Articles

Mini-Classes: A Way to Introduce Researchers to Resources

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Abstract

"The census microfilms are located..., The card catalog..., Photocopies cost..., The inventories..., Calendars are..., The State Archives include..." These or similar phrases are well known to any archivist working anywhere at any time in reference service. Archivists make available to researchers a repository's thousands or millions of pieces of paper—letters, tickets, scrapbooks, diaries, journals, ledgers. After all of these pieces of paper have been collected, cleaned, arranged, described; and sorted, their ultimate importance rests with their use by the researcher and historian of today and tomorrow. Reference service is the point in the archival process at which these discrete materials make contact with a user. The user imposes an historical perspective, a subjective theory, an open questing search, or a preconceived conclusion on these myriad paper objects and produces from this research an article, a book, a government agency report, a school paper, a dissertation, a newspaper article, a family history, a children's novel, a drama. The culmination of all the archival processes of collecting, preserving, and preparing is the use of the materials by an individual.

How to Cite:

Chrislock, D. L., (1979) “Mini-Classes: A Way to Introduce Researchers to Resources”, Archival Issues 4(1), 25–33. doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/archivalissues.8039