Here’s how these other researchers’ books and articles can help you to find archives:

• As you read, note down the names of people (or organizations), events, places, and topics mentioned. These details can help you to identify relevant archival collections.

• Don’t skip reading the endnotes and bibliographies. The author will cite the collections used and what archival repositories hold them.

• Use what you've found as starting points for searching for archival collection guides or repository information online to learn more about these or other collections that interest you.

Online discovery tools like the following enable you to search within descriptions of archival collections for the names (of people or organizations), events, places, and topics that you want to pursue:

• Online Archive of California: detailed descriptions of archival collections held by more than 200 libraries, special collections, archives, historical societies, and museums throughout California

• ArchiveGrid: over 7 million archival collection descriptions from over 1,400 libraries, museums, and archives from around the world

With each of these tools you can search descriptions of many, many archival collections across lots of libraries, archival repositories, museums, and more. The results you find will help you to identify archival collections or repositories you might want to visit in person.

UC Santa Cruz archival collection descriptions are discoverable by searching directly within UC Library Search as well as in the Online Archive of California and ArchiveGrid. Most UC Library Search records for archival collections include links out to view that collection’s guide.

Not all libraries and archival repositories include their holdings in online discovery tools, though. Community archives, small historical societies, or small museums may have archival collections that interest you. Reach out and ask questions; often archivists know about collections held outside of their immediate institution and help researchers make connections. Also worth considering is the possibility that an archival collection may still be in the hands of its creators. Arranging permission to access archival collections that are not set up for public research use may take some relationship-building time on your part and might not work at all. But it may also lead you to fruitful and unexpected insights.

Digital archival collections are collections that have been digitized and published online. Digital collections can be invaluable for research because you can read and look at them without the expense of travel.

Libraries’ websites and catalogs are often a good source for digital collections. Libraries usually invest in commercially packaged sets of primary sources via subscription to specialized databases. Selecting “primary sources” database types in UC Santa Cruz’s list of subscription databases will reveal what we offer.

Libraries may also digitize their own archival collections and make them available freely. UC Santa Cruz’s Digital Collections is one example. There are also multi-institutional platforms like Calisphere, which presents millions of items from educational and cultural heritage institutions across California. For each item presented, there will be descriptive information that will name what collection the item is from and where that collection lives.

You can begin to surface more digital collections via general internet searching too. Try a search in which you pair a name/organization/event/place/topic with AND DIGITAL COLLECTIONS.