Primary Sources: A Glance into the History of Metropolitan Milwaukee's Digital Archive

Primary Sources: A Glance into the History of Metropolitan Milwaukee's Digital Archive

In this course, our use of primary sources were important for a variety of activities such as the Milwaukee Zoo tabling Activity, the Milwaukee Public Museum Tabling Activity, and the Twitter Reenactment. Starting with the Milwaukee Zoo Tabling Activity I was first introduced as to what a primary source is and what its intended use is for.  The primary source is an artifact, document, manuscript, or other form of media that was created in the time that's being researched. For this class, there's a digital archive that is through UWM Libraries which are accumulative primary sources that cover a variety of events and information regarding the Milwaukee County Zoo and people associated. 

In the History of Metropolitan Milwaukee class we focused on the birth of Zero in 1919, which was the first polar bear to be born in captivity in North America. During this time period it can be a bit difficult to find information and so the use of primary sources was necessary to gain accurate information about the topic. For the Milwaukee Zoo Tabling Activity I was interested in learning about Edward Bean. He was the Head Zookeeper at the Milwaukee County Zoo from 1906-1926 and so he was an important figure at the zoo during the time period that Zero was born. Personally I found the most useful of primary sources to be a source that had multiple elements within it such as photographs, minutes, biographical information, financial statements, and other forms of information that would bring a greater understanding to the Milwaukee County Zoo and particularly Edward Bean. For example, in the Digital Archive there were the Annual Zoological Society Reports from 1919, 1920, and 1921. In these booklets there were photographs of the zoo, spending reports, updates and advancements the zoo had done within the past year. This really gave me a well rounded view of what had occurred in the zoo during that time which I found to be helpful. I ended up using this primary source for not only the Milwaukee Zoo tabling Activity but I presented the booklets as my main research topic for the Milwaukee Public Museum Activity as well. 

For the Twitter Reenactment I also chose to portray Edward Bean because I found him to be really interesting but I also knew a bit about him from my previous primary source research. I also decided to portray Daniel Hoan who was the second Socialist Mayor of Milwaukee from 1916-1940. When I was trying to find useful primary sources on him, I came across an address he had made during his time of being mayor although it was not dated. By reading the address I was able to get more of an insight into his personality through his writing style and verbiage that I found to be important when I portrayed him in the Twitter Reenactment. 

The most important takeaway I had from using primary sources in this course was how helpful they could be at understanding people within a time period. Although not in all primary sources, sometimes it was in a slightly less formal way than reading a piece of writing written today about the time period. I got to know Edward Bean and Daniel Hoan's personalities and I understood each of them more after reading and looking at them through the lens of the time period they lived in.