While with the ubersmart students of the NILA MFA program recently, I learned about several research sites and aids and wanted to share them with you:
- For costumes and fashion: the Fashion Institute and, of course, old issues of the Sears and Roebuck catalog (check your local library)
- For photos: Life magazine on-line archives
- In-library research: American Decades: Primary Sources (Gale Cengage)
I've only recently needed to start digging into the past, but so far my favorite way to get into the mindset and details of the period is through the everyday items I find at the second hand and antique stores--school workbooks, scrapbooks, magazines, music sheets, books, advertisements, tools, fixtures, pretty much everything local and national. Today I found the memoirs of someone who settled Oysterville with his family in the late nineteenth century, which is just what I needed to start "hearing" people of that time period. I wouldn't have found this online.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you, Grier. "Hearing" people tell their stories is a resource that can't be beat! What a treasure you found!
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