Laura Judd and Professor Paul Kerry, Department of History
Archives function as a sacred space of the scholar. They preserve the fragile remains of the past, offering access only to the most respectful readers. Perhaps this is why, for the undergraduate history student, the relationship between historian and archive often remains veiled. A typical history student at BYU interacts with the archive mainly through information collected in books; for that student, the archive is understood abstractly as a source of historical knowledge. As my undergraduate education drew to a close, I had the opportunity in July of 2008 to visit some of the most well established archives in the United States. Archival space has become a site for me to literally connect with the past, a space where my undergraduate training in historical practices are able to merge with deep respect for the goals and duties of the historian’s undertaking at a professional level.
I coordinated with Dr. Paul Kerry and fellow undergraduate student Ryan Tobler in planning out a research trip. Together we decided to our time on archives with the most material for our respective research interests. We spent four days in Boston at the Massachusetts Historical Society and Harvard’s Houghton and Schlesinger Libraries. Our final day was spent at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts Library. Each day had to be carefully partitioned out so as to get maximum time at the archives, often foregoing sleep and even food in the process. It was a true first-hand experience of the disciple’s enthusiasm, an enthusiasm that finds its sustenance not in food but in the ruling passion of learning.
Under Dr. Kerry’s tutelage, Ryan and I saved a lot of the time and difficulty of orienting ourselves to archival practices that most students experience at the graduate level. Looking through archival materials can be a very complicated process, as each archive has its own restrictions on the kinds of materials that can be accessed, as well as the ways in which those materials can be accessed and handled. Yet in addition to formally teaching us how to interact in these basic ways at each archive, Dr. Kerry showed by example how to understand and predict the expectations of archivists towards scholars and how to be sensitive to the culture of respect and mutual cooperation between archivist and historian.
In this learning setting, I could focus more on understanding the workings of the culture of the archive than on grappling with its basic mechanisms. I noticed that archivists had a very personal connection with the materials of the archive in which they worked. They exuded a sense of respect and protectiveness for archival materials that helped me to see my interaction with those materials as much more than the routine gathering of information. The restrictions to my access to materials provided an environment of respect in which I was grateful and humble to be allowed the trust to handle any materials at all.
The very process of handling materials came with its own insights. Letters, manuscripts and scraps of paper intermingled in the same folder labeled only vaguely as part of a collection of someone’s works. As I carefully turned page after page of old materials over for the first time, I realized the overwhelming task the historian faces to amalgamate and coordinate these scraps of paper in order to tell a story. The people around me in the reading room who spent the day diligently working away at their own projects gave me a sense of the daily ritualistic sacrifice of time involved in collecting and preparing information from archives for others’ understanding.
This preparation process, I learned, was not only one of reading: it involved the sometimes strenuous and painstaking work of copying page after page either by transcription, photography, or photo-copying. Dr. Kerry, Ryan, and I learned to work together as a team to get as much done in a day as possible. We had to coordinate ordering new materials with finishing off those currently in our use and to balance taking pictures with scanning microfilm. The exhaustion I felt by the end of the day testified to the grueling process that the scholar undergoes gladly for the purposes of conducting efficient research.
At the Beinecke Library, I had the opportunity for the first time to see Thomas Carlyle’s writing in tangible form before me. I had studied this nineteenth century man for an entire year before this research trip and had felt such a close connection to his writing and ideas already. To hold his writing in my hand gave me a literal connection with him. It is hard to describe the power of this kind of experience. It takes all the abstract thoughts in classrooms and books and congeals them in hard reality. This is real. It feels real in my hands; it is connected to a real person who had his own thoughts about life. I became aware that the scholar’s relationship is not one of a student learning ideas but of a professional charged with representing the past.
Overall this has been an invaluable experience for me in solidifying my relationship with the past and my sense of duty toward it. I have just graduated and am beginning my graduate education at the University of Chicago. The research materials I took with me from the Beinecke Library will provide an invaluable foundation for my masters’ thesis, which I will write by June 2009. I plan to continue to take advantage of my skills in archival research to facilitate my professional development and to remind myself of the archive’s power in brining personal meaning and connections to academic inquiry.