Archives and Special Collections

Deciphering handwriting

• Palaeography: reading old handwriting, 1500-1800: a practical online tutorial - from The National Archives (UK)

Currency conversion

• Current Value of Old Money - contains a number of links to currency converters from different countries and periods
• The Inflation Calculator - using the US Consumer Price Index from 1800-2012
• Purchasing Power of Money in the US from 1774 to 2010
• US Inflation Calculator - 1913-2012

Other Historical Resources

• The History Guide - Gottingen State and University Library (SUB) and the Library of the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies are collaborating to provide specialized information services that provide access to resources for Anglo-American culture, including English studies /Great Britain and Ireland, American studies, Canadian studies, and Australian and New Zealand studies.
• McKillop Library Historical Research Methods guide
• McKillop Library Historian's Craft guide

Since archival materials are unique, the method for citing them is different than what is used for published materials.  Researchers often have to identify individual pieces of paper when citing archival materials.

In many cases, the finding aid for a collection will indicate how to cite materials in that collection, but the general style is as follows:

• [Identification of item] in [collection number]: [collection name], Box [number], Folder [number], [name of repository].

Another form is like this:

• [Identification of item] in [collection number]: [collection name], Series [number], Box [number], Folder [number], [name of repository].

Collection and folder titles will be provided by the finding aid, but unless the finding aid is processed to the item level, researchers have to decide how to identify the item. Keep in mind that the point of this practice is to enable other researchers to follow in your footsteps and find the same items that you found. For that reason, you should identify the item with enough specificity that another researcher could find that same item that you cited, and not confuse it with another item in the same folder.

Example:

• Invoice for Ogden Goelet from J. M. Thorburn & Co., March 4, 1897 in SP 02: Goelet Family Papers, Box 1, Folder 11, Special Collections, McKillop Library, Salve Regina University, Newport, RI.