Archival Research

Discovering your Passion for Research

• Discovering your passion for research is often less about a sudden "eureka" (or finding a passion) moment, and more about a deliberate process of cultivating your curiosity and testing your interests. 

 

What is Black West Studies?

• Black Studies (or Africana Studies) is an interdisciplinary academic field focusing on the history, culture, politics, and socioeconmic experiences of people of African descent globally.  It bridges humanities and social sciences to examine Africa and African diaspora, resisting systemic racism through critical analysis of Black life, art, and social movements. 

 

Place: Census, Demography, and How to Use This Info

• The concept of place "has numerous definitions, from the simple “a space or location with meaning” to the more complex “an area having unique physical and human characteristics interconnected with other places.” There are three key components of place: location, locale, and a sense of place." (National Geographic)

• The census is crucial because it provides a comprehensive portrait of a national and geographical population and socioeconomic trends every years.

• Numerical Data Resources

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Archival Research and Special Collections

• Archival research and special collections are critical because they preserve primary source evidence—original documents, records, and artifacts—that provide authentic, firsthand accounts of historical events, people, and organizations. They act as cultural repositories, offering unique, often unpublished insights that facilitate original research, academic scholarship, creative inspiration, and legal evidence.

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In the Field:

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Ethnography

• "The characteristic methodologies of anthropology inform an understanding of human experiences and practices, illuminating their interconnectedness and interdependence. For sociocultural anthropologists, such connections are discovered mainly through long-term ethnographic research. Learning to be a good ethnographer requires learning how to observe, learning how to ask necessary and appropriate anthropological questions, and learning how to locate patterns in complex human behavior." (Princeton University Anthropology Department) 

• Reading to get you started:

  • Robert Emerson (et al.), “Fieldnotes in Ethnographic Research” in Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes

  • Emerson, “Writing an Ethnography” in Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes

 

Genealogy

• Genealogy is crucial for building a strong personal identity, fostering a sense of belonging, and understanding one's roots. It preserves family history, connects generations, reveals health patterns, and offers valuable context to personal narratives. It turns names and dates into meaningful stories, promoting empathy, resilience, and pride.

• Genealogy Sites:

  • FamilySearch.org

  • Ancestry.com

  • MyHeritage.com

  • Find a Grave

• DNA Sites (NOT LINKED, PAID SITES):

  • AncestryDNA

  • 23andMe

  • MyHeritageDNA

 

Oral History

• "Oral history as a practice refers to both the interview process and the output that emerges from it. In order to gather and preserve meaningful information about the past, oral historians might record interviews focused on narrators’ life histories or topical interviews in which narrators are selected for their knowledge of a particular historical subject or event. The value of oral history lies largely in the way it helps to place people’s experiences within a larger social and historical context, and conversely, to contextualize social and historical events through how people lived them. The interview becomes a record useful for documenting past events, individual or collective experiences, and understanding of the ways that history is constructed." (Oral History Association) 

• Donald A. Ritchie, “Using Oral History in Research and Writing” in Doing Oral History

• Selected Readings and Material Examples to get you started:

  • Oral History Association, “Capturing the Living Past: An Oral History Primer

  • Herbert G. Ruffin, and Kathryn Waddell Takara, “Kamaʻāinas and African Americans in Hawai’i”: Making Sense of the Black Hawaiian Experience with Dr. Kathryn Waddell Takara” in Freedom’s Racial Frontier

  • Library of Congress, "Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1938s" (Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas)

  • Calisphere, "Interview with Byron William Rumford" (Audio Archive), California Revealed from African American Museum and Library at Oakland Collections

  • California State University, Northridge, University Library, "The Black Power Archives Oral History Project" (Video Archive) 

  • UNLV Special Collections and Archives, "Oral Histories"

 

Research Ethics and Appropriations (For Researchers in Research Institutions)

• "Research ethics govern the standards of conduct for scientific researchers. It is important to adhere to ethical principles in order to protect the dignity, rights and welfare of research participants." (World Health Organization)

• Selected Readings:

  • Oregon State University, "What is the Institutional Review Board (IRB)?"

  • Oral History Association, “Oral History, Human Subjects, and Institutional Review Boards”​

 

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Subject Specific Writing

• Subject-specific writing is essential because it transforms generic subject into a powerful tool for critical thinking and research within specific disciplines like history, literature, sociolology and science. 

• Purdue OWL, “Subject Specific Writing”

Sourcing

• ​​Purdue OWL “Research and Citation”

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