Margot Note's Blog, page 27

A Deeper Dive into Archival Description

The purpose of archival description is to make accessible the information contained in the collection and maintain control over archival holdings.

Description should define intellectual content and physical characteristics, as well as document records creators, content, and context. It should also explain how to use the records, the relationships among records, and how to gain physical access.

Description Defined

Description analyzes, organizes, and records details about the elements of a collection, such as a creator, title, dates, extent, and contents, to facilitate the work’s identification, management, and understanding. It’s the creation of a representation of a unit of archival material by the process of capturing, collating, and evaluating information. It serves to identify materials and explain the contents and records systems that produced them.

Archival Description vs. Bibliographic Description

Description for archival materials differs from the bibliographic description that most people are used to based on their experiences with libraries. Both have standards—with archival description standards deriving from cataloging standards. However, archival materials don’t offer information about themselves as easily as a book, with a page listing title, author, publisher, year of creation, and other information. Instead, an archivist conducting description of a collection discovers and infers information from the content and context of the materials. The information is often updated if materials are added to the collection later.

Some Considerations

When describing collections, archivists consider several points. For example, they can only describe collections to the level at which archivists have arranged them. If an archivist hasn’t processed a box of archival materials at the folder level, then it can only be described at the box-level. For many types of collections, box-level description is adequate for research needs.

The level to which the archivist describes a body of records should be dependent on the records, their anticipated use, and the appraisal of their research value. Not every collection gets described to the same level, nor does everything within a single collection. I’ve found that my consulting clients and non-archivists tend to be surprised by the distinct levels of description. Many people believe that each item should be described, which is laborious and unnecessary. Instead, archivists focus on matching the level of description to the research value of the materials.

Archival description concerns itself with progressive levels of control, from the point at which the archivists brought in the collection and accessioned and appraised it. The collection is refined as the archivist performs additional arrangement activities, working through levels of arrangement. Description employs a hierarchical and iterative analysis of a body of materials sharing provenance. The process starts with describing the collection as a whole and then describes series and subseries as needed. 

Archivists are concerned about the chief source of information. At each point, the archivist is basing his or her description on previous work. For example, archivists draft their basic finding aids from the collection. Cataloging is then usually done from the finding aid. 

Description should only be made for intellectual groupings, not for various kinds of housing. It can bring together materials that are physically separated within the repository or connected to related holdings elsewhere. What cannot be brought together in a storage room can be joined within a finding aid. 

Lastly, the audience for the archival collection is important. Who will be using the records? Do they exist both in the repository and remotely, which is becoming increasingly important? What other information and background are the researchers likely to need?

The Result

Archival description is a process of creating access tools, usually finding aids or similar guides that allow researchers to browse the collection. Description acts as a surrogate to the archival materials; rather than searching through cartons of materials, users can peruse a document to facilitate access without unnecessary handling of materials. Description, performed with care by dedicated archivists, provides a road map to records of enduring value, just waiting to be utilized.

The blog was originally published on Lucidea's blog.

If you like archives, memory, and legacy as much as I do, you might consider signing up for my email list. Every few weeks I send out a newsletter with new articles and exclusive content for readers. It’s basically my way of keeping in touch with you and letting you know what’s going on. Your information is protected and I never spam.

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Arrangement in Archival Collections

Arrangement and description are the critical means by which archivists administer and control their holdings. Archivists view arrangement and description as an ongoing process, a series of linked activities that start with the decision to acquire materials.

Capturing Information

During accessioning, archivists establish an initial set of internal information systems, which sets the basis for this ongoing process. As work continues on a collection, the archivist expands and updates the information. Archivists may move the collection, get additional materials from the donor, or do further arrangement and description work—resulting in more detailed content descriptions.

The underlying rationale for these systems is that they continue to reflect the link between the records and the context of their creation. They also document what the archives has done to the records. That transparency is increasingly important for researchers. In the past, these systems consisted of multiple analog files, such as a card file with donor information or a logbook where accession numbers were assigned. Now, the information is frequently in one electronic system, but the underlying logic remains.

Archives and manuscripts form part of the overall information resources of a repository, along with books, serials, audiovisual materials, and databases. The underlying unity of all these information resources should structure the program, since queries are not format-based, except for visual materials.

