Blog 19: Reflection on Archives Essay

To start off, I never knew what the LaGuardia Archives was and I never knew how much interesting items they had there. Working with them allowed me to find enough information on “planned shrinkage” to write my essay. I never heard of Roger Starr or “planned shrinkage” before this paper and after reading the interview with him, I got a good sense of who Roger Starr was and what his ideas were. The archives allowed me to get a good idea of what “planned shrinkage” actually was. After the interview with Roger Starr, I learned mostly everything I needed to know about the idea, with a little more research I completely learned everything I needed to know about it, and I was able to work on my project from day one. That interview with Roger Starr was the introduction to the archives room for me and it started me off right for my paper. Also, the items that the instructor showed us gave the class a good representation of how the archives worked and why the archives are useful for doing research on anything that revolves around New York City. I found the archives project essay more difficult to write compared to the major research essay, because I couldn’t find a large amount of information on Roger Starr and his idea of planned shrinkage. Although, the paper was shorter than the research essay it still lacked the information that would’ve helped me write a longer paper. I would also blame myself for not doing a hardcore amount of research and if I did I believe that I could have found a lot more information for the essay. Overall, the paper allowed me to become more acquainted with the LaGuardia Archives room and now I found a good place to collect my information for future project instead of just looking up the information on the internet.