Archives

Dr. Laura Schwartz

Archives

Structure of this lecture

1. What is an archive? (not as self-evident as you might have thought…)

2. The "Archival Turn": Archives as historical artefact. (this is where it gets a bit more political…)

3. Where are the archives and how do you use them? (the practical bit…)

The National Archive

(est. 1838)

St Hugh’s College Archive

(est. 1886)

The Women’s Library

(est. 1926)

What is an Archive?

The National Archive

(est. 1838)

Archives of MI5 now available at Kew

The "Archival Turn":

Archives as Historical Artefact

St Hugh’s College Archive

(est. 1886)

The Women’sService Library

(est. 1926)

Death of Emily Wilding Davison (1913)

TheFawcett Library

The Women’s Library(2001)

Where are the archives and

how do you use them?

A2A ("Access to Archives")posted by the National Archive

http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/

Every city/region will have a "Local Archive" (what used to be known as a Local Records Office) which often hold the family/personal papers of individuals who lived in that area, as well as a wealth of other locally related materials including local papers which have not yet been digitised.

There are also many thematic archives: the Working Class Movements Library (Manchester); the Bishopsgate Institute (London); the Feminist Library (London); the Feminist Archive North (Leeds); the Modern Records Centre (University of Warwick); the Trades Union Congress Library (London Metropolitan University) ; The Black Cultural Archives (London); the Missionary Society Archives are many other collections relating to the British Empire (SOAS, London)

The role of archive research in your dissertation

• Once you have decided what area you are interested in for the subject of your dissertation, you need to establish your source base early on. So go visit the archive!

• This could be: a collection of personal papers; some oral history interviews; a particular newsletter or newspaper for a given period of time; visual sources such as a series of posters; or perhaps a mixture of the above.

• Your source base will help you to place parameters around your topic, and refine your question/line of inquiry.

• You should approach your source base as a case study through which to examine and test out your over arching questions about history and the world.

• This case study/source base will enable you to bring fresh insights to an existing historical debate or subfield. This is what it means to be original!

And finally some digitised sources…

Newspapers• Times Digital Archive, also

now Daily Mail and possibly Mirror available via Warwick Library.

• Modernist Journals Project.• Easily searchable across

whole period• Searching for needles in

haystacks now possible• Searching via specific event• Patterns over time• Public opinion (letters;

advertising)• Limitations

House of Commons Parliamentary Papers online

• All government reports and house of commons debates

• Available via Warwick Library Databases

First World War

• Women, War and Society, 1914-18. Available via Warwick Library Databases.

• Articles and primary sources from the Imperial War Museum

Women

• Women in the National Archives: Available via Warwick Library Databases.

• BBC archive: some great interviews with elderly suffragettes

• Sisterhood and After: Oral histories with activists from the Women's Liberation Movement

Second World War and Post-War Immigration

• Post-War Europe: Refugees, Resettlement and Exile, 1945-50.

• Available via Warwick Library Databases.

• Oxford Great War Archive:

Film/Television• BBC Archive:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/

• BFI Inview: http://www.bfi.org.uk/inview/

• BFI Screenonline: http://www.screenonline.org.uk/

• British pathe news: http://www.britishpathe.com/

• Box of Braodcasting. Available via Warwick Library Databases.