The purpose of arrangement and description is to promote access. Arrangement addresses the physical organization of records, while description is the process used to provide information about the context and content of records. Arrangement is inherently an intellectual process, and thinking about it only in terms of physical arrangement is too narrow. Both processes contribute to access.

Arrangement Defined

Arrangement is the process of putting items into meaningful groups and putting those groups in relation to each other. It identifies and brings together sets of records derived from a common source, which share characteristics and the same file structure. It also identifies relationships among such sets of records and between records and their creators, which relates content to context.

This process involves both intellectual and physical activities. Intellectual activities include analysis of records in terms of the type of materials, provenance, functional origins, and contents. Physical activities include the actual arrangement, sequence of papers, conservation measures, packing, and labeling.

Arrangement is also the process of organizing materials according to their provenance and original order, to protect their context and to achieve physical or intellectual control over the materials. It’s the organization and sequence of items within a collection.

Provenance and Original Order

In discussing arrangement, one must also discuss provenance and original order. Provenance suggests that records should be maintained according to their origin and not intermingled with those from another provenance.

Maintaining provenance maintains the relationship between the records and the organizations or individuals who created, accumulated, and maintained them in the conduct of personal or corporate activity. These actions aid reference as the archivist can identify where in an organization a specific activity took place and thus where the records might be.

Original order notes that records should be maintained in the order established by the person or organization who created, accumulated, assembled, or maintained them. Keeping records in the order in which the creator kept them provides information about the context and use of those records.

Intellectual and Physical Control

Through arrangement and later, description, archivists provide a structure—a framework of knowledge—that supports a wide range of research in collections of enduring value. Processing collections by provenance and original order and conducting arrangement using archival principles allows users to come as close as they can to historical figures and events.

The blog was originally published on Lucidea's blog.

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Archives and Memory

The term archives has many meanings; it encompasses a complex array of institutional, political, social, and cultural aspects. Archivists think about archival materials in terms of what they acquire, arrange, describe, preserve, and make accessible, but many think in more abstract ways.

The topics of history and cultural memory reflect the fundamental questions of archival identity: who archivists are and what they do. Archivists often use the metaphors of culture and memory to make the profession more understandable to others.

Memory Defined

All documents arise from the act of memorializing something—be it recording or sharing information—and the fact that people create and retain records.

Memory may be described in three ways:

A place where information is stored or from which ideas are recalled. Memories can be retrieved, reshaped by others, and distributed.

A thing or object that can be measured or managed.

An activity akin to a technology, machine, or performance that fixes items for later recall. As such, memory is a construction and a work in progress.

All three categories reflect the multifaceted definition of archives as a repository, as its holdings of the repository, and as the work archivists do. The usefulness of memory recalled by archives is shaped by both the quality of the documents as credible evidence, and the transparency of the context in which people create them.

Archivists also emphasize the importance of authenticity. Without quality and openness, archival collections lack a foundation on which to build. The assumption is that history is a pursuit of the truth so that history is written to memorialize that truth.

When archives develop collecting policies and appraise potential additions to their holdings, they’re assessing the quality of documents as evidence. When archivists arrange and describe collections, they increasingly aim at transparency, recognizing the stamp archivists inevitably put on collections.

Cultural Memory

Memory is complex and exists on several levels. It can be personal: who we are and what shapes us. It can be at the group level, that is, shared experiences that shape communities and the members of those communities. Culture also shapes memory. Memory fades if it’s not supported by something that preserves it.

As humans, we often look to things as representations of something else. For example, finding aids are commonly referred to as “archival representations” as they constitute surrogates for the collections.

These collections are themselves representations of the people, places, and events they document. In that respect, they have symbolic significance beyond research value.

The Impact of Technology

The impact of technology on history and cultural memory is still being investigated. Think, for instance, about how we view information through machine interfaces. On a technical level, the interface is the translation of the computer’s binary code to text and symbols that people understand. On a human level, the interface is how the archives presents the information and provides access to users. If users are approaching archives primarily or initially through websites, the interface becomes the intermediary between the user and the archives. Archivists may contextualize documents in the finding aid, but the way those finding aids are presented on the website has a consequence for the user’s sense-making.

