Tracing your family history? Awesome! What you’re doing is a form of archival research. Archival research means you’re looking for information and evidence in archives. What’s an archive? Just a collection created to preserve certain types of objects. For example, a record office is an archive the keeps birth, marriage and death certificates, while a local history centre is an archive that keeps letters, photos, documents and books relating to its town’s history. Even a library is a form of archive – it collects and preserves books.
Discovering the true story of Mary Ann Britland
Category: Archives
Archival research can be daunting. There are so many archives to explore, and the combinations of catalogues and search terms are almost endless. Even a seemingly simple project, like researching your family tree, can quickly become overwhelming.
For the sake of your time, money, and sanity, it’s vital to organise your research. Keeping track of what you need to do and have already done will stop you repeating the same searches over and over, and help you figure out which archives are most useful for your work. It’s also a concrete reminder of how much you’ve already done, which can be comforting on those days when it feels like you’re not getting anywhere (yep, we all have them).
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