If you are familiar with database searching, digital archival searches won't be much of an adjustment. If not, please make an appointment with me! I'll get you up to speed.
For the sake of an example, we will use one of OSU's collections. To see a complete listing, click on this link.
To simplify further: https://library.osu.edu/archives/digital
Let's say I've decided to focus on The Lantern, OSU's student-published newspaper. https://osupublicationarchives.osu.edu/
A note: often within archival collections, we will encounter outdated or even offensive viewpoints and descriptions. Many archives recognize this and work to alert users before they go too deeply into their searches.
Because we're a regional campus, why not search for references to us? I'll start with a vague keyword search.
Since I've not made any refinements to my search, there are over 7,000 results with dates stretching back to the 1800s. Not only is that an overwhelming amount of results, but many of them may be irrelevant! The best thing to do next is work on refining my terms.
At this point, I've decided I want to learn more about when our campus was founded. Since that's not something I know off the top of my head, I'm starting all results at 1950 and letting it run through 2012 (just in case there are other references made to it later.)
From there, these results look interesting and relevant. If you notice, we now have fewer results (and could narrow them down even more if needed.)
The lefthand side helpfully breaks down results by decade, type of publication, word count, etc. If I already knew which of those I wanted, I could click on any of them for a fresh set of results.
Instead, I'm clicking on the third result because it looks the most relevant to me based on this early search.
This is where archival collections really shine. Not only is the specific article I wanted to read highlighted, it appears in its original context as well. This is useful to understand what was going on at a particular point in history, that simply having that clipping on its own, removed from it source, would not.
However, you can still download just that piece if you like, or explore the rest of that issue.