Archives close at four. Every plan has to fit inside that.
Before you arrive
- Order the boxes in advance, always; same-day retrieval is a myth in about
half the places I have worked - Read the finding aid on the train, not at the desk
- Charge everything, because the plug sockets are theoretical
The first hour
Do not read. Survey. Open every folder in the first box, note what is in it,
close it, move on. You are building an index of the day.
The second to fourth hours
Now read, in the order the survey suggested, which is almost never the order
the boxes are in.
Photograph everything you touch
- A shot of the folder label, first, every single time
- Then the item
- Then, if it is more than one page, a shot of your own hand holding up the
page number
Step one is the one people skip, and it is the one that makes the photos
usable six months later. A folder of 400 undated images with no context is not
research, it is a burden you handed to yourself.
The last hour
Stop reading at three. Spend the last hour writing down what you found, in
prose, while the boxes are still in front of you.
The note I write at the end of every day
Three lines: what I found, what I expected and did not find, and the one box I
would open first if I came back tomorrow. That third line has paid for itself
more often than the other two together.