The Myth of Objectivity

Archival records hold just a sliver of the documentary record and cultural memory. As George Orwell wrote in 1984, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” In the context of appraisal and acquisition, archivists make decisions about what to save. Accountability and transparency come into play during these decisions.

Archives are powerful institutions that control the past and have a myth of impartiality, neutrality, and objectivity, and thus have power over memory and identity—and history.

The blog was originally published on Lucidea's blog.

If you like archives, memory, and legacy as much as I do, you might consider signing up for my email list. Every few weeks I send out a newsletter with new articles and exclusive content for readers. It’s basically my way of keeping in touch with you and letting you know what’s going on. Your information is protected and I never spam.

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Levels of Archival Arrangement—A Primer

To establish context when performing arrangement, archivists start with an understanding of the overall body that produced the records. Archivists keep evidential and information values in mind to create a scheme that protects both. As part of archival collections management, they also think about audiences, as archives usually have more than one.

Archivists start with the whole and then move towards an understanding of the parts of the collection. The realities of the materials’ volume and staff size will determine what’s done.

The traditional approach to arrangement goes back to archivist Oliver Wendell Holmes and an article in a 1964 American Archivist, where he discussed five levels of arrangement.

The Repository

The first is the repository level. This level pertains to arrangement into overall divisions or collections; sometimes, it relates to the physical layout within a repository. A repository may be divided into public records and manuscripts or might have a separate subject-related unit for literary manuscripts, or labor collections, or the like. In larger institutional archives, divisions like an organizational chart may exist.

The Record Group or Collection

The second level is record group or collection, which is the basic organizational unit by provenance, about a body of organizationally related records. There can be no overlap, so sometimes smaller, related agencies are kept together if it’s hard to separate them from the records of the larger group.

Record group is the National Archives term also used by other institutional repositories. Collection is a more generic term, used for manuscript collections but also institutional records in many settings.

Subgroups occur if there’s a major subdivision, such as a family collection with subgroups for the papers of individual members of the family. Sometimes personal papers contain a subgroup for organizational records that need to remain a part of the larger aggregate. All subgroups have a common origin in the larger record group or collection.

Series

Series, the third level, is the most important one in terms of arrangement. The series level indicates the real organization of the collection, and it’s a significant focus area for description.

Series aren’t always obvious, so look for a common denominator in terms of subject, provenance, or record types. Materials within a series are related by creation, activities, use, or form; they are filing units in a consistent pattern.

Once the series are determined, you need to decide on the order in which they will fall into the overall collection. You may have ten series, but one of them must come first in terms of physical containers and in terms of listing in the finding aids. You move from the most important series, the ones closest to the purpose of the records creators, to the least significant records. Archivists also move from general to specific.

File Unit and Document

The file unit is the next level. A series can be one folder, or it can be hundreds of boxes, and there are different schemes for sequencing those files:

Chronological is the most straightforward and objective. Chronological arrangement shows the relationship between the documents and the events that surround their creation. However, dates aren’t always obvious. Chronology splits ownership and separates letters and responses.

Alphabetical is used more frequently for literary materials or retained if it’s the original order. Alphabetical arrangement keeps letters and responses together but makes it harder to trace activities.

Combination is useful when the original order means that the incoming documents are alphabetical, and the outgoing files are chronological.

Subject arrangements are retained when they’re the original order and reflect the records creators’ projects or style of work. Subject arrangement often occurs in the papers of scholars, researchers, and journalists. Archivists, however, don’t create subject files since one document can have multiple subjects. The arrangement destroys context, and doing so inserts the archivist’s opinion where it doesn’t belong.

The last level is the document. Item-level arrangement is unnecessary and should rarely occur. Often my clients think that their collections must be organized individually, and then they become overwhelmed.

A Traditional Approach

Provenance informs the first two levels, while original order affects the last three. The five-level scheme is traditional, and some archivists feel that it no longer works. One problem is that a body of records can only be assigned to one collection or record group. The function that created a specific series of records can shift from one office to another over time, bureaucracies change, and the five levels don’t always work well.

