Educational Programs : Innovative Practices for Archives and Special Collections 9781442238534, 9781442238527

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Educational Programs

Innovative Practices for Archives and Special Collections Series Editor: Kate Theimer This dynamic series is aimed at those working in archives and special collections as well as other cultural heritage organizations. It also provides students and faculty in archives, library, and public history graduate programs a resource for understanding the issues driving change in the field today. Each book in the series tackles a different area in the field of archives and special collections librarianship and demonstrates the kinds of strategies archivists are using to meet these new challenges. These innovative practices reflect approaches and ideas that will be new to many readers. The case studies featured in each book have been selected to keep in mind a broad spectrum of readers and enable the series, as a whole, to benefit a diverse audience. Each book features case studies from both large and small organizations. Thus, some of the creative ideas presented are being implemented with costly tools and robust infrastructures, and others are being done on a shoestring. A hallmark of the series is that every case study incorporates ideas that are transferrable, even if the specific implementation might not be. About the Series Editor Kate Theimer is the author of the popular blog ArchivesNext and a frequent writer, speaker, and commentator on issues related to the future of archives. She is the author of Web 2.0 Tools and Strategies for Archives and Local History Collections and the editor of A Different Kind of Web: New Connections between Archives and Our Users, as well as having contributed chapters to Many Happy Returns: Advocacy for Archives and Archivists, The Future of Archives and Recordkeeping and the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Archival Science. She has published articles in The American Archivist and the Journal of Digital Humanities. Kate served on the Council of the Society of American Archivists from 2010 to 2013. Before starting her career as an independent writer and editor, she worked in the policy division of the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, Maryland. Titles in the Series Description: Innovative Practices for Archives and Special Collections Outreach: Innovative Practices for Archives and Special Collections Reference and Access: Innovative Practices for Archives and Special Collections Management: Innovative Practices for Archives and Special Collections Appraisal and Acquisition: Innovative Practices for Archives and Special Collections Educational Programs: Innovative Practices for Archives and Special Collections

Educational Programs Innovative Practices for Archives and Special Collections Kate Theimer

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

Published by Rowman & Littlefield 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom Copyright © 2015 by Rowman & Littlefield All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Educational programs : innovative practices for archives and special collections / edited by Kate Theimer. pages cm. — (Archives and special collections) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4422-4952-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4422-3852-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4422-3853-4 (ebook) 1. Archives and education. 2. Archives—Public relations. 3. Libraries—Special collections. 4. Libraries and education. 5. Libraries—Public relations. I. Theimer, Kate, 1966– editor. CD971.E38 2015 021.7--dc23 2014048168 TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

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Tablet and Codex, Side by Side: Pairing Rare Books and EBooks in the Special Collections Classroom Greta Reisel Browning, Appalachian State University

Fells, Fans, and Fame: Acquiring a Collection of Personal Papers with the Goal of Engaging Primary School Children Jane Davies and Janice Tullock, Cumbria Archive Service 3 Student Curators in the Archives: Class-Curated Exhibits in Academic Special Collections Jennie Davy and Amy C. Schindler, College of William & Mary 4 A Win for All: Cultural Organizations Working with Colleges of Education Andrea Reidell and Beth Twiss-Houting, Cultural Fieldwork Initiative 5 “The Archive” as Theory and Reality: Engaging with Students in Cultural and Critical Studies Anna McNally, University of Westminster 6 Make Way for Learning: Using Literary Papers to Engage Elementary School Students Ashley Todd-Diaz, Terri Summey, Shari Scribner, and Michelle Franklin, Emporia State University 7 Archivists Teaching Teachers: The Archives Education Institute and K–12 Outreach Janet Bunde, Melanie Meyers, Charlotte Priddle, and Andy Steinitz, Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York 8 Animating Archives: Embedding Archival Materials (and Archivists) into Digital History Projects Lisa M. Sjoberg and Joy K. Lintelman, Concordia College 9 “A Certain Kind of Seduction”: Integrating Archival Research into a First-Year Writing Curriculum Brooke Champagne and Amy Hildreth Chen, University of Alabama 10 Not Just for Students: An Archives Workshop for Faculty Rachel Grove Rohrbaugh, Chatham University

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11 Web Archiving as Gateway: Teaching K–12 Students about Archival Concepts Tanya Zanish-Belcher, Wake Forest University 12 Evocative Objects: Inspiring Art Students with Archives Yuki Hibben and Wesley Chenault, Virginia Commonwealth University 13 Documenting and Sharing Instruction Practices: The Story of TeachArchives.org Robin M. Katz, Brooklyn Historical Society Index About the Editor

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Archivists traditionally receive formal training in many areas of practice that relate directly to acquiring, managing, and providing access to collections, but increasingly, activities tied to outreach, such as developing educational programs, are becoming a more valued part of archivists’ responsibilities. Creating effective educational programs requires an understanding of the audience and how best to communicate information to that audience. This activity often benefits from a background in pedagogy, but most archivists lack any formal training in how best to structure educational experiences and simply forge ahead as best they can. Developing partnerships with teachers and faculty can result in more effectively designed programs by helping to fill that knowledge gap and also help archivists in gaining access to students in the classroom. Working with educators to reach students is essential to preparing the next generation of researchers and advocates for archives. Given the ever-expanding range of information sources available online, it is more important than ever for students at all levels to understand how to approach and assess both physical and digital archives and special collections materials. Both educators and students often fail to consider how the kinds of primary sources held in archival collections can contribute to areas of scholarship and creative practice outside of the typical bounds of history classes. Explaining what archives are, what they do, and what they hold are just the beginning for many possible conversations about how archival materials—and archivists’ knowledge—can assist both students and teachers. Working with archivists to explore the archives can help students in developing critical reasoning and analytical skills while giving educators new ways to engage students, and both groups can benefit from learning how the materials themselves can advance their understanding of the past and add value to their lives today. Educational Programs: Innovative Practices for Archives and Special Collections explores how archivists and special collections librarians in organizations of different sizes and types have approached these kinds of challenges and opportunities. These case studies show a range of audiences and strategies, but all were selected because they demonstrate ideas that could be transferred into many other settings. They can serve as models, sources of inspiration, or starting points for new discussions. This volume will be useful to those working in archives and special collections as vii

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well as other cultural heritage organizations and provides ideas ranging from those that require long-term planning and coordination to ones that could be more quickly implemented. The chapters also provide students and educators in archives, library, and public history graduate programs a resource for understanding the varieties of issues related to creating and implementing educational programs and how they can be addressed. ABOUT THE INNOVATIVE PRACTICES SERIES I debated with myself for some time over the title of this series, Innovative Practices for Archives and Special Collections. After all, what is innovative and new to one person is often standard procedure to another. Another option was to call them “best practices” and follow the model of a series of similar books from the same publisher featuring case studies from libraries. But this seemed equally problematic. In a field that seems to embrace the phrase “it depends” as a mantra, putting forward the experience of any one archives as best practice seemed ill advised. It is the very diversity of our field, though, that caused me to stick with my “innovative” label rather than shying away from it. There are new ideas in these books or at least ideas that will be new to many readers. My philosophy in selecting case studies for the books in this series has been to keep in mind a broad spectrum of readers and to position the series so that it will be as valuable as possible for a diverse audience. In each book, you will find case studies from both big organizations and small ones. Some of the creative ideas presented are being implemented with costly tools and robust infrastructures, and others are being done on a shoestring. In determining what to include, I wanted to ensure that every case study incorporates ideas that are transferrable, even if the specific implementation might not be. This commitment to making the series broadly valuable and practical has meant striving for a balance that favors more approachable innovations over implementations that are aggressively on the “cutting edge.” The ideas presented here are within the reach of most archives and special collections—if not right away, then in the near future. They represent the creativity and commitment to serving and expanding our audiences that I think are the defining characteristics of the archival profession in the early twenty-first century. Because archival functions and processes are interrelated and don’t always fit neatly into compartments, and because most archivists perform several of those functions and processes in the course of their daily work, the contents of each of the volumes in this series has both its own clear focus and overlapping relationships with the others. Case studies in reference and access touch inevitably on description and outreach. The

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overarching purpose of description is to facilitate use, so issues relating to reference, access, and outreach are components of the case studies in that volume. The case studies on educational programs in this volume have a clear relationship to outreach and touch on the areas of management, reference, and access. These interrelationships are inevitable given the nature of archival work, and most practitioners and students will find all of the volumes useful. Just as the activities archivists undertake depend on each other, so too have I depended on the assistance of my friends and colleagues who generously agreed to review the case studies. My thanks to Rodney Carter and Amy Cooper Cary for the time and careful consideration they have given to improving the latest two books in this series. ABOUT THE EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS CASE STUDIES The case studies in this volume show the range of audiences archivists and special collections librarians are targeting with their education programs. K–12 students are often considered the most challenging to reach with content about archives, but in their case studies, Jane Davies and Janice Tullock (Cumbria Archive Service), Ashley Todd-Diaz, Terri Summey, Shari Scribner, and Michelle Franklin (Emporia State University), and Tanya Zanish-Belcher (Wake Forest University) provide models of using somewhat untraditional materials to help younger students connect with what archives do. Undergraduate students are easier to reach if faculty members can be convinced to integrate archives into a course curriculum. Working successfully with faculty is well described in each of the case studies describing efforts aimed at undergraduate students— those from Jennie Davy and Amy C. Schindler (College of William & Mary), Lisa M. Sjoberg and Joy K. Lintelman (Concordia College), Brooke Champagne and Amy Hildreth Chen (University of Alabama), and Yuki Hibben and Wesley Chenault (Virginia Commonwealth University). Graduate students can be expected to bring a more sophisticated and specific interest to archival materials, and the case studies from Greta Reisel Browning (Appalachian State University), Andrea Reidell and Beth Twiss-Houting (Cultural Fieldwork Initiative), and Anna McNally (University of Westminster) show how archives professionals can make fruitful connections between graduate students’ interests and historical collections. As noted, developing effective working relationships with teachers and faculty is often the most important step in creating an educational program that draws on archival materials. Sometimes part of this effort involves teaching the teachers themselves, or at least making them knowledgeable about working with archival materials in general, and sometimes with specific objects and collections. In their case study, Janet

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Bunde, Melanie Meyers, Charlotte Priddle, and Andy Steinitz (Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York) discuss putting together a program designed to show K–12 teachers how to integrate primary materials into the classroom. Similarly, the Cultural Fieldwork Initiative discussed by Andrea Reidell and Beth Twiss-Houting gives students who are training to be K–12 educators hands-on experiences working with archives and historical society libraries to better prepare them for integrating primary sources into their future classrooms. Rachel Grove Rohrbaugh (Chatham University) provides an account of her experience as a new archivist reaching out to faculty to encourage use of the archives’ collections in their teaching. While Robin M. Katz (Brooklyn Historical Society) discusses a program targeting undergraduates and their faculty, the subject of her case study is something less often seen in archives—creating a stable online resource designed to share an educational program’s specific products with a wider audience of archival colleagues and educators. While those case studies are explicitly about working with teachers, all of the case studies stress how the archivists both worked with educators and learned from them about how to better engage with students. An important aspect of educational programs is how often they work both ways—students and faculty learn about archives, but archivists almost always come away with new knowledge as well. Many educators and students think of archives—when they think of them at all—as sources of information on history, consisting mostly of written documents. One innovative approach displayed by several case studies in this collection is to engage students by using unusual materials or by showing how archives can be used for subjects other than history. Collections of original drawings were used to introduce school children to broader subjects by the Cumbria Archive Service and Emporia State University. Tanya Zanish-Belcher describes both an actual and an ideal way to use the selection and preservation of webpages as a gateway for engaging students in archival topics. Using textual materials to inspire creative visual work is another way to show students how archives can be approached in different ways, as demonstrated by Yuki Hibben and Wesley Chenault’s discussion of using special collections materials as the starting point for art students’ assignments. Similarly, Brooke Champagne and Amy Hildreth Chen use archival materials to challenge students in a first-year seminar to approach writing in a new way. Anna McNally also challenges students in cultural and critical studies programs, who assume they are familiar with “the archives,” and engages with them about the reality of archives, forcing them to consider how the reality relates to their theoretical understanding. Another way to create educational programs that are more than just the traditional “show and tell” sessions is to find ways for students to use archival collections as the basis for creating something new of their own. Students in semester-long courses curated their own exhibitions at the

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College of William & Mary, created new educational resources through the Cultural Fieldwork Initiative in Philadelphia, conducted a “history harvest” at Concordia College, and created new artistic works at Virginia Commonwealth University. Working intensely with historical materials gives students new insight into how they can be used, as well as into the larger value of archives. While technology permeates all of our lives, and does so increasingly for newer generations of students, it is often the physical, tangible, “original” nature of archival collections that makes them both fascinating and challenging. Greta Reisel Browning describes these kinds of reactions as graduate students use books from special collections alongside digitized versions of them, displayed on tablet computers. For these students, working with the digital version often makes for a more comfortable experience. Similarly, for the K–12 students in Tanya Zanish-Belcher’s case study, the world of the web was familiar, but approaching it from an appraisal point of view and considering what should be preserved and how to provide context for it presented a new experience. For many archivists, learning about educational standards is itself a new experience. All three case studies focusing on educational programs for school children—those from the Cumbria Archive Service, Emporia State University, and Wake Forest University, as well as the Archivists Round Table of New York, which describes working with K–12 teachers—discuss the importance of tying education in the archives to the appropriate curriculum standard and so make the experience more relevant for students and teachers. Several authors working in colleges and universities also observe how their educational efforts relate directly to the educational missions of their organizations, contributing to producing graduates who are better prepared to succeed. In her case study, Robin Katz challenges archivists to more consistently and actively document and share the educational resources they create, as she and her colleagues have done through the creation of the TeachArchives.org website. While the chapters in this book do not include the range of detailed examples Katz was able to make available, each provides an opportunity to learn more and consider a new approach. I also think each also reflects a philosophy of experimentation that is perhaps the most crucial ingredient necessary for any organization interested in developing its own “innovative” practices. In this regard, I hope this book and the others in the series encourage all readers to consider how their own work could benefit from the exploration of new ideas and tools. Although this series of books can, by definition, include only a small sample of the kinds of approaches being developed by archives and special collections around the world to meet the challenges of staying relevant and adaptable in today’s complex environment, I am sure these case studies will give readers many useful ideas to consider, as well as the inspiration to come up with tomorrow’s innovations.

ONE Tablet and Codex, Side by Side Pairing Rare Books and E-Books in the Special Collections Classroom Greta Reisel Browning, Appalachian State University

For almost a decade, there has been a noticeable trend among scholars to use both physical rare books and e-book versions of them in tandem for their research. In her 2012 master’s thesis, Rebecca Niles investigated this research model through interviews with textual scholars, although she notes that a broader scholarly audience may also subscribe to this model. Niles found that textual scholars, an interdisciplinary group for whom the text itself is an artifact to be studied, treat digital resources not as equal or “satisfactory representations” for real materials, as some researchers use them, but as complementary resources, “each fulfilling roles and enabling behaviors that the other cannot.” 1 Observing this trend in my own work, I became aware that Appalachian State University faculty request librarians to teach students about electronic primary source databases and special collections in separate information literacy sessions. It seemed logical to me that students, especially graduate students who were beginning serious study in history and literature, should learn to use paired digital and analog resources just as their professors do. For this to happen, I determined that primary source databases and physical rare books had to meet in the same classroom. Digital text databases have revolutionized scholarly research over the last ten to fifteen years because of the convenient accessibility they provide to rare printed works. No longer must scholars trek to the British 1

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Library to study a first edition of John Milton’s Paradise Lost or early printed works of the fifteenth century; they can now view, download, and search these texts from the comfort of their homes or offices. 2 This easy access to digital texts allows them to be easily incorporated into teaching and dissemination, including “on seminar handouts, conference paper slideshows, or scholarly blogs” as well as in digital humanities projects. 3 For textual scholars, digital facsimiles provide access to additional copies for comparative collation. 4 However, the experience that many scholars have had in using physical rare books informs their use of the digital surrogates. Librarian Diana Kichuk notes, “the [Early English Books Online] scholar is engaged with the surrogate as if it were ‘the real thing,’ knowing very well that it is not.” 5 In contrast, undergraduates and first-year graduate students today may assume that digital repositories are the only necessary resource for researching historical published works. Indeed, the resources available for studying in the hand-press book period (fifteenth to eighteenth centuries), such as the subscription databases Early English Books Online (EEBO) and Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), offer unprecedented access to English printed works. Other repositories of texts exist in open-access sites such as the Internet Archive, Google Books, and library-based digitized collections. In 2009, Senior Lecturer in English at Bath Spa University Ian Gadd pointed to the reality that “there are now PhD students submitting their theses for whom EEBO has been a fact of academic life since they arrived as freshman.” 6 What novice researchers and students may not realize in this age of abundance, however, is that there is more (or less) than meets the eye with digital facsimiles, and this lack of understanding indicates the need for physical rare books to continue to be part of education in scholarly research methods. Seasoned researchers who use digital texts are usually knowledgeable about the pros and cons of using both digital surrogates and physical rare books. Digital texts in databases or open-access digital repositories offer immediate gratification in accessing the text quickly. To varying degrees, texts can be searched by keyword, magnified for enhanced readability, and in many cases, entire books can be downloaded so that researchers can create a virtual library related to their research on their own computers or electronic devices. The convenience of using these digital texts is remarkable given research methods with rare books prior to the 1990s. Many scholars and librarians, however, after years of using these sources, have developed a good sense of their limitations. 7 Those limitations center on five major areas: the challenges resulting from production in the original creation of the books themselves, the problems created by the way books were microfilmed and the effects on the resulting digital surrogates, searching issues due to methods of transcription, the lack of completeness in the physical representation of the book during microfilming and so in databases, and the loss of physicality of the item. In

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short, the problems with resources such as EEBO and ECCO often stem from the multigenerational reproductions by which the texts have been transformed. The challenges for digitized versions of many books begin with the original text itself. For books from the 1700s, Patrick Spedding, associate director of the Centre for the Book at Monash University, summarizes many of the problems: “Eighteenth-century British printing was often very poor, so errors in transcription may be caused by broken, badly inked, or warped lines of type. . . . The eccentricities of eighteenth-century type, which includes the long ‘s,’ ligatures, swash capitals, etc.,” can also cause problems for modern readers, as well as for OCR software. The next challenge for those accessing modern online versions of texts has its origins in the process of twentieth-century microfilming, which, in the case of EEBO, started in the 1930s and continued through the 1980s. In the creation of the original microfilm versions of EEBO and ECCO, for example, the books were filmed at a low resolution, in black and white, and pages sometimes became distorted. When the film was digitized to create the online versions of these tools, it was again done at a low resolution for faster loading, resulting in additional loss of clarity and detail. 8 As PhD student Andrew Keener comments, the result, for EEBO in particular, is that “the text images are sometimes poor in quality and therefore hard to read.” 9 In addition to providing digital images of the texts based on existing microfilm, many databases also provide a full-text version for searching purposes. As you would imagine, problems arise in both transcription and OCR that affect the quality of search results. As noted by Spedding, there are inaccuracies in ECCO because the text is OCRed and not handkeyed. EEBO publications are hand-keyed, so the transcriptions that are available may be more accurate, but transcribers are working from the digitized image, not the original book, and as noted, there are often issues with the legibility of the text in the digital images. Finally, Adriaan C. Neele comments that search results, while quick, lack context and may be misleading. In his experience, a keyword search “neither takes into account the various declensions of the word [if Latin], nor do the results give an immediate sense of the relationship, if any, to the main argument of the treatise. In short, the gain of access of the digital primary source may be tempered by the quality of the retrieved information, whereby the task of critical understanding and interpretation of the text remains with the reader.” 10 In addition to the low quality of the images produced by microfilming, that process results in other kinds of lost information and context. For example, in many databases there are no front or end pages, no consecutive blanks, no bindings, margins can be cropped, and illustrations that would not transfer well in filming are not included. Color text (such as red or gold) and color in images are lacking. Kichuk points to the

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“loss of valuable details about book production, illustration practices, and reading practices gleaned from page notes and inscriptions,” and Keener comments on the missing “watermarks, physical dimensions, and bindings, each of which offer important clues about the production, consumption, and circulation of a given book.” 11 Finally, the direct connection with the past is absent. Convenience is privileged over the tangible, but yet also intangible, aura of a book from a different time, owned and read by people unknown to us. “To hold the original book in one’s hand is to touch a part of human history,” observes librarian and professor of law Claire M. Germain. 12 In my classrooms, I find that this is a valuable element that delights both students and scholars. My thoughts on demonstrating to students how digital and physical books could work together in research had been percolating since 2012. That year, teaching faculty asked me to introduce primary source databases, such as EEBO, in one-shot instruction sessions while the humanities librarian was on leave. As I usually only teach about resources in special collections, I had a bit of a learning curve to master. Meanwhile, in 2013, the university’s College of Education provided our library with a teaching cart of twenty-five iPads. While I became familiar with using a few databases that held British primary source publications, I also noticed that the iPad cart was rarely checked out for use. This gave me the inspiration to use iPads and rare books in our collections to introduce graduate literature and history students to the complementary nature of digital and physical rare resources using both e-books and physical books from our rare book collections in information literacy instruction sessions. This case study discusses the joint use of iPads and rare books in a comparative exercise during special collections instruction sessions for two graduate classes. The study covers the planning, execution, and outcomes of the exercise with special attention to students’ responses and includes suggestions for future avenues in teaching with electronic and physical rare resources. PLANNING In special collections, I am the primary instructor for the rare book and manuscript collections and have free rein to develop new methods to engage students. So, I decided to test my idea in fall 2013 with English (ENG) 5000, Bibliography and Research, an introductory class to graduate study in the field required for all first-year master’s students in English. I had taught a special collections session for this class the previous year, so I had a sense of the student level and general faculty expectations. Different professors teach the course each semester, and thus, their

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preferences dictate the focus of library information literacy sessions each year. In fall 2012 and 2013, fortunately, both professors researched historical British literature, and they were enthusiastic about introducing their students to special collections. In fall 2013, the information literacy librarian for English taught a library module of three sessions of ENG 5000, with a fourth designated for special collections instruction. To prepare for my session, I coordinated with both the professor and my fellow librarian to lay out the goals of my session. The professor confirmed that students would appreciate a hands-on exercise and that a discussion of advantages and disadvantages of each medium would be valuable. We also decided to include an introduction to special collections, information about how to access the materials, and an overview of how these materials could be used in their work. The information literacy librarian planned to introduce primary source databases in her session immediately prior to mine, so the students would be familiar with the databases before we worked with them. At this point, I knew that iPads would be essential to carry out the comparative exercise. The iPad cart was a perfect solution since it could easily be transported to the rare book room where I teach using those collections. iPads could also easily sit side-by-side with rare books, from folios to duodecimos. This was preferable to taking rare books to computer instruction labs where there is not adequate flat space at each workstation to work with print materials. The labs also allow food and drink, a practice incompatible with special collections’ use policies. About a week before the class, the professor sent me his students’ literary interests so that I could pull related examples from the collections. Their topics included British and American literature and ranged from the specific, such as Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” to the general, for example Appalachian fiction. I looked for matches and correlations in our British studies, American literature, and Appalachian regional rare book collections as well as for books that were sturdy enough for a hands-on exercise. Most importantly, however, I searched each potential title for digital surrogates in our subscription databases, in Google Books, or through other websites. There were fourteen students registered for the class, and I pulled seven titles so that they could work in groups of two. This limited the number of titles I had to research and was suitable for the number of people and books that could fit around our rare book room table. I also created learning outcomes for the session. Not only did I want the students to become familiar with the resources of special collections generally, but in addition for this particular exercise, I wanted to introduce the idea that digital books could be used for research in concert with physical rare books, some of which they could access in our library. Through the session, the students should learn to decide when a physical book could provide information that a digital book could not and vice

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versa. They also would learn that the digital version was not the only resource that they should or could use in their future research. I hoped that through guided discussions some of the issues that practiced researchers note about digital book databases would become apparent to the students. A few weeks prior to the ENG 5000 instruction session, I gave my exercise a trial run in another graduate course, History (HIS) 5107, Research in British History. I had already been working out the details for the English class by this time, and it seemed logical that graduate history students could benefit from this exercise as well. My preparation for the comparative exercise was similar to that of the English class but significantly easier for a number of reasons. I had taught a session in this class several times previously, and I was familiar with the professor’s expectations and history students’ assignment—a lengthy primary source research paper. The professor always left the session content open to my discretion, merely stating that he wanted an introduction to our British studies rare book collections. In past sessions, I have given hands-on rare book exercises but not done any comparative work with digital versions. As far as I know, the professor did not schedule any other library information literacy instruction sessions for this class. There were only four students registered this semester, and the professor allowed me an hour and a half of his seminar period. I followed the same planning methods as I used for ENG 5000, except I looked for examples only in our British rare book collections. I had plenty of time to prepare, present material, and work through the exercise with this smaller class. IMPLEMENTATION The trial run of the exercise in the HIS 5107 class, by all appearances at the time of the session, went well. I had ample time to introduce the British studies rare book collections and engage what turned out to be three students in the rare book and e-book exercise and discussion. After introductory remarks about our British collections, I introduced how to use rare books in research, which included, among other things, where to look for a table of contents or index, as well as drawing their attention to the importance of reading the front matter, such as the author’s note to the reader, for clues about the text’s purpose and bias. I also demonstrated how to handle the books: the need to have clean hands (students washed hands before the class), how to use book supports with tight or fragile bindings, and pointers on turning well-worn pages. Then I distributed the books from those that I had preselected. The class focus was nineteenth-century Britain, especially political and social history. Given the small class size, I determined that each student could examine books individually rather than with a partner. I distributed the

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students’ selections from the cart and set them up with wedges if necessary, and then they spent about ten minutes familiarizing themselves with their books, both physically and intellectually. I handed out a sheet with questions for them to answer about the basics of their books (see appendix) and a second handout containing information about how to analyze primary sources. After the students became familiar with their books, each one gave a brief presentation based on the questions. I then distributed iPads and instructed them verbally and in writing (as part of a separate question sheet for the e-book comparison) how to search for the book as an eresource through the library’s catalog. In our catalog, search results show all of the instances of the books’ titles—e-books, physical books, microfilm, and various editions. For this exercise, I asked them to consider how hard or easy it was to use the e-book; was it easier to use than an actual book? I also asked them to think about the pros and cons of each method of accessing the books. After a short period of exploring the e-books, the students presented their observations about using both types of books, and questions and discussion about the comparative use of rare and electronic books for research purposes ensued. While I felt that the session went as planned, after the trial exercise in the history class, I made a few small adjustments before I gave the exercise again in ENG 5000. The biggest change was that there were fourteen students and only seventy-five minutes for the English session. I rearranged my presentation to place all of the introductory information in advance of the exercise, tweaked the discussion questions for a different discipline, and eliminated the separate presentations after each media to save time. For the English session, twelve of the fourteen expected students attended. From my preselected group of books, I called out titles and students chose the ones in their interests. I again allowed them about ten minutes to work with their partners to get familiar with their books. I used similar questions to those that I used in the trial run with the history class. When it was time to pass out iPads, I asked them to move their books to the center of the table if necessary to allow room for tablets. I then asked the students to search for their books as an e-resource through the library’s catalog. Given the three prior information literacy sessions that my colleague had delivered, I did not have to give many instructions. For students whose books were not available electronically through subscription databases, I provided guidelines for searching Google Books or specific websites. After a short period of exploring the e-books, they presented their books and observations.

