Archival research
Archival research systematically studies records preserved by archives to investigate people, institutions, events, and social change.
Finding aid: A guide describing an archival collection’s contents, arrangement, and access conditions. Finding aids reveal which collections may contain evidence relevant to a research question.
Archive: A collection of records preserved because of their continuing value, and the institution or place that holds them. Archival research takes place within collections assembled and maintained as archives.
Oral history: The collection and study of recorded interviews about people’s experiences and memories. Interview recordings and related papers can enter archives and complement documentary evidence.
Library research: Research using published and organized library materials, including books, journals, and reference works. Unlike archival research, it often begins with materials already edited and published for broad use.
Archival silences: Gaps in archival records that result from exclusion, loss, destruction, or unequal record-making. Silences limit what surviving collections can establish about marginalized lives.
Provenance: The origin and history of ownership or custody of a document or collection. Provenance helps establish who created records and how they came to be preserved.
Record (document): Information fixed in a medium and created or received in the course of activity. Records are the primary materials that archival research examines.
Genealogical research: Research into family relationships and histories using records and other evidence. Census, vital, and estate records make archives a major resource for family history.
Digital humanities: The use of computational and digital methods to study and present humanistic subjects. Computational analysis can extend archival research across large digitized collections.
Collective memory: Shared understandings of the past maintained and reshaped by a group or society. Archival selection and interpretation influence which accounts enter public memory.