Prior to class on Wednesday, I honestly didn’t even know that “archival research” was a thing. I suppose I knew that archives existed, but it just didn’t occur to me that people actively conducted research in them. However, despite my ignorance, I am excited to actually visit an archive and learn how to conduct archival research.
There are a few questions I am wondering about the way an archive works. For example, are there some documents that can only be viewed in an archive, or are all archived documents also available online? I know that some archives have an online catalogue of their documents and as an outsider, it seems like it would be much more efficient to view the documents online than to see them in person. However, I can imagine a certain sense of inspiration that might accompany the handling of an original historical document.
Furthermore, on a more philosophical level, I wonder which documents of
our current society are worthy of being archived and how digitization will impact the archival process. Considering the incredibly massive amount of media that we as a society produce, I can imagine that the job of choosing what to save is becoming increasingly harder. However, in reality, this problem is actively being solved by the digitization of our world. The internet in a sense is one massive archive and as most people know, “What gets posted on the internet stays on the internet.”
This, in a sense, is part of what makes the internet so great, it serves as a historian to catalogue the successes, failures, and daily lives of nearly all of humanity. It is interesting to consider, that in a few hundred years (if we survive that long) students will be looking through catalogues of famous tweets and possibly even evaluating the 140 character limi as somewhat of an art form, similar to haiku. Today is tomorrow’s history and it is unbelievable to see the rate at which we produce media today.
On the other hand, there is also something special about the lack of such media in the past. When there is a limit to how quickly and easily media can be produced, people will prioritize which media is most important. For example, when people read their news in the newspaper, it was full of actual articles and important stories. Contrastingly, online news today is inundated with advertisements, fluff pieces, and entertainment news. We face so much information that at times we miss the important things because there are so many distractions. That, I believe, is what is so special about an archive.
mattsrobinson 
Matt,
I think you do a really well done job breaking down this topic. Obviously, as our society progresses, with each day and year we will continue to have more and more information which can be looked at from a positive and from a negative perspective. The positive aspect is that new information is always a good thing for obvious reasons and the advancement of our society. The negative aspect though is that so much information out there today is simply wrong and gives readers a false sense of reality, and just bad info. So ultimately I totally agree with you in that archives are super neat because for the most part, we always know that the information is true because archives contain mostly primary sources (now obviously primary sources can be factually incorrect, but there is a better chance a primary source will be correct about an event than a wikipedia page).
Great post, awesome use of hyperlinks and photos as well.
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