No food, drinks, or gum, as they can potentially spill, stain, and damage irreplaceable records or attract pests.
No pens, markers, and highlighters. Pens, markers, and highlighters can potentially mark materials permanently. Most archives will have pencils you can borrow, but it’s good to be prepared.
Wear cotton or nitrile gloves when handling photos or negatives, film, or video tapes. The archive should provide these for you and will help limit the damage to photos from the oils on your hands. There is no need for gloves with regular paper records.
Avoid lotions and oils on your hands while using the archive and wash your hands before working with materials.
Ask permission before photographing any materials, as there could be copyright or privacy concerns. And never use flash photography.
Pull one folder out of the box at a time. Take your time to go through that folder and do not remove another folder until you’ve replaced the last one. This helps avoid mixing up materials between folders or losing anything.
Keep the items within the folder in order as well, this also helps decrease risk of mix-ups.
Avoid letting the edges of materials hang off of your desk or table, setting them in your lap, or holding documents upright without a support. Documents should lay flat on the table as much as possible.
Be gentle. Old paper can be quite brittle and delicate. When turning pages, especially larger pages, try to turn the page by lifting both corners at the same time and do so slowly. And try to avoid forcing a document to lay flat if it doesn’t want to. Ask an archive worker to demonstrate if you need help.
Listen to the instructions of the archivist working with you. They might have additional expectations in terms of safe handling of materials that were not laid out here. They just want to keep the materials safe for you and future users, it is nothing personal.
Be respectful of the researchers around you. Archives are generally quiet spaces, so try to refrain from loud conversations, listening to music without headphones, and other potentially noisy activities.
Be aware that you probably won't be able to bring a bag or coat into the space with you. So, dress appropriately for the weather (archives are often quite chilly) and be prepared to remove everything you need from your bag.
While archivists can sometimes be a little intimidating, they want to help you. Most archivists know they have cool collections and they want people to use them. So, when in doubt, try reaching out to the archivists at the archive you’re using, especially people with “reference archivist” as their title. They might be able to direct you to collections you weren’t aware of, have suggestions of the kinds of records you might want to look at, or know of other repositories that might be more helpful. Your campus archivist is also willing to help support your research and find potential leads for your question, even if your question isn’t about campus history.
There is a lot of variety in how archives operate and how strict they are with users. Some archives might require you to schedule weeks or months in advance to use their materials. Some might require you to make an appointment weeks ahead of time and provide an ID when you check in. Some materials might be stored off-site and you will need to give the archivists a heads up to make sure they’re on-site for you. And some archives allow walk-ins and will help you find what you need the day-of. And some collections are closed and you cannot get access to them at all. It really depends and it’s a good idea to reach out and ask questions before the first time you visit an archive. It will ultimately save you time and inconvenience.
The more complex and abstract your question, the more digging you might have to do. Not all answers are written out for you and they’re not always in folders labeled “Here’s the answer to your question!” Archival research can take a lot of work and you may end up reading through twenty folders of materials that don’t necessarily help you. You might end up looking at collections that are dead ends. You may end up on goose chases and you may find that your question is unknowable.
But that does not mean it’s not worth it. Uncovering lost, forgotten, or ignored information is important. You are doing a valuable service for the rest of us by doing this work and expanding what we know. And if nothing else, you might find something else that catches your eye and totally change the direction of your research. Archival research is often evolutionary; your research question may change as you find (or don’t find) information. That is not the sign of a bad researcher.
