Q Exercise: Archives For your exercise, we get to dig into some dusty archives! Thankfully, no need to sneeze as we will do this digitally. While the contents of most archives are not digitized, we are lucky that archivists have worked to create digital records of them available so that you can see what is available and see which ones might be useful for your own research. You are going to search through various archives to try and find possible data sources. This then allows us to see what we can access digitally as well as what might be available to get access to in person. For this assignment, please use a different font color so it is easier to see your answers Part 1: Online Archive of California Go to https://oac.cdlib.org/, which is the main list of collections across the state of California, including the UCs Do the following: • Click "Contributing Institutions" at the top • Scroll down to "" (or try doing ctrl+F to search for "irvine" to find that) and click the link for “UC Irvine.” UCI has multiple collections listed, so make sure you click UC Irvine. o *NOTE* Putting "irvine" in the search bar pulls a variety of collections, from things related to UCI to things in UCI’s collection, through to anything that has that word in it. Though searching for just a word, as you’ll see, brings a lot of unexpected results. For example, when I put in “Irvine” the fifth result is the “Star Trek Association of Irvine publications 1977-1991.” If this is something that intrigues you, UCI actually has these in their collections. Answer the below questions You will see five listed: Critical Theory Archive, Orange County Regional History Collection, Southeast Asian Archive, Special Collections, and University Archives. Click “Special Collections.” On this page, look for “Show collections with online items” so that you see what you can access online. Click on “Braunwald (Susan R.) language acquisition diaries.” 1. What sort of stuff (items, documents, etc.) does this archive hold? (note: look for “collection scope and content summary) 2. How was it obtained? (look for “acquisition information”) 3. What is the size of the collection and what years does it cover? Does it specify exactly how many items it contains? Does it give measurements/volume? 4. What is the sample/preferred citation? 5. Now that you’ve read the description, click the link near the top that says “Online items available” and look at some of what’s here. What sorts of research do you think these documents might be useful for? SocSci 3A Exercise: Digital Archives 2 Part 2: California Archives available online Go back to http://www.oac.cdlib.org/. Do the following: • Enter in a search term, anything you would like but you’re welcome to repeat prior searches/topics you’ve used in other assignments 5. What search term did you use? 6. How many results came back? (i.e. how many collections have this term attached to them?) 7. Pick one of the collections that appears interesting to you that is available online (it’ll have the eye symbol next to it). Which did you pick and why? 8. Please copy and paste the web address here. 9. Which sort of stuff (items, documents, etc.) does this archive hold? 10. How was it created? (i.e. what was its acquisition) 11. What is the size of the collection and what years does it cover? Does it specify exactly how many items it contains? 12. What is the sample citation? 13. Is everything available online or only parts of it? Are there things you wish you could access that you can’t? 14. Now that you’ve read the description, what sorts of research do you think these documents might be useful for? Part 3: California Archives, not available online Go back to http://www.oac.cdlib.org/. Do the following: • Enter in a search term, anything you would like but you’re welcome to repeat prior searches/topics you’ve used in other assignments 15. What search term did you use? 16. How many results came back? (i.e. how many collections have this term attached to them?) 17. Pick one of the collections that appears interesting to you that is not available online (it won’t have the eye symbol next to it). Which did you pick and why? 18. Please copy and paste the web address here. 19. Which sort of stuff (items, documents, etc.) does this archive hold? 20. How was it created? (i.e. what was its acquisition) 21. What is the size of the collection and what years does it cover? Does it specify exactly how many items it contains? 22. What is the sample citation? 23. Now that you’ve read the description, what sorts of research do you think these documents might be useful for? SocSci 3A Exercise: Digital Archives 3 Part 4: Going Beyond California Now you’re going to need to find an archive outside of the state of California. For this, I want you to use ArchiveGrid (but, keep an eye out and don’t choose an archive that’s in California!). https://researchworks.oclc.org/archivegrid/ Do the following: • Enter the same search term you used in Part 2. 24. How many results came back? (i.e. how many collections have this term attached to them?) 25. Pick one of the collections that appears interesting to you. Which did you pick and why? 26. Please copy and paste the web address here. 27. Which sort of stuff (items, documents, etc.) does this archive hold? 28. How was it created? (i.e. what was its acquisition) 29. What is the size of the collection and what years does it cover? Does it specify exactly how many items it contains? 30. What is the sample citation? 31. Is it available online? (note: on this site, it may only state this in the description, they don’t use a clear symbol like the California site.) 32. Now that you’ve read the description, what sorts of research do you think these documents might be useful for? (If there are items available online, you should try and look through like the prior part of this exercise; if it says available online but you can’t access anything make sure to note that.) Part 5: Going Beyond California Now you’re going to need to find an archive outside of the state of California. For this, I want you to use ArchiveGrid (but, keep an eye out and don’t choose an archive that’s in California!). https://researchworks.oclc.org/archivegrid/ Do the following: 33. Enter a new search term. What did you choose? 34. How many results came back? (i.e. how many collections have this term attached to them?) 35. Pick one of the collections that appears interesting to you. Which did you pick and why? 36. Please copy and paste the web address here. 37. Which sort of stuff (items, documents, etc.) does this archive hold? 38. How was it created? (i.e. what was its acquisition) 39. What is the size of the collection and what years does it cover? Does it specify exactly how many items it contains? SocSci 3A Exercise: Digital Archives 4 40. What is the sample citation? 41. Is it available online? (note: on this site, it may only state this in the description, they don’t use a clear symbol like the California site.) 42. Now that you’ve read the description, what sorts of research do you think these documents might be useful for? (If there are items available online, you should try and look through like the prior part of this exercise; if it says available online but you can’t access anything make sure to note that.) Part 4: Archival Reflection Archives represent a variety of potential data sources that can be used (some for quantitative work) to address aspects of a topic unexpectedly. I’d bet that many of you are aware of (and maybe part of) fandoms. They’ve gotten a lot of coverage and are especially active on social media, though they’re far from being something new. That Star Trek archive I mentioned at the top is a prime example. BTS has a huge, worldwide fandom. So does Star Trek. Are they similar? Different? Does the internet influence changes in the processes of fandom formation and engagement? How might you figure that out? Well, one way that this can be/is approached is accessing documentation of earlier fandoms which you can analyze and compare to more recent ones. This is the space where I want you to reflect upon the process of finding resources. What was it like combing through a list of results and finding ones that seemed useful/interesting to you? Do the descriptions of archive contents intrigue you? Why or why not? Methodologically, three approaches regularly have the most coverage and interest: surveys/secondary data analysis, interviews, and ethnographies. Interviews and ethnographies especially because they get to be more interactive with people, but archives push us to deal with the traces of people. Are archives something you could see yourself wanting to dig into? Why or why not? I even recommend you spend some time just googling around, searching for archives and seeing what you can find, especially since the databases used here don’t cover everything.