Guest post by Arcadia Rose Schmid
Primary source research for this course was among my favourite that I have ever had the pleasure of conducting. For all of the larger assignments, I used archival sources – most of them, if not all, primary – to find out information on what I was researching. This specifically included Frank Zeidler, Emil Seidel, and J.M. Klotsche, all of whom had files in the UWM Archives department. I utilized online searches and finding aids to determine what UWM offered in terms of sources, and was able to use two digitized projects to view files on Zeidler and Seidel. The Oral History Project at UWM has had transcripts of some of their interviews, along with the audio, made available, and all of the Emil Seidel papers are online. The greatest joy was found in requesting nine different boxes from the Archives from the Chancellor’s Records, however. I spent hours sorting through files that contained letters from Klotsche, newspaper clippings – my personal favourite was finding a diary that he kept from his time in Brazil. I prefer the physical archives because it is easier to come across something that was not of original interest but was found to be extremely useful; particularly, in Klotsche’s case, newspaper articles about him that gave valuable insight into public opinion of him.
This research differed from work that I had done
previously: Much of the work I have done as a historian relied heavily on
synthesis of secondary sources, with a few primary sources scattered in
between. This was the first time that I relied heavily on primary sources, by
analyzing them, drawing connections and ideas from them, and then used them as
a foundation for original ideas that I came up with. I distinctly recall being
distraught that I could not find secondary sources on the topics I researched
but can confidently confide that my work with primary sources has allowed me to
make new discoveries and has made me a better historian – and a better learner.
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