Research Reflection

Guest post by Bennett Ryan

For me, doing primary source research for course work in this class was mostly done through online resources such as the UWM Digital Collections and the Wisconsin HistoricalSociety Digital Collections. The benefit to doing my research using these platforms was the convenience of not having to go to a separate building. Additionally searching using keywords can make it easier to a wider range of sources about specific topics. However, this method of research is not without its drawbacks. For instance, there are certain items that could only be found within physical archives because they have not, or cannot be digitized. Additionally, while it is certainly convenient to be able to search by topic within digital collections, sorting items by location of origin can allow you to stumble upon interesting information that may pertain to your research, but doesn’t contain keywords that make the connection obvious. It takes more effort to find a wide diversity of sources on digital collections because you are searching based on keywords contained within the source; therefore, if you do not make sure to search multiple different keywords you risk making the research you conduct have too narrow of a focus. Doing research for my primary source presentation at the Milwaukee Public Museum, I found that it was easier to use these resources to find information on institutions, especially within Milwaukee, such as the physics department or UWM, but it was much more difficult to find information on specific people and events in their lives. It was very difficult to find any information on Manfred Olson, even when you would expect information to be available. I was expecting there to be something talking about his time as planetarium director, maybe something in a student newspaper talking about a demonstration he put on, but I couldn’t find anything like that. Maybe this is something that I would have had more luck with had I gone to the archives to research him, but searching for that kind of information requires knowing where to look in the first place.