As a nonfiction author who does a lot of research, I’ve
found one tool that is indispensible: my
camera.
I’ve traveled to many different libraries, museums, and
historic homes to do book research. Every library and museum has research
documents that no one else has. While a
growing number of primary sources are scanned and made available online, there
will always be more that are not online.
The only way to access them is to go and see them in person.
When I travel to research sites I have limited time to
spend. So getting as much information in
the time I have is crucial. Sometimes
research libraries will allow me to scan the documents I need. For those I scan them to a flash drive, or
email them to myself.
But sometimes there are simply too many documents to
scan. In that case, I ask for permission
to take photos for research purposes. I
always ask first. While libraries and
museums want researchers to use their information, they are also very
protective of their collections. If
there are lots of documents, taking photos is much faster than scanning
them. So I take photos of the entire
page. When I get home I can go through
them and zoom in to get a better look.
I use both my phone and a point and shoot camera for
this. I’ve also learned (the hard way)
to take extra battery chargers to power up my phone, as well as extra camera
batteries and memories cards for my point and shoot camera.
On my last research trip to Mount Vernon, I spent a lot of
time in the amazing Fred W. Smith Library for the Study of George Washington. I came home with literally thousands of pages
of research material. Some are scans and
some are photos.
So take your camera and start researching!
Don't forget to enter our book giveaway 2 -Book set from Sandy Brehl: BJORN’S GIFT and ODIN’S PROMISE
Carla Killough McClafferty
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4 comments:
Great idea! When out & about, I take pictures of street scenes, landscapes, whatever strikes my fancy, so that I can look at them later to recall weather, colors, smells, etc. I also take pics of historical markers that give general overviews of events.
Dear Jane, thanks for the comment. I do the same thing, especially when I'm doing research as it saves a lot of time.
Carla
Wow! I've never written non-fiction before (outside of memoir); this is an incredible amount of work. THANK YOU for doing it! I'm sure it makes your books so much richer (and obviously more accurate) because of it!
Sarah, thank you for your comment. Nonfiction is a lot of work because everything I write must be based on source documents. It is always my hope to write them in such a way that amazing, true stories read like a novel. Carla
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