Digital Humanities projects are simplest when working with sources already digitized. Research strategies for finding sources have changed over last two decades with a rising number of digitized sources and academic databases available to universities.

One benefit to academic databases of historical collections is that I can access archival collections from across the country. I have access to so many resources, but navigating the search can be daunting.

I did some searching in the databases available through my university and found that I had to browse through the databases first and figure out which ones might apply to my research. Second, I had to come up with a list of search terms that I was going to use in my searches. I was searching for material on Mormon settlement in the West, so I searched for Mormon pioneers, Mormon settlement, Mormons Utah, Mormons West, LDS settlement, Mormon migration, etc. One thing to consider while searching is that the same term might not apply throughout history. There may have been a different way a certain group of people was characterized or nicknamed in the past. It’s important to keep those in mind when searching. Once I found a document of interest, I paid attention to the other keywords associated with it in the metadata. I found exploring this to be a very helpful practice. Some of the databases also allowed browsing by topics as a finding tool. I found this to be helpful as well.

Although I was pretty sure I knew most of the Mormon collections and the repositories that held them, doing searches in academic databases opened my eyes to collections of interest held in New Jersey, Illinois, and California that I wouldn’t have known about otherwise. Once I was able to identify all the applicable collections, then I could evaluate their usefulness. Some of my research questions have a lot of applicable digital sources, others have very little. Now I have a better grasp on what collections exist and I can make a decision about how to use the sources available for my project.

Once I decided what collections were applicable to me, I had to remember what I learned previously about copyright and fair use. Some of the documents I found are protected by copyright still.

As I start brainstorming about all the projects I can do in the future, I will consider what digital records exist first before I finalize my project idea. It’s amazing to see what have been digitized in the last 25 years and made publicly available, although a lot of materials are still protected by copyright. I enjoyed perusing the databases and learning about what different repositories hold. While going to an archive has its benefits as well, having a wealth of digitized primary sources opens up many new avenues of research not possible in the past.