A New Paradigm

Some have suggested a new paradigm: that records aren’t created by a single body and don’t fall into a hierarchical arrangement with each other. Instead, records are created in a complex bureaucratic network that may have a hierarchy. While the organization may have a hierarchy, the records don’t have a hierarchy. While archivists determine the best way to arrange contemporary records, the five levels of arrangement can still be a useful way to view this process.

The blog was originally published on Lucidea's blog.

If you like archives, memory, and legacy as much as I do, you might consider signing up for my email list. Every few weeks I send out a newsletter with new articles and exclusive content for readers. It’s basically my way of keeping in touch with you and letting you know what’s going on. Your information is protected and I never spam.

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The Effect of Technology on Archival Activities

As technology has advanced, so has the effect it has had on traditional archival activities. The digital era has transformed collection development, appraisal, arrangement and description, preservation, and research services.

Collection Development

Archivists face the challenge of receiving materials in formats they may not be able to preserve or make accessible. In some cases, they may be expected to provide access to materials of which they won’t take custody. The archivist may play an advisory role to help the records creator develop recordkeeping systems, but not to arrange for the transfer of records.

Appraisal

Archivists are faced with vast amounts of material, created digitally but maintained in both paper and electronic form. The same series of records may move from office to office and from discrete types of documents to interrelated data systems. These activities make records scheduling and the development of retention schedules challenging to engineer.

The nature of these materials raises issues of assessing authenticity; it’s almost impossible to tell what an original document is. For legal reasons, systems now deal with these questions, but overlapping collections in formats where authenticity is hard to assess still exist.

Arrangement and Description

The range of new media complicates arrangement and description. A single series may be in paper form until a date, then stored as electronic media for a period, and are being created on a computer. It’s the same series but mixed now with other series in a system.

Traditional methods of arrangement and description result in static finding aids that no longer mesh with the fluidity of records creation. There is a movement towards finding aids that separate information about the records creators from details about the records, and towards finding aids that can change with input from staff and users. The purpose of finding aids is both for collection management and use. Do changes in technology mean that the needs of the repository for information about the holdings differ from those of the user?

As archivists re-engineered their finding aids for encoded archival description (EAD), they discussed with the audience for finding aids and whether they were useful for researchers or written in code only understood by archivists. In some respects, EAD has made the playing field more even, because repositories at all levels can adopt standards. It has also created a digital divide between repositories that have incorporated preservation and standards into their operations and those who haven’t.

Preservation

Digital records are fragile and easily manipulated. Without the correct hardware and software, they are unusable. These issues extend to audiovisual formats. Many archives have collections of media they can no longer access. Some items they know about; others are buried in unprocessed collections and may not surface for years. Even if you can access specific media now, will you be able to in ten years? None of the magnetic storage media are permanent, and software and hardware change rapidly.

Preservation in a digital world takes on new and complicated meanings, including environment and storage, and extending to reformatting and keeping information refreshed in both media and software.

Research Services

Researchers expect immediate responses, where they anticipated a waiting period in the past. Researchers also hope to do a great deal of research on an institution’s website. They expect to see information on the repository, the collections, and even entirely digitized holdings. Some researchers don’t understand that they may still have to visit the archives.

Archivists traditionally mediated between the user and the record. The Internet often eliminates the archivist from the transaction. Archives are complicated, and access systems don’t always translate into user-friendly versions.

Changing Technologies

Managing change is expected because of the rapid developments in technology that affect archives. This point of view runs counter to some traditional attitudes, but archival repositories must evolve and keep pace with technology to continue serving their users.

The blog was originally published on Lucidea's blog.

If you like archives, memory, and legacy as much as I do, you might consider signing up for my email list. Every few weeks I send out a newsletter with new articles and exclusive content for readers. It’s basically my way of keeping in touch with you and letting you know what’s going on. Your information is protected and I never spam.

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Technology’s Impact on Archives

Technology has changed how archivists do their work. The impact has been dramatic, but it has occurred over decades, so the transformations have been gradual.

The Impact of Computers

Before the 1980s, repositories collected, arranged, and described materials according to archival principles applied in idiosyncratic ways. Researchers knew about collections by word of mouth, footnotes, and published guides and corresponded with archivists for information. Unless the query resulted in an identifiable response, the researcher was expected to visit, sit in the reading room, and review the materials.