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RESULTS Measured against the learning outcomes I had identified, the exercise seemed to be a general success in both sessions. The students were excited to handle rare books during the sessions, and the iPads offered them an introduction to using the two mediums together in the same session. Discussions showed that the exercise challenged the students to compare two media that they had not used together in research before, although their observations were not as insightful as those researchers with stronger bibliographic knowledge or background would have had. I realized that without much experience with older books, they had little knowledge from which to work. The in-class discussions revealed insight into the students’ flexibility and familiarity with technology, their perceptions of rare books, and which features matter in their research. In the ENG 5000 class, we had limited time to discuss each group’s thoughts; in the HIS 5107 class, we had ample time, but these students had similar comments to those in the other class. In both cases, students pointed to the e-books’ generally easy navigation: they could easily flip from chapter to chapter or view multiple volumes in one location. They could search the e-books quickly through keyword search boxes and enlarge small type for easier reading. After handling mostly pre-1900 books in the session, the students noticed that the use of e-books could serve as a way to preserve the originals through less handling. A few negative aspects of e-books surfaced in the discussions. One student noted that his group’s e-book did not contain page numbers, and thus, he and his partner wondered how they would cite passages from those pages. Another pair could not open their e-book after repeated tries, so they could not participate in the discussion. Unfortunately, this group did not alert me to their situation early enough so that I could help them connect to their e-book before the presentation. While some students found e-book navigation simple, others found that they had a hard time getting a sense of their books’ organization. Finally, one student commented that she did not like to read screens for extended periods and preferred to read an actual book. In comparison to the use of electronic books, students noted with excitement the tactile experience that physical rare books offered. The “aura” of the book was powerful: handling a first edition, feeling the paper, and smelling an open book struck them as an unusual and thrilling part of the research experience. Another student was tickled to actually handle a book that she had only seen in a museum. The overwhelming minus to using rare books for the students was their concern for the books’ physical condition. In the discussions, several students said that they would rather use e-books in their research because they were afraid that their use of the physical books would further

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damage them. As I noted, I chose books dating from the late 1500s through the early 1900s that were in relatively sturdy condition for those ages. In the class session, however, the students in ENG 5000 appeared relatively comfortable working through their books for the exercise. In the HIS 5107 class, however, the students were exceptionally careful in turning the pages of the books and seemed to read every word on each page—to the point that ten minutes had passed and no one had made it past the first few pages. At this point, I encouraged them to turn to chapters, look for indexes, or turn to the ends of books. By contrast, when we moved to using iPads, these history students were immediately into the heart of the books within seconds of opening the digital files. I was able to draw out a few additional perspectives in the HIS 5107 class with longer discussion time. When presented with the question of how they would use physical books and digital surrogates jointly in research, one student pragmatically noted that she could use the physical book during special collections’ open hours, but still continue research using the electronic version when the department was closed. She also conjectured that could use the e-book’s search interface capability to quickly identify relevant passages to examine in person. I then asked the students if they thought the e-book and the physical book were the same. One student said that he would look in the e-book to see if there was the same tear that he saw in the physical book. I was amazed to learn through this question that the students had not given any thought to the fact that the books on the table in front of them in our library were not the copies used in the digital database and that there may be differences in the text for any number of reasons, such as missing pages or illustrations, individual alterations to books over time, provenance evidence, binding errors, and many other possibilities. During the discussions, the students also failed to note many of the problems with databases that practiced researchers did, such as missing pages or lack of color in the e-books. The students who examined books printed in blackletter (Gothic) type did persevere in making sense of the words in both media, although did not comment that one media was easier to read than the other. Prior to the sessions, both professors supported the exercise and encouraged it. After the sessions, however, I received limited feedback from them. The ENG 5000 professor expressed his appreciation for the exercise in a brief conversation after the session. The HIS 5107 professor left the class before I was finished, and I never learned his opinion on the success of the session. While these sessions served as most students’ first introduction to rare books, their familiarity in using computers made their adjustment to using iPads minimal. I had to give very few instructions in this area, whereas I gave many directions about using and handling rare books. While the students seemed comfortable using iPads to access rare books through

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databases or other means, ironically, all were thrilled to work with actual books during the sessions. LESSONS LEARNED The comparative exercise in both classes revealed the need for additional information and methods to better reach the learning outcomes for the exercise, as well as the stark contrast between students’ comfort level with electronic books and rare books, and how this exercise best works with course curriculum and assignments. After the sessions, I realized that there are two areas in which I can amend this exercise so that students gain a deeper understanding of the digital and physical printed resources. It seemed that the combination of the restrictive time of a class period and the amount of information that I hoped to cover (or to be revealed through observations) limited the students’ learning experience. For instance, in the English class, there was barely enough time to cover everything—the final discussion was quick, since six groups had about fifteen minutes to give their informal presentations and answer any follow-up questions. The discussions, therefore, were not as exploratory as I would have liked. Ideally, students should spend more time examining the two types of books to think realistically about using these two media in partnership in their research. One option to improve this situation may be to eliminate a portion of the session by assigning a preparatory web tutorial about the collections in general, and this would allow more time for the comparative exercise. Another option is to work with professors to create an assignment in which students use rare books and e-book surrogates for actual research and reflect on the process. This would require students to visit the reading room in special collections to use materials and provide a more authentic research experience than an instruction session allows. I also realized that students needed more bibliographic understanding before they could really see what they were missing when they use digital books, which, in turn, would enable them to ask more probing research questions. In the discussions, students only commented about the importance of physical items relating to the mystical quality of a rare book and dug no deeper. “Bibliography,” in John Carter and Nicholas Barker’s second definition, is “the study of books as physical objects.” 13 In his commentary on EEBO, Ian Gadd observes, “Appreciating EEBO’s limitations—and hence using it correctly—requires a particular kind of prior scholarly knowledge, a knowledge about old books that is most obviously associated with the discipline of bibliography.” He goes on to explain that humanities graduate programs are teaching this area less and less, and now, “the unprecedented and apparently unfettered access to early printed books that EEBO provides appears to have coincided

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with a period when decreasing numbers of students and scholars know how to describe or interpret bibliographically those same books.” 14 Gadd’s observations were proven true though my comparative exercise. Knowing this more clearly now, in the future I can include an overview of relevant bibliographic details before the exercise. There is not enough time, however, in a one-time instruction to teach the multitude of aspects of bibliography that would truly further students’ understanding in this area. One possible option may be to ask students to work through web tutorials that cover this supplementary information in advance of the session and then review it in person. It was enlightening to learn through the exercise and subsequent discussions that students are generally afraid to work with rare books for long-term research in comparison to digital surrogates. Digital natives that they are, students today have grown up practicing with digital items, and they are fairly fearless in figuring out various interfaces. Simultaneously, libraries are starting to offer more and more e-books, and the emphasis on the modern physical codex seems to be diminishing, making those from the seventeenth or eighteenth century seem more unusual than ever. Moreover, special collections librarians and archivists impose rules for the use of their unique and rare materials to balance preservation and access but may, unintentionally, amplify or instill this fear of using these materials. This exercise, especially in the history class, showed me that care must be given to balance the delivery of the rules with encouragement to use materials. Also, encouraging faculty members to create assignments that allow students to practice with books in the special collections, I believe, would help lessen this fear. In using this exercise in both English and history graduate classes, it seemed that the English students were more prepared to think seriously about using rare books—analog or digital—than the history students. I thought initially that this was the case because history students often work with manuscript materials and these students needed more education about historical printed sources to rouse their interest. I learned from individual research consultations with these students after the class, however, that there were a variety of issues that lead them to a lukewarm reception to the hands-on exercise during class. They expressed that while they found the class interesting, it did not meet their immediate needs, which included questions about how to search for digital primary sources that were not held in our special collections. Unlike the ENG 5000 students, who had an introduction to rare books in the session with no specific assignment outcome, the HIS 5107 students had research papers due at the end of the semester. When I taught their instruction session during the fifth week of class, they had not yet decided paper topics, so the comparative exercise was merely hypothetical and of limited use to their practical needs at the time. If we had held such a session in the middle of the semester, rather than the beginning, and used actual

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sources that they planned to use in their papers, I believe that the exercise would have had more traction. In addition, the excitement that the ENG 5000 students exhibited during the class, I think, was due to the preparation the professor gave his students about the special collections session. The students seemed primed for the session, whereas the HIS 5107 students seemed only politely interested. The multiple library sessions that the ENG 5000 students had prior to their visit to special collections also prepared them to consider the joint use of rare and e-book resources. The session seemed to meet the English students at exactly the right moment in their learning continuum, whereas the history students seemed less ready for this exercise. As with most instruction, it is productive for both the professor and the archivist or librarian to agree on clear goals before the session. Openended directions from the instructor are not as useful as more specific ones. My assessment of the exercise was primarily through the students’ responses to the exercise questions and one faculty member’s feedback. Future assessments could be more robust, such as a brief post-session survey for the students, to gauge which parts of the session worked better than others. CONCLUSION While bibliography may seem “old fashioned” to the non-rare book librarian, this exercise shows that clearly there still is a need—if not more of a need now, in our age of digital abundance—for students to learn about the roots of digital resources and the study of books as physical objects to make fuller, more accurate and insightful use of them in textual or other historical studies. Through exercises like this one, we can teach students how to evaluate rare book sources in order to do sound research and become better critical thinkers. While we have budding scholars seated at the rare book room table, we need to take advantage of educating them in bibliography for the digital sources they use and encourage them to be curious about the stories that physical rare books can tell that a single digital facsimile cannot. The integrated teaching approach that this exercise offers, I believe, is more valuable than separate instruction sessions about digital and rare resources. It meets today’s students at their research reality—the digital world—and introduces them to more effective and advanced research skills by showing them the connection between physical and e-books in the same session, rather than either only the disembodied virtual book in a database or the singular rare and seemingly antiquated physical book in special collections. By providing a synthesized learning experience, we

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can prove, once again, that special collections are relevant in the digital age. Greta Reisel Browning is reference archivist/librarian and curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts, Special Collections, Appalachian State University.

APPENDIX: INTRODUCTORY RARE BOOK ANALYSIS A) Identify: Describe the book(s): •

Title

•

Author(s)

•

Date(s) published

•

How is the book organized? Is there a table of contents or an index?

B) Place in context: •

How does this book relate to the readings and discussions that you have had so far in class this semester?

•

What can you gather is the purpose of this source?

•

Can you tell if there are any biases in your book(s)? If so, what do you think they are and how can you tell?

C) Further questions: •

What is at least one question that you have after looking at your book(s)?

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NOTES 1. Rebecca L. Niles, “Thresholds of Engagement: Integrating Image-Based Digital Resources into Textual Scholarship” (master’s thesis, University of Toronto, 2012), 5–6, http://hdl.handle.net/1807/33081. 2. “For many researchers today (whether academic or simply curious), one of the greatest benefits of recent technological progress is the ability to conduct archival research at home, in your pajamas, or at two in the morning.” In Andrew Keener, “Reading Rare Books Online,” Vade Mecum: On Literatures, Languages, and the Technology of the Book (blog), January 5, 2013, http://andrewkeener.wordpress.com. “Monumental, EEBO has changed the way early modernists do research.” In Robert Alan Hatch, “Clio Electric: Primary Texts and Digital Research in Pre-1750 History of Science Author(s),” Isis 98, no. 1 (March 2007): 152–53, 155–56, http://www.jstor.org. stable/10.1086/512840. “These works then, available through open access, offer an entry globally to the rare editions of Calvin’s work, which were previously only available locally.” In Adriaan C. Neele, “Research in Theology in the Digital Age: Opportunities and Limitations,” Acta Theologica 3, no. 2 (2011): 192, doi: 10.4314/actat.v31i2.9. “EEBO attempts to bring everything to the scholar’s desktop—replacing the need to travel, to navigate catalogs and indexes, to access remote shelves and dusty books or unwieldy microfilm reels—and banish the appalling expenditure of time.” In Diana Kichuk, “Metamorphosis: Remediation in Early English Books Online (EEBO),” Literary and Linguistic Computing 22, no. 3 (2007): 292–93, doi: 10.1093/llc/fqm018. 3. Ian Gadd, “The Use and Misuse of Early English Books Online,” Literature Compass 6, no. 3 (2009): 680, doi: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2009.00632.x. 4. Niles, “Thresholds,” 62. 5. Kichuk, “Metamorphosis,” 296. 6. Gadd further discusses the lack of bibliographical understanding in the digital generation in relation to digital and physical rare resources, “Use and Misuse,” 680, 682. 7. Not all scholars, however, are aware of the full gamut of digital text limitations: some may still be “blind to their inadequacies.” In Marilyn Deegan and Kathryn Sutherland, Transferred Illusions: Digital Technology and the Forms of Print (Farnham, England, 2009), 133, available from: eBook Collection (EBSCOhost), Ipswich, MA, accessed July 24, 2014. 8. ECCO is based on the microfilm series The Eighteenth Century (1982) and Eighteenth-Century Short Title Catalogue (1983). EEBO is based on the microfilm series Early English Books, 1475–1640 and Early English Books, 1641–1700. For a good description of the development of the catalogs on which both ECCO and EEBO are based, see Ian Gadd’s “The Use and Misuse of Early English Books Online,” Literature Compass 6, no. 3 (2009): 680–92, doi: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2009.00632.x; Patrick Spedding, “‘The New Machine’: Discovering the Limits of ECCO,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 44, no. 4 (Summer 2011): 438, doi: 10.1353/ecs.2011.0030 (quote); Kichuk, “Metamorphosis,” 293–95. 9. Keener, “Reading Rare Books.” 10. Regarding errors, Spedding, “The New Machine,” 438; regarding EEBO, Kichuk, “Metamorphosis,” 295; regarding lack of context in searches, Neele, “Research in Theology,” 194. 11. Kichuk, “Metamorphosis,” 298; Keener, “Reading Rare Books.” 12. Claire M. Germain, “Rediscovering Rare Books in an Electronic Age.” In Legal Reference Services Quarterly 20, no. 1–2 (2001): 96, doi: 10.1300/J113v20n01_09. 13. John Carter and Nicholas Barker, ABC for Book Collectors (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll, 8th edition, 2004), 37. 14. Gadd, “Use and Misuse,” 682.

TWO Fells, Fans, and Fame Acquiring a Collection of Personal Papers with the Goal of Engaging Primary School Children Jane Davies and Janice Tullock, Cumbria Archive Service

He communicated better than any guide book writer before or since the essence of the Lakeland landscape, the visceral attachment of man to place, the spiritual power of weathered rock and angry sky. He was priest and poet in his own blunt way. 1 —Eric Robson

In 2006, the Cumbria Archive Service was offered the chance to purchase the papers of Alfred Wainwright (1907–1991), accountant, hiker, author, and television personality. A. W. (as he liked to be known) had initially handwritten his Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells 2 as his own record of his hikes, but was encouraged by friends to publish the first guide in 1955. The work of this reluctant author is now considered the standard reference work to the English Lake District, a major national location for holidays and outdoor activities such as hiking. By his final publication in 1989, his work included more than forty volumes of hikes across the north of England. His books have remained in constant publication and sell in the millions. In the mid-1980s, A. W. featured in five television series for the BBC and became a TV personality. These programs were very popular with hikers, but the beauty of the fells and A. W.’s strong personality meant they were also enjoyed by the armchair enthusiast. Today the fells he described are often known as the Wainwrights, and A. W. has a society dedicated to keeping his work alive. 15

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These books are more than simple guidebooks. They are meticulously compiled handwritten and hand-drawn works of art, which are admired as much for their literary and artistic merit, as they are their topographical accuracy. The collection offered to the archive service consisted of annotated maps, notebooks, photographs, and extensive slide collection, as well as original pages, sketches, and proofs of his books. There are also a range of personal papers, including correspondences with his late widow Betty Wainwright and letters from fans. Our aim was to use the collection to provide opportunities to learn, explore, and discover a range of subjects, through a program of outreach and learning activities, particularly activities for schools. We wanted to ensure that the project was relevant and engaging for our target audience. Our project aimed to have the people at its heart. To help achieve this goal, the schools program was researched and designed in partnership with teachers. Teachers described for us the difficulties they previously had getting pupils interested in the past, resulting in a project incorporating a combination of archive resources and learning activities to successfully engage pupils with the collection. PLANNING The Alfred Wainwright archive was offered for sale to the Cumbria Archive Service, 3 the county-managed archives agency, at a price of £135,000. This kind of acquisition was beyond the means of the service, and so in 2010, an application was made to the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). HLF is a public organization responsible for distributing money raised through the National Lottery and allocated for heritage projects. It is the biggest dedicated funder for heritage in the UK, with £375 million to invest annually. The initial application from the Cumbria Archive Service was for a grant of £184,000. The total cost of the project was £207,000: £135,000 to purchase the collection and an additional £72,000 for processing, preservation costs, and an outreach program. The remaining funds would be contributed from other sources. This application received phase 1 support, the first step toward full funding for the project. Success at this stage brought £7,000 to develop the project plan, which was required for the next application to the HLF for full funding of the project. This initial funding was used to employ independent consultants, Jane Davies and Janice Tullock, to develop the project in detail. Jane has a background as a cultural learning specialist, and Janice is a registered archivist. We worked with Cumbria Archive Services staff from the four local offices. Although all four offices offer a schools service, only one office at Carlisle has a specialist education officer. From the very earliest examination of the Wainwright collection, archivists hoped to use it to develop activities and resources to attract

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new users to the archive service, in particular schoolchildren. The collection provided the Cumbria Archive Service with two relatively unusual opportunities. First, the collection is linked to a well-known television and literary personality, and so many people would have an immediate interest in the collection. Second, the collection could provide a means to explore a wide range of areas of the school curriculum, from design and technology to environmental studies. In developing the project, we were seeking to capitalize on these opportunities. An additional driver in creating the plan was to assess and build on public interest in the collection and the project. In creating the phase 1 bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund, we sought views and expressions of support from various interest groups, including groups supporting local heritage, countryside preservation, hiking, and specific localities. We also used the local press to reach those not connected to these groups and gain letters of support. This was necessary for the funding bid but was also market research for the future activities. The response was unprecedented for the archive service, with over one hundred letters and emails from groups, organizations, and individuals, all overwhelmingly expressing support for the project. We were delighted with this demonstration of public interest, but having raised interest in the possibilities of the materials, it would also be a challenge for the project to meet this unexpectedly high demand. As part of the second phase funding application, HLF requires an activity plan for the proposed project. The activity plan shows why the project is needed, how it has been researched, and how it will be delivered. An essential part of the activity plan is an examination of the potential audiences for the project and a description of how the project will reach and engage with each of them. Our research for the activity plan was based upon the principles of audience development theory—namely, to provide the types of activities people want, we need to understand their needs and interests. The Arts Council England defines audience development as: activity which is undertaken specifically to meet the needs of existing and potential audiences and to help arts organisations to develop ongoing relationships with audiences. It can include aspects of marketing, commissioning, programming, education, customer care and distribution. 4

We began by considering the current users of archive collections in Cumbria and what drives them to use the collections. Existing audience research showed that the majority of current service users were over fortyfour years old and lived locally. Previous research had also shown that the biggest barriers to participation were the limited hours the archive was open and that potential users were unaware of the collections and services offered.

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In addition to compiling information on the profile of existing users, we also considered potential audience groups who might be interested in the archive but did not fit the mold of the existing users. We determined that the new types of users we most wanted to engage with the collection were schoolchildren and their teachers, hikers and hiking organizations, and those living outside the county. Cumbria Archives Service had already identified developing services for schools as a priority, and as a result, schools became the primary target audience for the outreach. The hiking community and those outside the county were targeted through an exhibitions program. The next stage was to undertake a series of consultations with six schools in Cumbria. This included a consultation workshop with primary and secondary school teachers, an independent outdoor education consultant, archive staff, and education staff from two potential partner organizations—Kendal Museum and the Lake District National Park. These aimed to gauge teachers’ interest in using the archive as a teaching resource and to obtain teachers’ and educational partners’ views on the type of tools to be developed. The workshop included an introduction to the collection and an opportunity to examine a number of items. Attendees discussed the potential relevant curriculum areas, activity ideas, age range of pupils to target, and the style of resources that would be most useful. Participants then undertook a series of exercises to develop curriculum activities inspired by the collection and completed an evaluation questionnaire. These workshops ensured that we matched the development of the teaching resource to the needs of schools. They also had the added benefits of providing evidence to HLF of the need for the development of the learning resource and of raising awareness of the collection and the archive education service to schools. Reactions from the workshop were positive about the collection and its potential for engaging students. However, the teachers thought that Wainwright himself might not be familiar to schoolchildren, and so there would need to be a particular angle to the learning resources to interest them. The teachers suggested that the project be developed as a resource for schools that were carrying out an investigation of their local area as part of the history or geography curriculum. Completing this type of “local study” was a popular request as it was a specific requirement of the history curriculum. Also popular among the teachers was providing a challenge for the children, such as asking them to use Wainwright’s techniques to draw a map of their home locality. The teachers suggested a number of other ideas for projects for children based on the materials in the archive, covering nearly all areas of the curriculum, from English to psychology, and for all age groups of children. Feedback was particularly positive from primary school teachers, who suggested two projects that could be explored using the collections. The first was a local study, which could use a variety of sources such as maps,

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photographs, and reference books to find out about the locality and to construct hikes, as Wainwright had done. The second suggestion was that children could write their own Wainwright biography using the archive, which would develop their historical and literacy skills. Teachers also advised on the format of the learning resources they would like to see produced. They didn’t want a resource pack that would support a one-off lesson or visit, but preferred a combination of resources that they could use for a longer project. These would be used both in school and on a visit to the archive center. Finally, the teachers stressed the importance of the real archival documents being available to the children and for the resources we developed to look as close as possible to the original. They said that the material should be as “raw as possible for students—as big as possible, as close to the original materials as possible, not excerpts.” The teachers had reacted very positively to being able to handle Wainwright’s original notebooks and wanted their students to have the same experience. They believed that digital copies would not have the same impact. Teachers described children as living in a digital world and they valued bringing them into contact with paper and the construction of books through the Wainwright archive. From this consultation, we concluded that the Wainwright collection did have the learning potential we had expected. Our activity plan called for designing a learning program that would support children aged 9–11 in primary schools (equivalent to grades 4–6 in the United States) and aged 11–13 in secondary schools (equivalent to grades 6–8 in the United States). This program would be developed in partnership with schools, piloted with them, and then made widely available for local teachers to implement. The program would be based on a suite of learning resources, themed into investigations about the local area and a local person of international significance. With this demonstrated support for the project from educators and the local community, in 2011 Cumbria Archive Service was able to secure full funding from the HLF to purchase and process the Wainwright collection and to undertake the outreach program. IMPLEMENTATION The first stage of implementation was to acquire and process the collection. 5 In summer 2013, with cataloging partially completed by staff from the archive service, Jane returned as learning advisor for the project. HLF project funding supported Jane to create the learning program and train staff of the archive service to implement it with schools. Janice was brought onboard to bring together the final evaluation of the project. A total of £31,000 was received from the HLF to support the development of the educational products for the Wainwright collection.

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We had felt that the initial development of the project had benefitted from the contributions of teachers, and therefore, Jane wished to continue to develop the learning program in partnership with them. This also ensured that the program met the needs of schools, which was particularly important as at this time the national curriculum was under review. During this development period, new curriculum documents were published and were taken into consideration in developing our Wainwright teaching materials. This case study covers the section of the project relating to primary schools. Jane identified three primary schools and approached them as partners on developing and piloting the learning program. Two of these schools had participated in the original workshops. Schools were offered funding to provide replacement staff for contributing teachers. Teachers provided details of how they followed the curriculum, explained what they needed from the learning package, and brainstormed potential activities with Jane. One-on-one meetings were held with all the teachers to discuss in detail how the project would fit with their planned topics and specific school needs. Each pilot primary school had a different project focus. One school piloted the activities as part of a geography and history study of Kendal, their local area. A second school used the resources to support a literacy and geography topic. Here the children used Wainwright’s techniques to write a guidebook to their local area. The third school used Wainwright as a cross-curricular topic over two terms of work, studying a wide range of areas including history, geography, art, and literacy. The pilot was a six-month period of discussing ideas for activities and resources with the teachers and then developing the activities. Activities were tested with the children in the classroom and at the archive center and evaluated by the children and the teachers. Jane then further refined the resources. Along with the results from the pilot process, the project was influenced by previous research Jane had undertaken for the Wordsworth Trust. This explored the significance of the three dimensionality of the manuscript/archive in the project Beyond Words. 6 This research highlighted the need to use not just the words written on archival materials but also to investigate them as physical objects. It examined whether their creases, folds, and stains provided not only deeper meanings but also improved visitor experience in an exhibition. When we view a manuscript in an exhibition, how often do we read but fail to look? And by failing to look, how much do we miss? If we replaced the manuscript with a transcription of its words, what visual clues to its creation and history would be denied to the visitor? 7

This perspective from the Beyond Words project influenced our thinking about the format of both the resources and school activities.

