Students | SICAR 2005
Summer Institute on Conducting Archival Research
June 13-17, 2005
The George Washington University Cold War Group (GWCW) hosted a Summer Institute on Conducting Archival Research, June 13-17, 2005. Ph.D. students working on dissertations involving archival research on Cold War topics participated in the Summer Institute -- a four-day seminar held at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., which was followed by an optional half-day visit to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in College Park, MD.
The Summer Institute trained 26 graduate students from across the United States and around the world in archival research. Session topics included how to prepare to go to an archive, how to structure time in the archives, understanding how archival documents come to be written and deposited in archives, the challenges of interpreting archival documents, issues of culture and language in working in non-American archives, and how to search for information not in the archives, such as consulting private papers, making Freedom of Information Act requests for still-classified documents, and conducting oral history interviews. Summer Institute participants read archival documents provided to them during the sessions and discussed their interpretation.
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