In the 1980s, archivists saw libraries adopt online catalogs and other collection management tools. Over time archivists embraced technology and automated archival collections management practices. These activities resulted in the development of standards, and the recognition that sharing information across repositories was desirable. Early mechanisms for sharing information were through bibliographic utilities, using designated computers and lines, unavailable to the public.

The Impact of the Internet

The World Wide Web, launched in the 1990s, altered how archives communicated with the world and changed user expectations. The Internet sped up automation activities. Not only were archivists developing collection management tools, implementing OPACs for bibliographic description, and creating databases for internal and external use, but they were also developing new ways of sharing information beyond repository walls.

In the first generation, the catalogs were online, but the researcher still had to contact the archives to see the full inventory. In the 1990s, repositories began encoding their finding aids in Encoded Archival Description (EAD) and posting them on websites or making them available through other means. Researchers found materials on their own as well as through repository websites, which stimulated the sharing of information, both among archives and with the public.

Archivists now dealt with actual digital holdings and not just collection management tools and internal recordkeeping systems. They acquired born-digital records and digitized analog collections. Archival websites became an outreach tool, and not only an online catalog.

Important Questions

These developments raise the following questions:

Does provenance still have relevance? Records are created and distributed with ease in organizations, which makes it challenging to ensure that records from one source don’t mix with another source.

Do digital records have an original order? Is original order meaningless in an environment where files are retrieved and sorted differently based on various queries?

How do archivists identify an original document when there is often no single copy? How does one determine authenticity?

In an analog world, records transfer to an archives when they are no longer needed for the primary value for which they were created. In a digital world, inactive records are difficult to identify. Recordkeeping systems are designed to meld various kinds of data, as well as supersede old data. Will records physically transfer to the archives, or will they remain with the records creators indefinitely?

Is it necessary to appraise, arrange, and describe collections when a computer can search vast quantities of material for keywords?

Do appraisal and accessioning decisions become more straightforward or more complicated in a world without physical permanence? What impact will technology have on the notion of continuity?

Does the decline of permanence shed light on the motivations that cause creators to create records and archivists to keep them?

What is the role of the repository in promoting collections when Google can find most information?

Are researchers interested in what a repository has to offer or only in finding specific information?

How does that change when the researcher never talks to the archivist? Is it the same to put everything on the website?

How do these changes affect what archivists tell donors about how they will manage collections and make them available?

What do archivists need to know in a digital age in terms of collaborating with other staff members and various constituent groups?

No Easy Answers

Fundamentally, archives haven’t changed. Records are produced by some generating technology, be it pencil, typewriter, or computer. The fundamental activities of archivists remain the same, but how they do it evolves.

The blog was originally published on Lucidea's blog.

If you like archives, memory, and legacy as much as I do, you might consider signing up for my email list. Every few weeks I send out a newsletter with new articles and exclusive content for readers. It’s basically my way of keeping in touch with you and letting you know what’s going on. Your information is protected and I never spam.

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The Process of Accessioning in Archives

Archivists bring new materials into their institution’s recordkeeping systems through accessioning. Accessioning occurs when collections are physically and legally transferred to an archives.

Archival records can be acquired in whole or in parts over time in a variety of ways, such as by retention schedule, statute, transfer, gift, bequest, or purchase.

Traditionally, archival accessioning has functioned as the bridge between unprocessed and processed collections. It’s a way to acquire the information necessary to administer the collection when it arrives at the repository. It also gets all the archives’ holdings under a uniform level of control and establishes priorities for future work.

During the time of accessioning, archivists record information about the creators, origins, contents, formats, and extent of the collection. Other activities include a preliminary review of the collection, providing suitable storage, and recording the essential information.

Accessioning Information in Many Forms

Accessioning includes the process of creating internal information systems. An accession register or log assigns the collection a unique number, usually the year plus some identifier, which immediately creates a permanent record for the aggregate. This number also constitutes a chronological record of materials entering the system and a record of the necessary legal and intellectual information.

