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Research at the Polly Rosenbaum State Archives and History Building

This guide includes information about scheduling an appointment to view materials from the Arizona State Archives and the State of Arizona Research Library in the Reading Room of the Polly Rosenbaum State Archives and History building.

Where to Start your Research

Where to Start

How to Find a Research Question

When you begin to think about what you want to research, it can be difficult to get started. Framing the topic you are interested in as a question can help you narrow down your topic and find what sources you need to answer your question. However, you want to be careful when creating your research question and find one that will not be too broad and give you too much information or a question that is too narrow and will provide you with little or no information. 

For example, if you wanted to learn more about mining in Arizona a broad question would be, "What information is available about mining in Arizona?" The answer to this question could include information from any place or person that was involved in mining operations in Arizona and range from when mining began hundreds of years ago to today.

One way to narrow down this question may be to think about the Five W's: Who, What, Where, When, and Why? For the above question, the following could be potential topic ideas for your question.

  • Who: Miners, Owners, Families, Children of Miners, etc.
  • What: Mining Conditions, Living Situations, Money Earned by Miners/Owners, Town Populations, etc.
  • Where: Northern Arizona, Florence, Bisbee, Ghost Towns, etc.
  • When: Late 1800s, Early 2000s, Spanish Settlement, etc.
  • Why: Learn more about miners day to day lives, Find out if mining was profitable, Understand how mining works in modern day, etc.

Using these ideas, an example question for your research could be, "What were the living conditions of miners like in Bisbee in the early 1900s?" This question narrows down the original broad mining questions with who (miners), what (living conditions), where (Bisbee), when (early 1900s), and why (learn more about Bisbee miners). 

Preliminary Broad Research

Once you have your research question, next do some preliminary research to see if there is enough information to answer your question, or too much information to show you need to narrow your question down further. To do so, you can do a general internet search or use some of the resources we have at the State of Arizona Research Library. 

A few of our resources to get you started are our online website Arizona Memory Project, which includes many digitized records in our collection, our online Catalog of records which encompasses all of the collections at the State of Arizona Research Library, and our Finding Aid LibGuide that will help you navigate a few of our most used resources.

If you find you cannot find any information in your preliminary search, you may need to broaden your search, whereas if you find too much, you can narrow down your question topic further. 

Determining Research Needs

In addition to our research resources, we have additional pages included in this guide to help you understand the terminology and types of resources that are available for your research needs. These include research definitions, resources organized by subject, and types of resources including primary, secondary, and tertiary and how they are different from each other.

Putting in an "Ask a Question" Request

  • If after searching through our resources you are unable to find the answer to your question, or the resource you need is not online, you can fill out our "Ask a Question" form found here so the Reference Librarian can assist you.
  • Make sure to include as many details as possible.
  • Again, remember to use the Five W's to determine what information is important to answer your question and put in the ticket description. 
    • Who are you trying to find information about
    • What details you believe are important (i.e. what agency made the report, what newspaper you need, what event took place)
    • Where the event or topic took place (Be as specific as possible, if you are looking for something that happened in Sun City, please put Sun City, not Phoenix)
    • When the event happened (The narrower the date, the better chance we have of finding information)
    • Why you are looking for this information (We may be able to find additional information based on your research question)
  • If you don't know some of the answers to these questions, that is okay, just include what you can, and we can assist you in answering your question!