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As the view of teachers was in such close agreement with the conclusions of the Beyond Words project, Jane was able to use both these insights to direct the design of the learning program. In order for the children and other visitors to experience the Wainwright collection up close and in its three-dimensional glory, high quality facsimile copies of selected items from the collection were made. Sections of the collection were digitized at a high resolution, with both sides of documents copied and reproduced in color, on similar types of paper to the original. The reverse sides of letters and maps were digitized and copied, even where they only contained stains and creases. This attention to detail meant that the learning program would enable children to handle and use facsimile copies that were almost identical to the originals. The children were then able to investigate the sources as if they were looking at original documents. To add to the authentic experience, the facsimile documents were placed in archive folders and tied with archive tape. This level of detail was appreciated by the teachers, as one noted in the evaluation form: “The detail was lovely . . . things like using the ribbons on the folders to add authenticity, the authentic looking maps etc. Overall a very good workshop.” 8 The Beyond Words research had also highlighted the importance of visual metaphors in public displays. In the Wordsworth Trust exhibition, Dorothy Wordsworth’s letters were piled high, producing an immediate impact on the visitor and illustrating the intensity of her communication. The research found that “visual representation is an effective mechanism for communicating simple messages.” 9 This technique was used in designing the Wainwright learning program to illustrate the quantity of mail Wainwright had received. Wainwright received mail from fans, including queries regarding hikes, letters asking for financial assistance, and letters relating to his charitable work. As part of the learning program, a large bag of facsimile letters was created, and the children were asked to guess how many letters were in the bag. Teachers commented that this was much more powerful than simply telling the children the number of letters he received. Another instance of using these facsimile letters and their impact was a workshop activity during which each child in the class is given a facsimile letter, which had been placed in an addressed envelope. They are asked to open the letter, read it, and to imagine what Alfred Wainwright would have thought and felt when receiving the letter. This simple, interactive activity gave the children a personal, emotional experience, helping to bring the words to life. The children were able to empathize with and understand Wainwright much more than if they had read a typed extract. A further influence on the design of the program was feedback from teachers in the initial consultation sessions that described how primary age children often found it difficult to connect with history. Primary age

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children were described as feeling that the past is of another world and not real. We wanted to use the archives to help create this connection by using the materials to tell the stories of individuals. We hoped that emphasizing the personal connections could make history so much more engaging for children, and we designed activities in a number of ways to connect children to the archives. The first method we used to make personal connections between the children and Wainwright was through cartoons. One of the workshops introduces the children to Alfred Wainwright by telling a story about his life. An artist was commissioned to create a series of cartoon storyboards telling his life story, drawn in a style to appeal to children. This technique was developed after advice from the Cumbria Archive Service, Carlisle, which uses puppets of characters from the archives to bring the stories to life. A second tool we used to make a connection between the children and Wainwright was to focus their investigation of the archive on his personal papers. The workshops were designed so that the children were focused on the collection items that they could easily relate to, those items from Wainwright’s childhood. Activities used his school reports, stories about his rabbit, and drawings from childhood. Wherever possible in the activities, we made connections between the children’s lives and Wainwright’s life. A final technique that we used to develop the personal connection between the children and Wainwright was to put the archive evidence they had found into the context of real life. After investigating his childhood documents, the children were then asked to develop a story about a day in the life of Wainwright as a child. The story starts “On Thursday Alfred woke up and. . . .” They are asked to create a story using the facts from the evidence they found in the archive. Not only does this activity help to develop literacy skills, but creating stories like this is also an excellent way to bring a character to life. The Wainwright learning program also looked at how we could use the archive to introduce historical research techniques to primary school children. One of the aims of the new English national curriculum is: “To understand the methods of historical enquiry, including how evidence is used rigorously to make historical claims, and discern how and why contrasting arguments and interpretations of the past have been constructed.” 10 The development of these skills was a core aim of all the activities and resources of the learning program. At the start of the workshop or activity, very little information is given to the children about Wainwright. Throughout the program, the emphasis is on the children finding out about him for themselves. Jane and the teachers of the pilot schools designed activities that focused on investigating the facsimile archives to uncover evidence about his life and work. The children used

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this evidence to build a picture of his life and fully understand the techniques he used to create his guidebooks. In responding to the teachers’ request for cross-curricular resources, Jane designed a resource that used a drama technique called “conscience alley.” This technique is used to reinforce the concept of history as an interpretation of evidence that has been constructed through analysis of contrasting arguments. In the activity, students are asked to create a point of view based on a letter from the collection. They are then asked to present this viewpoint to a student representing a “historian.” The “historian” walks down conscience alley listening to the various arguments from the students about the impact of Wainwright’s books and then decides what he or she will write in a history book about him. This is a fun, lively activity that the children thoroughly enjoy. It also firmly supports the national curriculum aim: “Teaching should equip pupils to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and judgment.” 11 Teachers in the initial consultation sessions were very supportive of the value of the children experiencing the real archives. Although very high quality facsimiles had been produced for the program, we believed that it was essential that the children have the opportunity to see the real items. An experience with a real object or artifact is magical. Real objects have an aura about them that can transport the visitor or workshop participant back in time and provide a unique and special experience. The learning program was therefore designed to include work in school and a visit to their local Cumbria Archive Service center. Sections of the collection were loaned to each center for these visits. To emphasize the importance of caring for the collection, Jane designed the visit to show the original material to the children in one of the archival storage rooms. The children were not told they were looking at facsimile copies during the workshop until the archive vault visit. (One of the record centers regularly uses this technique in other education sessions and had advised Jane to do this.) At this point, the children were asked whether they thought the items were original or not and asked to say why they thought they had handled copies. This allowed archive staff to illustrate the security and conservation features of the room and the needs of the collection, but it also made the children feel as though they were having a very special behind-the-scenes tour. This aspect of the workshop seems to have been effective, as one teacher noted: “Children were in awe of the archive vault.” 12 Many children cited in the evaluation that this part of the visit was their favorite activity. Teachers had also told us of the value of interactive activities in the learning program. Jane therefore designed the program to provide children with the opportunity to replicate the physical process of creating a document. We hoped it could be a powerful tool to give them a deeper understanding of the person who created the original archival document

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and his or her skills. Wainwright was a skilled artist, illustrating his books beautifully with detailed drawings of landscapes. During the guidebook workshop, the children are given a simple drawing activity where they can create a picture by building up textures in a similar way to Wainwright (see figure 2.1). They also use a mapping dip pen and bottle of ink to complete one of his unfinished drawings from the collection. These two processes not only develop the children’s drawing skills but also are highly effective in helping them understand the delicate detail, concentration, and effort that it took to produce the guidebooks. These hands-on activities have been shown to be very popular with the children. These activities are part of two school workshops, Discover the Life Story of Alfred Wainwright and Discover How Wainwright Wrote His Guidebooks, which are now available to schools at each of the four Cumbria Archive Service centers. For each workshop, a kit of resources has been produced that includes activity instructions, replicas of documents in the collection, cartoon story boards, art activities, and materials. Core staff from each of the four offices have been trained to deliver the workshops. To accompany the workshops, a suite of resources has been developed and is now available online. 13 These help teachers to support the

Fig. 2.1 Child showing the guidebook he had produced in the style of Wainwright.

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topic of Wainwright in the classroom and include two PowerPoint presentations, a biography summary, a timeline activity, and topic plans. In addition, a set of replica objects and documents contained within a backpack was made available for loan. Teachers can use these items along with the online materials to introduce the topic to the children. RESULTS During the ten-month piloting phase (September 2013–June 2014), 398 school children attended workshops in two of the archive centers. Each of these workshops was evaluated using questionnaires and evaluation activities by both teachers and children. Feedback from children showed that they had learned about Wainwright while also enjoying the activities. When asked what their overall impression of the workshop was, the teachers who completed the evaluation forms provided comments such as: “It was brilliant, lots of information which they will remember and want to have a go at, thank you” Evaluation of the activities by pupils revealed that they enjoyed the range of activities, both the creative activities and the investigation of the archive material and objects. For example, one said: “I have enjoyed looking at Wainwright’s camera, boots and pens. I’ve learnt so much about him,” and another wrote: “I enjoyed holding the backpack. I have learnt about Alfred Wainwright’s childhood. I would like to see more of the archive.” From September 2014, all four centers will be offering Wainwright workshops, making them accessible to schools across the whole county of Cumbria. This is a significant achievement due to the rural nature of the county, which often limits access to cultural resources. Lessons learned from the Wainwright project have also influenced the development of other areas of schoolwork by Cumbria Archive Service, with some of the techniques used in other projects. The workshops are now available across the county to be booked by schools and are receiving a healthy level of requests. The program has also received media attention, and the introduction of the workshops has been filmed and appeared as a local television news item. 14 The successful development of the program and the positive reactions of teachers have led other cultural organizations to develop learning activities that are complimentary to the Wainwright learning program. The Lake District National Park developed a mapping workshop that supports the schools in understanding their own local area and developing their own guidebooks. The Lakeland Arts Trust developed a landscape art workshop for Abbot Hall Art Gallery in Kendal that complements the Wainwright activities. The focus of the workshop is studying landscape art to develop students’ own techniques and support them in developing

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their own guidebooks. Both of these workshops were tested by the pilot schools in the Wainwright archive project and are now available for other schools. LESSONS LEARNED Our main difficulty in the project has been that we underestimated the level of support from archive staff that Jane would need to deliver the project. As she wasn’t employed by the archive center, she needed support in arranging for the facsimiles to be made, in providing access to the original materials, and in playing a role in the school workshops. Although this was beneficial in helping archive staff to understand workshops that they will later have to deliver and ensuring we learned from the services’ prior experience of working with the schools, it was extra work for the staff. For a future project, we would include this in our planning. We started this project believing that designing engagement activities to meet the needs and interests of a specific audience group—teachers and school children—was imperative to taking full advantage of the acquisition of the Wainwright collection, and this has been shown to be correct. In our careers in archives, we had both seen archivists invest time and money into writing learning resources for primary children that had then not succeeded in reaching many children. We took our experiences with previous projects and used them to design what we thought would be an optimal outreach program for the Wainwright collection. As a result, our project is thriving. We think this can be attributed to four aspects of our approach. First, the learning program provides what teachers and pupils want. The activity plan we wrote specified that the program would be designed by a professional cultural educator in partnership with the schools. We used the teachers’ ideas and experience throughout the program. This meant not only that they got the product they wanted but also that the teachers had a stake in the program and wanted to stay involved. More schools are now teaching in a cross-curricular way, merging curriculum areas such as literacy and history to deliver topic-based projects in their schools. During the consultation, teachers had recommended that the project be developed as a cross-curricular resource. We followed this advice with the resources produced mainly involving history, English, geography, and art. Securing the support of the teachers has not been easy. They are busy people with lots of calls on their time. To help ensure that we could have the kind of access to their expertise that the design of the program required, we included funding so that we could cover their time away from the classroom.

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It can also be very difficult to communicate with teachers because of the amount of information they receive on a daily basis. A range of marketing techniques is needed, especially when promoting new products. Jane invested in marketing the program, and we believe that this has been the second main reason for its success. Jane’s marketing strategy included a variety of techniques. Face-to-face contact with teachers was one of the most effective methods. This was achieved in a variety of ways, including by attending a local head teacher meeting to promote the project. In addition, Cumbria Archive Service is part of a local education network of other cultural organizations called Lakeland Museums Education Network (LMEN). This network often runs joint marketplace events and training for schools, which can be more attractive to schools because of bigger offerings they provide jointly. The project was also promoted via the LMEN network during a new National Curriculum Teacher Training Day. The archive centers also used traditional marketing methods. Information was emailed to schools through the county council email system to all head teachers, as well as being sent directly to teacher contacts. A workshop was run as part of a Gifted and Talented Day involving two pupils from each of fifteen schools. This was a great opportunity to raise awareness, and teachers attending the event were provided with promotional leaflets and information. Finally, we found that word of mouth was very important, and the project was promoted to personal contacts by Jane and other archive service staff. The third factor that we believe has led to our success is that the project relies upon and maintains the power of the original documents, while still protecting the originals. The use of high quality facsimiles is an ideal way of working with the youngest children. Jane was able to design activities such as the letter discussions and to use the replica backpack, which would not be possible with original archives. The use of facsimiles also allows the original archive to be presented to the children as being special and worthy of preservation and to demonstrate how this is achieved. Fourth, while Wainwright as a teaching topic was not an immediate, natural fit with the primary school curriculum, we were able to find creative ways to engage students with his story and use the collection as an educational tool. Once the new national curriculum was confirmed, the local study element of the project became more significant. The learning program was developed and marketed as a project about a significant local figure who has had national and international impact. Teachers who have used the resources commented that it is the local nature of the resource that really appeals to and has motivated their children to learn. Studying the topic has generated pride in the pupils about the beautiful Cumbrian Mountains and their links to a local figure of significance. Teachers have commented that it can be very difficult to find good “lo-

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cal” resources for their teaching. The success of the program has encouraged us to be more adventurous in the future when considering how to integrate archival collections into the school curriculum. Finally we have learned that, although challenging, it is possible to make connections between archives, the past, and younger children. The feedback from the children was that the workshops and activities were fun and that they gained knowledge and developed skills. CONCLUSION The learning program is now designed, piloted, refined, and complete. Staff of Cumbria Archive Service have been trained to deliver the workshops. While there is still technical work to be done to create an online environment to provide access to the resources, as of the fall of 2014, Jane is about to leave the project in the hands of the permanent staff. Although the project funding has ended and the service is currently subject to severe financial restrictions, they hope to be able to continue to provide the workshops and to promote the learning program to teachers. The online resource is designed to stand alone should this not be possible. Feedback from archive service staff, teachers, and pupils has confirmed that using specialist learning staff, such as Jane, in partnership with teachers and archive staff, has been successful in creating a program to meet the needs of teachers and children. Archive staff do not always have experience and time to design resources and activities for schools and cannot be expected to keep up-to-date with changes to the school curriculum. Specialists are available, and if you are able to secure the funds to support them, they are an excellent resource. Above all, we believe that the development of the Wainwright learning program provides a useful model for how to use archive collections in support of the primary school curriculum. We hadn’t expected to be producing cross-curricular resources, but this route was very successful. Probably more successful in reaching children was that the program allowed the power of the archives to speak for itself. Jane Davies is a freelance cultural learning consultant, and Janice Tullock is a freelance archive and heritage consultant. NOTES 1. Eric Robson, chairman of the Wainwright Society, “Following the Trail of Wainwright,” BBC, October 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/cumbria/hi/people_and_ places/newsid_8280000/8280493.stm. 2. There were eighteen volumes in the series; the first of which was A Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells: Books One: The Eastern Fells. London: Henry Marshall, 1955. The final volume in this series was published in 1966. These were followed up by

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guides to other localities, a series of books of drawings, and a number of autobiographical works. 3. “Cumbria Archive Service,” Cumbria County Council, accessed August 1, 2014, http://www.cumbria.gov.uk/archives/. 4. “Audience Development and Marketing,” fact sheet, Arts Council England, June 2011, http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/media/uploads/pdf/gfta_info_sheets_nov_ 2012/Audience_development_and_marketing.pdf. 5. The collection is 26.5 linear feet. The full catalog is available online at http:// www.archiveweb.cumbria.gov.uk/CalmView/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog& id=WDAW. 6. Jeff Cowton, Jane Davies, Jael Edwards, Jane Connolly, Helena Sinclair, and Eleanor Black, Beyond Words: Understanding and Sharing the Meanings of Manuscripts (Grasmere, UK: Wordsworth Trust, 2012), accessed August 1, 2014, http://sure. sunderland.ac.uk/3729/17/Beyond_Words_1.pdf. 7. Cowton et al., 1. 8. Wainwright pilot workshop teacher evaluation questionnaire. 9. Cowton et al., 30. 10. “Statutory Guidance National Curriculum in England: History Programmes of Study,” Department for Education, UK Government, accessed October 1, 2014, https:// www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-in-england-historyprogrammes-of-study/national-curriculum-in-england-history-programmes-of-study. 11. “Statutory Guidance National Curriculum in England: National Curriculum in England: Framework for Key Stages 1 to 4,” Department for Education, UK Government, accessed October 1, 2014, https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/ uploads/attachment_data/file/239035/PRIMARY_national_curriculum_-_History.pdf. 12. Wainwright pilot workshop teacher evaluation questionnaire. 13. “The Life and Work of Alfred Wainwright: Resources for Schools,” Cumbria County Council, accessed February 11, 2015, http://www.cumbria.gov.uk/archives/education/wainwright/. 14. “Wainwright Masterclass for Whitehaven pupils,” ITV, accessed May 26, 2014, http://www.itv.com/news/border/story/2014-05-22/wainwright-masterclass-forwhitehaven-pupils/.

THREE Student Curators in the Archives Class-Curated Exhibits in Academic Special Collections Jennie Davy and Amy C. Schindler, College of William & Mary

In her book Exhibits in Archives and Special Collections Libraries, Jessica Lacher-Feldman notes, “Any good exhibit teaches, it requires research that might spark further research endeavors, and it creates goodwill and interest, which can be construed as service to the campus and to the broader community.” 1 We have embraced each of these points in our exhibits, classes, and outreach in the Earl Gregg Swem Library’s Special Collections Research Center. Student curation at the College of William & Mary allowed us opportunities to showcase and integrate our materials into coursework, come up with new exhibit ideas, fill our expanded exhibit space, and provide students with a class project based on the real-world work of public historians, archivists, and museum professionals. Student curators analyze documents and through them tell a story to the public in their exhibits, bringing the primary sources to a wider audience. In 2010, special collections added a program of student-curated exhibitions to its outreach agenda. We presented exhibit curation as an alternative to the typical archives instruction experience of “show and tell” with the resulting research paper. Since the program’s inception, students have curated exhibits on the material culture of tobacco, William & Mary student publications, nineteenth- and twentieth-century diaries, William & Mary during the era of Jim Crow, and other topics. Also, as universities are regularly called on to defend degrees in the liberal arts and humanities, especially the employability of graduates with those de31

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grees and the relevance of the courses, the class-curated exhibit project provides students with an opportunity to learn about a task typical to professionals in public history, archives, and museums. This real-world experience can help to demonstrate the overall value of what students get out of the project beyond just learning about the collections held by the archives. While we had been creating exhibits for many years prior to starting a class-curated exhibition program, most of our special collections staff and archivists did not have a museum studies background or other strong training in exhibit curation. The planning and execution of the library’s exhibits, including the class exhibits, improved as staff received more training and refined our practices in engaging classes with special collections material 2 and with the addition of a new special collections staff member with a graduate degree in museum studies. Our case study will cover special collections’ first impromptu classcurated exhibit and improvements to our planning and implementation, which have resulted in working more closely and effectively with faculty and students on the six exhibits that followed. We believe the process has produced both a better experience for faculty, students, and special collections personnel as well as better exhibits. PLANNING The Swem Library has a decades-long history of producing exhibits, created by archivists, librarians, library staff, and outside curators. Lacher-Feldman puts it very simply when she states that we “exhibit because we can, and because our holdings make for great exhibits. Sharing our treasures with a broader audience is a natural outcome of the work that we do. Finding opportunities to take the materials out of the stacks and placing them in context in an exhibition is exhilarating, challenging, and beneficial. What better way is there to share what we have in our shops and what we do in the profession than to feature our talents and treasures?” 3 We knew we wanted to expand the curation of exhibits to include students with whom we could share our enthusiasm for learning about the unique material in special collections and how to share it with a public audience. An expansion and renovation of the library completed in 2005 included twenty-five exhibit cases throughout the library along with additional spaces that can be used for hanging photography, art, or exhibits that feature solely reproductions. Of the twenty-five exhibit cases, four contain permanent exhibits and are located in special collections: the William & Mary maces and other official college regalia and the reproduction office exhibit of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger.

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The exhibits in the remaining cases are changed every three to twelve months depending on their location, light exposure, and purpose. On three of the library’s floors, there are rotunda galleries each with four built-in exhibit cases. The first floor rotunda gallery is located immediately outside the entrance to the special collections department and is used for rotating exhibits of material from our collections. The second floor rotunda gallery holds a rotating exhibit of faculty publications. The third floor gallery initially held exhibits of material from the library’s book collection highlighting bindings, endpapers, and other interesting features, but with the retirement of the serials librarian who produced those exhibits, staff in special collections took responsibility for those cases as well. We envisioned the gallery on this floor, trafficked by students seeking quiet study space and library board members visiting the building for meetings, as an ideal place for class-curated exhibits. After the completion of the expansion and renovation, special collections’ focus shifted to expanding outreach efforts, including bringing more classes and visitors to the department. Special collections’ instruction program had steadily grown, and staff offered a variety of hands-on learning experiences with archival material for students. We were well aware that both faculty and students found classes meeting in special collections that went beyond a traditional “show and tell” more engaging and regularly worked with faculty to integrate special collections material and staff into their courses in new ways, including discussing classcurated exhibits with potential faculty partners. While we had hoped to interest faculty members in exploring classcurated exhibits in the library, we had not developed procedures or guides for these exhibits in advance. We had a culture of responding to opportunities and needs as they presented themselves. Our opportunistic approach often meant that sufficient time for detailed planning in advance was a luxury we did not have or create for ourselves. We recognize this practice would not work within others’ personal work habits or institutional cultures (nor might it be the most efficient and effective way to begin a program), but it was typical of the style of the library at the time. As part of efforts to promote new uses of special collections material, we had previously contacted Professor Susan Kern, who teaches classes on material culture and public history, about one of her classes curating an exhibit using material from special collections, but with no success. Susan happened to visit special collections during the December final exam period to speak with archivist Amy Schindler about a donation, and Amy took advantage of the meeting to ask if she would like to undertake a class-curated exhibit the following semester for her field school in material culture course. Implementing the project would require Susan to rethink an established course and its syllabus, so it would have been an easy project for her to delay to “someday” in the future. However, after the impromptu conversation, Susan shared a draft of her

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syllabus, and Amy reciprocated with a list of potential material from special collections’ holdings related to the material culture course’s topic—tobacco. While compiling a list of possible material for inclusion in the tobacco exhibit in December and early January, Amy also worked with special collections colleague Chandi Singer, who was responsible for exhibit design and installation in the library, to determine what was needed from the professor and students in terms of item selection, label copy, design, and installation. We drafted deadlines for students to complete these tasks and created potential topics for class sessions in special collections. Chandi agreed to work with Amy and the class on the exhibit during the upcoming spring semester. We met with Susan in special collections the week before the spring semester began to review the preliminary list of tobacco-related objects and discuss logistics for class sessions to be held in special collections. As a result, we decided that the class, which met for three hours each week of the twelve-week semester, would dedicate three class periods to working in special collections on their exhibit. Chandi created label templates for the different types of objects from which the students could select for their portion of the exhibit. These included books, artifacts, correspondence, ledgers, ephemera, and other material. Concise guidance for the preparation of label copy and examples of labels from earlier special collections exhibits were also prepared as handouts for the students’ first meeting in special collections. 4 IMPLEMENTATION The first class session with the student curators began with an introduction to special collections, our staff, collecting areas, how we acquire collections (something we find students often have a great interest in), and what researchers need to know when they visit. The students then took part in an activity with a partner analyzing a document related to the course’s topic. This was meant to introduce students to typical material in archives, and as they worked, it was clear that most of them did not have prior experience or were uncomfortable using primary sources for research. Each pair then reported on their document and analysis to the rest of the class. We then provided an overview of how we create exhibits including the physical characteristics of the exhibit cases, research and identifying material, layout, and design. We showed students examples of recent exhibits posted on our Flickr page and went to the gallery where their exhibit would be installed to talk about the logistics of the space and considerations for design. We also discussed the purposes of exhibit labels and the information that was expected for their labels, both identification and interpretation. Students were reminded that they

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would be writing for a public audience, not an academic paper, and to think about the story they wanted to tell using material from the archives. At the end of the first class period, each student chose, from a group of material we had preselected, the object he or she would analyze, describe, and display in the exhibit. They were also encouraged to visit special collections on their own to review other options to use in the exhibit. None of the students took this option, and in the end, all students chose an item from the preselected group of material related to the course’s topic. Susan guided her students through additional research related to the history of tobacco including placing the items selected for the exhibit into their historical and cultural contexts and advised students through their research outside of special collections. During a later class session held outside of special collections, the students and professor discussed the objects they had selected and how they fit into the larger history of tobacco production, advertising, economics, and consumption. The class divided themselves into themes related to tobacco. Each theme represented an exhibit case: “Smoking for the Learned Man” (tobacco and education), “A Penny a Pound” (the tobacco trade), “Peddling Poison” (advertising), and “Smokin’ Sports” (tobacco and college sports). With some variations, this process of using a preselected list of possible material from which students can choose with follow-up class discussion of the selected objects has generally continued in our later class-curated exhibits. During the second class session in special collections and subsequent group meetings outside of class time, the students worked with special collections staff to conduct additional research within the collection, select specific items to include in the exhibit, and discuss design elements. For instance, students chose which pages of a business ledger or rare book would be displayed or selected a handful out of the hundreds of cigarette cards and cigar wrappers to display. We also worked with each group to sketch layouts for their part of the exhibit. The student curators were required to produce brief identifying object labels for each item to be used in their exhibit case, a medium-size label for each case’s sections (generally each student in the group had responsibility for one section of the case), and a longer label introducing the visitor to the theme of the group’s case. The labels were submitted to the professor and to us for review. Upon receiving the label text from the first student curators, we spent a good deal of time editing and reformatting the labels. We had expected the students to follow the example formats for labels provided but found that many had not. When discussing the potential components of doing an exhibit with Susan before the semester began, she was interested in the students having the chance to prepare some of the material for display and install the exhibit. We decided that the eleven students would each mount one small- to medium-sized reproduction on foam core, as we usually do for

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our exhibits, instead of training them to mount original documents, a potentially significant use of time. This exercise came at the beginning of the class’s third session in special collections, which was near the end of the semester. Most of this final class period in special collections was spent installing the four exhibit cases. In addition to Amy and Chandi guiding the class through the exhibit installation, a special collections graduate student assistant with previous experience installing exhibits for special collections was also on hand. The students enrolled in the field school in material culture course all had an interest in public history and museums, and their professor recognized that the experience of installing the exhibit would be of value and interest to them. The first class’s experience creating an exhibit was unique in a number of ways, while also providing a very necessary learning experience for us. Susan’s class is the only class that opted to take part in exhibit fabrication and installation. All other class-curated exhibits have been fabricated and installed by the exhibit coordinator with assistance from special collections student assistants and other staff members. We improved our instruction in the analysis of material by revising the hands-on exercise to analyze material, providing more instruction on writing labels, crafting learning objectives for classes, and assessing class sessions. For students accustomed to primarily writing papers and taking tests, curating an exhibit challenges them to think differently about audiences and how their research can be conveyed visually and cohesively. For most students, this was their first time writing for an exhibit, so they were not familiar with the concepts of informational versus interpretive labels, writing for a broad public audience, and editing to create meaningful, concise label text. As we worked with more student curators, we came to understand their difficulties and realized we needed to do more than just provide examples of past exhibit labels. Instead, we now teach label writing theory and processes. With the arrival of new special collections staff member Jennie Davy in 2011 to take over exhibit coordination, we had a staff member with the expertise to provide more in-depth instruction with label writing and the exhibit process as a whole. She adapted our label guidelines, worked with the professor to require assigned readings on exhibit label writing, and presented the exhibit process and principles of interpretation during the introductory class session. We found that label editing exercises and discussions were helpful for teaching students how to edit their own writing. Our approach is to suggest that the students first write out all the important ideas and aspects they want to cover related to an object or topic without considering the word count, then write several iterative drafts working to cut out superfluous words and ideas until they create a concise, meaningful label that fits suggested word count and reading level guidelines. Once students have written a few versions of their label text, they hand in drafts of

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their labels to the professor and special collections staff prior to submitting their final text. Some professors have used a collaborative approach and have students writing and revising their labels as a group. The exhibit coordinator meets individually with student groups to provide feedback about themes, length, audience, and other elements in their label drafts. This conference session also provides an opportunity to discuss the proposed design for the group’s section. Our ability to recommend selected course readings in later class exhibit projects was important to give students a deeper understanding of exhibits. After our experience with the first exhibit class, we also wanted to give students some idea of what to expect in curating an exhibit. We suggested they read blog posts by two of special collections’ graduate student assistants who had curated small exhibits as part of their assistantships. 5 We now assign a few chapters from Beverly Serrell’s Exhibit Labels: An Interpretive Approach, which provide helpful and accessible tips for introducing students, faculty, and staff to the process of developing an exhibit from a broad idea to thoughtful and concise interpretive labels. 6 We learned that it was also important for professors to specify an academic writing style guide, such as MLA or Chicago Manual of Style, as a reference for grammar and consistency across student curators. Since our first class-curated exhibits in 2010, staffing changes in the library have also changed the way special collections designs exhibits. In 2011, Jennie Davy joined special collections staff, taking over exhibit coordination, including design and installation. Previously, a graphic designer who reported outside of special collections completed all graphic design projects for the library, including exhibit posters and other graphics. After the graphic designer position was eliminated, staff members in a library graphics committee designed them. This process was often cumbersome and resulted in graphics that did not match the tone or vision of the student curators. Jennie’s arrival meant that the graphics and design work for class-curated exhibits would be completed by a special collections staff member who had worked closely with students and could better tie in the visual appearance of the exhibit with the student curators’ chosen themes. All of the library’s exhibits are featured on the Swem Library website, with an exhibits section for current and past exhibits. 7 The exhibits are also documented with photographs of the cases, which are uploaded to Swem Library’s Flickr account, with all label text accompanying the images added to the description fields for searchability. 8 Class-curated exhibits are clearly marked on-site and online to both publicly acknowledge their research and interpretations as student work but also to provide clarification to viewers in the event they question the students’ interpretation.

