INTRODUCTION TO THE SOURCES GUIDE	by Beth Duryea
<-- previous section | search | table of contents | next section -->

Searching for sources...

Before you begin searching this guide for archival sources, it is a good idea to find a general topic, and we offer elsewhere at this site some practical advice on how to do that, as well as advice on how to use this guide and the archives to narrow your topic (Nailing Down a Topic).

The starting point for searching our local archives is the Collection Descriptions List included at this website. There is a separate entry for each Valley archive included in the guide. You can click on each one individually to view its contents. From there, you will be able to scroll through the site, or use your cursor to move quickly to sections of the site. You may also be able to use your browser's search capability to locate particular terms referenced in our descriptions of archival materials. There is the additional possibility of searching across some of the collections by using the Guide's subject search capability. Finally, in most cases you will also be able to link from this site to the homepages of specific archives, where you will find additional information on collections.

Keep in mind that once you have located a potentially valuable set of documents at a particular archive, your next step will be to arrange a visit, which is when the real fun begins. At the archive, you will find additional material to help you in your search, including finding aids that offer even more detailed indexing of collections than is available here.

You will also find archivists in the archives. Historians differ on many things. But they all agree archivists are indispensable partners, thanks to their expert knowledge of their collections and the periods they cover. Archivists can help you refine or expand your search in new ways. More about that later, when we move into the archives.

You should begin your search for archival sources by reading the introductory text for each of the archives in this guide to learn what types of sources you are likely to find in each. Don't assume that every archive will have some kind of material on every subject. In fact, unlike general purpose libraries, most archival repositories have particular focuses.

For example, the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association Library (which, in fact, is an archive) houses "information relating to economic, social, and cultural conditions in the Pioneer Valley during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries." There are family papers, which include correspondence, deeds, wills, and estate inventories, and a large collection of account books and diaries. This collection is probably not a good place to look for sources relating to late 19th-century international relations or the peace movements of the last century. It would, however, be an excellent source of information on 19th-century family history, agricultural history, or small business in that period.

Some archives, particularly those at the five colleges, house collections that are more varied in their subject matter. Amherst College has collected the papers of many of its graduates, and the information revealed in their letters, business papers, and the published materials they left behind often touch on a wide range of topics related to United States and world history. The Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College is predominantly a women's manuscript collection, but that by no means restricts its subject matter. Smith offers a wide-ranging social history collection because, as archivist Sherrill Redmon puts it, "Women are people, and so they have been involved in everything that people are involved in." You'll find there material you can use to write about medical history, the law, missionary activities, suffrage, labor relations, peace movements, 20th-century politics, or radicalism and reform, birth-control issues, and animal rights, to name just a few topics illuminated by this incredibly rich collection.

Some of the archival collections referenced here are particularly deep in specific areas, as a survey of the collection descriptions will make clear. For example, if you are interested in 19th century abolitionism-perhaps abolition activity in Massachusetts-reading the introductions to the various archives may cause you to narrow your search to the Smith College and Sophia Smith Collections and the W.E.B. DuBois Library, as these are archives containing 19th-century material related to social history and African-American history. A quick search of the Historic Northampton listings to check what is in the "Family papers...from the mid-18th to the mid-20th century," would probably also repay the effort.

Another way you can quickly survey contents of some of the collections referenced here is to use the Guide's subject search function. (The Mount Holyoke College collection you can search by subject from the Mount Holyoke website, to which we link.) The subject search function will lead you to entries in subject lists for different holdings. These are lists of personal and corporate names and topics of significance that come up in the holding's papers. In this way, you will turn up entire collections that relate to your topic and/or smaller amounts of material in collections that have a different focus but contain some sources pertaining to your topic (perhaps a few letters or copies of pamphlets or the papers of one family member within a collection of family papers). For the anti-slavery topic, for example, there is a substantial collection of Garrison Family Papers in the Sophia Smith Collection. You will also find that the Erasmus Darwin Hudson Papers at the W.E.B. DuBois Library contain the papers of Erasmus Hudson, Sr., who worked with abolition societies in 11 states from 1839-1850. (One word of caution: Do not rely on subject searches alone. Sometimes you can find important material missed in a subject search by browsing collections. And resources at the archives themselves, including additional finding aids and the archivists themselves, can point you to valuable material you might have missed otherwise.)

Once you have located listings of interest within particular collections, you may be able to use your browser's search function to do a word search to locate possible source materials. For the anti-slavery topic, for example, you would search under "abolition." But you might also want to try "abolitionists," "anti-slavery," "William Lloyd Garrison," "Sojourner Truth," and the names of other important individuals in the movement. Of course, you could also look through the collections without resorting to word searches.

In deciding which documents might be useful, keep in mind that in this guide archival collections are described in two ways. They are described in terms of their contents--that is, by subject matter and by type of document (are the materials correspondence, reports, audio tapes, photographs, pamphlets, news clippings?). They are also described in terms of the volume of space they occupy, which is usually indicated in linear feet, referring to the amount of shelf space occupied by the documents. (Think of two linear feet as equivalent to a normal file-cabinet drawer. A linear foot can hold as much as 1500 sheets of paper, although obviously some items in archives take up more linear space than sheets of paper. Also, not every piece of paper is one document. A document can be a three-page letter, a 50-page report, or a 20-page diary.) Obviously, both elements of a collection's description, content and size, will be important to you as you appraise the possible value to you of particular archival sources. For example, if you are interested in researching the home front during World War I, you may choose to explore the War Service records of the Smith College Relief Unit in the Smith College Archives. When you come across this source at this website, you will discover that it occupies 17 linear feet. Of that, the listing notes, there are 1.5 linear feet of photographs and .5 feet of news clippings. The remaining 15 linear feet include correspondence, financial and legal records, and glass slides. Clearly, this is a valuable source. A six-inch thick stack of folders containing news clippings on your topic is likely to be useful, saving much time scanning reels of microfilmed newspapers. And an eighteen-inch pile of photographs sounds promising. But the listing does not reveal how the remainder of the 15 linear feet of documents is divided. You will want to check with the collection archivist-or with finding aids at the archive-to find out how many of these linear feet are devoted to correspondence, how many to financial records (and what type), how many to legal records (and perhaps how much space is taken up by those glass slides). A phone call to the archivist would probably help you decide how useful this collection would be in your research, and whether it is worth a visit.

The size of collections varies enormously. But don't be fooled by size alone. Good things can come in small packages. The Ashley Family Papers at Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, for example, fill only 2.5 linear feet but contain the sermons and notes of a Tory sympathizer that could offer invaluable information on Tory thoughts and activities during the Revolution.