Digital Collections Search

1. Choose an item from Barnard’s digital collections or NYPL’s digital collections
2. Write for five to ten minutes, considering the following questions from “Using Archives and Special Collectiond in Creative Writing Research” by Katherine Hughes and Clare McClulskey-Dean:
   • How might you use this resource for Creative Writing research?
   • What can you learn about the historical and local context in which the resource was created?
   • Who was the author/creator of the resource and what can you learn about them?
   • Why do you think this particular resource was preserved by its creator and/or by the archive?
   • What gaps or absences can you detect?
3. Find the finding aid for the collection of which your item is a part. Skim through it, paying close attention to historical, biographical, and scope and content notes.
   • For item’s from Barnard’s digital collections, the image will have the collection name under the “details” heading. You can search for that collection on Barnard’s Collections website. At NYPL, the items on their digital collections will have collection information linked under the “item data” heading. You can also cross-reference with their Archives & Manuscripts finding aid website and/or go to the digital collections site, click “browse,” and then click “collections.” Then select a collection of interest and click “about.”
4. After taking a look at the finding aid, see if you have anything to add to the questions above.

Working with Prompts

Choose another item (or continue working with the same item) and spend some time working with one or more of the following prompts:

• Erasure
  • First, read “The Near Transitive Properties of the Political and Poetical: Erasure” by Solmaz Sharif
  • Optional: “The Weight of What’s Left {out}: Six Contemporary Ereasurists on Their Craft” by Andrew David King
• Found poetry
  • If working with archives of a writer, consider a cento
• Consider using anaphora or writing a sestina using language from your source
• Imagine the life of the creator and/or the subject
• Writing about your point of view: what does the object look like, what do you observe, what does it make you think about?
• Imagining the object’s point of view: what does it feel, what does it see, what does it think about or remember?

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