Building Authentic Undergraduate Research Opportunities in the Archives at Every Level: Integrating Special Collections Materials into the Classroom at a Large Public University

This poster articulates diverse pedagogical approaches to integrating Library archival resources into the academic classroom. Until recently one of the most common methods our History faculty have used to interact with our University Libraries Special Collections and Archives has been through what library curatorial staff refer to as “one-shot show-and-tell” sessions. This is a familiar format in which a class visits the library to see a small specific collection of archival materials and the curatorial staff gives a brief talk about the rules of using this area of the library and its resources. The strengths of this type of experience are that students have a “field trip” experience wherein they are introduced to a repository and are able to develop a level of comfort in an unfamiliar setting. However, this pedagogy does not permit students to engage with the materials in a critical manner nor to develop confidence working with or discovering primary source materials relevant to authentic research questions.

In spring semester 2015, Dr. Susan Cogan piloted a digital exhibition project in her Renaissance History course of 40 students. The Library’s Special Collections and Digital Initiatives departments collaborated with Dr. Cogan in order to determine whether this digital framework was viable to extend sustainably to disciplines beyond the History Department. Students developed an exhibition of rare books and manuscript materials using the digital platform, Omeka. This process involved students seeking the expertise of academic faculty, curatorial staff, and digital library specialists in order to select appropriate materials for digitization that could be used to create and exhibit with a strong analytical narrative. The project proved viable and sustainable and has been used in multiple university departments in every semester since its inception.

Feedback on the initial project indicated that students more highly valued engaging with the rare materials than they valued building the digital exhibit and learning software skills. Consequently, we sought different pathways by which we could achieve the objective of students’ engaging with, thinking critically about, and communicating research related to rare materials. We have tuned student experiences to fit with a variety of class types: small upper division seminars, medium-sized upper division classes, and large first year surveys. We have used three methodologies. For seminars we have tried a “petting-zoo” experience where students take rare materials out into public spaces of the university and encourage interaction with the objects. For larger (30-40 student) upper division classes we developed a small group poster project focused on materials appropriate to the subject of the class, which the students then present in a formal research symposium setting on campus. Since it is not feasible to bring a large (120 student) survey class into Special Collections, we are experimenting with taking objects into the classroom throughout the course of a semester. This pedagogy energizes our teaching and allows students to bring course material to life in an extremely personal way that enhances content knowledge and analytical skills.