My First Experience in the Archives
Going into the archives for the first time turned out to be a much different experience than I was expecting. When I pictured the archives, I envisioned a dark, gloomy room filled with dusty wooden desks with really bad lighting. These thoughts turned out to be quite misguided. The archives was located high up in the HSSE library of Stewart. The archives looked relatively new with bright and shiny desks, proficient lighting, and a wonderful staff.
My first step in getting into the archives was meeting with the front desk staff. The woman I talked to was very nice and extremely helpful. I recommend always calling ahead of time to reserve your materials; the staff will greatly appreciate it. If you reserve your material ahead of time all you have to do is fill out the form and show your ID to the person working the front desk. Surprisingly, the archives are pretty strict on their rules. You must put all your stuff in these high school looking lockers to the right of the front desk. The only thing you can really bring into the actual room is a pencil and a notebook.
I decided to research what turned out to be a very broad topic; the Purdue train wreck of 1903. To my astonishment, a man brought out a two shelf cart full of boxes on my topic. At first I was pretty happy with this fact but that feeling quickly subsided by the end of my first day in the archives. Bringing back my first box to my table, I felt a rush of nervous anxiety. Do I just open up the box and dig in or do I carefully skim through the folders and only pick one? I decided to start with the first folder and go a folder at a time. The staff provides a very handy card to hold the folders spot in the box. They are very stern on the fact that they want everything put back exactly where you first got it from. Opening the first folder I was amazed at the overall look of age. The edges of the papers were browning and you could tell the papers were very fragile. I was already overwhelmed by the vast majority of papers in just one folder. There were about fifteen folders in just one box. After going through a few folders I decided this collection of materials was just not specific enough for my paper. One tip to possibly avoid this dilemma is to look through the entire collection online to see how large or small it is, what specific topic you want to research in the collection, and how many days you have to actually be in the archives.
That night, I decided to change my course of research by switching to Winthrop Stone. I knew he was once the president of Purdue so I thought I could write about some of his scientific research while president. After getting into his collection, my ideas drastically changed. One of the first boxes I opened contained an old, worn scrapbook. I really enjoy looking at historical diaries so this was right up my ballpark. On the first page, to my surprise, was newspaper clippings of the actual Purdue train wreck of 1903. The first article I saw detailed the events that were happening on campus before the train wreck. They included really interesting details such as how many students were attending the pep rallies and the fundraisers going on at the time (Purdue Enthusiasm). As I flipped through the large scrapbook, the articles were kept in chronological order. It was almost like a book, detailing the exact details of this horrific but historical crash. I also found really intriguing facts about the involvement of women during the crash. The woman came from all around the surrounding neighborhood with home remedies to help the injured students ((Fourteen Dead Wreck Victims—More than Fifty Injured).
These really interesting facts helped me to develop a very rounded paper. Without the help from the archives, I feel as though my paper would have been lacking. You can’t seem to find such in depth facts about certain things such as women’s involvement just from Google. When you actually look at the papers and hold them yourself you almost develop a personal connection to your topic. This can typically make your whole writing process easier because you actually care about what you’re writing about. I’m the first person as far as I know to write about this particular scrapbook in this collection. By the end of my experience with the archives, I really felt a sense of pride with my finished product.
My first step in getting into the archives was meeting with the front desk staff. The woman I talked to was very nice and extremely helpful. I recommend always calling ahead of time to reserve your materials; the staff will greatly appreciate it. If you reserve your material ahead of time all you have to do is fill out the form and show your ID to the person working the front desk. Surprisingly, the archives are pretty strict on their rules. You must put all your stuff in these high school looking lockers to the right of the front desk. The only thing you can really bring into the actual room is a pencil and a notebook.
I decided to research what turned out to be a very broad topic; the Purdue train wreck of 1903. To my astonishment, a man brought out a two shelf cart full of boxes on my topic. At first I was pretty happy with this fact but that feeling quickly subsided by the end of my first day in the archives. Bringing back my first box to my table, I felt a rush of nervous anxiety. Do I just open up the box and dig in or do I carefully skim through the folders and only pick one? I decided to start with the first folder and go a folder at a time. The staff provides a very handy card to hold the folders spot in the box. They are very stern on the fact that they want everything put back exactly where you first got it from. Opening the first folder I was amazed at the overall look of age. The edges of the papers were browning and you could tell the papers were very fragile. I was already overwhelmed by the vast majority of papers in just one folder. There were about fifteen folders in just one box. After going through a few folders I decided this collection of materials was just not specific enough for my paper. One tip to possibly avoid this dilemma is to look through the entire collection online to see how large or small it is, what specific topic you want to research in the collection, and how many days you have to actually be in the archives.
That night, I decided to change my course of research by switching to Winthrop Stone. I knew he was once the president of Purdue so I thought I could write about some of his scientific research while president. After getting into his collection, my ideas drastically changed. One of the first boxes I opened contained an old, worn scrapbook. I really enjoy looking at historical diaries so this was right up my ballpark. On the first page, to my surprise, was newspaper clippings of the actual Purdue train wreck of 1903. The first article I saw detailed the events that were happening on campus before the train wreck. They included really interesting details such as how many students were attending the pep rallies and the fundraisers going on at the time (Purdue Enthusiasm). As I flipped through the large scrapbook, the articles were kept in chronological order. It was almost like a book, detailing the exact details of this horrific but historical crash. I also found really intriguing facts about the involvement of women during the crash. The woman came from all around the surrounding neighborhood with home remedies to help the injured students ((Fourteen Dead Wreck Victims—More than Fifty Injured).
These really interesting facts helped me to develop a very rounded paper. Without the help from the archives, I feel as though my paper would have been lacking. You can’t seem to find such in depth facts about certain things such as women’s involvement just from Google. When you actually look at the papers and hold them yourself you almost develop a personal connection to your topic. This can typically make your whole writing process easier because you actually care about what you’re writing about. I’m the first person as far as I know to write about this particular scrapbook in this collection. By the end of my experience with the archives, I really felt a sense of pride with my finished product.