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RESULTS As of fall 2014, six exhibits have been created by the classes of four different faculty members working with special collections. The classes have ranged from lower-level introductory courses to upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses from several departments including history, English, women’s studies, literary and cultural studies, and Africana studies. Exhibit topics have included tobacco in material culture, diaries, university student publications (two different classes created exhibits on this topic), William & Mary during the era of Jim Crow, and women from Virginia’s Peninsula region active in civil rights. Our first two student exhibits concluded with an exhibit opening reception. Subsequent exhibit projects now also include students sharing their research and interpretations in a gallery talk, presentation, or other method during the opening reception. We have found that students really enjoy seeing their research on display for others to view. An exhibit opening provides students an opportunity to invite friends and family to a special event in the library and show off their accomplishments. Seeing student curators and faculty members invite friends, family, colleagues, and community members to the exhibit reception or for tours of the exhibit at other times gives us evidence that they feel the exhibit was a successful assignment. Additionally, these exhibits give us another avenue to expand relationships with students, faculty, alumni, and other members of the community. The fall 2011 Introduction to Literary and Cultural Studies classcurated exhibit Alternative Voices, featuring William & Mary student publications, presented us with a reason to contact alumni who had worked on those magazines, newspapers, and zines (see figure 3.1). As a result, several alumni donated material to the archives, and one alumnus developed a relationship with the library and became a financial supporter. Similarly, a reception for the fall 2013 class-curated exhibit Peninsular Women, which featured the biographies of several women active in advocating for civil rights in their Hampton Roads communities, brought many members of the local African American community into Swem Library for the first time. We have also taken advantage of the exhibits by advertising them to our library colleagues and staff throughout the university. The exhibits along with the receptions and presentations enable others to learn about specific topics, the range of material contained in our holdings, and different ways it can be used. These opportunities raise the profile of the archives within the library as well as bring the department to the attention of our university and community. Like most libraries, Swem has been placing an increasing emphasis on assessment in recent years. As part of a library-wide goal to create a culture of assessment and innovation, we try to actively evaluate the

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Fig. 3.1 Student curator Ally Hiponia and friend examine her group’s section of Alternative Voices created by Professor Sharon Zuber’s “Constructing the News” Fall 2011 Literary and Cultural Studies course. Jennie Davy, Swem Library.

effectiveness of our instruction and outreach activities, including our work with classes curating exhibits. We have sporadically sent a survey at the end of the semester to faculty and students who have visited as part of a class. We have used a slightly modified version of the surveys from the Archival Metrics toolkit. 9 These surveys gather information about the experiences of faculty and students with special collections, its holdings, staff, and research. We also have copies of the self and group evaluations written by students who created the fall 2011 Alternative Voices exhibit, which included a formal presentation about the student publications they selected to use in the exhibit as part of their final project. Responses from students on what they learned about the research process and using special collections often mention that they were not previously aware of special collections and its holdings. If they were aware of special collections, they often did not realize that it was available for undergraduate researchers or how they would go about using the collections. The students also cited what they had learned about the breadth of special collections’ holdings, handling material, the availability and willingness of staff to assist them with projects, and how they could use the department’s holdings for this and future assignments in their responses. These responses show that the most basic goals of the

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archives and faculty about introducing students to special collections, the variety of material available for them to use, and how they could work with staff were met. Students had generally positive responses to the exhibit project, including one student who responded, “I really enjoyed participating in the creation of the exhibits for Swem. I thought it was really neat that we were working as a class to create something that would be showcased in the library at the end of the semester.” Disappointments voiced by students were infrequent; for instance, in one case, two students only wished that more university memorabilia could have been included in their part of the display. 10 Feedback from faculty members about their experiences incorporating a class-curated exhibit into their course curriculum has been overwhelmingly positive, with one professor stating, “The exhibits were an excellent way to reinforce classroom learning and give students a real-life opportunity to showcase their work.” Another faculty member had intended for her students to think more analytically about public history and see another career option for students interested in history; one of her students has since pursued a graduate degree in public history, mentioning her exposure through this class exhibit project as part of her motivation. This student also specifically requested that her professor mention her work on the exhibit project in her letters of recommendation for graduate school. 11 Due to the size of the classes and because of an emphasis on collaborative projects, most exhibits are divided into sections with each small group in charge of one section. One faculty member commented how the collaborative nature of the project allowed students to learn or hone skills useful in the classroom and beyond, such as “communication, consensus building, and confronting less productive members.” LESSONS LEARNED Through the course of completing six class-curated exhibits, we have continued to refine our process and learn from our challenges and successes in working with students and professors. Initially, we had struggled for three years to find a faculty member willing to partner on the exhibit project with us. However, once the first class exhibit was complete, other faculty could see the work produced by students and discuss the experience with archivists and faculty. Susan played a role in encouraging another faculty member, Professor Jody Allen, to try an exhibit project with her course, and Jody has since included exhibit projects in two different courses. Word of mouth and referrals as well as personal relationships are important to attracting more faculty to undertake an exhibit project.

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After our first experience, we have used different exhibit spaces from those we had planned at the outset. We had repeatedly promoted the third floor gallery as the student exhibit space, and while the first three class-curated exhibits have been displayed there, faculty have since shown a preference for the exhibit space on the first floor of the library that visitors walk through to reach the Special Collections Research Center. While this leaves the library with a need to find content for the third floor gallery, it gives us an example of students using material from the archives, which we can point out to faculty, tour groups, donors, and other visitors without having to travel to another floor. While introductory class sessions are held in special collections for all classes curating exhibits, not all courses have dedicated additional class time for follow-up meetings in special collections. Instead, in some instances, individual group meetings are scheduled with staff and the faculty member outside of class time for the students to discuss potential themes in their section of the exhibit, items to be included, and suggestions for design elements. While in this model the students and faculty were discussing their exhibits during class time, we think that providing students with “workdays” in the archives as part of their regular class sessions is a helpful way to make sure students have time to meet with their groups during the operating hours of the archives. One faculty member reflecting on her experiences with class-curated exhibits told us, “I think it is crucial for faculty to understand they will have to dedicate class time to a successful project, which means less time to cover traditional content.” 12 Working with the professor to develop a semester schedule that holds students accountable for work throughout the semester is key for a successful exhibit. Regardless of whether students return to the archives for class workdays or individually, we have come to the conclusion that they should be asked to provide summaries of their research experiences in the archives to their professor and us during the semester to ensure they are on track with their research and are actually putting in adequate time early in the semester. Using project management principles, such as requiring smaller scaffolded assignments (“deliverables”), helps students learn to manage their time and projects effectively by holding them accountable to the process and not just the end product. It is also important to get students writing about their themes early so they are thinking about their exhibit thesis statements from the beginning and how their exhibit labels should be interpretive and argumentative, not just descriptive, in nature. We have also learned that there are always new ways to accomplish our goals as well as possibilities for engaging students with the archives’ work and projects. An option we have considered but have not employed yet is having the students visit a special collections exhibit and then asking them to discuss and critique the selected exhibit. Another real-world

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exercise would be to provide students with a label from a previous exhibit and see what suggestions they would make for editing the label. We take advantage of formal meetings and casual conversations with faculty during and after the semester’s project is completed to gather feedback. These conversations have informed evolutions in and changes to the student exhibit program. After the first class-curated exhibit was installed and opened, we purposefully met with Susan after the end of the semester to gather feedback on what worked and where there was room for improvement. As a result, the label instructions and examples were adjusted, and we developed a checklist for special collections and future faculty members interested in curating an exhibit to review before the semester’s start to better capture the scope of the exhibit project. 13 One faculty member has suggested we add a page to our website outlining the exhibit project process for prospective faculty members, which we can then advertise to a broader faculty audience. 14 Based on our experience, we have now developed best practices for working with faculty interested in including student-curated exhibits in their classes. We meet with the interested faculty member for a planning session well before the semester begins to discuss the exhibit topic and themes, student involvement and expectations, and deadlines. We have learned that adequate time for planning by both faculty and special collections staff is essential. This also allows us to develop a good working relationship with the faculty member and to have input in the course syllabus, including adjusting deadlines and asking for students to submit earlier drafts and research notes to archives staff for feedback, so meeting earlier allows the exhibit to be fully integrated into the syllabus as it is developed rather than being tacked on to a fully developed course. During this planning session, we reach an agreement outlining who is responsible for providing what information and content with deadlines attached. We discuss with the professor the advantages of front-loading the exhibit coursework early in the semester to allow time for staff to work on design, fabrication, and installation so that the exhibit can open before the end of the semester. We have found that holding presentations related to the exhibit during scheduled final exam times ensures that all students are available to attend the exhibit reception. If that is not possible, delaying the exhibit opening until the following semester may be an option as well. We communicate to faculty that depending on their objectives for what they want students to get out of the exhibit project, students can work on various parts of the exhibit process, including object selection, research, writing, designing, fabricating, and installing. Except for the first exhibit by the material culture course, no other faculty members have included the fabrication and installation components in the coursework but have instead focused on research, writing, and presenting their exhibit. With the curation of the exhibit alone already requiring signifi-

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cant adjustment to a course’s syllabus, we acknowledged that faculty are generally not interested in the process of the exhibit’s physical creation but choose to focus on the intellectual aspects of analyzing material, group work dynamics, and writing. Finally, we have learned that publicity is also an important part of any exhibit program since drawing an audience is an integral part of the exhibit. Public relations and awareness of class-curated exhibits on campus have improved since Swem Library added an associate director of strategic communications and outreach in 2012. Our colleague often assists with planning and advertising of exhibit receptions and writes news stories about class-curated exhibits, which have been featured on the university’s main news page. 15 With all of the available communication channels, there are always writers looking for content, which we can provide in the shape of an interview for a local newspaper, an article for an internal email newsletter, or 140-character tweets. CONCLUSION To more closely align with the university’s focus on teaching, learning, and research, special collections has drastically increased outreach efforts through instruction sessions and showcasing collections with a rigorous exhibit schedule. We have found facilitating these class-curated exhibits to be both challenging and rewarding while providing students and faculty a way to creatively present their scholarship to the campus community and beyond, as well as learning about archives. In a typical class using special collections material, we are often involved at the beginning and during the students’ research process, but we do not always see the final outcome, and these exhibit projects give us that opportunity, which is very satisfying. We continue to work with students curating exhibits through class assignments, independent studies, and internships as a way to develop our exhibits program into a real-world application for students interested in museum, archives, library, and public history fields. In the future, we would like to expand to courses from more diverse academic disciplines, including art and art history and environmental studies. We also see recent opportunities in changes to William & Mary’s curriculum that will require first-year students to enroll in an interdisciplinary course that examines a big idea with a focus on developing communication skills, evaluating information, and creating narratives through non-research paper assignments. A class-curated exhibit seems like an ideal project for this new required course. We would also like to challenge student curators to develop more interactive components to their exhibits, perhaps creating a method for visitor feedback or interaction between the student curators and exhibit visitors. Eventually, we may start to use special col-

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lections’ installation of Omeka to create online class-curated exhibits that could remain visible beyond the typical six-month installation of our onsite exhibits. 16 As a special collections in a university library, we are constantly exploring new ways to advance the Earl Gregg Swem Library’s mission to “support and enhance teaching and research, and foster intellectual curiosity, creativity, and lifelong learning” in the William & Mary campus community and beyond. Thus, there are many avenues for us to undertake to integrate our material into library instruction and outreach, including primary source analysis, critical research of the texts in our collections, student-curated exhibits, and much more. The reality is that adding a class-curated exhibit to a course’s requirements can be challenging, but it can also be deeply rewarding for the students, instructors, and archivists, as well as the people who visit and learn from our exhibits. Jennie Davy is the Burger archives specialist at the College of William & Mary, Earl Gregg Swem Library, Special Collections Research Center. Amy C. Schindler is the director of archives and special collections at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Until December 2013, Amy was the university archivist at the College of William & Mary, Earl Gregg Swem Library, Special Collections Research Center. NOTES 1. Jessica Lacher-Feldman, Exhibits in Archives and Special Collections Libraries (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2013), 7. 2. Some of the resources and training opportunities we have been able to take advantage of include: Eleanor Mitchell, Peggy Seiden, and Suzy Taraba Past or Portal? Enhancing Undergraduate Learning through Special Collections and Archives (Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association, 2012); Midwest Archives Conference Symposium, “Engaging Students and Teachers: Integrating Primary Sources in K–16 Curricula,” October 2012; Mid-Atlantic Archives Conference Workshop, “Archival Instruction: Promoting Collections, Information Literacy and Collaboration,” December 2012. 3. Lacher-Feldman, 8–9. 4. Current label writing instructions provided to student curators can be shared on request. 5. The blog posts provided an interesting contrast as one graduate student obviously enjoyed the process of exhibit curation along with appreciating the value of the endeavor to library outreach, while the other student was not enamored with the differences between research and writing for her academic work and her exhibit. Hannah Craddock, “I Am a Self-Proclaimed Craft Nerd,” An Acquired Taste (blog), November 29, 2010, accessed October 27, 2014, http://scrc.blogs.wm.edu/2010/11/29/iam-a-self-proclaimed-craft-nerd/; Leigh Soares, “The Challenge of Designing Exhibits,” An Acquired Taste (blog), January 4, 2011, accessed October 27, 2014, http:// scrc.blogs.wm.edu/2011/01/04/the-challenge-of-designing-exhibits/. 6. Beverly Serrell, Exhibit Labels: An Interpretive Approach (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira, 1996), 1–19, 83–94. Chapters assigned for required student reading consisted of “Behind It All: A Big Idea,” “What Are Interpretive Labels?” and “Writing Visitor-

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Friendly Labels.” Other exhibit and museum readings are also recommended for student curators: Freeman Tilden’s seminal work, Interpreting Our Heritage, identifies six principles of interpretation based on National Park Service programs that may help instruct students in their task for creating an interpretive exhibit. Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977); “Gallery Text at the V&A: A Ten Point Guide,” Victoria and Albert Museum, accessed October 27, 2014, http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/v/v-and-a-gallery-text-guidelines/; “Writing and Designing Text to be Read,” From the Field (blog), accessed October 27, 2014, http://ecosboulder.wordpress.com/2010/03/10/writing-text-to-be-read/; Nina Simon, Museum 2.0 (blog), accessed October 27, 2014, http://museumtwo.blogspot.com. 7. “Exhibits and Programs,” Earl Gregg Swem Library, accessed October 27, 2014, https://swem.wm.edu/exhibits. 8. W&M Swem Library on Flickr, accessed October 27, 2014, https:// www.flickr.com/photos/scrc/sets/. 9. Archival Metrics: Promoting a Culture of Assessment in Archives and Special Collections, accessed May 30, 2014, http://www.archivalmetrics.org/. 10. Self and group evaluation of the campus publications project, compiled responses in the possession of the authors, December 2011. 11. The authors created a survey during the preparation of this case study due to the sporadic use of previous end-of-semester surveys and to ensure faculty responses specifically addressed the student-curated exhibits. Survey of faculty participants in class-curated exhibits, compiled responses in the possession of the authors, July 2014. 12. Survey of faculty participants in class-curated exhibits, compiled responses in the possession of the authors, July 2014. 13. The checklist was used for the two following semesters but is no longer in use and can be shared on request. Published after we had implemented many of our classcurated exhibits, Joy Beckman shared a template for integrating student-curated art exhibits at the Wright Museum of Art into courses at Beloit College in the 2012 publication A Handbook for Academic Museums: Exhibitions and Education. Although the template was designed for an academic art museum, archives staff may find her suggestions helpful in designing a class-curated exhibits program that will work for the unique needs of their institution. Joy Beckman, “Faculty and Student Curators: An Exhibit Template for Course Integration,” in A Handbook for Academic Museums: Exhibitions and Education, eds., Stefanie S. Jandl and Mark S. Gold (Edinburgh and Cambridge, UK: MuseumsEtc, 2012), 322–32. 14. Survey of faculty participants in class-curated exhibits, compiled responses in the possession of the authors, July 2014. 15. Tami Back, “Project Spotlights Contributions of Local Women to Civil Rights Movement,” William & Mary News & Events, accessed October 27, 2014, http:// www.wm.edu/news/stories/2014/project-spotlights-contributions -of-local-women-tocivil-rights-movement221.php. 16. Swem Library Special Collections Research Center’s installation of Omeka is currently used for an online Civil War transcription project and alumni engagement project, called Staying Connected, in which alumni from the university’s choir are digitizing and describing University Archives holdings related to the choral program. “Omeka,” Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, accessed October 27, 2014, http://omeka.org; Swem Library Digital Projects, accessed October 27, 2014, http://scrcdigital.swem.wm.edu; Amy C. Schindler, “Staying Connected: Engaging Alumni and Studies to Digitize the Carl ‘Pappy’ Fehr Choral Music Collection,” in Outreach: Innovative Practices for Archives and Special Collections, ed., Kate Theimer (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014).

FOUR A Win for All Cultural Organizations Working with Colleges of Education Andrea Reidell and Beth Twiss-Houting, Cultural Fieldwork Initiative

As people working in the history field, archivists often lament the lack of understanding the public has about our institutions and the general health of history education in schools. We often observe that many students do not know how to read old handwriting and that teachers don’t assign research projects. One positive response to this concern is to work with students in colleges of education as they prepare to become teachers. If we show them how they can partner with archives to teach history, then they can take these habits into their classrooms and instruct the next generation in the processes for and value of historical collections and research. In Philadelphia, a group of more than thirty cultural organizations, including many archives, has found a way to work with preservice teachers by building on the existing strengths of the National History Day (NHD) program. The venture, the Cultural Fieldwork Initiative (CFI), is led by the National Archives Education Program at Philadelphia and the College of Education Social Studies Certification program at Temple University. Launched in 2011, CFI is the first cultural practicum in the country for emerging educators. The CFI requires Temple undergraduate and graduate students in social studies education classes to conduct fieldwork in regional cultural institutions. Students engage in a one-semester 47

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project to make historical collections more accessible to students and teachers, particularly those who participate in NHD. Philadelphia’s cultural organizations came together more than ten years ago to bring NHD to the city’s students. NHD is a National Humanities Award–winning project-based history education program. NHD engages secondary-level students in the process of historical inquiry through primary source research, argument development, and presentation of projects in a variety of formats. Independent evaluation of NHD students has proven that student participants outperform their peers on state standardized tests in multiple subjects, including reading, science, math, and social studies. 1 Our goals for the CFI complement those of NHD. The CFI program aims to introduce emerging social studies teachers to the abundant cultural resources in the Philadelphia region, connect higher education organizations, K–12 teachers and students, and cultural institutions on shared goals and initiatives, and make our cultural heritage partner institutions and their collections more accessible for teachers and students. Through the CFI, university students who are learning how to be teachers carry out practical projects in educational settings that are often new to them: archives, libraries, museums, and historic sites. Cultural partners include big organizations such as the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the National Constitution Center, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, as well as smaller organizations like the John J. Wilcox Jr. LGBT Archives at the William Way Community Center, Pennsylvania Hospital Archives, and Fonthill Castle, an Arts and Crafts–inspired historic site in Doylestown. The CFI has been a great success in the Philadelphia region and becomes better every year as we incorporate feedback, address challenges, and develop new ideas. In this chapter we will describe the origins of CFI and how it works to benefit both teachers in training and cultural heritage organizations. We believe CFI can serve as a model for archives in other communities, including those who want or need to implement something similar on a much smaller scale. PLANNING The founding codirectors of the CFI are Andrea Reidell from the National Archives Education Program and Christine Woyshner from the College of Education at Temple University. Christine and Andrea met in the winter of 2010 when they were assigned to the same judging team at a school-level NHD contest. After their official duties were over, they chatted about their professional interests and discovered a shared interest in better connecting classroom educators with educators in cultural institutions. Both thought that students studying to be teachers were key to

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changing and enhancing the relationship between teachers and archives. Naturally, Christine and Andrea did not leave the NHD contest that day with a fully formed plan for collaboration. But they did leave with an important new professional connection outside of their usual network of colleagues and the knowledge that each was interested in trying to work on the same professional challenge. In follow-up conversations over the next several months, Christine and Andrea described their perspectives and respective contexts. Both came from large bureaucratic institutions where change comes slowly, but together they identified points of opportunity. Christine, who had been working for years with various members of Philadelphia’s cultural community, was looking for a way to give her students a new type of field experience, one that would help enhance their teaching skills but was not classroom based. Her main challenge was the large number of students in her classes: for any given methods class, she had between forty and fifty students. That was impossible for one (or even several) cultural institution to take on. The “aha” moment came during one of those conversations when Andrea suggested that the strategy for overcoming the numbers challenge might be tapping into the already-existing National History Day Philly network of more than twenty cultural institutions. Designing the collaborative fieldwork project using the NHD Philly network would both support and strengthen the NHD Philly program, while providing a fieldwork experience that would give important insight to emerging educators about the highly regarded NHD curriculum and goals. And, of course, it also would give Philadelphia’s cultural institutions access to the skills of preservice teachers who, in turn, could help make institutional resources more available to other educators and students. To follow up on this idea, Andrea and Christine convened a group of approximately ten NHD Philly colleagues (archivists and educators) in June 2011. The group discussed the CFI concept and important logistical questions for this collaboration-in-the-making. They also discussed issues like how many hours fieldwork students would need to work in order to make the experience worthwhile and what would the best process be for assigning students to fieldwork sites. Andrea and Christine designed the CFI to benefit all types of institutions but kept in the forefront that it needed to accommodate both those that had an education/outreach person on staff and those that did not. This was important for ensuring that the learning and collaborative process would work effectively for a variety of potential partners and greatly strengthened the project as a whole. Getting early input from colleagues at a range of organizations helped surface issues that might not have been considered. For example, one archivist, who like many others in the room had never worked with education students before, asked, “What should our expectations be for these students? I know how much pro-

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cessing an archives intern can get done in a semester, but I know nothing about what education students can do in that time.” Once the group outlined a workable framework from the cultural institution perspective, Christine sprang into action to incorporate the fieldwork into her fall methods class. This was challenging because of the time frame; the group had not met until summer, so she only had a short time to work it into her syllabus. Christine and Andrea also had to consider the spring semester of the two-part methods class. Since students are not required to take the methods classes in consecutive order, fall students could not simply continue in their fieldwork placements in the spring. Christine and Andrea developed the spring fieldwork experience to thematically support the fall course but not be dependent on it, especially since some students take the spring class first. Spring semester students are required to attend Andrea’s annual training for NHD Philly judges and potential judges and also judge at one of the two NHD Philly competition days. This is designed to give the emerging educators the valuable experience of attending and judging at an NHD contest while also addressing an issue that constantly plagues NHD coordinators: a shortage of judges. And so the format was set: fall semester for cultural fieldwork, spring semester for judge training and judging. The first year of the CFI definitely reflected its reality as a prototype. The fieldwork was included in the methods class, but students who registered for the class were not initially aware that the class now involved fieldwork, which caused some confusion. The cultural partners had their fieldwork students on-site but were not quite sure how to evaluate the students’ work or to connect the fieldwork experience with what the students were learning in class. Despite the challenges, however, the instructors, the coordinators, and the partners could see that with the CFI, we were on to something, educationally. IMPLEMENTATION From that somewhat rushed beginning in 2011, with twenty-one cultural heritage hosts and forty-five students, CFI has grown into something much more integrated. Christine rewrote her syllabus after the first year so that its focus is now on learning in cultural institutions and includes case studies about NHD. We established a grading system for the fieldwork and developed a grading rubric for the partners to use. Now in our fourth year, we have established a regular rhythm for the year and much smoother processes for creating productive outcomes for both hosts and students. The CFI, because of the number of people and organizations involved, requires a great deal of advance planning and clear communications about expectations and timelines. Were an archive to create a similar

