Archival research: make the most of your next trip to the archives

Preparing a trip to the archives can be challenging; managing the many photos you take in the archives can also be a daunting task.

This course is meant to help you make the most of your archival trips by helping you understand the way archives work and why, and by presenting several digital tools that simplify the process of taking useful pictures of your sources, then organise and annotate them so you can easily find again exactly the ones you need when it comes to writing your thesis or research article.

Bildet kan inneholde: papir, utgivelse, papirprodukt, bok, design.

Photo: Alexandre Simon-Ekeland & Hege Rød Segerblad

Target Audience

All students at master level or above and employees at the university, although primarily meant for students and researchers in the humanities and social sciences.

In this course, you will learn

After attending this workshop, you will be well prepared to take your first (or next) trip to an archive.

The course will cover how to:

  • Take pictures and make pdfs with Microsoft's OneDrive app, which automatically runs an optical character recognition on printed sources.
  • Import such a pdf in Zotero, and annotate it there.
  • Import pictures into Tropy, group them, organise them, and annotate them.
  • Decide whether Zotero or Tropy, or a combination of both, are best suited to your own research.

Working Methods

We will start the workshop with a presentation about archives: what they are, how archivists think, and what you should think of before you visit an archive.

Then, we will work with, and combine, Microsoft OneDrive and Zotero. You will take pictures of printed sources that we will provide and learn how to turn them into a pdf file, then how to add those files to Zotero and annotate them.

Finally, we will use pictures of handwritten material and work with Tropy. You will learn how to group pictures that belong together, add metadata, and annotate the pictures, as well as use the different options in Tropy to make the text easier to read.

(If you prefer, you are free to work with your own sources for both Zotero and Tropy.)

Instruction will be in English, unless everyone is competent in Norwegian, and we can also answer questions in Norwegian. 

Preparation and practical infromation

Note that you need to have a Zotero account and basic knowledge of Zotero, which you can obtain on your own or by taking one of the library’s Zotero courses.

If you do not have your own sources to work with, please download the following files, which we will use as an example. 

bring your laptop with Zotero and Tropy installed, as well as a smartphone if you want to learn to use Microsoft OneDrive scan & OCR. 

On a private laptop or a UiO mac computer, you can install both Zotero and Tropy by downloading them from their respective websites:

On a UiO windows laptop, you need to install Zotero through Software Center but you can install Tropy by downloading directly from its website.

If any of this is unclear, you can contact alexandre.simon@ub.uio.no before the course. 

Price

The course is free of charge

Instructors

Alexandre Simon-Ekeland, Hege Rød Segerblad, Lars Lørdahl

Contact

Alexandre Simon-Ekeland, alexandre.simon@ub.uio.no

Register for the Course

Registration

Published Aug. 19, 2025 1:53 PM - Last modified Dec. 15, 2025 10:51 AM