Archival Materials Quotes

There are three things to leave behind; your photographs, your library, and your personal journals. These things are certainly going to be more valuable to future generations than your furniture!

What drove me to do 'Dead Wake' was that after doing the most preliminary of reading and scoping out what kinds of materials might be available in archives and so forth, I realized that this book - the research, the writing - would present me with a rare opportunity to explore to a full extent the potential for suspense in a nonfiction work.

On a very personal level, I have fond memories of spending a lot of time in the Library of Congress working on my collection of poems 'Native Guard.' I was there over a summer doing research in the archives and then writing in the reading room at the Jefferson building.

What's an archive, son? Is that anything like a closet?

History written in pencil is easily erased, but crayon is forever.

We still have documents from the First World War that have not yet been declassified. I have no idea why. It boggles the mind.

I had already done a lot of research for Rough Riders, keeping notebooks and old photographs. Some of the books were antiques for that time period, with the covers falling off.

In public buildings set aside for the care and maintenance of the goods of the middle ages, a staff of civil service art attendants praise all the dead, irrelevant scribblings and scrawlings that, at best, have only historical interest for idiots and layabouts.

Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.

I just love the days when you come out of the archives with half a dozen excellent descriptions or poignant accounts of personal experiences.

When I wrote about the Spanish Civil War many years later, I used documents that I picked up when I was a child, as a lot hadn't been published (a lot more resources are available now).

As a biographer, I try to uncover the adventures and personalities behind each character I research. Once my character and I have reached an understanding, then I begin the detective work reading old books, old letters, old newspapers, and visiting the places where my subject lived. Often I turn up surprises, and of course, I pass them on.

I started reading the big histories and the small histories, the memoirs and so forth. At some point, I found the diary of William E. Dodd.

If I were an antiquarian, I would have eyes only for old stuff, but I am a historian. Therefore, I love life.

I don't normally do pure historical work.

So research is a terribly imperfect science, and you learn an awful lot more after you've published a book, because people keep writing to you and saying, 'Oh, gosh, I was related to such and such a character and I have a letter in my possession.'

Every presidential library is a reflection of the society at the time in terms of the media in it.

Over the last two years, I have been able to comb through The Prince's archives. I have been free to read his journals, diaries and many thousands of the letters.

To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.

Biographers search for traces, for evidence of activity, for signs of movement, for letters, for diaries, for photographs.

History depends always upon what, for one reason or another, has survived from earlier periods, particularly upon what was written down or pictured.

I read numerous books - loads in fact - and, as I always do when recording a historical project, immersed myself into the subject matter. I spent many hours at Henry's old homes, such as Hampton Court, and visiting the Tower of London. I read no other books during that period.

I realized the importance of archiving. So I save key pieces from my collections, as well as any red-carpet things that become iconic. I always ask for that stuff back. I'm like, "It's going in my archives."

I definitely am concerned with preservation. For me, what's interesting is the archival state, or how long oil paintings last.