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Post #3: Libraries Vs. Archives


This Tuesday’s class included several discussions about archival access, archival reference, archival policies, digitization, and other related topics. One discussion that the class focused in on this session that I find important to highlight was the differences between a library and an archive. People who are researchers or scholars and or have careers that require visitations to a library or archive may know the difference between a library and an archive, but people who do not have history or research-based careers/have not completed research in these spaces may not. For this reason, sources which delineate the difference between libraries and archives such as Laura Schmidt’s article Using Archives: A Guide to Effective Research and Mary J. Pough’s article The Illusion of Omniscience: Subject Access and the Reference Archivist are vital to understanding the differing operations that occur within them. For Schmidt’s article, not only did she explain the general protocols of archives and a library, but she produced examples of the varying archives that exist that people can complete research in. The archives listed were college and university archives, corporate archives, government archives, historical societies, museum archives, religious archives, and special collections.[1] I found this detail notable because it displays the array of options that a researcher has when intending to complete research. Though some of these archives might have certain policies that require a researcher to complete prerequisite activities to enter, require research fees to utilize their archive, or other protocols that might catch a researcher off guard, it is awesome to know about the multitude of options people have when it comes to tracking down archives for research.


[1] Laura Schmidt, “Using Archives: A Guide to Effective Research”: https://www2.archivists.org/usingarchive.

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