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program on its own with one social studies methods class, the work would be less intensive, but the general process of implementation would be similar to our experience. For the cultural partners, implementation begins in late summer when they are asked to submit to Andrea job descriptions for fieldwork projects. Partners may submit multiple job descriptions and may seek multiple students to fill one type of job. Each of the cultural partners uses the CFI program to meet its own educational needs. In general, archives and small historic sites use the program as a way to expand their staffs with educational “experts.” Many of these partners do not have an educator onboard, or their educator does not have the time to do all of the public outreach desired. Projects are structured to be accomplished during the fieldwork assignment of three hours a week for ten weeks. Andrea reviews all the submitted project descriptions to ensure that they meet CFI’s criteria and will provide a worthwhile educational experience for the student. She also continues to recruit new partners annually, offering them “model” project descriptions from an institution similar to their own. September brings Match/Placement Night at the beginning of the semester. A speed dating type of evening, it brings with it all of the excitement, angst, and exhaustion that is part of those types of encounters. Each participating cultural partner staffs a table, and the fifty or so students enrolled go to the tables of the cultural organization where they wish to work to be “interviewed” (see figure 4.1). In preparation, the students have received all of the job descriptions along with a synopsis about the organizations. The students bring résumés with them to leave with the cultural partners they meet. We have learned that photos on the resumes are invaluable in the matching process, as each partner is likely to interview about twenty students within a two-hour period! Match Night occurs on a Monday, and by Friday, the cultural partners let Andrea know their top three choices for each opening. Andrea and Christine then quickly crunch the results and make assignments. In a few cases, they will need to ask an organization to consider a student who was not on their list or to consider taking additional students. Most partners will have only one fieldworker, but some have as many as six. One model for creating meaningful learning experiences for students while filling an organizational need is provided by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP). HSP is one of the cultural partners who take a larger number of fieldworkers in order to support its NHD initiative. In 2011, HSP decided it wanted to open its doors more fully to 6th–12th graders who were conducting National History Day research. While it had hosted a few classes as part of field trips, it did not have the staff support to help students who showed up on their own after school. These secondary students, who have little prior experience with special collec-

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Fig. 4.1 Fieldwork students gather around Curator of Education Adrienne Whaley at Match Night to learn about opportunities at the African American Museum in Philadelphia.

tion libraries or primary sources, needed extra help learning the process of research in such a place and, understandably, were intimidated. With the four to five CFI fieldworkers placed at HSP each fall, the organization trains them to become student mentors, or research buddies, to the younger student researchers. First, the fieldworkers learn about HSP’s collections and various finding aids, and then they do a practice search on a subject of interest to them. Once training is completed, student mentors are available on Wednesdays from 2:30 to 8:30 p.m., the one day that HSP is open in the evening. When secondary students check in, they are assigned a mentor who helps them navigate the library, transcribe and interpret sources, and think about how to use the information to build a historical argument. The program has been successful on an institutional level, building the walk-in student audience to nearly 300 in school year 2013–2014. On an individual level, both the secondary and the college students benefit as they learn history and how to navigate special collections. In a few cases, relationships also have developed as younger students return to work more with the fieldworker in successive weeks. In addition to their responsibilities as outlined by their cultural heritage hosts, the syllabus for the social studies pedagogy courses requires

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the preservice teachers to write a lesson plan both at the beginning of the semester and again at the conclusion. The professors can use the change in quality over time to assess the CFI work as well as the students’ readiness for student teaching. In many cases, this assignment is incorporated as their prime duty while doing cultural fieldwork. (Even at HSP, fieldworkers create lesson plans while waiting for secondary students to arrive.) Fieldworkers create lesson plans around either assigned topics or ones they choose for themselves, using what they’ve learned about the collections and specific artifacts and documents during the semester. This work is invaluable not only for the fieldworkers in developing their own teaching practice but also for the partnering organizations. Fieldworkers at the Temple University Libraries, one of the larger cultural partners, created lesson plans for staff who did not have that skill. Since 2010, Temple University Libraries have been building a web portal documenting twentieth-century civil rights milestones in Philadelphia’s history, showcasing materials from the holdings of the Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center. CFI fieldworkers selected images and texts from archival holdings and drafted a contextualizing essay, bibliography, and lesson plan. The result was information for two additional content modules on the websites 2 as well as new material for teacher classroom use. Fieldworkers at smaller cultural institutions often help set educational frameworks at an institution, as well as create specific educational experiences. For example, at the Abraham Lincoln Foundation, a historic and philanthropic outreach of the Union League of Philadelphia, a student created classroom materials showing how the Union League’s collection could be used to meet Pennsylvania state education standards. At the historic house Wyck, fieldwork students conducted new historical research that staff did not have the time to do and created educational materials to support three plans for use in secondary classrooms. Fieldworkers assigned to the Historic St. George’s United Methodist Church produced a scavenger hunt and lesson plans for high school students to explore its museum. One of the favorite parts of the CFI for all partnership participants is the concluding class. Held at Temple in a small auditorium, the preservice students present their fieldwork experience to an audience of cultural partners, university staff, and invited guests. For each placement, the cultural organization staff person introduces the organization briefly, and then the student describes the project and his/her new learning. For placements with more than one fieldworker, each student shares a learning outcome. The amount of work accomplished is always surprising, diverse, and impressive, and all participating—from staff to student— feel justly proud. The final part of the program is essential: evaluation. Professors need to know how the students performed, fieldworkers desire feedback to

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continually improve their developing teaching skills, and the cultural partners wish to improve their supervisory skills. The partners receive a rubric for judging the fieldworkers’ performance at their placements. Cultural partner staff complete the rubric and return to Christine so that the students both can be graded and receive feedback. Andrea sends out evaluation forms to the partners to gather input on the process and success from their point of view. RESULTS Based on three years’ worth of feedback and observation, the CFI has been extremely positive for all constituents: the fieldworkers, the cultural partners individually, and the regional educational community. The benefits to emerging educators include intellectual growth, establishment of professional connections and experience, and enhanced marketability for teaching jobs. The cultural partners benefit by newly created instructional resources, innovative ideas for education, and new advocates for their institution. The regional educational community as a whole benefits by the creation and strengthening of ties and the development of new understandings about expanded educational partnerships. Although Christine and Andrea gathered feedback from students and partners every year in order to improve the CFI, it was not until the third year—once the program and procedures were fairly well established— that we were able to turn our attention to more formal evaluation and assessment. The first step of this process was funding; although many people assume that the CFI is a grant-funded project, it is not. It has no budget line at either the National Archives or Temple. This of course limited the type of evaluation we were able to conduct. The initial assessments on the student side were gathered in writing and verbally. The fieldworkers provided their professor (and sometimes the cultural partner supervisor) with feedback in weekly logs and to the university in course evaluations at the end of the semester. The fieldwork students also shared impressions with supervisors both informally through the process and formally at the final class. The fieldworkers often expressed to their host organizations that working in a “real-world” environment taught them how to create effective lesson plans using primary sources in ways that a classroom alone couldn’t. Students at HSP emphasized how the experience strengthened their abilities to communicate with secondary students. At the celebration event, fieldwork students make comments such as “I never knew what a finding aid was before. Now I will know how to use them to help my students access primary sources” and “I am even more excited to teach history.”

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Each year students reported that their fieldwork projects helped them both as students and as emerging educators. But a big question had yet to be researched: was the CFI helping to improve teacher education in measurable ways? In 2013 Christine received a small grant through the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage to begin the process of more formally evaluating student learning. The data is still being analyzed, but preliminary results indicate that there is a measurable difference in practice. Students who did fieldwork became more sophisticated in the ways in which they taught with primary sources, especially moving from a reliance on fairly random online sources to using specific documents found in archival collections. 3 Partner feedback has always been a critical element in shaping the CFI. However, due to an online survey glitch, no partner data is available across all three years of the program. Thus much of our information from partners—while informative—is still anecdotal at this point. The first+year survey revealed interesting information about the program’s original participants and how well we were reaching and serving a variety of cultural institutions: 39 percent did not have a staff member dedicated to education outreach, 72 percent had not worked previously with preservice teachers, and 100 percent were interested in participating in the program the following academic year. Partners the first year also offered the following comments: It helped alleviate our librarians’ concerns about increased student usage. As the semester progressed, I could increasingly see the value of having someone closer in age to our patrons working to develop aids to using our resources.

The most recent partner survey (fall 2013) revealed partners’ ongoing satisfaction and longevity: 74 percent of institutions had previously participated in the CFI, and 100 percent said the Cultural Fieldwork Initiative met (or exceeded) their expectations. Partners also included comments such as: Great program. It is amazing to see how little the students see cultural institutions as resources in the beginning, and it was wonderful to see them describe what they gained from the class. The student gave us support and expertise we couldn’t have had with our own limited capacity.

Arguably one of the CFI’s greatest achievements, though, has been the way it has linked archives in new ways with local colleges and universities. Archives have a long tradition of working with history departments and archival training programs, but the CFI is to our knowledge

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the first time archives have interacted on this level with colleges of education and helped to mentor new teachers in the use of primary sources. The CFI has received education awards locally from Temple University and at the state level by the Pennsylvania Council for the Social Studies. The program was also featured nationally as a model of innovation in collaborative history education in the Journal of American History (March 2013). 4 LESSONS LEARNED As with any relatively new and ongoing program, the CFI includes both lessons learned (past tense) and lessons learning (present tense). This section includes a sampling of both. First, we learned the value of getting a small group together, trying something, and then revising. If Christine and Andrea had spent too much time getting feedback from internal and external colleagues, the CFI as an idea could have gotten really bogged down. Instead, they took an idea from origination to implementation within five months—practically warp speed considering their respective institutions and all the moving pieces. True, that short time frame made the beginning a little confusing and messy. But more importantly, it also made the CFI happen. After the project was launched, then lesson learning could begin in earnest. We also learned—not surprisingly—that clear and frequent communication among all parties is essential to success. This includes the setting (and keeping) of deadlines, being specific about expectations, and encouraging people to give both negative as well as positive feedback. One example of this is communication about education as a field. Like archival work, education has specific terminology, concepts, and practices. But since potential fieldwork mentors can come from any position in an institution—archivists, curators, even directors in the smaller institutions—it is important to introduce and explain education terms and concepts to all partners. We are currently discussing best ways to develop this part of the project from an ad hoc system into a more structured professional development opportunity for partners. While sometimes challenging, our experience reinforces the importance of keeping the “big goals” of the project clearly in focus. When we developed the CFI—a large, multi-institutional partnership—we needed to recognize that the project and its results would never be “perfect.” For example, the partners would all like to have the methods students for more hours and a longer period of time. The education professors and their students wish that cultural institutions were open hours that are more convenient to busy students who are often also working. But neither is possible, due to the nature of how the institutions operate. So we figured out how the CFI could work—imperfectly—for everyone in-

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volved. And while sometimes it’s easy to get bogged down in the imperfections of the program, we’ve learned to focus on the fact that, overall, it’s achieving the goals we set for it. Just as it’s important not to underestimate the importance of effective communication, we’ve also learned to try not to take for granted the time commitment necessary to implement and maintain a project like the CFI. This involves two levels of partner commitment: for overall project leadership and coordination and for institutional mentoring and supervision. Clearly the CFI needs to have one coordinating partner like the Education Program at the National Archives at Philadelphia to keep the project moving. Much of this coordination work is “seasonal” and on an academic calendar. Andrea estimates that she spends 15–20 percent of her time on CFI during those busy periods—a not inconsequential amount of time for any individual or institution. In addition, each cultural partner also needs to have staff who can devote time to supervising the fieldworkers. The preservice teachers are, after all, students who are in new environments and need coaching and instruction. At HSP, Beth set up systems for weekly check-ins to ensure that the fieldwork student mentors were both learning themselves and able to fully assist the secondary students. Other partners have created similar structures for the fieldwork students at their institutions. And, finally, we learned to be prepared for some pushback, even in unexpected places. As people who work in archives, museums, and libraries, we sometimes take for granted that everyone sees the intrinsic value of our institutions. Unfortunately, that is not the case, and we found through the CFI that we often had to convince people of the importance of our institutions. When Christine began floating the idea of the CFI to statewide education colleagues, she had one person ask her, “But what can our students learn in archives and museums?” This stunning question illustrates a lack of understanding among education administrators and faculty about public history institutions, and it also presents staff at archives and museums a challenge and opportunity to answer that question. CONCLUSION So what are the big “take aways” from Philadelphia’s Cultural Fieldwork Initiative? They, like the program itself, are constantly evolving but can be summed up in a few sentences: collaboration among different types of institutions/programs builds capacity for sustained change, improvement, and excellence throughout a community. Everyone—archivists, students, educators—wins when we work together. But perhaps more importantly, the CFI helps us recognize that archives can make a difference in history education. Archives and other

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cultural institutions have an opportunity through programs like the CFI to help create better-educated teachers who feel connected to archives, know how to use their resources, and who teach their students how and why they should do so. From a self-interested perspective, that will create more history-literate adults who are interested in, understand the value of, and support our institutions. But on a more basic level, the CFI helps us all understand that it is our collective responsibility, and our collective privilege, to improve education in any way we can. Andrea Reidell is education specialist at the National Archives at Philadelphia, and Beth Twiss-Houting is senior director of programs and services at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. NOTES 1. Kay Sloan and Saul Rockman, National History Day Works: Findings from the National Program Evaluation, National History Day, December 2010, http:// www.ncdcr.gov/Portals/32/PDF/NHDReport_Final3.pdf. 2. “Civil Rights in a Northern City: Philadelphia,” Nick Nguyen, Lou Parisi, and Matthew Schade, accessed October 6, 2014, http://northerncity.library.temple.edu/ classroom. 3. Christine Woyshner, “Learning to Teach History at Cultural Institutions: Lessons from an Urban Teacher Education Program,” paper presented at AERA Conference: What Are History Teachers Learning from Historic Sites? Boston University, February 2014; and Christine Woyshner, “Report to the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage on the Cultural Fieldwork Initiative: A Partnership between Temple University’s Teacher Certification Program in Social Studies and Philadelphia-Area Cultural Institutions,” April 8, 2014. 4. “2012 Awards,” Pennsylvania Council for the Social Studies, accessed October 1, 2014, http://pcssonline.org/2012-awards; “Temple Award,” http://education.temple.edu/faculty/christine-woyshner-edd, accessed October 2, 2014; Christine Woyshner, Andrea Reidell, and Marc Brasof, “The Cultural Fieldwork Initiative: Collaboration for Better Education,” Journal of American History 99, no. 4 (2013): 1189–99, http://www.bu.edu/sed/files/2013/11/Woyshner-Cultural-Fieldwork-Initiative.pdf.

FIVE “The Archive” as Theory and Reality Engaging with Students in Cultural and Critical Studies Anna McNally, University of Westminster

In recent years, the notion of “the archive” has gained enormous currency in academic and artistic circles. 1 Much of the discussion has centered on texts by Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. For Foucault, “the archive” is related to a system of language that produces meaning, not what can be said but the set of rules that govern what is say-able. Derrida meanwhile leads us to understand that the professional view is invested with layers—veils—of poetic and political ambition, despite, or perhaps better put because, of the scientific, managerial and law-making aspirations of the archive. . . . The meaning and use value of the archive will not be transparent, entirely evident, known or knowable. This is because the entirety of the motives of the archive founder, and the archivist’s hands thereafter, is no more fully known to them than any individual can see the entire shape of their imagination and agency. 2

Both theorists understand archives to be “the source of power and control,” 3 but their conception is entirely detached from any “real” physical archival repository. For artists, “the archive”—both conceptual and actual—can be seductive. Hal Foster has pinpointed this “archival impulse” as being attracted to materials that are “fragmentary rather than fungible, and as such they call out for human interpretation not machinic reprocessing.” 4 None of these, of course, represent what most archival professionals would consider an accurate depiction of archives as they know them. 59

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Archivists have embraced these perspectives in their professional literature but, for the most part, have not entered the wider academic and artistic discourse. We could choose to stick our heads in the sand and ignore the conversation that is happening around us or embark on a doomed attempt to reclaim the word “archive,” much as was once tried with our IT colleagues. Alternatively we can attempt to join in, reinvigorating both the academic discussion and an interest in the records themselves. This chapter discusses how, in the context of two different institutions, I have sought to engage students and faculty from the broad field of cultural and critical studies with “the archive” as I understand it. I will also discuss the impact this has had on our other teaching work, and the success we have had in replicating this approach with faculty in other fields. PLANNING The University of Westminster is an institution serving 22,000 students in the heart of London. Previously the Regent Street Polytechnic (and later, Polytechnic of Central London), it received its university charter in 1992 but can trace its roots back to 1838. The archive services department holds the records of the university and its predecessor institutions, as well as deposited collections supporting research. The first university archivist was appointed in 1994, and aside from occasional temporary staff, this was a solo post until I was appointed as university history project archivist in 2009. My position formed part of a four-year project ahead of the university’s 175th anniversary celebrations in 2013. Although primarily supporting the production of two history books, I was also given the broader goal of raising awareness of the archival collections across the university. Archive services had a good relationship with the university’s corporate services (including the marketing and alumni teams) and ran a research methods session for the undergraduate history students; however, it had not been possible to pursue a large amount of student and faculty engagement due to limited staffing resources. With the archive team now doubled, we had the increased resources to be able to effectively engage in more outreach work, confident that we could meet any demand we created. However, I had no previous experience of working in a university prior to this job and so was unclear about how best to promote the collections. From 2004 to 2008, I had worked at the Tate Archive, which collects materials relating to twentieth- and twenty-first-century British art. At the Tate, I cataloged collections including the administrative records of the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) dating from 1968 to 1987. I was

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working closely with Ben Cranfield 5 from the London Consortium, 6 who was researching the ICA’s history for his PhD thesis. While knowledge of the acquisition process is always useful for understanding an organization’s archive, in this case it was absolutely crucial. The ICA’s papers had been acquired by the Tate Archive in several distinct phases, each of which reflected the institution’s history at that time. The papers also have some notable gaps, including the records relating to several key exhibitions and events. As a result, we talked a lot about the archival process, the concept of original order, and the “invisible hand” of the archivist. We came to the conclusion that the postgraduate students in the London Consortium’s MRes in Humanities and Cultural Studies would also benefit from these discussions and so began developing a session for them. The two-hour class formed part of the core Research Methods in the Humanities course. The Tate Archive’s collections are primarily used for art historical research, such as writing artists’ biographies or proving the provenance of a painting. As they had chosen to study cultural studies rather than art history, we assumed the London Consortium students would be more interested in ideas and discussion than in historical research and so would be unlikely to feel that archival research could enrich their studies. We also presumed they would be familiar with the concepts of “the archive” as discussed by Derrida, Foucault, and Foster, as these ideas were so prevalent in the humanities at that time. The aim of the session was therefore to try to show the students how an understanding of professional archival processes was relevant to theories around conceptual notions of “the archive.” We also wanted to show them that archival research could lead to fresh new thinking informed by the past, rather than simply producing historical writing. We therefore decided to focus on the archival process, including topics such as: How does an item get into the archive? And what impact does the archivist have on its journey? We wanted to challenge the students to consider archiving as an active, rather than passive, process. I began the class with a forty-five-minute lecture, explaining to the students the journey of materials from acquisition through to the researcher looking at them in the reading room. This was my first taste of the response of a non-archivist audience when you tell them that you throw things away! The lecture provoked a lively debate, particularly around ideas of selection and disposal, which made clear that the students hadn’t considered these aspects of archives before. The lecture was followed by a practical exercise looking at records from the Tate Archive. The aim of this exercise was to pique their interest in using the collections. I selected items that fitted into four themes that I thought might be relevant to their studies: • Archives of things that never happened. Examples from the Tate’s collections included correspondence relating to an exhibition that

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was cancelled at the last minute and drafts for a book that was never published. This was designed to show them that the archive couldn’t necessarily be trusted and also that it isn’t just there to confirm what you knew but can provide new avenues of research you didn’t know existed. • Archives of ephemeral and intangible events. In particular I wanted to look at the debates around the documentation of performance art and whether photographs and written descriptions can really capture a temporal event. While this is particularly relevant in relation to performance art, it can of course be applied to wider activities and the extent to which we can ever understand the past through the archive. • Archives of audience responses to art. In particular we looked at the records of several seminal exhibitions at the ICA and to what extent we could gauge the audience’s reaction to them at the time, especially where the work was considered challenging. • Research as archive. This included showing the students card indexes, notes, and drafts compiled by art historians during their research that had then been acquired by the archive. This provided an opportunity to talk about different types of record-keeping technology and their modern parallels, as well as the circularity of research being incorporated into an archive. The items were drawn from different fonds within the Tate Archive and were laid out on tables for browsing, with one theme per table. 7 I had originally intended to write descriptive labels for the files, explaining how each one met the theme, but ran out of time ahead of the session. Instead I printed out the catalog record for each file and used that as a label. Although not part of the original plan, this is a technique I have continued to use in teaching sessions because of its success on this occasion. It gave the students an opportunity to become acquainted with the language and structure of the archive’s catalog records and to see firsthand how a file is usually far more interesting than an objective catalog could ever convey. The session was successful but was not repeated as both Ben and I moved on to other jobs shortly afterward. I did, however, have the opportunity to further develop these themes into a paper given at the Arts Libraries Society UK (ARLIS UK) conference, Archiving the Artist, in 2009. 8 When I started at the University of Westminster, I was in the process of turning the paper into a book chapter, 9 and so this research was at the forefront of my mind. At the university, my first step in trying to expand archive services’ teaching provision was to look through the university’s website to get a better feel for the range of subjects offered. I then tried to identify courses that might be amenable to input from the archive services. My initial

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focus was on the arts and humanities. I was aware of the current high levels of interest around notions of “the archive” in these areas and so hoped the faculty would be receptive. My previous experience at the Tate also meant I was comfortable and confident with discussing archives in these contexts. Despite identifying several relevant courses, I struggled to know who to approach. Faculty deans were obviously too important to concern with these things, but were heads of schools? It was often difficult to work out who the leader was for a particular course. I tried “cold-emailing” a few lecturers who I thought might be interested in having us involved with their course but received no replies. I was struggling to know if I was emailing the wrong people or contacting them at the wrong time of year or whether they were simply uninterested. I did however discover a course titled Knowledge, Cultural Memory, Archives and Research (hereafter referred to as the Knowledge and Research course) being offered to postgraduate students within the School of Humanities. 10 This is a core course for students in the Visual Culture, Cultural and Critical Studies, and English Literature MA programs and optional for students in the Museums, Galleries and Contemporary Culture MA program. One of the course leaders, Marquard Smith, 11 had edited a book 12 that I had made heavy use of in my writing, and so I felt I could offer him an approach that would fit in with his teaching. When I discussed the course with the university archivist, she mentioned that the previous year a visual culture student had carried out research for her dissertation using the university archive collections. We hoped therefore that we would be pushing on an open door. Since my previous attempts at emailing lecturers had been unsuccessful, I decided instead to approach them in person. That summer I was invited to a drinks reception at which Marquard Smith was scheduled to speak. This gave me an opportunity to meet him in an informal setting. I introduced myself and mentioned the dissertation by the former student. I explained that I had previously taught a session while at the Tate and was keen to offer a similar opportunity to the university’s students. Marquard was interested, and as a result of our conversation, I was invited to lead one of the course’s two-hour sessions in the forthcoming year. I was fortunate that the instructors gave me free rein to prepare the session and only asked in advance for a title for the session, which I decided to call “The Role of the Archivist.” In preparing the session, I drew on the experience I had of running our Introduction to Research Methods class for undergraduate history students. In that case, the two-hour session also begins with a forty-fiveminute introduction to what archives are and practical guidance on how to find relevant collections and what to expect when using them. Students are then provided with a box of archival materials and a theme,

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and they have an hour to work out how those items relate to their theme and to interrogate them for their trustworthiness. Unfortunately using original archival materials in a classroom setting is difficult for us because the University of Westminster is a multisite institution. We have a small reading room but can only accommodate four researchers at a time, and teaching for the humanities subjects usually occurs in other buildings. Our session with the history students is a long-standing arrangement, so we were able to schedule this session in our building, meaning we can use archival material without the difficulties of transporting it. However, as the arrangement with the visual culture module was a new one, I did not feel I could ask for the class to be moved. I therefore had to plan the Knowledge and Research session without using original material. I had kept my notes on the London Consortium class, and I drew heavily on these in my planning, especially as both were two-hour sessions. I assumed that the students would be approaching the subject from a broadly similar background to the students from the London Consortium. The session took place within the context of a course about theories of “the archive,” and so I interpreted my role as being to introduce them to ideas of “real,” physical (and digital) archives as opposed to theoretical concepts. I had seen a syllabus of session titles, although not the reading list or detailed content. However, as my session was intended to contrast to the other sessions, I was confident I wouldn’t overlap with them. I reused much of the material from my introductory lecture for the London Consortium, alongside the research I was carrying out for my book chapter. However, I had to consider how to incorporate the aspects of the handling session without using originals. While presenting digitized material using PowerPoint does have some benefits, such as making it easy for the whole class to see the document or photograph, it does mean that students are losing the tactile experience of archives. I was certainly not trying to promote a fetishized “old books smell nice” approach, but I was keen to show them as many examples of “real” archives as possible. As I didn’t yet know the university’s archive well, I wasn’t confident that I could use it to repeat the four categories I had originally used at the Tate. 13 Instead I decided to develop my third theme of “the audience.” History and art history have traditionally focused on well-known individuals, and that is the kind of research I thought our students would expect someone to do in an archive. I wanted to show them that archives also contain large numbers of people whose presence in this historical record is peripheral. These individuals, unnamed and unidentifiable, have often been recorded in the archive by accident; they happened to be there when a significant historical event was taking place, but their presence wasn’t necessary for the event to occur. An example from the University’s own history is February 21, 1896, when the Lumière brothers

