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Archives and Special Collections

What is an Archives?

A library houses books, also known as secondary sources, which by their very nature, are mass produced, edited, and usually composites of numerous works. An archives houses documentation which is predominantly unique, unpublished, and irreplaceable, in both form and substance, because it was created for a one-time use, intention, and/or purpose. The majority of materials found in an archives are considered to be primary sources - those which provide individual first-hand knowledge, research, or other documentation of events, personalities, or social topics and issues of concern at the time.

A library arranges its material according to subject/topic or material type. An archives arranges its material by creator-those "non-current records of individuals, groups, institutions, and governments that contain information of enduring value”-Society of American Archivists. As such, with few exceptions and depending on the function of the archives, archival collections generally do not receive additional materials on a continuing basis. 

What is the difference between a "special collection" item and an "archives" item? A special collection item is inherently rare, unique, irreplaceable, not distributed in quantity and/or is unusually valuable (historically or monetarily). "Special Collections" could include a group of like items from the same creator (e.g., photographs, books, or zines) or an item focused on a single topic. Now, archival collections may also contain special collection items, but they are organized within that collection, as they stem from the same creator and archivists prefer to keep all creator records together. We call that following "provenance".

An archives contains letters, reports, notes, memos, photographs, and other primary sources that originate from one source - the creator of the collection. Archivists follow the practice of Original Order, which means that we do not re-arrange/re-group/re-organize the materials, unless absolutely no original order can be ascertained. Archivists believe that creators of documentation organized their materials with a rationale in mind and we follow that original order, while maintaining archival policies and procedures.

Take a look at this website for additional information when using archives as a resource: https://research.library.gsu.edu/archivalresearch

If you plan on attending graduate school or publishing historical material, you will need to visit an archive for its resources. See the Society of American Archivists' webpage Finding and Evaluating Archives.

We wholeheartedly encourage undergraduate and graduate use of our collections. Our collections often offer surprisingly diverse information and may "piggy back" on other collections at CI or other archival institutions. For instance, the Lagomarsino Collection not only benefits students and scholars interested in politics or history of the 1980s and 1990s, it also provides valuable primary resource material for such areas of study as agriculture, economics, education, environment, civil rights, crime, family concerns, foreign affairs, health interests, labor law, trade, transportation, and veterans' affairs. It can also be utilized in conjunction with that of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.

For further information on our other collections and how they can help you write a better paper, see the next section entitled, "How our collections can help you."

For information on other archives out there, that you may not know exist, please see the section entitled, "Other archive sources".