Files on the donor or the source of the records are also valuable. Files like this can take many forms, such as physical files or a field in a database. The key point is access by the donor’s name.

The locator file tells you where a collection is stored. Collections may be split among several locations for assorted reasons. In archival repositories,it’s more common to label the shelves and then record the location of boxes by stack level, range, or shelf number. Doing so allows you to move collections to make the best use of space and annotate the locator system. Such flexibility is necessary because archival collections tend to grow or shrink, and have materials that require a variety of storage types.

Regarding the accession form, this depends on the repository, but in many cases, this is a MARC cataloging record or a database entry form that containsinformation for both public access and collection management. It usually contains a condensed and preliminary version of what goes in a finding aid, since the collection hasn’t had much work performed on it. If there is a container list, it’s often appended to the accession form for staff and researcher use.

There may also be a dossier, administrative file, or case file created for the collection.From the time a collection first comes to an archives’ attention, information about the records creators has accumulated, ranging from correspondence with the donor, newspaper clippings, information on related holdings in other repositories, and notes from any visit to the donor including preliminary lists of cabinets and boxes. The dossier is an active administrative file to which the deed of gift and any future contact with or information about the donor or collection would be added.

Internal Information to Inform Archival Choices

These forms of accession data are the foundational source of information about a collection. They are internal and thus not public, although archivists may share portions of the information with users upon request. Acquisition files grow over time and are one of the distinctions between how libraries and archives handle acquisitions. Archives are more like museums in this respect.

Through this process, archives set up the kinds of internal information systems that they will add to and continue to use. Any of these records can be augmented over time, and specifically, the information on the accession form can and should grow as the collection is further arranged and described. If acquisitions are performed well, archivists will have reasonable, essential control over their holdings, both physical and intellectual, even before archivists perform the bulk of processing.

The blog was originally published on Lucidea's blog.

If you like archives, memory, and legacy as much as I do, you might consider signing up for my email list. Every few weeks I send out a newsletter with new articles and exclusive content for readers. It’s basically my way of keeping in touch with you and letting you know what’s going on. Your information is protected and I never spam.

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Collection Analysis for Archives—Thought Starters

Collection analysis is a process that helps clarify the archival repository’s goals in the context of its mission and budget, supplies data used to set collecting and funding priorities, and builds a base for long-range planning and administration.

The assessment provides a snapshot of what an archival collection looks like at any time, measuring it against a set of objective categories and criteria. It’s a time-consuming process, which is why it isn’t undertaken that frequently.

Collection analysis is both quantitative and qualitative. Collections are enumerated, which results in data regarding cataloged units, size of collections, date spans, and other information. The analysis of those findings is qualitative and gives the archives a sense of both broad and detailed subjects it collects. Not only do archivists review categories, but they also subdivide major subjects into facets to determine whether the categories represent real-world subjects of importance to the archival repository.

Collection analysis is a top-down approach, starting with the overall repository holdings and dividing them into units for analysis. You end up with data at a finer level of granularity; how fine depends on how archivists designed the analysis. It’s often undertaken as an early step in a larger process, such as documentation strategy, where the repository needs to know what is has before planning strategy moves forward.

Descriptive, Not Prescriptive

Collection analysis is descriptive, not prescriptive. From there, you must figure out where you are going. Just because archives are weak in a specific area doesn’t mean they should actively seek collections in that area. Archives may use the information gained from collection analysis to reevaluate existing collecting policies and design future strategies.

Collection analysis can help a repository understand its current holdings so that future collecting reflects conscious decisions based on accurate information. Repositories thus use activities like collection analysis to reevaluate their collecting policies and set priorities for more short-term collecting efforts that are consistent with the overall policy.

Beyond deciding on topics, archivists must think about the level at which to collect. Not everything will be pursued with the same level of intensity. Archivists can, for example, decide to collect on a topic through summary documentation, records sufficient to document a basic chronology, or more comprehensive documentation. Archives may also say that they will solicit, passively accept materials, or reject offers based on their analysis.

