Doing Archival Research in Political Science By Scott A. Frisch, ...

Because there are many collections, and many of them are very large, not all collections are fully processed (from the researcher’s point of view). Repositories must make choices about whether to process a collection, which collections to process, and how many resources to dedicate to a collection. As a result, the quality and detail involved in processing a collection will vary from collection to collection. However, this can be partially overcome as the researcher develops more experience working with collections; one begins to develop a sort of “sixth sense” with regard to them.

Archival collections are located everywhere: from the Library of Congress to university libraries to government agencies at federal, state, and local levels to even private corporations. Some manuscript collections are held in family or private custody. Finding archives, however, can take some work because there is no one central depository listing all of the archival collections. The two most complete lists of archival collections are Proquest’s Archive Finder, which is a “directory of over 5,750 repositories and over 206,000 collections of primary source material housed across the United States and the United Kingdom,” and the Northwest Digital Archives, containing “access to descriptions of primary sources in the Northwestern United States.”¹ Finally, those scholars who are interested in studying Congress should consult the Congressional Biographical Directory, which contains information on the research collections of individuals serving in the House and Senate.² Users need simply to input the name of the member and click on the research tab. This will reveal whether papers for the member exist, where they are located, and some brief information on the size and scope of each collection. There are archives, in short, for every breed of researcher containing every kind of material imaginable. They offer limitless research opportunities that depend only upon the imagination of the researcher, the time he or she has to do research, and the size of the research grant he or she may have. Nevertheless, before embarking on archival research, one should proceed with eyes wide open. There are challenges and pitfalls to consider, and it is to those we now turn.