Students come hoping to dazzle everyone with their deductive powers, but also apprehensive of complete and abysmal failure. Under these circumstances there are great opportunities for making a name for themselves one way or another. The papers students prepare on their artifacts include description of the object, an outline of the investigative strategies pursued, and then as the main point of the exercise, historical analysis. Explanation, rather than mere identification, is the main goal of the report. The object reflects contemporary material conditions and social values, and must be made to speak for the society that fashioned and used it.
Students have about a month to complete the first project, then move on to work on documents.
The Roberts Collection ranges over every field of endeavor from the sixteenth century on, with many important letters from major figures. Every member of the history department chooses documents for the seminar selecting those that seem to offer something solid for students to work on. Again each fall there are about a third more documents than there are history majors in the course, so there is some range of choice for each student. Most of the documents selected are letters, but students have also worked on wills, contracts, diaries, and even a 1799 safe-conduct pass signed by Haitian leader Toussaint L'Ouverture. Over the course of the preceding year the manuscript cataloguer works closely with faculty, planning the sort of documents that might prove useful in a student search.