Introduction to Archival Research at ASU Library
Session Summary:
This instructional session will encourage undergraduate students to engage with primary sources as an interdisciplinary scholarly research tool. Students will utilize the resources available through the ASU Library to develop skills on how to use primary source materials for personal or directed research. By reinforcing information literacy skills and encouraging critical analysis, students will learn how to formulate historical questions from encounters with historical documents, objects, and materials.
Learning Objectives & Outcomes:
- Information Literacy
- Use appropriate, efficient, and effective search strategies to discover primary sources.
- Identify and distinguish between catalogs, databases, and other online resources.
- Be familiar with the most common ways primary sources are described, such as catalog records and archival finding aids.
- Evaluate the appropriateness of a primary source for meeting the goals of a specific research or creative project.
- Critical Assessment
- Identify and communicate information found in primary sources, including summarizing the content of the source and identifying key components such as how it was created, by whom, when, and what it is.
- Critically evaluate the perspective of the creator(s) of a primary source, including tone,subjectivity, and biases, and consider how these relate to the original purpose(s) and audience(s) of the source.
- Examine and synthesize a variety of sources in order to construct, support, or dispute a research argument.
Target Audience:
Content is focused on first and second year undergraduates; however, students of all levels and disciplines are encouraged to develop an understanding of what primary sources are, why use them, and how they are used in research.