonial archive
* Technical issues

Question 3

Harris 2001, p. 332
“Archival scholarship at its best, it seems to me, is an _______________”

Answer 3

ongoing, evolving interaction between the scholar and the voices of the past embedded in the documents

Question 4

Accessing Evidence in Archives

• No source should _________________

Answer 4

be taken at face value: all sources must be evaluated critically and contextually

Question 5

Archival
Research

Answer 5

“I would simply
describe archival
research as somewhat
akin to confidently
accepting the challenge
of working on a jigsaw
puzzle where you can
be reasonably certain
that pieces are missing
and that the box cover
with the picture of the
completed puzzle will
never be found”