Archives in PA: Creating Your Plan for Archival Research

Now that you know some of the items you can find in an archive, it is time to plan your research. In this chapter we will cover how archives came to be and how to craft your research approach.

How Archives Came to Be

Around the turn of the 20th century in the United States, we created a distinction between "libraries" and "archives." In most state capitols and universities, there were libraries which had items they put in "special collections." These special collections were not like the items in the lending part of the library. They were items that were often irreplaceable, unique, and of special historical significance.

For instance, beginning in 1878, State Librarian of Pennsylvania Dr. Charles Ehrenfeld, collected both contemporary newspapers from around the state as well as newspapers printed decades earlier. His initiative provided those in Harrisburg access to news from every county in Pennsylvania, but it also archived thousands of newspapers. The result today is the most extensive and complete collection of Pennsylvania newspapers found anywhere, including the Library of Congress.

By 1900, it was evident that these special collections in libraries needed particular skills for preservation and organization. At the same time, the federal government and most state governments recognized the need for an archive of their documents. Thousands of institutions across the country developed archives between 1900 and 1940. Soon after, a program of training began for archivists to manage these collections.

Archivists are professionals trained in the preservation, description, and cataloging of archival materials. Over the last hundred years, the standards and practices have evolved over how items are described, cataloged, and preserved. Perhaps the best example of this evolution of practices is the use of white cotton gloves to handle archival materials. The use of white gloves was encouraged so that the natural oils on people's hands did not damage the fragile paper. However, after several decades of the practice, archivists realized that the gloves prevented the careful handling of vintage paper, and it was more likely the fragile paper would be torn. Science further supported archivists in showing that freshly washed hands provided no further damage to vintage paper. They changed their recommendation to no cotton gloves needed for handling documents (You will still see television shows showing researchers wearing white gloves while handling paper.).

Two recent changes happened to archival practices in 2021 during the pandemic. The first was the use of hand sanitizer before handling any materials due to the belief that viruses lived on paper. It was soon discovered that the alcohol in hand sanitizer would "eat" or dissolve vintage paper. Fortunately, the practice of hand sanitizer stopped by 2022, but it is not known how much damage was done. The second change in archival practices continues today and involves the descriptors used in archival catalogs. Words used in collection titles and descriptions are regularly evaluated by archivists, then changed if deemed offensive. For researchers this means that we will not be able to find materials under their previously known names, and we must re-search for them all over again. 

The practices and standards of archival work are continually evolving. The Society of American Archivists found at https://www2.archivists.org communicates and educates on changes in the field.

Now that you have some background information on archives, let's discuss how to approach research in them.