(this guide is provided courtesy of the Australian Society of Archivists Inc)
Knowing what information is available, where to find it and how to extract it from the places where it resides, are skills that seem to be more and more important these days.
Archives are among the information resources that are available to answer the questions we wish to ask. We may wish to find out (for example) how and when our grandparents arrived in Australia, why a particular government decision was made, what Banjo Patterson thought of Henry Lawson, or the nature of responses to the AIDS epidemic. We may be pursuing a family history hobby, working on an academic research project, documenting a legal claim, writing a book. Whatever the motivation for the research interest, it is possible that the information we seek is to be found in archives.
This leaflet has been prepared by the Australian Society of Archivists Inc (ASA) to assist researchers who are unfamiliar with archives so that they can make the best possible use of archives in their research.
The leaflet explains what archives are, why they are different from other sorts of research information, and what implications this has for undertaking successful research.
Archives are documents made or received and accumulated by a person or organisation in the course of the conduct of affairs and preserved because of their continuing value.
The word 'Archives' (with a capital 'A') is also used to mean the building or agency responsible for caring for the archives.
All individuals and organisations accumulate documents (or records). Individuals and families accumulate household bills and accounts, family letters and photographs, insurance policies and bank statements. Organisations accumulate official letters received and sent, notes from one person to another within the organisation, financial and personnel records, minutes of meetings and so on.
Documents (and therefore archives) need not be written on paper. They could be films and videotapes, audio cassettes, computer records, maps and plans, photographs.
Not all such documents survive. Most personal and family documents, for example, are discarded when they are no longer of use. Documents that end up as archives may have been deliberately selected for their continuing value, by archivists or by the organisation or person that accumulated them, or they may have survived quite by chance. Not all documents originally accumulated will become archives.
Archives share some unusual properties that set them apart from other categories of information. To make the best use of archives, and to help develop research competency, it is important to understand these properties.
Why do archivists bother with provenance, original order etc., when it may all seem like an obstacle to getting the information you need?
First, the properties of archives, particularly their natural accumulation as part of the normal conduct of personal or business affairs, have some important implications. It means they are evidence for what the person or organisation that accumulated them has done in the past and why they acted as they did.
Secondly, if the documents were rearranged in a way that would help answer your questions, the same rearrangement might be useless for the next researcher who has quite different and unforeseeable questions to ask. On balance, the most effective way to get at the evidence in archival documents is to preserve their provenance and original order.
Evidence needs to be evaluated, tested and compared and not accepted uncritically. But archival documents are as close as you can get to what a person or organisation actually thought or did at the time the document was created.
As you study archival documents, you are almost leaning over the shoulder of the civil servant who wrote the memorandum, the clergyman who filled in the register, the great-aunt who wrote the letter, or the cartographer who made the map.
The unique nature of archival documents has implications for researchers who wish to make use of them. Researchers who may be familiar with libraries and 'secondary' information sources such as published books, will need to modify their research strategies and expectations accordingly.
Here are some of the main differences to take into account:-
It is not possible to browse the shelves as in a library. You will have to discuss your area of research interest with an archivist and consult 'finding aids' (which is what archivists call their catalogues, indexes and guides). When you have selected the archives you want to see, they will be fetched for you from the repository.
Some archives may be unavailable for research, for reasons of confidentiality, or because they are being repaired. There is no general and unrestricted right of public access to archives. Access rules are usually set by law, or the person or organisation that originally accumulated the documents.
You will need to work out which person or organisation would have had an interest in or functional responsibility for your subject area, and what records they might have therefore created about it. Archivists find this is one of the hardest things about archives for researchers to remember, so here are a couple of real life examples from one Archives:
Archivists at Sydney City Council are often asked to help people find out when their old terrace houses were built. There were no documents specifically accumulated on the subject, because it was of no official interest to the Council. But reorienting the enquiry as 'What Council departments or functions might have been concerned with details of individual properties last century?' yields the answer: The Council has accumulated assessment-books since the 1840s, and these documents, originally made for financial reasons, can be used to deduce construction dates from changes in assessment patterns.
Sydney City Council has (unlike some other local governments) never been officially responsible for the function of managing cemeteries. Therefore, the Council has never accumulated documents about cemeteries, so the Council's archives do not contain much evidence about early Sydney burial grounds.
'In-house' Archives and 'Collecting' Archives
Generally speaking here are two kinds of Archives. Some are 'in-house' Archives, responsible for caring only for the archival documents of their own organisations. These include the Archives offices of governments (Commonwealth, State and local), businesses, schools, churches, community groups and so on.
Other Archives 'collect' documents from outside their own walls, in order to build up useful research collections. These include State library manuscript departments. 'Collecting' Archives often try to specialise: for example in documents of literary figures or scientists or business.
If you have not undertaken research in a Archives before, these tips will help you to get the best results -
WARNING!
Doing research in Archives can become addictive. Beware and
enjoy!
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