Earlier I had laid out my plans and notes-to-self on how I would approach my first day of archival research. In hindsight, I would say I started off on a good foot. I did not find everything I was hoping for. For example, I couldn’t find much American Cold War propaganda art, and the propaganda which I did find was very nuanced and hard to pin-point. That being said, I found a lot of new information which did work toward my subject… so my approach didn’t let me down.
To start, off, I was expecting the archives to look something like this (for some weird reason):
Source: Wikimedia.org
But it didn’t. It was a comfortable room with artifacts on bookshelves and in the neighboring room. We had our introduction and then it was time to dig in. The first thing I did whenever I began to read a new source was to make note of what it is, what it is called, and provide a brief description. I have already seen good come out from this, since I plan to revisit an artifact which I would have otherwise not been able to find again.
- As a side note: I also took pictures of everything that I read, so I could revisit them later without having to leave my desk.
When it came to branching out from my used sources, I did it in more of a stream of continuity. I was working with school newspapers, and so to “branch out” I decided to look through the contents of the entire artifact and to read later publications of the newspaper to get a better sense of context. Again, this was a very good choice, as I not only better understood what I was reading, but I found even more evidence to support my topic.
For finding trends: I couldn’t find much about a “wave of similar inspired [propaganda] pieces” which I spoke about last time. Instead I found a trend where, with time, the newspaper seemed to get much more direct about discussing communism and global politics. This could have been attributed to a new student body, a new newspaper board, etc. I’m still trying to figure that part out.
Finally, background research. Well… I still have to do that part. I have a few names of a few authors, but I do not know who they are or what they did. And this leads me into a new step I took upon myself mid-research: write down what you still don’t know and what you want to know. By doing this, I now have an organized list of what to research (and why I’m researching it), as well as the list of sources I know I can immediately refer to to answer such questions.
Here are some examples of some of the questions I wrote:
- “Who was the editor for this year?”
- “Who is this author?”
- “Is this art supposed to be anonymous?”
- “Given that contrary ideas were few and far between, does that mean it was not popular though?”
- “Is this editor the same as the other editor?”
- “Does the change is student body have anything to do with it?”
Since I am still far from being done, I still cannot say if my approach was actually foolproof or not. However, I do think I was set in the right direction, so for the time being, I am going to say this approach is all alright.
Photo Sources:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Archives_nationales_(Paris)_Grands_d%C3%A9p%C3%B4ts_(salle_de_l%27Armoire_de_fer).png