To Collect or Not Collect

Once it’s understood what’s in a collection, archivists can figure out what they wish to collect or not collect. For example, what’s the archives’ statement of purpose? The archives should be clear on its role within the larger institution’s mission. The general institution policy is often not appropriate or reflective of the archives’ goals. What are the types of programs supported? Most repositories support research. What about exhibits, publications, and any other outreach programs? Who are the users? Does the archives serve only a scholarly audience or the general public? Is there a primary audience whose needs are the most important? What are the identified strengths and weaknesses of the collection? Does the repository emphasize geographic areas or periods? Topics or languages? Forms of materials? What does the repository not collect? Items outside the collection are often defined in format terms. The bulk of this information can come from collection analysis.

Some institutions have formal or informal agreements with others that would affect decisions. They may have contracts with institutions to help them care for their records. What are the agreements regarding coordination or resource sharing?

Ask yourself about procedures for monitoring and reviewing your findings. There should be a time frame for reviewing what you are doing. Often, short term collecting initiatives have been launched, and the archivists must assess them considering longer-term goals.

The blog was originally published on Lucidea's blog.

If you like archives, memory, and legacy as much as I do, you might consider signing up for my email list. Every few weeks I send out a newsletter with new articles and exclusive content for readers. It’s basically my way of keeping in touch with you and letting you know what’s going on. Your information is protected and I never spam.

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Finding a Research Question

When writing a paper, your first task is to find a research question that will lead to a research problem worth solving. First, find a topic specific enough to research it in the time that you have allotted to complete the project. You are looking for a right-sized question worth investigating. A thesis question, for example, should be bigger and more complex than a short undergraduate paper.

Next, interrogate the topic until you find questions that catch your interest. Your questions should inspire you and get you excited. Don’t settle on the easy or the boring. Keep probing the topic until you find a subject that lights a fire in you.

Determine the kinds of evidence that your readers will expect you to offer in support of your answer. Will you need to look at secondary sources, or primary sources, or both? Will you need quantitative or qualitative data?

Ask yourself if you can find this data. Commit to researching a topic only when you think you have a good chance of finding the right kind of evidence.

Once you think you have enough data to support an answer to your question, you can begin to formulate an argument that makes your case.

Ask Yourself Three Questions

Your aim is to explain the following:

What you’re writing about

What you don’t know about it

Why you want your readers to care about it

Alternatively, you can frame your argument in this way:

“I’m working on the topic of X because I want to find out Y for readers to understand Z.”

Connecting Claims, Reasons, and Evidence

As you formulate your research question, you can also start to structure your argument in this way:

“I claim that X because of these reasons Y which I base on this evidence Z.”

You should also anticipate objections and formulate responses in this way:

“I acknowledge these questions ABC, and I respond to them with these arguments 123.”

A Zigzagging Journey

Creating a question, researching, and developing an argument seldom takes a straight path. Instead, once you have an argument worth making, you may discover that you need more evidence, new sources, and even a different direction for your paper. Allow for some detours on your journey to deeper knowledge.

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Three Levels of Critical Thinking

No matter what your stage in life, critical thinking skills allow you to think more deeply. When conducting research and writing for an academic audience, critical reasoning is required to interpret your findings.

Critical-thinking skills connect and organize ideas. Three types distinguish them: analysis, inference, and evaluation.

Analysis

Analysis involves the following activities:

•         Identifying what’s being said

•         Distinguishing the relevant from the irrelevant

•         Connecting different strands of thought

•         Classifying similar characteristics

•         Determining differences

•         Identifying analogies

Inference

Inference requires you to perform the following tasks:

•         Drawing out what is being conveyed (and what’s not being conveyed)

•         Interpreting actions to be examples of characteristics, intents, or expressions

•         Identifying assumptions

•         Abstracting ideas

•         Applying analogies to reach conclusions

•         Recognizing cause and effect relationships

Evaluation

Evaluation includes these activities:

•         Giving reasons for decisions

•         Judging the value, credibility, or strength of an argument

•         Understanding the significance or meaning of information

•         Criticizing ideas in a constructive manner

•         Modifying ideas in response to counterarguments or feedback

Becoming skilled in problem-solving and critical reasoning gives you a significant advantage in your personal, academic, and professional lives. The processes of critical thinking encouraged by research and writing will benefit you for years to come.

What do you do to think critically? Let me know in the comment section below.

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