Read about the landscape of archival research and the experiences of graduate students in archives and libraries around the world in this report from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR).  

Between 2003 and 2015 more than 200 CLIR Mellon research fellows made 991 visits to 750+ libraries, archives, museums, archaeological sites, and private collections in 64 countries, and wrote 177 reports about their experiences.  Read the full text online.

A few quotes from the report:  

“Discovery is a key part of the research process, but tools for discovery are often incomplete or difficult to use, if they exist at all.” (p. 21).

"Regular communication between researchers and librarians or archivists can make a crucial difference in the success of a researcher’s project, especially when not all information about a collection is contained within finding aids" (p. 21).

"Serendipitous discovery was an important part of many fellows’ research projects” (p. 21).

Researchers should be "aware and wary but at the same time open to what they find, knowing that it is incomplete and that it tells a story that is as much about the collection and its practices as about the subject they are researching” (p. 27).