despite having unfettered access to the bodleian all through undergrad, I’d never really used archive material for any of my work - there was never really time to get into an archive for a weekly essay. Going to the Beckett archives in Reading, and the MacNeice archives (back in Oxford) was exciting, and absolutely illuminating for my diss - but it wasn’t all easy! this is my advice for archive work:
- send emails so far in advance! you have to request your materials in, I think, quite a lot of archives, with advance notice, so you want to be in communication with them well in advance of that - I think a month would probably be about right (everyone I spoke to was very obliging and would have helped out last minute, I’m sure, but there are transport considerations - for you and for the material - and opening hours to work around)
- some of them will need almost as much documentation as going on holiday - you might need a passport, proof of address, proof of student status and maybe even a second photo ID. make a list of these so that you don’t set off on a train without them! there will also inevitably be a few forms
- give over an afternoon to going through the catalogue to request your materials. to be honest, these things are posted on some kind of stone age internet, and I am adamant that you need a degree in archiving to really understand them, so make sure you timetable in some space to just work your way through slowly and identify what looks useful - most archives have a limit on how much you can request, so it’s good to have seen everything they’ve got on offer in your field before you start narrowing down your requests. in some cases they might be able to help you out with materials on the day, but sometimes they’re stored offsite
- it’s unlikely (although I’m sure not impossible) that the archives are holding the key to your project. it’s much more likely that their vast reserves of contextual material will help you to shape your argument and your ideas, and give you the opportunity to write with confidence and authority. the fourth picture (which is artfully concealed because I think that all the pictures you take are supposed to be for personal use only) is a pile of memos from when one of my writers worked at the BBC and it was fascinating to immerse myself in the culture and lifestyle of that, even if little of it will make it into my essay
- (not to be totally cliché but) enjoy it! it’s a massive privilege to be able to access some of this material, with its little quirks like typos, handwriting and crossings out. make the most of its chaos and its unfinishedness! some of it is thousands of years old! isn’t that what learning is really in service of?
