ABSTRACT
All times before the instant in which you read this are already past. For the present, we can actively seek information by a variety of means. For the past, we are the passive recipients of only two sorts of evidence: remains and records. Documentary research is concerned with the latter, the use of written records as a source of information. In the past, this limited our access to those cultures that possessed a system of writing and to those matters about which they chose to write. We know how the Roman Empire was governed; we can only guess at the politics of the peoples who built Stonehenge. Today we have access to far more written records than we can conveniently handle, and records may also take the form of photographs, film, audio disks, videotapes or computer diskettes, each of which requires slight modifications of our traditional techniques of study. Collections of records are termed archives.
