Hi there! I am a freshman history student with no experience in serious historical research. This year I'll be writing a thesis on the history of Taiwan. I have already found relevant literature, but still having troubles with sources. I don't live in Taiwan, and my Mandarin skills are, well, basic. I called several large museums, but the staff don't speak English there, and when I finally found someone who would explain the situation in Mandarin, the staff just replied "you can find everything on the website". I found a catalogue at last, only to discover that the most valuable catalogues are not accessible for me cause I'm not a member of their library or something... So I feel kinda lost, don't even know where to start from or who should I contact do get access to archive documents.
Also, I haven't really decided on the topic yet, since I don't know from which period most documents have survived. However, the period should be before 1895, that's an almost mandatory criterium. So, guys, what would be your advice?
P. S. It was suggested that I should contact the university library. However, our uni is very young and so is its library, and there are very few people who study Taiwanese history in our country, so I'm not sure if that would help
I'm a librarian and an archivist. First off: contact your library. If librarians only advised on issues we were personally subject experts on we'd have to shut down right now. You think I answer questions about eunuchs all day? Of course not. Librarians are familiar with how to find anything, that's what we're trained on, not subject expertise. I can just as easily answer your question as help someone find car repair manuals for a 1988 Honda Accord, having no expertise in either, it is the same essential task to us. Also you're almost certainly going to need ILL with this, since it sounds like your school doesn't support a strong East Asian program? And you'll probably need help working with ILL because we don't typically teach it to freshman library instructional classes, usually just grad students.
Second: this is way too much for a freshman, slow your roll! No one expects a freshman to be churning out original archival research in a language they don't fluently read! There would be way less college graduates if so. I do archives instructionals with freshman and they typically are me presenting a single document (in English) carefully selected to relate to their classroom topics, and a worksheet with questions like "Who wrote this document? Who did the writers intend to read or use this document?" etc. Talking this level is what I expect from a freshman, as an archivist working with freshmen.
What you can reasonably use at your level (though this is somewhat advanced for a freshman, but not crazy advanced) is translated published primary source collections. Here is a good guide to what these are and how to find them. The main words to use when searching are "sources" and "documents." This example search turns up what you should be looking for.