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Cinématographe machine was exhibited in our theatre: the first showing of cinema to a paying audience in the UK. There needed to be “an audience” at this event, but each one of the fifty-four individuals in that audience could have been replaced by a different person, and the historical event would still have occurred. Moreover, we do not know who many of the individuals at that event were. The archive does not contain their names, there are no photographs of the audience at that event, and we don’t know their motive for being there. “The audience” here represents the information that the archive doesn’t record. I found examples from both the university’s collections and the ICA archive at the Tate to illustrate this theme so that the taught part of my session concluded with a “show and tell” slideshow. Including this section, I planned to speak for an hour, allowing an hour for questions. IMPLEMENTATION The session started by dispelling a few myths about archives—namely that we require researchers to always use white cotton gloves, that the archive is some kind of Indiana Jones–style storeroom where things go to be forgotten, or that it is a bias-free historical resource. The aim was to get the students’ attention by challenging their assumptions. The first images I showed them are collections in a presorted state. These included photographs taken by the university’s first archivist showing mountains of boxes and disordered files. I had also sourced images (with permission) from colleagues on Twitter to show that this isn’t a unique situation. As professionals we tend to take this for granted and only show these “before” images to colleagues. However, the response they received from students suggests these images are helpful in conveying an understanding of our role. I explained some of the transfer procedures within the university, ranging from orderly relationships with some departments to the less systematic occasions when space is suddenly required or a faculty member is retiring. Images of items that have been simply found in the university’s buildings in recent years—such as hand-cut silhouettes from the 1920s—convey an idea of the amount of chance that influences the survival of archives. Conversely, I explained why we also purchase items from rare book dealers and auctions and how the provenance of each item is recorded through the acquisition register. The importance of recording provenance in archives has obvious parallels with its use in the art world, and so discussing it with the students allowed me to bring in ideas of value and trustworthiness. As provenance also plays a role in the arrangement of archives, I then moved on to discussing original order and the concept of respect des fonds. I have found it is easiest to explain archival arrangement by comparing it to the ap-

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proaches of museums and libraries, as students are likely to be more familiar with these. In particular, I explain the concept of hierarchical arrangement and how this ensures that no particular research theme is prioritized over others. Discussing archival arrangement is a good opportunity to explain some of the reasons why archival research can be difficult and frustrating. Explaining the importance of not disturbing original order justifies why many archives will not allow researchers to access unprocessed archival collections. An understanding of respects des fonds can help researchers to appreciate why we have not split the collection into thematic areas for them. Acknowledging that this creates difficulties for some types of research helps ensure that students aren’t put off at the first hurdle. For example, one of our key genealogical resources in the university archive is the registers of members of the Polytechnic’s social and sporting clubs. The registers contain an individual’s name, date of birth, address, and occupation and so are very useful for family historians. Unfortunately the information is recorded by the date they registered (and therefore their membership number), not by surname. A separate register of subscription payments lists members in alphabetical order and can be used to discover the membership number. Understanding how and why these records were created is therefore vital to their research use. It is easiest to explain this principle by using the example of bound registers, as it is clear that the contents cannot be rearranged without a drastic and destructive intervention. I then explained that the same principle is applied to loose-leaf papers, even though at first sight it appears they could be resorted into a more convenient order. Arrangement leads on to a discussion of the appraisal and disposal of records. This is a contentious issue as many people seem to believe that archivists have taken a Hippocratic oath to do no harm to any old paper. I explained the various decisions that archivists make when deciding to dispose of records, from simple cases such as duplication to more subjective decisions based on their long-term value. I also discussed what would happen if archivists threw nothing away and how quickly the quantity of material would spiral out of control and cease to be useful. From appraisal, I moved to an explanation of archival description. In the UK, it is normal to describe archival collections to the file and item level. I explain the usefulness of description both for accessing the collections and also for security reasons (for example, noting a particularly significant stamp or autograph). Archival thefts are not necessarily well known outside the profession; often they occur gradually over a long period and aren’t as sudden and high-profile as a theft from a gallery. Explaining this threat to archives can make sense of what might seem like archaic search room rules, such as not allowing researchers to bring in bags.

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A large proportion of the talk was taken up with discussing the need for objectivity in archival description and its impossibility. I used examples from the archive, first showing an amusing letter and then bringing up my objective description of it. I then showed the description of a photograph and then the image itself. This particular photograph is our most popular image on Flickr. Our catalog description reads: “Photograph showing two people in fancy dress, one as a skeleton (carrying a football rattle), the other as a clown.” Annotated on reverse is: “Polytechnic magazine July 1920. Football match in costume” (see figure 5.1). The actual image usually comes as a surprise to the students. I have asked if they can come up with a better description while staying objective, and so far none of them have. Photographic archives were discussed in some detail as they are likely to be a source that the students want to use. I explained the difference between an archive and a picture library (many of which call themselves archives) and how the latter are catalogued and accessed in a different way from a traditional archive. I also talked about the ways in which we have used images from the archive in the university’s marketing and have sold them commercially for books and films. This gave me the op-

Fig. 5.1 This photograph is used to show students the challenge of describing an image in words. Image courtesy of University of Westminster Archive Services.

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portunity to discuss why the university keeps its archives and the financial pressures we face. I concluded the discussion of use of archive collections with ways in which archives can and have supported projects that aren’t strictly historical research. These include exhibitions, publications, and creative writing projects. I described how we have helped the artists, writers, and curators involved in these projects to find documents that were useful to them and the research process in general. The taught part of the session concluded with a slideshow of images, as it is not possible to use original documents. My examples were chosen to demonstrate how the anonymous public is recorded in the archive as “the audience” participating in historical events. Using scanned documents meant I could take examples from the university’s collections and others I have worked with elsewhere. From the ICA archive, I used documents relating to exhibitions that are now considered canonical but may have been received quite differently at the time. This included audience response forms for When Attitudes Become Form, and a photograph of visitors to Cybernetic Serendipity. 14 A review of the same exhibition from the university’s student magazines not only provided a nice connection between the two archives but also showed the importance of researching beyond the obvious collection for your topic. As discussed above, documents relating to the 1896 Cinématographe exhibition show some of the limits of archival research, whereas photographs of the crowd at the 1929 Lord Mayor’s Parade, where the audience’s faces are clearly visible, show how people can be captured for posterity and yet be untraceable to the genealogist. The parade photographs also capture details of everyday life beyond the out-of-the-ordinary event that they intended to capture. After showing images of these items, I gave examples of the keywords I used to find these items, such as “response,” “comments,” “audience,” “survey,” “crowd,” and “demonstration.” These indicate how you need to think widely and creatively when you are using archives for thematic work and the importance of considering how the item might have been described. This returned the discussion to my title—the role of the archivist—and the impact that the archivist’s appraisal, arrangement, and description decisions have on researchers. Although I had planned to speak for an hour and allow the second hour for discussion, the nerves involved in speaking before a new audience meant I ended up only speaking for forty-five minutes. Fortunately, this left additional time for a robust discussion with the students. As before with the London Consortium students, much of the discussion centered on the idea of disposal for the archive. This also led to a comparison with digital records, where the perception was that it was possible and easy to keep “everything.” I explained the practical difficulties around the migration of digital formats, but we also discussed the notions of value and selection. Would the archive be better if it was more

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complete or would it just be bigger? This was also not long after the news that the Library of Congress had acquired Twitter’s archive 15 and so a large proportion of the time was taken up in discussing this acquisition and whether or not it would prove useful to current and future researchers. RESULTS The first session was very successful, with a thank-you email from Marquard the next day asking to make this a regular session for the course. The first session was taught in 2011 and was scheduled toward the end of the second semester. I have repeated it each year since then, but the session has now been moved earlier in the second semester. Course leader Sas Mays explained that they found that students who were new to issues of the materialities of institutional and cultural memory found the theoretical material dauntingly abstract, and in the following year we reversed the order. Having [the discussion of practical archiving] at the outset gave students a firmer sense of the issues at hand, including the theoretical, and this subsequently enabled us to build up their knowledge of archival issues. In addition, discussion [in this session] worked very well in the multidisciplinary context of the module, and enabled students from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds to engage with issues of memory, and with each other’s interests and knowledge-bases. 16

I had hoped that this session would inspire more of the students visiting the university archive to use our collections. After the first session, one student visited for a follow-up interview as part of her coursework. However, we have not seen an increase in student research visits from this course as a direct result of the session. Nonetheless, it has become clear during the discussions that the students are often already working at or researching in archival collections elsewhere. It is therefore important that we are sending them out into the research community well equipped with a detailed understanding of archival procedures, and we see this as an important contribution to the employability skills of our students. As a wider result, the increased role of archive services in the teaching work of the university helped to secure permanent funding for an assistant archivist post. I was fortunate enough to be appointed to this post in summer 2013. This has enabled us to develop longer-term relationships with teaching faculty and to plan future activities with confidence.

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LESSONS LEARNED The content of the Archives and Knowledge session is constantly evolving. In response to questions from the students, I have included more detailed discussion of the opportunities and difficulties surrounding digital archives. However, subsequent years have brought up other issues, in particular responding to news stories around privacy and data. After the session, I make notes for myself about which topics were discussed and try to ensure that these are incorporated the following year. I also keep an eye on the news in the weeks leading up to the class so I have an idea of the issues students are likely to raise. Recent news stories are also helpful in stimulating discussion. Once I have finished speaking, it often takes the students a short time to formulate their thoughts into questions and, therefore, for the discussion to get going. It helps to have the instructor present to make the links with other topics they have studied, but mentioning high-profile events like WikiLeaks and the Hillsborough Independent Panel 17 in the UK helps to move the discussion onto familiar and pragmatic territory for them. The experience of planning and teaching the Knowledge and Research session has had a huge impact on our work across the university. Firstly, it has given us a pathway for approaching other departments within the university. A similar scenario of one student from the undergraduate multimedia computing course using the university archive for final-year coursework has led to an unexpected but fruitful relationship with the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering. We now work with both the first- and final-year students on archive-related projects. Sometimes the example of one interested student is the easiest way to approach faculty members, as it provides a clear example of what can be achieved. Secondly, we have changed the way that we promote and assess our outreach activities within the university. In the past we have concentrated on promoting our collections and history as subjects for research and counted our success purely on the number of visits to the reading room. We are now offering broader research skills sessions. These sessions use our collections as examples of archival material but focus on conveying a wider message about the benefits of archival research to our students. The success of these sessions is judged on the projects and opportunities that come about as a result of our higher profile in the university, rather than on numbers visiting the reading room. Thirdly, I have incorporated some of the theoretical teaching from this session into the Research Methods session we offer to BA history students. This session was traditionally focused on the practical aspects of finding and accessing the archives they need for their final-year research. It now includes an explanation of the archival process and an introduction to the broader conceptual debate around “the archive.” My hope is

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that this will help them challenge and interrogate the archival sources they use and so make them better historical researchers. CONCLUSION I now teach around six to eight sessions per academic year, but the Knowledge and Research session remains one of the highlights for me. It provides me with an impetus to keep up with the wider debate around archives in the media and critical thinking and an opportunity to present any new ideas I have absorbed or developed in the previous year. It also provides me with regular experience of being challenged on those ideas by an intelligent and engaged audience in the discussion afterward. Focusing on the archival process provides a structure to the talks as well as an important understanding of what archives are—and are not. Demystifying archives gives the students more confidence when dealing with them either as a historical source or as an object of critical theorizing. We try to ensure that students are also provided with all the relevant information they would need if they choose to research in an archive, either our own or elsewhere. However, even if they never actually visit an archive, we hope that their theoretical writing is bolstered by an understanding of “real-life” archives. By expanding the work of archive services into teaching, we have also gained a greater profile for ourselves in the university as professionals, rather than just collection holders. This has opened up opportunities for a wide range of collaborations including academic projects, mobile apps, and exhibitions. It has also enabled us to reach a wider range of students beyond those subjects our collections could easily support and has enabled us to play a broader role within the research community of the university. At the University of Westminster, we are trying to ensure that archivists’ voices are heard in the training of researchers so that, while we cannot reclaim the concept of “the archive,” we can at least rebalance it. Anna McNally is assistant archivist at the University of Westminster Archive. NOTES 1. An excellent introduction to theories around archives across art and critical theory can be found in Sue Breakell, “Perspectives: Negotiating the Archive,” Tate Papers 9 (Spring 2008), http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/perspectives-negotiating-archive. 2. Julie Bacon, “Archive, Archive, Archive!” Circa 119 (Spring 2007): 50–59. 3. Louise Craven, What Are Archives? Cultural and Theoretical Perspectives: A Reader (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2012). 4. Hal Foster, “An Archival Impulse,” October 110 (Autumn 2004): 3–22. 5. Now, Dr. Ben Cranfield, based at Birkbeck College (University of London).

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6. The London Consortium was a multidisciplinary graduate program in humanities and cultural studies, run as a collaboration between the Architectural Association, Birkbeck College (University of London), the Institute of Contemporary Arts, the Science Museum, and Tate. 7. The Tate’s Archive Reading Room was used for this session, and the number of themes was constrained by the number of tables available in the space. 8. Recordings from the conference are available online at http://www.tate.org.uk/ context-comment/audio/archiving-artist-audio-recordings. 9. Anna McNally, “All That Stuff! Organising Records of Creative Processes,” in All This Stuff: Archiving the Artist, eds., Vaknin, Stuckey, Lane (Faringdon, UK: ARLIS, 2013). 10. The module is taught at level 6 and 7 and is worth twenty credits over two semesters. 11. Dr. Marquard Smith has now left the University of Westminster and is currently research leader/head of doctoral studies at RCA. The other course leader is Dr. Sas Mays, senior lecturer in English Literature. 12. Michael Ann Holly and Marquard Smith, eds., What Is Research in the Visual Arts? Obsession, Archive, Encounter (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press/Clark Art Institute, 2008). 13. I have since incorporated more material from the university’s archive into the session, as I have found documents with a strong relevance to the theme. 14. TGA 955/7/2/12 and TGA 955/18/2. Scans of these had kindly been provided to me by the Tate Archive for the purposes of this session. 15. “Twitter Donates Entire Tweet Archive to Library of Congress,” Library of Congress, April 15, 2010, http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2010/10-081.html. 16. Sas Mays, email message to author, August 17, 2014. 17. On April 15, 1989, ninety-six men, women, and children lost their lives in a tragedy at the Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield. The Hillsborough Independent Panel was appointed to oversee the disclosure of all relevant information, a large proportion of which came from archives.

SIX Make Way for Learning Using Literary Papers to Engage Elementary School Students Ashley Todd-Diaz, Terri Summey, Shari Scribner, and Michelle Franklin, Emporia State University

As educational institutions, special collections and archives affiliated with universities have a priority to develop ways to direct their outreach efforts effectively to reach as many audiences as possible. Most of these audiences are associated with the university in some manner, such as alumni or specific college classes. One audience that you do not often find in reading rooms of university special collections and archives is pre-K–12th-grade students. Special collections and archives often overlook this group of students when designing educational programs; therefore, many of these students do not become aware of our unique resources. Providing younger students with knowledge of these kinds of institutions and special materials early in their educational career may encourage them to seek out archival collections for professional and personal reasons in the future. In 2010, the Emporia State University (ESU) Special Collections and Archives, in partnership with the library’s public services department, began collaborating with teachers from a local elementary school to remedy this problem. The program we created was designed to enhance the standard curriculum by offering students the opportunity to interact with archival materials and utilize critical thinking skills. From a small beginning, this program, which we call Make Way for Ducklings, continues to grow and has the potential to expand beyond our local community to 73

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share the wonderful resources that we have in our collections. It also serves as an example of how special collections and archives can reach out to this young audience, providing learning opportunities focused on artifacts and materials in their collections. Although this program is specific to one collection at one university, it could be replicated with other collections and audiences. Several years ago, a national magazine indicated that ESU, a mid-size institution in the eastern half of Kansas, was a hidden treasure. However, one of the little-known treasures on campus is an outstanding collection of original artwork from children’s books. ESU Special Collections and Archives is fortunate to house the May Massee Collection of children’s literature and illustrations. May Massee (1883–1966) was a children’s book editor who established two of the first three “junior books” divisions in major publishing houses in the United States: Doubleday, Page and Company (1923), and Viking Press (1932). The collection features over 3,300 manuscripts and pieces of original artwork from authors and illustrators including Robert McCloskey, Ludwig Bemelmans, James Daugherty, Don Freeman, Kate Seredy, and Astrid Lindgren. After a phone call from an elementary teacher in our community, we decided that this would be an ideal collection around which to structure an educational outreach program, while also increasing awareness in the community about our available resources. PLANNING In 2010, we developed and implemented the initial Ducklings program in the span of about two weeks. The catalyst was a local third-grade teacher whose memory of seeing one of ESU’s special collections as an undergraduate student stuck with her for forty years. As with any institution, you may not realize the impact that you have on lives until many years later, and such was the case with this teacher. In the 1970s, after receiving the May Massee Collection, ESU sponsored workshops featuring its manuscript materials. As an undergraduate student at ESU, this third-grade teacher participated in one of the workshops and became aware of the collection of children’s book artwork owned by the university. In a phone call to the special collections and archives, she discussed her memories of the collection and the names of some of the authors included in it, such as Robert McCloskey. She noted that as she was preparing reading units for the year she was interested in incorporating items from the May Massee Collection into her teaching plan. Since the class read and learned about Caldecott Award–winning books, she expressed an interest in providing her current students with the opportunity to experience the collection just as she did as a student and inquired about bringing her classes in to see the materials. It was this telephone call that inspired the special collec-

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tions and archives staff and one of the public service librarians to consider putting together a program for her students initially and for other groups in the future. After the initial contact, the first thing we did was consider what we had within our holdings that might work for an educational program with third-grade students. The teacher mentioned that the students were reading books by several award-winning authors, including McCloskey. Through conversations with the teacher about the various artifacts and McCloskey’s stories, we decided to focus on the Caldecott-winning book Make Way for Ducklings. The May Massee Collection possesses over forty original illustrations and related manuscript materials for this story. Once we made the decision that the book would be the focal point of the program, we needed to determine how we could present it to the students. One of the first steps of the special collections and archives staff was to take inventory of what we had in the May Massee Collection. Once we knew exactly what was related to the selected story, the staff met to discuss the best strategy to meet the needs of this presentation. We needed to decide the best way to present the artifacts and illustrations to the visiting students, provide an educational experience, and maintain their attention during the program. Due to extenuating factors, we were at that time using our gallery space to house our offices, so we needed to consider that in the planning process as well. We identified another space to utilize; however, it was smaller than the gallery and would require dividing the two visiting classes into smaller groups to allow them the best opportunity to adequately view the manuscript materials. To provide activities for each of the smaller groups when they were not viewing the manuscripts, we worked with a public services librarian to create two additional stations for the students to visit. These stations included a library tour and a video presentation of the story. Although the visiting classes had read Make Way for Ducklings before coming to ESU, we decided to show the video version of the story, created by Weston Woods. This provided a chance to not only remind them of what they had read but also to let them see the illustrations from the book again in a media format so they would be familiar with the pictures before seeing the original artwork by McCloskey. Finally, because the ESU university libraries are open to the public and have an extensive children’s literature collection, we decided to include a tour to familiarize the students with our library in the hopes that they would return with their parents. With these plans in place, we were ready to implement this new program for our young visitors, or so we thought.

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IMPLEMENTATION We implemented our program in stages over a timespan of several years. Each time we offered the program, we tried to increase the number of schools and students participating in it, while improving the program. In August, at the beginning of each school year, those involved in the program—the special collections and archives staff and a public services librarian—meet to identify and contact potential groups that could visit the ESU Special Collections and Archives to participate in the Make Way for Ducklings program. Prior to the arrival of each group, we utilize both formal and informal meetings to determine specific details for each program. In each instance, we identify a contact teacher to assist us in planning the details of the visit, time of arrival, number of students, length of the visit, and any other significant information. Although we have a framework that we use for the program, we can customize the experience to meet their educational needs. After each group leaves, we meet to assess our perception of the experience; mainly discussing what went well, challenges faced, and what we can modify or improve. In this section, we will discuss implementation of the program and its evolution over time. In that first year, we planned a program that we thought would engage the students; however, because we had not done this type of program before, we were not sure what to expect. On the day of the event, we greeted the classes in the lobby of the William Allen White Library. At that time, we divided the students into three groups. Each group had a small number of students so that we could better accommodate them in the room set aside to view select Make Way for Duckling items from the May Massee Collection. We displayed original artwork, correspondence, photographs, and other related materials in two table display cases so that the students could not touch them, thereby protecting the delicate materials. While one group viewed these displayed items, Terri Summey, the partnering public services librarian, took another group to the library’s story time room to watch the video of the story. Another volunteer took the remaining students on a short tour of the library, emphasizing the children’s literature collection. Throughout the event, we rotated the groups until all of the students had the opportunity to visit all three stations. Although the teachers and students enjoyed the event, immediately following the visit the participating staff met to share our perceptions of the event and identify ways we could improve upon the program. The students seemed to do well with watching the video of the story and touring the library; however, we believed that the special collections and archives component needed something more. In this initial offering of the program, we displayed the artwork in more of a “special collections and archives” environment, utilizing flat display cases for the selected pieces.

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It posed a challenge for the students to see the individual items as our staff discussed them. This resulted in more individualized viewing of the different items, and staff answered questions one on one, as opposed to a discussion involving all of the students. Consequently, some of the students became disengaged with the activities, not making the same connections to the materials as other students. Therefore, something the staff felt strongly about revising for the next implementation of the program was to make changes so that all of the students received the same experience. The second year, we followed up with the teacher to initiate a return visit, which allowed us more time to plan. We decided that to facilitate students remaining engaged with the program, especially those waiting to see the items from the May Massee Collection, we needed to expand the number of original artwork pieces on display, add some activities, and increase the number of activity stations to further divide the large group of students. To allow all of the students to view the artwork simultaneously, we decided to replicate the feeling of visiting an art gallery. This enabled Michelle Franklin, the archives assistant, to introduce and talk about each piece, field questions from the group, and discuss various elements of the individual pieces to enable student learning. We believed that with this change, the students would receive the same information and experience as they would learn as a group through the questions and answers and resulting discussion. By using more of an “art gallery” model, with dimmed lights and pictures hung on the walls, we hoped to create more of a reverent atmosphere so that the students realized the collection that they were viewing was unique and very special. However, once again, we faced the challenge of having our gallery space occupied by our offices. To simulate a gallery experience, we selected representative illustrations from Make Way for Ducklings, framed copies of the original artwork, and hung them on the walls of the library’s conference room. Because we wanted more activities, we searched various literaturebased resources to identify potential activities that we could use in our program. One resource we located was Google Lit Trips, http:// www.googlelittrips.com/GoogleLit/Home.html. This site had a “virtual trip” to Boston based on Make Way for Ducklings. Not only did this site introduce the students to the places mentioned in the story, thereby making it more real, but also it provided an opportunity for lessons in geography. This was particularly valuable since many of the visiting students do not have opportunities for travel outside of our community. In addition, we have the book Make Way for Ducklings in several languages. We added a display and discussion of the different covers of the books in various languages. One of the covers is in Spanish, which was recognizable by native Spanish speakers in the classes. They enjoyed the opportunity to show their expertise by helping to pronounce the words

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in the title. Our student employees also helped to plan activities, which would engage and occupy students during the times we were transitioning between groups. One of the transition stations that we developed centered on the names of the ducklings in the story. In the story, the author alphabetized the names, beginning with Jack and ending with Quack. This provided the impetus for an activity where we had the students alphabetize not only the names of the ducklings in the story but also their own ducks, which resided in a paper pond mural on the wall. Finally, we retained the station where we showed the movie that presents the book to the students, since we found this to be a helpful refresher. At the end of this event, all of the participating staff once again met and determined that, although it was better, we still could make improvements. In the third year of the program, we had a new curator of special collections and archives, Ashley Todd-Diaz. After filling her in on the details of the program, we decided to once again be proactive and contact our initial partnering teacher. Additionally, we wanted to increase the number of participating schools, thereby exposing more students to the materials. Understanding that economic factors impacted the ability for local schools to conduct field trips due to the cost of transportation, we knew that locality would be relevant. Initially, we reached out to schools within walking distance to alleviate the need for transportation and gained a second group of third graders from another elementary school. Furthermore, because the spouse of one of our public service librarians taught third grade at another local school, we used her as a champion to add another school to participate in our program. Therefore, in the third year, we were able to reach more elementary schools. Utilizing the experience of the previous year, we assessed our outcomes and identified ways to expand and improve the program. Since the special collection and archives offices had now moved to their permanent location, the gallery space was available to feature the illustrations. This allowed us to combine the discussion of the manuscript materials with a behind-the-scenes tour of May Massee’s reconstructed office, which had previously only been viewed through a window. Since we were working with elementary schools, we acknowledged that consulting the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) 1 would help us align our current and potential activities with relevant standards to better achieve our goals. Because of this increased emphasis in the public schools on the CCSS and a growing importance of assessment in activities presented by the university libraries and archives, one of the first steps we took toward improving the program was to consult the CCSS to create potential outcomes. The CCSS is divided into two sections, English Language Arts and Mathematics, with each of those divided into further categories. One of the categories within English Language Arts is Reading: Literature (RL), which has four sections: Key Ideas and Details (RL

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3.1–RL 3.3), Craft and Structure (RL 3.4–RL 3.6), Integration of Knowledge and Ideas (RL 3.7–RL 3.9), and Range of Reading and Level of Complexity (RL 3.10). With our new knowledge of the standards, we met with partnering teachers to discuss specific outcomes for the program. From there, we developed activities to meet the corresponding standards’ focus on making connections between illustrations and complex aspects of text because of the concentration of visual materials in the May Massee Collection (see figure 6.1). Based on these new outcomes, we modified the activities and implemented them in subsequent offerings of the Make Way for Ducklings program. Therefore, it was in this third year that we made our most significant changes to the program. We are using this framework for the foreseeable future with just a little modification as needed. Instead of immediately dividing the students into groups, we begin the program with an introduction to the story and view of the video version of the book. We added a short video that featured McCloskey discussing his work as an author and illustrator. During this introductory session, we emphasize the special nature and uniqueness of the materials that they would be viewing on the visit. We want to impart to the students how these original pieces of artwork differed from what they saw in their books and that they only exist at ESU’s Special Collections and

Fig. 6.1 Students problem-solve together using illustrations from Make Way for Ducklings.

