Hello hello world. I have returned from the depths of my school’s archives and am here to regale all of you with tales from the depths of the Santa Clara University Archives:

For starters, the archives, did not at all pan out how I thought it would be… I was no Indiana Jones nor Nancy Drew. Instead my luxurious archival endeavor consisted of a two hour session in a small room where I spent the entire time looking at old editions of our student newspaper, The Santa Clara.

Initially, my goal was to tell a story about a history of Santa Clara University and relate it to a personal experience of my own. I would then use the information I found in the archives to help with this process. I decided I wanted to research the history of all things food at the university, old menus, ordering receipts, where we got our produce from, because the point dining system we have is one of the main reasons I decided to come to this university. Our point dining system allows for students to pay for meals as if they have a dollar value, enable take out options, and our dining system offers an abundant of gluten free, vegan, vegetarian, and organic food selections. I marched into the archives with much gusto and ambition, only to find that there was no information regarding any of those topics within the archives…

Me when I finished in the archives

Concerning? I think so.

As alarming as it sounds, there was no information regarding food AT ALL within the archives because according to the archivist who was assisting us, all of the information is thrown own each year with the taxes and is not saved. I was frustrated, disappointed, and tried my best to find anything about food in The Santa Clara, but unfortunately had no luck.

I left the archives feeling defeated, frustrated, and began to wonder what I could have done differently. A potential I did not think of until after I left was to maybe look at old bank receipts and repots in order to see if there was anything about food. From the article I read by Tirabssi, she mentioned using a principle of selectivity in order to understand how to think of where information would be put by someone who created it. It was not until after I left where I thought this might have been a possibility.

I wonder what would’ve happened

After my archival adventure, and writing an essay regarding what I found (or did not find) I am by no means a research expert. I have a lot to learn, but I am excited for the next time I have to look up more information on something now that I have new methods to approach it with.

Nailed it

♥Little Kelli