By Olivia Chhlang | Reporter
Baylor students can often struggle trying to find scholarly articles and primary sources to use for research papers, taking time to make sure that the pieces have been properly cited or sourced — just to find out it doesn’t have the right information. The Baylor Digital Collections, part of the University Libraries, makes it easy for students to find everything they need all in one place.
Eric Ames, associate director for advancement, exhibits and community engagement, broke down the process of taking a physical copy and digitizing it, enabling researchers to access them anywhere and at any time.
“For example, if there was a collection of Civil War letters in the Texas Collection, we would scan them,” Ames said. “We would transcribe them so people can read the text without having to read the 19th-century handwriting and [release] them online for people to use for research.”
Based on the data collected from the digital collections’ analytics, the collections are mainly used by researchers, but Ames also encourages students to use them to make their own research easier. Rather than scouring the internet for secondary articles, the Baylor Digital Collections provides primary source material with all the information a student needs.
“If you’re doing a research paper and you want to see the perspective of a Baylor student from the 1800s or you want to read through newspapers of Waco in the 1910s, you’ll find those in those collections,” Ames said.
Houston sophomore Audrey Kim has taken advantage of this resource and said she doesn’t have to dread writing research papers anymore.
“[Baylor Digital Collections] is very easy to navigate,” she said. “For example, I’ll type in a keyword and then I’ll get a whole list of articles written that have that word in it.”
The Riley Digitization Center in Moody Library is dedicated to the process of digitization, so there are many articles for researchers and students to find and use.
“We are adding to those collections all the time,” Ames said. “New items come up periodically throughout the year, and we are always running checks to make sure that the things that are already online are still working correctly.”
Baylor Digital Collections offers plenty of resources the university has to its students, along with the time and effort that goes into maintaining them.
“It’s nice to see other articles that relate to [my] topic and have good quality examples of research that has already been done to put in my own research paper,” Kim said.
Research doesn’t have to be difficult and finding the right resources can make research rewarding and fun.
“There’s plenty of content in there to help you to do better work,” Ames said.
