ETHNC 5900 Methodology: Introduction

This guide contains information about digitized archival materials from the Marriott Library Special Collections on the topic of ethnic studies. Links to collections of materials by or about different ethnic and cultural groups can be found in the tabbed sections at the top of this page. The digitized materials represent only a fraction of the archival collections in the Marriott Library. If you'd like information about non-digitized collections that you may be able to access once the coronavirus pandemic subsides, ask one of the subject librarians whose contact information can be found in the lefthand column of this page.

You may find language or terminology in the finding aids, digital item descriptions, or archival resources themselves that is outdated, insensitive, or even offensive. While much of this language comes directly from the interviewees, diarists, and other content creators and is preserved to reflect their actual beliefs, some of it may reflect librarians' and archivists' own biases. If you have questions or concerns about anything you see in the archives, please reach out to a subject librarian.

Put simply, archives hold historical records. These may include diaries, meeting minutes, photographs, home movies, and other primary source media that can teach us about a person or organization and the time period in which they existed. Records are organized into collections, some of which might have been assembled by the donors themselves or purposefully created by archivists to illuminate a certain topic.