eLabs & Community Events
Strategies for Finding Scattered Documents
August 7, 2026 1:00 pm – 4:30 pm Eastern Time
Historical correspondence, organizational records, and other primary sources are often dispersed across a vast network of archives, museums, historical societies, and private collections. For scholars and practitioners working with these materials, locating them can be one of the more challenging and time-consuming stages of a project.
On August 7, in a half-day workshop for the eLabs conference Revolutions and Reflections, Cathy Moran Hajo will draw on her work with Jane Addams Papers and Margaret Sanger Papers projects to share practical strategies for identifying, locating, and tracking scattered documents. Participants will learn about the various resources useful for conducting exploratory searches, as well as will discuss how to interrogate their available documents to identify potential leads to relevant materials. The workshop will also address strategies for contacting repositories and private individuals, and methods for documenting searches.
Designed for both emerging and experienced practitioners, this session will equip participants with concrete techniques for beginning or expanding their documentary search.
Please note that registration for this workshop will open when the conference registration opens in late June.
About the Presenter
Cathy Moran Hajo, Ph.D. is the editor of the Jane Addams Papers Project at Ramapo College of New Jersey. She formerly worked as Associate Editor of the Margaret Sanger Papers Project at New York University. She taught for many years at the Institute for Editing Historical Documents, and has contributed several courses on the basics of scholarly editing for eLaboratories. She teaches an undergraduate course, Introduction to Digital History, at Ramapo College. She served as president of the Association for Documentary Editing in 2008-2009.