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Archives. Once the students return to their schools, we ask that they create a blog posting that we can post on our departmental blog. 2 During the 2013/2014 school year, the Emporia Unified School District, USD253, received 21st Century Community Learning Center grants for all of the schools in the district, from the elementary schools through Emporia High School. These STREAM grants provided each school with funding for extended learning opportunities outside of the classroom in science, technology, reading, engineering, the arts, and mathematics (STREAM). The events were designed to prepare students for college and career opportunities. One school that had not visited the ESU Libraries and Archives previously contacted us early in the fourth year to ask about visiting the library as part of its STREAM day. As part of its grant, the school desired to introduce the students to various aspects of a college campus. The entire school was visiting campus for the day, and the lead teacher asked the library to develop a literacy-based program for the kindergarten and first-grade classes as part of the day’s activities. Since the grant included reading and the arts, we decided to adapt our existing program for this age group. Although we retained key elements, we knew that some of the activities would need to be modified to keep the younger students engaged. RESULTS The Make Way for Ducklings program successfully expanded the participating students’ awareness of the ESU Special Collections and Archives and the one-of-a-kind materials that we have to offer. While students are familiar with libraries, for many of them this was their first visit to a special collections and archives. Although it was apparent when the students arrived that they did not know the difference between libraries and special collections/archives, by the end of the program, they had gained an awareness of the differences between the two. An overt change in the students’ behavior was observed when they entered the special collections and archives’ area and encountered the manuscript materials. This was partially a result of the program’s introductory discussion of published versus unpublished materials and partially due to presenting the materials in a gallery setting under spotlighting, which allowed the students to experience the shift in environments and realize that this was a special experience that required a certain type of behavior and respect. Before viewing the manuscripts, students were reminded to look with their eyes rather than their hands, and when the group walked through the gallery doors, a noted hush and sense of excitement came over them. The change in surroundings encouraged an increase in focus and attention, which led to more critical observing and thinking.

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An associated result was the empowerment of the students to embrace and share the new knowledge and insight they had received. Aside from the county historical society and museum, the ESU Special Collections and Archives is the only non-library information resource in the local community. As such, a primary goal of the program was to familiarize the students with this resource and help them feel comfortable using our materials and viewing our exhibits. Within the weeks following each program, we would be pleased to occasionally welcome a student or two who brought his or her families to the special collections and archives to meet the staff and pass along what he or she learned about the artwork. Not only did this reveal the spark kindled within the students about these unique materials, but also it showed that they had come to see these resources as something that partly belonged to them and were available to them for future use and sharing. As a result of the program, these students now felt ownership of this resource, and the chance that they would return to use either the May Massee Collection or other materials in the special collections and archives was greatly increased. Although only a few students have visited thus far, when you consider that the catalyst for initiating the Make Way for Ducklings program was a student’s memory of visiting the ESU Special Collections and Archives forty years ago, we are satisfied that the seed has been planted and the students will eventually find their way back. Another primary achievement of the program was offering students the opportunity to consider a familiar object in a new way. When the third-grade students arrived, they knew the plot and characters of Make Way for Ducklings, which is in line with CCSS RL. 3.1 and RL. 3.3, but they had not thought about the book much beyond that. Through the course of the program, students began asking and answering questions with a new awareness of the book as more than the storyline. They began to use critical thinking skills to consider the author and how he transformed an idea into a book. By viewing illustrations from various points throughout the creative process (sketchbooks, drafts in various media, and dummies), the students actively evaluated the manuscript materials and used higher-level learning to make observations that align with the CCSS RL. 3.7 and RL .3.7 for reading literature and informational texts, respectively. When viewing the sketchbooks, students made comments about how much McCloskey practiced drawing the same item, even something small like a duck wing or a plant, over and over again to fully understand it and be able to best represent it. While closely examining the illustration drafts, students were excited to search for areas where McCloskey had changed his mind and either redrew or completely erased certain elements of the illustrations. They discussed how those changes might have altered the overall illustration and impacted how the reader understands the story. Furthermore, comparing the drafts between one another prompted stu-

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dents to observe the effect color and medium choice have on conveying content and evaluate why McCloskey might have made these decisions based on what was going on in the world in 1941–1942. The students identified the media McCloskey used to create his illustrations (pencil, crayon, and ink) as materials they use at school and acknowledged that with practice they could be as accomplished as he was. Additionally, the dummy pages that feature pieces of typescript adhered to the illustrations with tape provided students with the opportunity to discuss changes in technology and make connections between traditional practices of cutting and pasting paper with today’s computer-based practices of cutting and pasting. With the expansion of the program to include illustrations and manuscript materials from additional McCloskey books, students had the opportunity to compare and contrast not only stages of the creative process and the product of different media but also the author’s work across various settings and sets of characters, as is reflected in CCSS RL 3.9. By integrating observations of McCloskey’s focused sketch studies and choice of subjects, the students made connections about how he drew inspiration from real life—whether it was the ducks he passed every day in the park or his daughters. University libraries and archives staff received the program well. In particular, the members of the staff who assisted with the project appreciated the new viewpoint the students brought to the materials. For example, the students recognized sketching techniques they had been learning in art class and offered insightful ideas about why McCloskey chose to draw or paint something the way he did. The dean of University Libraries and Archives was also pleased with the initiative to collaborate with the local community. He encouraged the special collections staff to continue building relationships with more schools and teachers in the district to increase the visibility and reach of the program. We assessed the success of the project in a number of ways. The first was through an analysis of thank-you cards the students sent regarding their favorite parts of the program. Popular responses included the illustrations/paintings (31 percent), the video (12.5 percent), the games (12 percent), May Massee’s office (10.5 percent), and the Google Lit Trip (9 percent). This firsthand narrative data allowed us to see what aspects of the program stood out to students and what they thought was memorable. The fact that so many students remembered the illustrations reinforced that this was a central aspect of the program that left a positive impact on the students. Likewise, the frequency of mentions about the video, the games, the tour, and the Google Lit Trip that appeared in the thank-you notes reinforced that each station was resonating with different students and that each was an important and effective aspect of the program.

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Another way the student perspective benefited assessment was the evidence of peer recommendations between students. In the subsequent years the program was conducted, we noticed that new students were already primed to see certain artifacts and illustrations because their friends had told them about their experiences with the program. In particular, students were excited to see what their friends called the “secret room,” which is May Massee’s office. The fame that this room has received through its wide-reaching reputation among students as a secret and mysterious aspect of the Make Way for Ducklings program reflects how deeply the students were affected by and motivated to continue discussing the program. We were able to assess the teachers’ perception of the program’s success by the fact that they were very interested in scheduling return visits the following years. To date we have worked with the first school for four years in a row and since 2011 have added three additional schools to our schedule. This past year, teacher involvement has increased through their willingness to encourage students to contribute their reflections on the program to the newly established special collections and archives blog. Not only does this reflect continued support of the program itself, but also it aids the effort to increase student interactivity and overall engagement. LESSONS LEARNED Although the program has been successful thus far, there have been, and still are, opportunities for improvement. We have learned the importance of planning before each instance of the program, as well as debriefing after each program. Each planning session consists of gathering all of the university libraries and archives staff involved with the program and the students who will be working with the visiting classes. Specific requests from the teacher as well as the number of classes and students attending the session are shared; generally, we host two classes of third graders with approximately twenty students in each class. This is a great time to review our notes from the previous debriefing session and discuss any changes that need to be made and allows us to continually refresh the program. Ideas generated have ranged from making duck-shaped name tags for each student to utilizing different building spaces for the presentations to “renting” live ducklings for the students to interact with; this latter suggestion has yet to be incorporated. We also assess the available personnel, assign stations, and develop a time frame for the session. This is especially important when we have student assistants who are helping with the program for the first time as they are able to ask questions and “practice” their assigned activities prior to working with the grade school students. In future iterations of

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the program, we anticipate making only small changes or tweaks for each group to personalize it to their needs. Debriefing allows us to recognize what went well, identify any unexpected challenges, and share insights learned from working with the students. At one of the stations in our current program, the students currently participate in a trivia game, alphabetize the ducklings by name, and do a matching activity with the foreign language book titles. Since some groups quickly complete the games and activities, we have discussed developing an additional activity as a backup plan. We have also discovered that third graders love foreign languages! When a Japanese special collections student assistant led the foreign language activity, the students were fascinated to hear the student assistant’s memories of reading Make Way for Ducklings as a child in Japan and enjoyed listening to her read the title of the book in her native tongue. This would have been a great opportunity for her to read the book to the students in Japanese. Another class revealed that their school was studying Germany over the course of the school year, and they were especially interested in the German edition of Make Way for Ducklings. We would love to further develop the foreign language portion of the program, working with ESU’s Office of International Education and our international student population. Additionally, although we have been receiving informal feedback from teachers and students via thank-you letters and blog contributions, moving forward we are interested in developing a more formal assessment. One idea would be to create a packet for the classes to use prior to coming to University Libraries and Archives and then provide assessment materials following their experience with the program. This may require working with the University Libraries and Archives director of assessment to develop and implement an assessment tool. Assessment is not an area we have focused on in the past; however, we recognize that developing and implementing assessment tools will serve to strengthen the program and help us better meet the needs of the participating classes. While it is exciting to consider the many ways we want and need to further assess this program, it is also a little daunting. There are some things that are not easily quantifiable and therefore difficult for us to formally assess. For instance, how can the impact of this program be tracked as these students continue their educational paths? We have the great example of a third-grade teacher whose interaction with the May Massee Collection in 1979 helped inspire the formation of the current program in 2010. How to document and assess that success is a topic we will address as we develop an effective assessment system for this program. We have realized the importance of successfully identifying a champion at each school to help advocate for the value of the program and coordinate details, but we acknowledge that we need to continue devel-

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oping these relationships. The teacher who initiated this program retired in 2014, and we hope that Make Way for Ducklings will continue to be a part of the third-grade curriculum at her former school. We will need to initiate contact with the new third-grade teacher during the fall 2014 semester and follow up with other teachers from that school who have used the program with their classes. We have also realized the importance of tailoring the program to grade level after working with a blended group of kindergarten and firstgrade students. As noted, in fall 2013, more than seventy students, plus their teachers and some parents, made a special trip to ESU as part of a STREAM grant day. To accommodate this large group and the younger ages of the participants, the Make Way for Ducklings program was modified. More staff and students were utilized so that groups of five to six students could have interactive discussions regarding the artwork, and we located a larger space in the building so we could spread out while still keeping each class in the same area. The program was successful, but it was easy to see the differences between kindergarten and first graders and the third graders with whom we regularly share Make Way for Ducklings. If we have the opportunity to work with additional grades in the future, we will need to make further adjustments to the program. CONCLUSION Thus far, the program has been developing consistently each year, allowing us to reach over 250 students and make more connections in our local community and expand our patron base. Although we have successfully reached a number of local schools, there is a lot of potential to expand the program by including more content and adapting it to other grade levels, as well as improve it through formal assessment initiatives. Although the ESU University Libraries and Archives works with the local community on a variety of programs and initiatives, these usually focus on promoting awareness of the library’s circulating collection and services to adults. The Make Way for Ducklings program has broken new ground in that it has drawn on the materials of the less-familiar special collections and archives department to connect with a group of patrons that is not normally targeted: elementary school students. Considering the richness of archives and manuscript collections in general, we believe that special collections and archives have an abundance of materials that can be utilized to create educational programming to reach this group of students not normally included in outreach programs. In our case, the familiarity of the books and characters present in the May Massee Collection fit perfectly with the curriculum for the local third-grade classes, but we believe that the general principles and structure of our program is easily adaptable to other collections. Due to

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the Common Core State Standards’ focus on incorporating primary source materials into classrooms, this is an ideal time to reach out to local schools and build relationships with teachers. It is our desire to instill in this group of students a curiosity about and knowledge of the archival and manuscript resources so that they might seek them out in the future. Keeping in mind the impressive fact that the catalyst for developing this program was the memories resonating with the third-grade teacher who initially reached out to the University Libraries and Archives staff, we hope that, by providing these students with an awareness and ownership of special collections and archives, they will continue to draw on these throughout their academic careers and lifelong learning. Ashley Todd-Diaz is assistant professor, curator of Special Collections and Archives; Terri Summey is professor, head of public services; Shari Scribner is assistant archivist; and Michelle Franklin is archives assistant at Emporia State University Special Collections and Archives. NOTES 1. Kansas College and Career Ready Standards, “English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science and Technical Subjects,” March 8, 2013, http:// community.ksde.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=Eam2SVhPqGE%3d&tabid=5559& mid=13575. 2. “Walnut School Visits to Learn about Make Way for Ducklings,” Special Collections and Archives, November 22, 2013, http://blogs.emporia.edu/faculty/specialcollectionsandarchives/posts/11/22/2013/walnut-school-visits-to-learn-about-make-wayfor-ducklings/.

SEVEN Archivists Teaching Teachers The Archives Education Institute and K–12 Outreach Janet Bunde, Melanie Meyers, Charlotte Priddle, and Andy Steinitz, Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York

Special collections and archives have an image problem. Rather than places that celebrate and preserve memory and culture, open to all, they seem out of reach to many people. Often part of other institutions, such as universities or museums, these repositories are sometimes viewed as treasure houses for old books and artifacts that only a select and educated few may enter or dusty basements full of old papers that few people want to enter. Still other people may not know that special collections and archives exist at all, let alone what might be found inside them. While many involved in the profession have for years tried to combat these stereotypes, we need to do more to reach out to communities and users who would otherwise never consider setting foot into such a place and show them that visiting archives can be easy—and even fun. An outreach effort designed to help introduce archival materials to potential new users while they’re young has been organized for the past four years by the Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York, Inc. (A.R.T.), a professional organization for archivists in the New York City metropolitan area with over 650 members. As part of New York Archives Week, held every October, A.R.T. sponsors the Archives Education Institute (AEI). The goal for the institute is to introduce primary sources to K–12 teachers as a viable and practical resource for classroom instruction and out-of-class assignments. 87

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Rather than providing ready-made curriculum exercises for educators, the AEI brings together archivists and other special collections professionals with K–12 educators for a full day of events aimed at encouraging the use of primary source materials in the classroom and helping archivists identify ways to connect these materials with Common Core requirements. Focusing on a different broad theme each year, participants learn about collections and documents available in local repositories and use these resources to create classroom activities based on these documents. Since its debut in 2010, the event has built relationships between special collections professionals and educators from across the five boroughs of New York City and beyond. This case study will provide basic information about the development and evolution of the AEI over the past four years and present the experiences of two of the special collections representatives who participated as presenters in 2013. DEVELOPING THE INSTITUTE Although the first institute was held in 2010, planning for the program began years earlier, stemming from efforts by A.R.T. to create a new event that would introduce archives to different audiences. For nearly two decades, outreach efforts had focused on reaching people interested in family history; a Family History Fair, coordinated by member Steven Siegel, had become a staple of New York Archives Week. A planning committee charged with coming up with a new event, made up primarily of volunteers from A.R.T’s Outreach Committee, decided to host an event focused on educators. With guidance from Brenda Parnes, formerly with the New York State Archives, and Doris Malkmus of Pennsylvania State University, the planning committee developed an outline for a free, daylong event that would allow archivists to present facsimiles of archival materials from their collections to K–12 teachers, who would in turn provide insight into how they could use the material in the classroom. During the early planning stages, the committee wrestled with basic questions: Who were we trying to reach—educators or their students? What did we want them to learn about how archives are organized and how to interpret different kinds of historic documents? What subsequent actions should the event encourage its participants to take? What resources could and should A.R.T provide, either through its website or via other means? What did A.R.T. hope its members would learn from participating educators? Many A.R.T. members already worked successfully with college-level students and instructors, so expanding our outreach to younger students and K–12 teachers seemed a natural extension of their work. Given that the abilities and needs of students in primary and secondary schools are very different from college-age students, we hoped the new event would help our members better understand how to select

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and explain documents for younger students. In planning the initial institute, we reached out to local and personal contacts to help us reach educators and provide an experienced perspective on using archival resources in the K–12 classroom. The National Archives at New York City (NARA-NYC) agreed to host and publicize the event. NARA-NYC’s robust educational programs and dynamic educational staff helped us solicit educator participants for the event. Brenda introduced us to Julie Daniels, one of her former colleagues at the New York State Archives, who along with Kristi Fragnoli of the College of St. Rose, agreed to give a presentation on how to locate and use primary sources in the classroom. With a location secured, and with experienced educators ready to help us with the event, we turned toward preparing a detailed schedule of the day’s activities. This schedule has remained relatively unchanged throughout subsequent iterations of the institute. The workshop is a fullday event divided into two sections. The morning includes an overview by A.R.T. members on what archives are and where they may be found. This goal of this presentation is to establish a basic understanding of archives among all participants. At the first institute, Julie Daniels’s and Kristi Fragnoli’s presentation followed, showcasing the rich educational resources of the New York State Archives, accessible through their website. In later years, the morning session evolved into a panel discussion, often moderated by Christopher Zarr of NARA-NYC, followed by a question-and-answer period that focuses on how to find and use archival materials. A break for lunch follows. As lunch is provided, attendees stay on-site and activities continue through the break. In the institute’s first year, an educator showed a video of her students enacting an historical debate in her classroom aided by the use of historical documents. During this and subsequent institutes, we offered a tour of the NARA-NYC processing area and stacks which allowed all participants a behind-the-scenes look at a large repository. The morning discussions set up a framework for the afternoon session, which started with selected archivists presenting documents from their collections that relate to the institute’s theme. The number of presenting archivists has varied from year to year. Because we try to allow all presenters equal time, we’ve found that more than five presenters strains the format. We tried five-minute sprints one year, but a presenter usually takes at least fifteen minutes to comfortably cover his or her presentation and allow for questions. These documents were initially presented as packets of photocopies that participants could take with them; in later years, digital copies of the documents were submitted to the Outreach Committee in advance and projected on a screen to all participants. At the first institute, as the archivists presented their documents, they discussed with participants how they might be incorporated into class-

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room exercises or instruction. These presentations were then followed by one-on-one conversations as educators talked with the archivists whose documents they found interesting. At subsequent institutes, these discussions evolved into guided small-group exercises focused on concrete outcomes. Beginning with the second institute, the Outreach Committee preassigned participants to small groups for discussion. Each group discusses a selection of the material presented and brainstorms curriculum exercises. We try to form the groups so that educators who teach to the same age level are together, which usually ends up with groups for grades 1–3, 4–6, 7–8, and 9–12. Each group of teachers is matched with at least one of the archivist presenters based on the relevancy of their material. For instance, an archivist with text-heavy resources will work with high school or upper-middle school students, while photographs work well for younger students. In each group is also an Outreach Committee member who serves as conversation facilitator and note taker. There never seems to be enough time for this part of the day, and it is important for the facilitator to keep conversations on topic and productive. Discussion centers on how the material at hand could be used within the classroom setting. Participants create lesson plans or model classroom activities using the documents presented; these lesson plans and activities currently focus on how to use the materials in conjunction with the guidelines established by Common Core. Most of the time remaining in the day is left to this activity. The event culminates in a wrap-up discussion moderated by NARANYC staff. Certificates are distributed to all participants; educators and certified archivists may use these certificates toward continuing education credit. After the workshop concludes, A.R.T. compiles each group’s work into a curriculum guide with reproductions of the examples and commentary on how to integrate the documents into a classroom setting for different age groups. ANNUAL PLANNING FOR THE EVENT The theme for the AEI changes each year and is selected by A.R.T.’s Outreach Committee about six months in advance. To appeal to the widest possible audience of teachers, themes need to focus on broad subjects, which touch on a variety of disciplines and are not too narrow in timeframe, as that could limit the field of interested educators, particularly those who teach social studies (who often focus only on specific eras). Themes must also be flexible enough so that they can be intellectually accessible to the full spectrum of K–12 students. While we have not yet taken this approach, we have considered selecting themes that appeal to particular granting organizations, anniversaries of significant events, themes that complement content available in local collections, and

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themes coordinated with those chosen by National History Day. Since 2010, our themes have been social, civil, and human rights; immigration; transportation; and food and foodways. The 2014 institute theme will be performance and the arts. Two other important matters that we address in the early planning phase (six to twelve months prior to the event) are funding and location. For the past four years, the AEI has benefitted from the support of the UFT-ATSS (United Federation of Teachers/Association of Teachers of Social Studies) and funding from MetLife. This has allowed us to provide a breakfast with coffee and a boxed lunch, both of which serve as incentives to attend. Our partnership with UFT-ATSS began with the initial institute; Brenda Parnes, one of the members of the initial planning committee, put us in touch with this organization. Members of the Outreach Committee have gone to UFT-ATSS board meetings to give presentations on the AEI; these presentations, as well as the participation of UFT-ATSS leaders at most of the institutes, has helped establish a strong, ongoing relationship between the two organizations. MetLife has provided funding for events associated with New York Archives Week for the past twenty-five years; a portion of this funding has been allocated for the institute for each year of its existence. In choosing a location, we decided that lower or midtown Manhattan is an optimal location for the event, central to a majority of potential attendees and with a variety of transportation options. The meeting space needs to support a capacity of forty to fifty people, to accommodate the participants, speakers, and committee volunteers in one room. We also require a computer and digital projector for presentations, movable furnishings to facilitate the small group discussions during the afternoon session, and a place in which food may be consumed. Since the institute is a no-cost, day-long workshop held on a Saturday, the location also needs to provide support staff on weekends for free. Many places with standard business hours either cannot support this or would charge for the service. A.R.T. was fortunate to partner with NARA-NYC for the first three years of the institute. NARA-NYC provided a site for the institute that was both centrally located in downtown Manhattan and at no cost. This partnership also had unforeseen benefits. NARA-NYC has an educational staff, whose connections to educators across the city and beyond allowed us to receive constructive feedback while developing our agenda as well as advertise the event effectively to educators. The archive’s staff was also familiar with providing tours of their facilities, an optional activity that they extended to our institute’s participants during the lunch break. For most participating teachers, this was the first time that they were able to step into a functioning archive. After the theme is selected and about two months before the institute occurs, the committee initiates an application process for archivists and teachers. In general, we have found it better to contact teachers before the

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school year starts. Applicants for the institute are required to fill out an online form 1 articulating why they wish to attend, what they hope to get out of their participation, and their relative levels of experience with instruction and with archival materials. Archivists are also asked whether they can bring facsimiles of archival materials from their collections relating to the theme. We ask that they upload a sample with the application, but it is not required. During this time we also line up speakers for the morning panel. We start by contacting members of A.R.T., though we have also asked institute applicants regardless of affiliation when we believed they could provide an interesting perspective. Each year we aim to have about thirty to forty attendees. When selecting participants, we strive for a ratio of approximately five teachers for each archivist. We also seek a well-proportioned distribution of teachers across the different age groups. The types of teachers who apply (the grades and disciplines they teach) have a far greater effect on the selection of archivists and materials than the other way around. The UFTATSS has been critical in helping us reach out to teachers. Our contacts at NARA-NYC have also been instrumental in helping us advertise the event. We’ve found it valuable to include a few students (both archivists and teachers), as they tend to have different perspectives from their established professional counterparts. We have gotten attendees, including students, by sending an announcement to colleges with teachers programs, such as Teachers College at Columbia University. We generally rely on our established A.R.T. communication channels, such as our membership email blasts, our website, and our social media accounts, to contact archivists. We select archivist attendees based on the quality of material that they can provide, as they are generally expected to present primary source documents from their repositories in the afternoon session. While we will consider selecting an archivist who cannot or does not want to present materials from his or her repository, the likelihood of allowing that person to attend is much smaller due to the larger pool of archivist applicants to seats available. We now also require all presenters to submit copies of their material to the committee in advance of the workshop. To help select the most appropriate materials, a committee member is made available to help them select material from their collection. This helps us vet quality and also ensures that we have material appropriate for the age groups that the attending teachers instruct. Archivist participants submit digital copies of their selections, and we also make sure that printed copies are available for the small group discussions in the afternoon.

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SPEAKERS’ PERSPECTIVES This section provides the perspectives of two of the presenters at the 2013 AEI, which focused on the theme of food and foodways. These archivists will describe the materials they selected to share, their experiences in the small groups of teachers, and what they learned from the experience. Charlotte Priddle The Fales Library and Special Collections at New York University houses the Marion Nestle Food Studies Collection, one of the premier collections of food-related materials in the United States. Given this, it made perfect sense to participate in the 2013 AEI program, not only due to synchronicity of subject matter but also because we have an interest in getting primary materials into the classroom as early as possible so as to give students an understanding of the importance of documentary evidence early in their studies. In selecting the materials I would share as a presenter, I knew I would need to show images on-screen of the chosen items and also produce handouts for the educators to use in afternoon curriculum planning sessions. It was therefore important that the materials chosen met the following criteria: they were directly relevant to the topic of focus, they could be used in multiple ways by different age groups, they were immediately engaging or interesting, they were old enough to be out of copyright but not so old or fragile that they could not be reproduced, and that they would be at least somewhat recognizable to modern children in format or subject. Taking these criteria into account, I selected five items that I had used before and knew well: an American manuscript cookbook from the 1840s; an 1871 cookbook with associated clippings, handwritten recipes, and pressed flowers; a cookbook and housekeeper’s guide from 1744; a small advertising pamphlet from 1916 produced by Jell-O; and a children’s coloring book from the 1920s produced by Planter’s Peanuts. My presentation consisted of five or six slides of each item. While displaying these, I described the object itself, what the images represented (title page, interior recipes, newspaper clippings, etc.), and gave a short explanation of how I had utilized them in the past in the teaching that I am involved in. Given my institutional affiliation, most of the instruction I am involved in focuses on undergraduate and graduate students, but the power of primary sources to engage people with the subject at hand works across age groups. The items used in the presentation were chosen for this reason, and their diverse formats and content illustrated how primary sources can be used to signal a range of ongoing social, cultural, economic, and technological contexts from their era of production.

