Analyzing Special Collections Materials

Now that you’ve found some special collections materials for your class research, how should you go about analyzing and understanding these materials? While books and articles are complete works, sifting through special collections often gives you fragments of information. As the researcher, you need to extract information from these objects, which may be straightforward or may require additional research.

Primary Source Analysis Tool

The Library of Congress uses a simple tool for analyzing primary sources, in which the researcher writes notes for three things: 1) observe; 2) reflect; and 3) question.

Observe

In this step, you are identifying observations and noting details. Some questions you might ask:

• What are you looking at?
• What do you notice first?
• Who is the creator of the source?
• When was the source created?
• What is being documented?
• What stands out to you about the source?

Reflect

In this step, generate and test hypotheses about the source:

• Where do you think this came from?
• What can you say about the creator of the source?
• Why do you think somebody made this?
• What do you think was happening in the time period when this was made?
• Who do you think is the audience was for this source?
• What tool was used to create this?
• Why do you think this item is important?
• If someone made this today, what would be different?
• What can you learn from examining this?
• What is the significance of the source?

Question

After observing and reflection on the source, ask questions! What do you still want to know that the source itself cannot answer?