Help awaits you at the Reference Desk! Here is where you'll find an archivist who can help answer your questions, no matter what stage you're at in your research. If you're just beginning, then you are probably trying to formulate an idea about what you want to study. Archivists help researchers with many kinds of questions on all sorts of topics. Some questions are quite specific: say, for instance, a genealogist is looking for the birth record or a relative. Others might be quite broad: a researcher might be interested in finding personal writings of children in Michigan during the nineteenth century. Looking at a list of sample questions might give you an idea of the variety of topics that people study, and about what you'd like to research yourself.
If you've already formulated a question, then you might look for advice on what type of materials to use to answer it. The reference archivist can help with this too. One of the most difficult aspects of primary source research is knowing what to look at; for example, a researcher studying children in Michigan might look at quite a variety of materials, including photos, birth records, letters, and diaries -- all of which are probably in seperate collections. The archivist can help you decide which materials are going to be most useful, as well as recommending materials you might have never even considered. If you want to know more about how to find call numbers for items, or whether or not the archives even has what you're looking for, take a look at the Finding Information page .
Finally, when you know exactly what collections or items you want, the archivist can get them for you. Researchers are not allowed to retrieve items on their own; aside from the security concerns, the researcher simply wouldn't know where to begin to look! The archivist will bring the materials out to you, where you can work with them on a table in the reading room.
But you don't necessarily have to be at the Bentley to ask reference questions. Many researchers live miles away and can't afford to visit the archives in person. To help these researchers, the reference archivist answers questions that come in by phone, mail, fax, and even e-mail. Would you like to try? If you have a question that you'd like answered, why not e-mail it to the Bentley?