Conducting Primary Source Research in a Pandemic

Guest Post by Lillian Pachner

Conducting primary source research for this class proved to be a pretty big challenge for me. I have never really done primary source research at this level before so I had to learn a new skill. On top of that, this is a skill I will have to re-learn in the future, because I had to learn to navigate doing primary source curation and research completely virtually. Eventually I will have the learning experience of going to the archives in person, post pandemic. I began conducting my research by virtually meeting with Abigail Nye. She walked me through how to find relevant digitized archives and other aspects of doing academic research. She was extremely helpful. This whole experience was entirely out of my comfort zone. Talking to new people, especially virtually is a huge challenge for me (social anxiety), so that was definitely something I had to overcome to get through this experience. All in all though, I feel really good about what I did under these circumstances. I am leaving this semester feeling so much more prepared and equipped as a history student. I can’t wait until this pandemic is over so I can really dive deep into archival research.