University Archives is a valuable resource for research about Cal Poly. There are millions of documents in the archives, and it can be hard to know where to look and how to find the right keywords to search. We've outlined some of the steps we recommend you begin with when you are researching with the archives:

• Gather up what you know about the topic, people, time period. Jot down phrases, names, dates, and keywords you think might be related to your research question
  • you might want to explore secondary sources or Wikipedia to learn a little more about the context
  • What formats of materials are you interested in? (video, audio, images, documents, data)
• Try a search of the digitized student newspaper and the Cal Poly Report to learn more about the topic at Cal Poly
• Expand your search to all of our digitized materials
• Check what other collections we have that are not digitized:
  1. Search the University Archives Register to see if there are collections that might cover the topic you are researching
  2. Search all of the collections described in the Online Archive of California
• Contact us at archives@calpoly.edu or schedule an appointment for a zoom meeting if you have questions or you aren't finding what you are looking for
• restart the process, adding more keywords