Part I

Hi there!

It appears you want to learn more about working with what historians refer to as primary sources. AskHistorians has an FAQ which you might find interesting, as well as a Monday Methods series on Finding and Understanding Sources. I’ll nevertheless provide a short introduction here as well. My work is largely on western people and institutions in the modern era, so these pointers should hold good for that.

Note that I'm not going to go into have historians use or interpret primary documents. That's a major discussion in and of itself. This is simply an introduction to how you could go about locating and accessing primary sources and documents from different types of archives.

Since you have not narrowed your topic in neither time, geography nor any other way it is really quite hard to know where to begin, but here goes.

First of all you'll want to know as much as possible about the person you are interested in. Who was he or she? Where did they come from? When and where did they live? Where did they work? What organisations or people were they associated with or in contact with? Is there any particular aspect of them or their activities you're interested in? All of these things will help you locate possible records or original documents.

So, what kinds of records are we talking about? This is where the questions above will help you. Think carefully about what kinds of written records someone would produce and leave behind. These can be of the formal kind (such as documents to do with their work), or of a more private nature (such as letters to friends or family). Once you know a bit about what you are looking for, you can start to look into where any of these papers might be found. If these documents have been preserved, most would likely be held in some kind of archive.

Let’s start off with public archives.

Public archives – like a national, departmental or municipal archive – will hold records pertaining to public/government affairs. This includes the records of people who worked in the public sector, from presidents and prime ministers downwards – as well as the records of any interactions private citizens might have had with the government or a public body (such as being contracted to build something, selling goods or services to the government, participating in a debate or discussion etc). These records can be in the form of letters, telegrams, memoranda, minutes of meetings, contracts, reports, document drafts and much more.

If the person you’re interested in held an important enough position, then the archive might have organised many of his or her papers together, making them easier to find and access. If this is not the case, then you would have to go looking through the files pertaining to the organisation and time period where the person in question worked or had contact with.

To take an example from my own research: I want to study the activities of Robert Cecil towards the end of the Great War. I also know the Cecil served as British Minister of Blockade from 1916 to 1918. His files are not singled out or held separately, thus I have to find the files from the Ministry of Blockade (MoB) for 1916-18. Cecil was also Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (effectively a deputy foreign minister), and the MoB was run as a subordinate ministry to the Foreign Office. The MoB archive is therefore part of the Foreign Office archives, which in turn is now held by the British National Archives.

Once you’ve identified the archive in question, and its location, it’s time to do some digging. Depending on how well the archive in question is organised, that might well involve going there and spending days or weeks digging through boxes and folder of papers trying to find what you’re looking for. In the abovementioned case, I’m lucky enough that the UK National Archives is a well organised institution. They’ve even got a decent digital search engine, so even though the primary documents themselves aren’t digitised, I can narrow down my search even further.

For example, I’m particularly interested in letters where Cecil is discussing Denmark. The UK National Archives and their digitised version of the Foreign Office index system tells me that many papers pertaining to the MoB and Denmark in 1917-18 should be found in box 1886 and 1887 of the FO382 (Foreign Office, Contraband Department, and Ministry of Blockade: General Correspondence) series. The next step is therefore to order up the relevant boxes for study, and then to head to the National Archives complex outside London, and start going through those boxes.

At this point it is important to note that most people can access public archives (at least in the West) freely. The only stumbling point is that you normally have to register beforehand, and that whatever documents you want to study might have to be booked some time in advance (as they may have to be brought in from storage). The main exception here is if the documents in question are classified. Many public files have or have had some form of classification attached to them. This is normally time limited, though. So the older the records you are looking for, the less likely they are to remain classified. Some archives might also limit access to files to professional researchers. The easiest way to find out whether this is the case with the files you are interested in is usually to contact the archive or institution in question directly.

So much for public archives. Now on to private archives. If the person you are interested in did not work in public life, or the kind of papers you are looking for does not pertain to public life, then your task might be a bit more challenging. If the person worked at a private company, then the archives of this company might hold the documents you are looking for. The company might also retain the archive themselves, or they might have handed it over to a public archive or institution (such as a museum) for safekeeping and maintenance. Private companies – if the firm in question still exists – might also be much more reluctant to allow private citizens access to it. There are a number of reasons for this. They can be vary of losing control over trade secrets, afraid of bad publicity or simply not have the resources to make the files accessible on request. A private archive is also less likely to be well organised than a large public archive is, thus requiring you to spend more time searching in order to find what you are looking for. Again – the easiest way to find out is to ask.

Finally, you might also be interested in the private papers or correspondence of a person – diaries, letters to colleagues, friends and family etc. Such personal papers, if they were collected and preserved at all, might still be in private ownership. They might also have been handed over to some institution (museum, library or archive) for safekeeping. Such archives are more likely to exist if the person in question was either a meticulous writer, or had some form of personal secretary or assistance in organising files. Identifying the existence and location of such archives may be challenging. Many countries and organisations maintain records or lists of private archives, although the easiest way forward might be to look at the source lists of published biographies or other relevant works. If these are written on the basis of private papers, then they should be indentified here.