LaGuardia Community College Wagner’s Achieve – Aisel Omerbashi
LaGuardia Community College Wagner’s Achieve
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Tag Archives: Robert Moses
07. Robert Moses papers and Archival Research Overview
Archival research is based on the type of the material we are looking for. The materials can be diaries, rare books, paper documents, photographs, et cetera, but can also be historical artifacts like jackets or trophies. To get access to this type of materials you should refer first to the archive website and find out what are the steps you should follow. It is a must to do an advanced planning for visiting the archive since this type of material very delicate and sometimes may be one of the kind. Actually I have an opposition about this type of rare or unique materials. I agree for farther research to have access to them, but to their copy not to the original ones, because as it was mentioned in the readings, those are irreplaceable. Anyway, at list they don’t let you to take them home, so you should use that time wisely whenever you get access to them. Archives have primary source materials and it will ground your research. This archives are accessible by others as well, not just by students or professional academic researchers.
The Robert Moses papers are organized in series and in numerical order from Series 1 to Series 16. The papers mostly include materials based on the type of job position he was at that time and based on the project he was working on. He had a long career as a public official and also he worked on many important projects that still stay strong nowadays. We can access to his series of papers by referring to the New York Public Library’s (N.Y.P.L) website, at Archives and Manuscripts, and find out the steps to follow. They may ask to fill a form with your information and the need for the material requested.
Archival Material Post # 5
The Robert Moses Papers are arranged into sixteen principal series. These series are based on the projects he was involved in and within each series it is ordered by different time periods. Some of the archival material that can be found are speeches, memoranda, press releases, reports, plans, photographs, and more relating to Robert Moses. The material types available are Blueprints, maps, and photoprints. I didn’t think that blue prints were available to the public, free to view. I always had the impression that these documents were reserved for architects or city planners. In order to access the material you should first visit the facility website and fill out a request access form for the Robert Moses papers, which require your name, email, and address.
Homework#5 Archives
This article definitely has a lot of in depth and historic information regarding the creation of important roads, tunnels, highways, parks and bridges around New York City. Many of us, including myself, are sometimes guilty of not paying much attention to the bridges that connect boroughs and states, or roads and tunnels that gets us from place to place. It’s easy to take these little things for granted as we go about our everyday lives. But thanks to the New York Public Library for collecting and archiving such important and historic information for us so we are able to have an understanding and appreciation for all these incredible paths around us.
Robert Moses work and information were changed after a period of time. His papers were filed alphabetically by subject and others were filed chronological. The materials used to archive his work and life achievements were personal correspondence, speeches, press releases, reports, magazine and newspaper clippings and blue prints. These resources are easy to access through the internet and the New York Public Library archive by filling out a request form to view documents with specific dates, time frame and segments.
Reflections #5: Archiving Robert Moses
The NYPL Robert Moses archives contain a wide breadth of information. The archive encompasses his personality and his being, whereby it is cohesive and stark as a whole, but in pieces are sporadic and heavily concentrated. That being said, it includes a variety of documents: photographs, printed matter, speeches, correspondence papers that record his reign in numerous office, and his invention of several major public transportation and parks projects.
These papers are organized chronologically, although sometimes events and projects in his life overlapped, therefore some timelines bled over each other. Each paper is linked to a page which further summarizes the contents of the document. Some papers are highly dense, thus they are further segmented (ex. the 1st Series: Personal and Library Correspondence) or highly organized and indexed. All of these documents however, facilitate the need to contact the NYPL ARCHIVES & MANUSCRIPTS division to plan for a visit to study these documents.
