When you search for digitized primary sources, you may be searching several categories of information.
For text-based items, if the item is machine-readable through OCR or through a transcription created by the archives, you can search within the text. When you search the historic text, you will want to think about the terms that were used at the time. An example--when researching the experiences of women at Cal Poly, historic texts have used many terms, including "girls," "coeds," and "skirts" as well as other outdated terms. Sometimes they misspell words.
Tips for searching historic text:
- what were historic words that would have been used at the time?
- Did a place have a former name (a street changing name, a country's former name)
- Did the person change names? (for example, married, or emigrated)
Archives staff also write descriptions and other metadata to describe the items. For example, if the item is a photo, they may include a title supplied by the creator, but then add additional information like a description of the image depicted and an approximate date span. They may use terms that were current to their time period, but might already be outdated and have not yet been updated.
- what are some more recent terms used to study this topic?