Have yuu ever been to an archive?

[Ivykaty44]

to research your family histroy or research anything else that the archive hold, house history, or academic work?

where did you visit and what was it like?

Yes - I went to St Katherine's House Record Office in Northampton and tbh, it was a complete nightmare, although I did find some amazing stuff out for my geography work.
I was studying Landscape History as part of my BSc degree and I decided to do a land use comparison of two school sites in my local town. The record office had loads of stuff that a lot of people in the town I was studying about would never know unless they went there and looked at the records.
The thingk that annoyed me was the ordering process- quite complicated. Then the photocopying rules and stuff - some of it was like looking for a needle in a haystack and I wish I had planned more time there.
My tips would be to be specific and write down what you really, really need to know before you go, otherwise you could be there for ages and not actually do anything productive. I would defo checkout the website for wherever you go and also call beforehand and ask any questions you may have then. Staff were quite sparse when I went and that was a quite a large record office.

thanks - anyone else been?

oh yes - I went to the national archives in Canberra but some records are available online.

I also have been to state archives three or four times. Some stuff was on microfiche and the latest lot I looked at were paper records. Thankfully you can search online for what you want - so I had the info for what I wanted but in Brissy they were very efficient as I looked for further records and they came out very quickly. There was even a sealed statement that should not have come out with my pile - it was part of a divorce record and the only way to get it unsealed was via court order!!!! I looked at immigration records, old wills.

The best I have seen for my family at this point in time is an article my great great grandfather wrote and sent back to the Royal Geographical society of QLD about the people and places where he was managing a mine in Malay - photos and article hand written in 1896! The photos were amazing. I have photocopies of it.

I really love looking at the original records. Looking at my grandfather's immigration file from when he came to aus as a 9yo with his mother and siblings. I was able to view the files and in fact they were wrapped with others including a file for a great great aunt that I had been led to believe had died in Wales!! SHocked to discover she had actually made it to Aus and died here in Brisbane.

At the national archives it was a little more difficult - you usually need to order specific things with a day or so's notice or be available during the week as a lot of it is kept at another storage facility. I have looked online at docs available from the UK national archive - I have downloaded dh's great grandfather's naval record.

I went to the Guildhall in London to research the merchant naval career of my 2xgt grandfather in the Lloyds registers. It was amazing as I managed to trace all his voyages over a period of about 15 years when he was either a mate or captain.

It was very easy to do and I was able to use a digital camera to photo all the pages in the registers. I was only there for one afternoon.

I did a history PhD and still research so I spend alot of time in archives! Just remember that things vary hugely from archive to archive, so do make sure to check in advance how long it takes documents to come up, what copying facilities are available, what ID you'll need are etc etc. Don't turn up expecting to have a document in your hot little hands five minutes after ordering! Archives often aren't well-funded and tend to prioritise preservation over ease of access, but by and large they do their best. Digital cameras can be great if the archive will let you use them.

Yes every work day for years and years...

jobrien gives good advice.