Continuing on from the last two posts about archives, let’s run through a strategy to do some archival research.

Here are the two most important things to remember:

Ask the archivists for help. In my experience, archivists are friendly professionals who know a heck of a lot about where information might be hiding.

Take a lot of notes, especially any names you find while reading a document. Then use those names to expand your search. And keep careful track of the catalog number of each document.

Let’s say you have an aunt who you know was a courier for a resistance network in Lyon, France, during the war. She was arrested, but not deported. That is enough to get started. I’d start in Lyon itself in the official regional archives. They happen to have an impressive database of resisters from the region that was constructed in response to the Klaus Barbie trial. If your aunt was arrested in the Rhone region, she’s in that database. Of course, she might be in it under a pseudonym, but that’s a different problem.

So you go to Lyon, look up your aunt’s dossier and take a lot of notes. It’s important to make a list of all the other names that come up in your aunt’s file. These may be resistance colleagues of hers. Make a list of all the names you find including any alternate spellings and any pseudonyms. It’s helpful to write down birthdates and other facts about these other people as well. You want to look up their files as well because not all archival files are created equal. Some have a lot more information in them than others.

What do you do if your aunt did her illegal work in a region where no one did anything particular to gather up or organize resistance files? Start on the national level. Follow the trails of the other names you read in the files you find and keep expanding your search.

Archival research is a slow process that is unlikely to follow the path you expect. You will not find everything there is to know about your aunt in any one archive. Some archives will have more information. Some archives might have nothing at all.

Be open minded and flexible. And don’t forget to ask the archivists for help.

Next time: Footnotes!