Introduction to Working with Archives – Worksheet
1.Working with your partners, inspect the digitized item you have been assigned from the Poly Archives. Items are assigned by group number in this Google Drive folder.
Use information from that item (a title, a label, etc.) to try a search in the NYU Special Collections portal https://specialcollections.library.nyu.edu/search/
Record the full information you found about your item below:
2. The document giving you this information is called a finding aid. Finding aids describe archival collections to researchers and provide a full container list of the items in the collection. Spend some time looking around the finding aid to which your item belongs. Then, answer the following questions:
To what series does your item belong?
2b. What other series are in this collection? What do you notice about how the collection is arranged?
2c. What is the name of this collection?
In what section of the finding aid can you find background information about this collection?
3.) Referring to the finding aid’s preferred citation note, formulate a full citation for your item:
Helpful resources
NYU Special Collections search portal
Search for collections across (or within) Poly Archives, NYU University Archives, Fales, Tamiment, NYU Abu Dhabi Archives, Brooklyn Historical Society, and New-York Historical Society
Images from Brooklyn Historical Society, Brooklyn Public Library, and the Brooklyn Museum
Digital Public Library of America
Collections of images, documents, video, and audio files from across across the United States. Search curated sets by topic or search the entire collection by keywords. Since dpla is an aggregator site, you need to click the link in the item record to find the archives where the item is held.
Questions?
Contact Dibner librarian/Poly Archivist Lindsay Anderberg for help
la715@nyu.edu