Not long ago Brian Wansink, a professor of nutritional studies at Cornell University, analyzed over 50 paintings of the Last Supper to test a theory that the food depicted in that scene had increased in size as food became more abundant. The paintings represent a span of a thousand years, and in that time, Wansink discovered, the portions shown had become larger and larger: the loaves of bread, the amount of food on the plates – even the plates themselves (www.theatlantic.com/food/archive/2010/03). Intrigued by the findings, other researchers are now looking at recent increases in the size of our dinnerware, the inflation of portion sizes on food packaging and the augmentation of serving sizes in today's recipes as significant contributors to the current epidemic of obesity.

This is one of many stellar examples of the value of conducting hands-on research through the use of archives, special collections and library resources. When writing a dissertation, you need to break new ground. The raw material is out there in abundance, but no one else has ever studied it through the unique frame of reference that you have honed through your doctoral studies.

Fact-finding

When you research a topic online, you are reading facts that others have deemed important to the topic. In many cases, those facts have not only been selected for you, their significance has also been interpreted. For a dissertation, you need access to all of the facts from non-interpretive sources, so that you can make your own determination of which ones are important. Oftentimes salient information about an event or an individual has fallen into obscurity because no one has reviewed the original documentation at its source or for a length of time. Your own interpretation of the facts and their relative weight will be derived from the theoretical frame of reference you are bringing to bear on the subject.

Discovery

Doing hands-on research in a special collection or an archive is like sifting through the soil on an archaeological dig, inch by inch. Why do people go to so much trouble to find a few shards of an ancient civilization or the anklebone of a skeleton? Because those are never-before-seen gems that can be studied and catalogued with other newly discovered gems, leading to fresh insights and understanding about an entire civilization. Most archives and special collections are as inexhaustible as the site of an ancient civilization, even to their curators. When you start digging into references with your unique dissertation topic in mind, you have the potential to discover a gem or two of your own.

Pattern-making

Unless you are conducting an original or primary research study, the research section of your dissertation is the proof that you can bring new significance to old data. When you are studying archival sources or special collections, patterns and recurring themes begin to emerge from the high volume of references consulted (for an excellent example, see Alexander, Christopher et al. "A Pattern Language." Oxford University Press. New York. 1977). Given the specialized vocabulary you have developed to explore and explain a unique dissertation topic, you start to name the patterns you are seeing and to describe what those patterns mean in a manner that is consistent with your theoretical framework. That is the essence of original work: you are able to bring new meaning to specific content or processes based on revelations emergent from the breadth and depth of your research.