1. What is an archive? (not as self-evident as you might have thought…)
2. The "Archival Turn": Archives as
historical artefact. (this is where it gets a bit more political…)
3. Where are the archives and how do you
use them? (the practical bit…)

The National
Archive
(est. 1838)

St Hugh’s College
Archive
(est. 1886)

The Women’s
Library
(est. 1926)

The National
Archive
(est. 1838)

St Hugh’s College
Archive
(est. 1886)

The Women’s
Service
Library
(est. 1926)

Death of Emily Wilding Davison
(1913)

TheFawcett
Library

The Women’s
Library
(2001)

A2A ("Access to Archives") posted by the National Archive http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.
uk/

Every city/region will have a
"Local Archive" (what used to be known as a Local Records
Office) which often hold the family/personal papers of individuals who lived in that area, as well as a wealth of other locally related materials including local papers which have not yet been digitised.

There are also many thematic
archives: the Working Class Movements
Library (Manchester); the Bishopsgate
Institute (London); the Feminist Library
(London); the Feminist Archive North
(Leeds); the Modern Records Centre
(University of Warwick); the Trades
Union Congress Library (London
Metropolitan University) ; The Black
Cultural Archives (London); the
Missionary Society Archives are many other collections relating to the British
Empire (SOAS, London)

The role of archive research in your dissertation
• Once you have decided what area you are interested in for the subject of your dissertation, you need to establish your source base early on. So go visit the archive!
• This could be: a collection of personal papers; some oral history interviews; a particular newsletter or newspaper for a given period of time; visual sources such as a series of posters; or perhaps a mixture of the above.
• Your source base will help you to place parameters around your topic, and refine your question/line of inquiry.
• You should approach your source base as a case study through which to examine and test out your over arching questions about history and the world.
• This case study/source base will enable you to bring fresh insights to an existing historical debate or subfield. This is what it means to be original!

• Times Digital Archive, also now Daily Mail and possibly
Mirror available via Warwick
Library.
• Modernist Journals Project.
• Easily searchable across whole period
• Searching for needles in haystacks now possible
• Searching via specific event
• Patterns over time
• Public opinion (letters; advertising)
• Limitations

House of Commons Parliamentary
Papers online
• All government reports and house of commons debates
• Available via
Warwick Library
Databases

• Women, War and
Society, 1914-18.
Available via
Warwick Library
Databases.
• Articles and primary sources from the Imperial
War Museum

• Women in the National
Archives: Available via
Warwick Library
Databases.
• BBC archive: some great interviews with elderly suffragettes
• Sisterhood and After:
Oral histories with activists from the
Women's Liberation
Movement

Second World War and Post-War
Immigration
• Post-War Europe:
Refugees,
Resettlement and
Exile, 1945-50.
• Available via
Warwick Library
Databases.
• Oxford Great War
Archive:

• BBC Archive: http://www.bbc.co.uk/archiv e/
• BFI Inview: http://www.bfi.org.uk/inview/
• BFI Screenonline: http://www.screenonline.org
.uk/
• British pathe news: http://www.britishpathe.com/
• Box of Braodcasting.
Available via Warwick
Library Databases.