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Following the presentations, I was placed in a group with three high school teachers and an A.R.T. facilitator. The morning presentations had raised questions that could be answered during the opening part of the afternoon sessions. These questions included general queries about how materials had ended up in special collections, what areas and time periods the library collected in, and how access worked for people not affiliated with the institution. These general conversations broke down any barriers that could potentially have existed and gave the opportunity to emphasize how interested special collections and archives are in outreach to different communities. After some discussion, the educators decided that the most useful resource for their students would be the 1916 Jell-O pamphlet. This pamphlet, only twenty-four pages in total including front and rear covers, was intriguing because of the ways in which it could be utilized to talk about a range of issues including pre–World War I America and the women’s suffrage movement, among others. The educators explained that it was important to have something that could tie in with other aspects of the curriculum so that conversations about the item could connect to other lessons or sources that had been discussed in the classroom previously. This part of the session was most useful as it gave me a broader understanding of the context in which the teachers would use the pamphlet and some of the other historical events that students would have covered, and therefore allowed me to participate more fully in the ensuing conversations. Learning about the topics studied by high school students and their familiarity—or lack thereof—with primary resources was helpful to my own teaching, as instruction in special collections is rising each year, particularly among undergraduates. The pamphlet, which has a picture of a young woman in her wedding dress on the cover, traces the various uses this “bride” can put Jell-O to during the early stages of her married life, as she now has “a man to feed and keep happy.” The pamphlet allowed educators the space to discuss questions such as what was being communicated about women’s roles in the family, how a family operated, and what this indicated about society as a whole. The strong visual elements gave them the opportunity to have students seriously engage with the object to work out when it was produced—for example, by looking for evidence of its production through dress and topical references in the text—and also to think about what it said about the evolving American identity. Discussions therefore covered not only the specific civic and historical topics but also raised questions about how these historical materials relate to modern life and the foods and lifestyle choices available to many of us now. Some of the most interesting discussions among the group were about the possible uses of this item to discuss the women’s suffrage movement. We discussed the possibility of having half the students study the pamphlet and engage with the world it represented and the other half

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read letters to newspapers from suffragettes. As a librarian, I was able to suggest how to access primary sources, such as historic newspapers, that would give students the chance to read contemporary accounts from people who did not share the worldview portrayed in the pamphlet. One of the educators talked about having students engage in a live debate between the “Jell-O woman” and a suffragette, with each trying to persuade the other about the legitimacy of her point of view. These concepts all support the College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Writing, which are an integral part of the NYS Common Core Curriculum and emphasize the need for students to be able to “gather relevant information from multiple print and digital resources, assess the credibility and accuracy of each source,” and “draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection and research.” 2 It was eyeopening to me that this one pamphlet about the myriad uses of Jell-O allowed all of these ideas to be discussed and grappled with. In a small group, it was easy to get discussion going, and participation was equal among members. The materials themselves and my familiarity with them gave me the opportunity to engage with the educators from the outset and to therefore participate more fully in the ongoing discussion and lesson planning. The A.R.T. facilitator kept notes on the discussion and the points being raised, kept us on track when we got sidetracked or when the conversation became too tangential, and at intervals would read back to the group summaries of the discussions for feedback and confirmation, which was helpful in bringing all participants together and leading conversation forward. Melanie Meyers While the Center for Jewish History (CJH) does not have a particular focus on food studies, we do have a substantial number of cookbooks from our five collections that represent the varying cultural traditions and significance of food and cooking throughout the modern Jewish diaspora. Cookbooks and materials about food have been prominently featured in our public programming and digital collections, so being able to do outreach with these materials was enthusiastically supported by CJH. Additionally, we have been trying to connect with different user groups; like many special collections, professional scholars are our most common users, but we have been actively working on how to broaden our public programming offerings in new directions and expand our appeal. So, being able to participate in such a workshop allowed us to gain valuable insight into how we can engage with new constituencies and how our materials can be repurposed in ways that would be educational to these potential user groups. For my five items, I tried to choose materials that explored, but were not strictly limited to, Jewish history; I wanted to make sure my choices

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were not too narrowly focused to be effectively used for classroom exercises. Instead, I tried to focus more on the general concepts of immigration and American culture, consumer culture, and construction of gender. For the first four, I chose items that explored these themes in more detail: a cookbook created by Proctor and Gamble in the late 1920s, Crisco Recipes for the Jewish Housewife; a photograph featuring a selection of books from our regional cookbook collection, which pictured books with titles such as Shalom on the Range and A Russian Jew Cooks in Peru; an article from a home economics journal written in 1919, addressing the issue of “Jewish Dietary Problems”; and an ephemeral item, a school project created by a Palestinian child, circa 1930, which was a miniature cookbook in the shape of a grape cluster, lovingly colored and painstakingly lettered in Hebrew. My last item was a copy of The Settlement Cookbook, a cookbook that was first published in 1901 and is still in print today, in its 34th edition. Settlement was compiled by a German Jewish immigrant, Lizzie Black Kander, as a fund-raising vehicle for a local charitable organization referred to as a “settlement house”; settlement houses were social work organizations that helped new immigrants assimilate into American life. In the settlement environment, young women were taught household skills such as cooking and sewing, but the overall thrust was to help new immigrants assimilate and to learn to cook with American products and foods as part of the acculturation process. So, there are many ways to approach this book, as a discussion of women in philanthropic and charitable organizations or to discuss the nuances of immigration and assimilation. But what is also fascinating about the book is that it can be an excellent catalyst for a discussion of gender; the book is titled The Settlement Cookbook: The Way to a Man’s Heart, and the cover art features angelic looking women in aprons and toques, holding copies of the cookbook, while marching into a giant heart. Interestingly, the subtitle was dropped at some point in the 1960s or 1970s, presumably due to advances in gender equality. I was placed with the middle school group (teachers in grades 7–8), and the item that was chosen for discussion was The Settlement Cookbook. The participants seemed to feel this item would resonate the most with middle school students, would be a good component in a lesson about women’s history, and there was also opportunity to discuss culture and immigration as well. The book cover, in particular, was an excellent discussion starter; one of the first things mentioned was how the image on the cover of this item was very different from the cookbooks that students would be familiar with. The students would be more used to seeing cookbooks or magazines that feature a professional chef (of either sex) rather than a professional housewife, so the initial conversation would start out comparing and contrasting the cover of Settlement with more current books on cookery. Additionally, the teachers felt that a short

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discussion of what a settlement house actually was would be helpful and how institutions and social work organizations not only provided help to new immigrants but also provided professional opportunities for women. This would be compliant with the Common Core standard that relates to “comprehension and collaboration,” which emphasizes “participating in conversations with diverse partners, building on others’ ideas, and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.” This also relates to the standard for integration of knowledge and ideas, which asks that students integrate visual information, rather than just textual, with other information in analyzing primary and secondary sources, as well as the overall Common Core goal of gathering and using evidence from a variety of sources. 3 The next step outlined by the participants would be for the students to look at some of the older recipes in the book (which are clearly German and Jewish in origin) and discuss the role of food and cooking in their own cultures and how they differ or are similar. Eventually, the exercise would culminate in the students creating their own short cookbook, featuring recipes from their own cultural or ethnic backgrounds, commentary on the significance of food and cooking, and integrating graphical information as appropriate. The final aspect would entail sharing these books with each other, possibly as part of a classroom celebration where students could also bring in food items for other classmates to sample and discuss, time and circumstances permitting. This part of the exercise would fulfill various goals in the writing standards for social studies, such as writing informative and explanatory texts, organizing and presenting information, and distributing the final product. What was also very fulfilling about these exercises was the interaction with the teachers that continued after the institute was finished, as the participants had reviewed their materials and had the opportunity to reflect on the exercises in more depth. I was asked by many participants for my contact information, which I gladly gave, and was contacted by some of them after the fact to thank me and ask additional questions. One of the frustrations voiced was that the teachers wanted to expose their students to primary source materials, but that planning field trips to engage with materials in person was frequently difficult, especially with middle school students as their days are more rigidly scheduled than younger children. In one particularly gratifying exchange, a teacher asked me the question: if they couldn’t come to me, could I come to them and talk about primary sources in their classroom? I was delighted to be asked, but I must confess I had never even thought about it before this interaction. When I brought this up to the CJH administration, they were extremely supportive, which is encouraging in terms of expanding our own educational outreach initiatives and reaching out to new audiences.

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RESULTS We believe the AEI program has succeeded in connecting members of the educator and archivist communities in the New York metropolitan area. Over seventy educators and over fifty area archivists, librarians, or museum professionals have been selected to participate in the institute over the past five years. Eighteen different repositories have shared their materials, and several participants have returned to attend multiple institutes. One educator even returned as a presenter in a subsequent year. The program has also broadened the audience for A.R.T. programming. One participant in the first institute has served as a panelist at subsequent events and plans to participate in other Outreach Committee programming. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the program has also forged relationships between archivists and local teachers and also broadened the audience for A.R.T. programming. One participant in the first institute has served as a panelist at subsequent events and even plans to participate in other Outreach Committee programming. Another one of our multiyear participants, Pamela Cruz of the Girl Scouts National Historic Preservation Center, has said that her institution has conceived of educational outreach differently and created educator packets based on primary sources in their archives because of her and her colleagues’ participation in the AEI. The institute’s success may also have benefited from the adoption by New York State in 2011 of the Common Core standards; 4 these new standards, with their focus on critical analysis and an increased emphasis on nonfictional material, may have given our event a new significance and may have made educators more receptive to the materials we had to share. In subsequent years, the development and adoption of Common Core standards also encouraged us to address this audience. In early years, we distributed paper questionnaires the day of the institute and asked participants to return them before leaving; in later years, we distributed an online questionnaire, which participants could fill out at their convenience. Feedback in both cases was not comprehensive, and most of the data collected was anecdotal, rather than quantitative. Therefore, it was nearly impossible to accurately assess results from year to year as the results were so inconsistent. While we plan to work harder to ensure that feedback is asked for and returned to us in a timely fashion, we also feel that the lesson learned is that assessment should be part of the planning process, rather than just an afterthought. Additionally, the assessment tool should be designed in a way that allows us to elicit targeted feedback in order to improve specific aspects of the program; for example, assessing whether the participants found the panels or the small group sessions more valuable. While comments such as “I thought that day was informative” or “I enjoyed all aspects of the program” are

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interesting and encouraging, they offer very little in terms of substantive value. The mechanism for collecting feedback should be consistent, in order to improve our assessment process and also to improve the institute as a whole. Going forward, we hope to redesign the questionnaire and distribute the same questionnaire over subsequent years, in order to capture better and more consistent data that will allow us to measure more effectively how successful we have been in reaching and aiding our intended audience. LESSONS LEARNED The format of the institute has changed each year since its first iteration in 2010 based on feedback from participants. Much of this feedback has been gleaned from informal conversations at the close of each institute, although some of it was gained from the questionnaires mentioned above. Changes to the format of the institute have also been driven by attendance; by the capacities of an all-volunteer committee to plan, host, and conduct follow-up events; and by a desire to form a local community of archivists, librarians, museum professionals, and educators passionate about incorporating primary sources into the K–12 classroom. In the first year, A.R.T. sponsored a follow-up event held a month after the institute, but the event was poorly attended (perhaps due to its January date), and it was not repeated in subsequent years. The morning speakers featured during the first institute received positive feedback from attendees, but the committee decided that inviting speakers from Albany was not a feasible solution for subsequent events, and panels that include local educators and museum, archives, and library professionals were assembled for subsequent institutes. During the second institute, we hired a participant to write the curriculum guide following the event. The length of the submitted document was unwieldy, as the author had elected to include activities at every grade level for every document presented. Administering the work of a paid employee also proved difficult for a committee comprised of volunteers. Over the next two institutes, we moved to streamline the process of compiling the curriculum guide. In our current model, curriculum activities are drafted during the small-group discussions in the afternoon of the institute, rather than being compiled by one individual after the event. Committee volunteers work to compile the results from each of the groups into a curriculum guide that is circulated to participants following the event. We plan after the 2014 institute to formulate a template, using A.R.T.’s new logo and branding, so that information can easily be plugged into the guide by all volunteers, rather than having a few people reformat everyone’s work.

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Perhaps the biggest change in the institute’s schedule, however, is in the afternoon session. The first institute incorporated a “speed-dating” format for the afternoon session; rather than presentations by archivists and educators to all participants, archivists sat at tables while teachers circulated through the room, stopping to talk with archivists whose materials they found appealing. Feedback gathered from the initial round of questionnaires let us know that all participants—archivists and educators alike—wanted to know more about what documents had been brought to share, so later iterations of the institute asked archivists to present their materials formally to everyone rather than waiting for educators to come to them. This change allowed archivists to provide context for the materials they had brought and initiated useful dialogue among the entire group about how such materials could be used. A design quirk in the online application for the second institute allowed educators as well as archivists to indicate that they planned to present archival materials at the institute. While the Outreach Committee was initially unsure what types of archival materials educators could or might present, we found that most educators who selected this option brought on-topic documents, most easily located online, that they had used in their classrooms. These educators were able to give valuable information about how students approached and learned from these documents. Because many educators had selected documents that comprise part of NARA’s collections, a further connection was bridged between the educators and the archivists in attendance. This error-turned-feature proved so successful that we have kept it as an option in following years. In the past two years, two educators have presented primary sources that have revealed and solidified connections between the information seeking practices of educators and the resources that archivists, librarians, and museum professionals make available. In 2013, one educator (who has attended multiple institutes) wrote her own on-topic curriculum guide based on primary sources she had found online. Presenting this document allowed her to receive valuable feedback from other participants (both educators and archives professionals). Her guide was also distributed to all participants, providing another valuable takeaway from the event. In 2014, another educator attendee shared primary sources that she has used in her middle school classroom to highlight how two simultaneous sociopolitical movements that are often taught separately could be viewed simultaneously. These primary sources dealt with speeches and writings of a historical figure. After her presentation, one of the presenting archivists shared that the papers of that historical figure were held by her institution. This opened the door for potential future collaboration between an educator and an archivist who could expand an existing lesson based on the collections available at a local institution. We are still struggling to find the best way to share the curriculum guides. Some curriculum guide materials have been distributed via email

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to participants; we have also shared some resources via our website. In addition to distributing them via email to participants, we have shared some resources via our website. However, the page for the AEI (http:// www.nycarchivists.org/aei) is buried within the “Events” tab on the main site, and we have not analyzed our web traffic to ascertain who is visiting the page or using the resources provided there. Opinions vary on whether tidy packets for a target audience are better than general guidelines and unmediated access to resources. Copyright is also an obstacle affecting our ability to select material as it can inhibit our ability to distribute primary sources online or to give high-resolution scans directly to participants (or, practically speaking, to choose a topic, given the nature of copyright for some mediums such as recorded audio). One solution would be to invoke fair use, having teachers confirm that they will only use the material within the context of a classroom. This could be achieved by using a contact form that the teacher completes before making the material available, rather than offering a public link. CONCLUSION Overall, the program has been an effective venue for reaching out to a population that has been traditionally underserved by archives and special collections. As many special collections and archives are housed within academic institutions, they enjoy an in-house audience of undergraduate and graduate students; reaching out to the K–12 group requires a concerted outreach effort, which is also why the collaboration with UFT-ATSS was a great help to the project. With a relatively modest budget, the program has been very successful and has enjoyed excellent attendance since the inception, demonstrating that K–12 teachers are seeking to engage their students with primary source materials, starting at a relatively young age. It has also been of great value to the archivists and librarians who presented and facilitated the discussion groups, as it provided insight to a constituency that is not the typical user base for special collections. As technology becomes integrated into learning at an earlier and earlier age, even elementary school pupils need to be able to assess where documents, sources, and information comes from. The opportunity to work with teachers directly to give them access to potential materials that could be utilized to help with various aspects of the Common Core curriculum through programs such as this represent a positive way for archivists and librarians to use their expertise and knowledge to reach an educational community that may believe that access to special collections—particularly within universities—are out of reach to ordinary people.

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Janet Bunde is assistant university archivist and archivist of the John Brademas Congressional Papers, New York University; Melanie Meyers is senior reference services librarian, special collections, the Center for Jewish History; Charlotte Priddle is librarian for printed books, Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University; Andy Steinitz is outreach analyst at JSTOR. NOTES 1. We have used Wufoo for our online registration form; at first we used the free option, which has limited features, but now we have upgraded to the cheapest feebased option, which gives us access to enough questions and fields to gather the information we need. 2. “College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Writing, Grades 6–12,” in New York State P–12 Common Core Learning Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy, accessed September 25, 2014, https://www.engageny.org/resource/new-yorkstate-p-12-common-core-learning-standards-for-english-language-arts-and-literacy. 3. “New York State K–12 Social Studies Framework,” New York State Department of Education, December 17, 2013, https://www.engageny.org/resource/new-yorkstate-k-12-social-studies-framework. 4. “Common Core Learning Standards: Frequently Asked Questions,” New York State Department of Education, last updated April 8, 2014, http://www.p12.nysed.gov/ ciai/common_core_standards/faq.html.

EIGHT Animating Archives Embedding Archival Materials (and Archivists) into Digital History Projects Lisa M. Sjoberg and Joy K. Lintelman, Concordia College

Concordia College, a small liberal arts institution located in Moorhead, Minnesota, believes in innovative, experiential teaching and learning opportunities. These methods include using emerging digital technologies in the classroom and implementing digital humanities (DH) practices into our scholarship and teaching. Broadly defined, DH is a “set of conceptual and practical approaches to digital engagement with cultural materials.” 1 This engagement can take many forms. Brett Bobley, director of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Office of Digital Humanities, suggests the following can be classified as DH: “open access to materials, intellectual property rights, tool development, digital libraries, data mining, born-digital preservation, multimedia publication, visualization, GIS, digital reconstruction, study of the impact of technology on numerous fields, technology for teaching and learning, sustainability models, and many others.” 2 According to Lisa Spiro in a 2013 presentation to the American Philosophical Association, there are five reasons to pursue DH projects and scholarship: “(1) enabling information analysis through managing, mashing, mining, mapping and modeling data; (2) transforming scholarly communication in terms of research and publication; (3) providing greater access to cultural information; (4) enhancing teaching and learning; and (5) making a public impact.” 3 We have long been interested in digital 103

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projects for these reasons. Joy Lintelman is passionate about having her undergraduate students doing history, not just memorizing facts or consuming secondary narratives. To accomplish this goal, she has developed digital history projects for many of her courses. Lisa Sjoberg regularly curates digital materials and is keenly interested in providing enhanced access to archival materials, particularly for teaching and learning. Based on these areas of interest, our goal has been to utilize DH as a means to bring together faculty with future professional and citizen scholars in order to increase access to information, invigorate our classrooms with new models of learning, and create publicly accessible content. Our DH work originated in 2010 when both of us were interested in learning Omeka, a content management system for digital collections. That same year, we collaborated to create a digital history project for Joy’s United States history survey course. This initial collaboration resulted in Omeka exhibits about Concordia-related topics. Over the past four years, we have continued to develop digital projects that utilize the collections in the college archives. Our most recent project was conducting a History Harvest with Concordia alumni during the college’s annual homecoming festivities. This History Harvest project will be the focus of this case study. PLANNING In the recent monograph Digital Humanities, the authors discuss the notion of animated archives, characterized by “participatory models of content production, research, and curatorship bringing together professional and citizen scholars in team-based projects that interpret the cultural patrimony as a public good.” 4 Our goal in designing these DH assignments has been to create collaborative projects that fuse theory with this practice of animating archives. In so doing, students authentically experience scholarship and the production of knowledge, particularly because their work is disseminated to the public. In order to meet these goals, we worked closely together to frame assignment descriptions, timelines, and assessment measures for individual assignment components. We believe in a scaffolded approach for DH projects to break the larger assignment into manageable pieces for the students. Further, we feel that students should focus their efforts on analyzing and synthesizing primary sources, not on getting bogged down in the technology. We therefore learn the technology as best we can before the course starts and develop guidelines, metadata standards, and other materials to assist students in navigating the software and equipment. In 2013, we were awarded a small technology grant from Concordia for the purposes of integrating DH concepts and practices into a course. This grant funded the investigation of technologies and planning of

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course assignments from May to August 2013. Until this point, the DH projects we developed had focused on students digitizing, interpreting, and sharing primary sources already present in the college archives’ collections. Instead of this approach, we wanted to create a project that would allow students a real-life opportunity to experience the whole process of producing new scholarship from generation of original sources through their collection, organization, presentation, and systematic historical analysis and interpretation. So we elected to model a project after the History Harvest concept, which was initially conceived by Dr. William G. Thomas III, professor in the humanities and chair of history at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. (Dr. Thomas visited Concordia College in February 2013 as a consultant for the history department’s self study, which provided a great opportunity to learn about DH from an experienced scholar.) History Harvests are “community events in which students scan or photograph items of historical interest, brought in by local institutions and residents, for online display.” 5 We designed the Concordia History Harvest so it would afford specific opportunities to the students: (1) gathering primary sources directly from donors, (2) digitizing and describing the materials, and (3) adding them to a digital archive (which we eventually coined the Concordia Memory Project). The Concordia History Harvest was a semester-long project that was integrated into Joy’s History 112 course—United States in Perspective from 1865—which is part of the college’s core curriculum. As such, the course attracts students from a variety of majors from first-year students to seniors. The fall 2013 course had twenty-six students enrolled (eleven first-year students, twelve sophomores, two juniors, and one senior). The students represented a number of majors including education, business, biology, nursing, social work, and history. While we worked together to plan the Concordia History Harvest as well as grade and teach its various components, Joy was the official instructor of record. Joy designed the framework of the class and the other assignments in the course. Lisa served as an embedded archivist teaching class sessions about metadata and Omeka. She also attended a number of classes to work with project groups, listen to presentations, and meet with students. Armed with a framework for the DH project, we began to plan the specific details of the event and the accompanying assignments. A fundamental element of the History Harvest concept is to engage the students at all levels of the event, including much of the planning. That said, we knew we needed a few components (e.g., target audience, dates, and location) established before the course would start in late August 2013. We chose to focus on the community of Concordia alumni because we hoped to gather materials about Concordia College, and we knew that many alumni returned to campus at homecoming. Holding the Concordia History Harvest in conjunction with this institutional event provided a great opportunity to maximize contact with our target audience. We

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chose to have the event in the college’s library—a central location that is easy to find and was open during the hours we planned to be collecting materials. Homecoming takes place each fall in October. Knowing that we would only have approximately one month with the students before the event, we needed to have some structure in place to ensure a successful learning experience. First, we reserved the video and audio equipment we would need for capturing oral histories. Second, we created four groups to which we would assign students the first week of class to continue our preparations. The publicity group was responsible for creating publications (electronic and print), working with the Alumni Relations Office to advertise the event, distributing materials at homecoming registration, and greeting History Harvest participants on the day of the event. Another group was responsible for all aspects of oral histories: learning the technical aspects of the equipment, mastering skills for conducting oral histories, and serving as the interviewers on the day of the event. Members of the scanning/photography group were required to master the technical aspects of the scanning equipment, learn the archival standards for digitization, and scan and photograph materials at the event. Finally, the event logistics team prepared forms and paperwork for donors, worked with the library staff to arrange the spaces for the event, coordinated the receipt and return of video equipment, and served as the data collection team at the History Harvest. Once we established these working groups, we focused our efforts on writing assignment descriptions for the History Harvest project. This detailed handout described History Harvests, provided the rationale for completing an assignment about Concordia College, listed skills that the students would learn, and delineated the timetable, process, and grading criteria for the project components. We knew that students would be uploading the items into the digital archive and completing some sort of analysis and interpretation of them, such as developing an exhibit, after the History Harvest event was over. At this point in the process, however, we had no idea how many items would be donated or what kind of items we would receive. This nebulousness created anxiety and uncertainty for us, but we had no option but to wait and to develop some of the assignments only after we conducted the History Harvest. The final component that we planned before the event was determining a platform for the digital archive. We looked at a number of platforms and products for our summer technology grant and ultimately decided on Omeka.net. Our two other front-runners were Omeka.org and CONTENTdm. The criteria we used to select the system were: cost-effectiveness, metadata capacity, intuitive search interface, capacity for user submissions, and accommodation of multiple user accounts. While we would have preferred an Omeka.org site (the locally installed version of Omeka), our IT department does not currently have the capacity to sup-

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port it. CONTENTdm is excellent for metadata and searchability, and we already have a license; however, the software would not be intuitive for students nor would it easily accommodate multiple user accounts or allow user submissions. The Omeka.net (hosted version of Omeka) was cost effective and did meet our other criteria, so this was the system that we eventually chose. Omeka uses Dublin Core—a simple metadata schema that the students could understand and utilize. An additional benefit of Omeka.net is that it has a plug-in to allow for advanced metadata (Dublin Core Extended). We did not elect to install this plug-in because it added metadata fields that we did not need and would be challenging for the students to understand and implement. Once we selected and purchased our license, we worked together to install plug-ins, develop a couple of simple pages (about us and contact information), and created the collection for the Concordia History Harvest. Our design work allowed the students to simply upload items into a preestablished collection. With the bones of the History Harvest in place, we were prepared to flesh out the project at the start of fall semester 2013. IMPLEMENTATION The History Harvest was interwoven throughout the semester work in Joy’s class. From the first day of the course, students were informed that they would both study and “do” history. They would review the broader narrative of United States history, but would also move beyond that by considering what this history looked like when viewed from the perspective of the people and communities that comprised Concordia College. The History Harvest would allow them to discover, process, and analyze stories of people, places, and things. They would learn how to piece these stories together and then explain and interpret them to others. This work would allow them to practice the historical craft rather than just reading about it. During the first week of classes, students were introduced to the History Harvest concept and were provided the assignment description for the project. After these introductions, students signed up for their project team: publicity, oral history, scanning/photography, or event logistics. From that point, we met with each group during class on a regular basis not only to get updates on their work but also to provide tips and training. For example, Joy provided guidance for the oral history group on podcasts to watch about conducting oral history interviews, and Lisa worked with the scanning/photography group to explain scanning specifications. 6 Each group was responsible for submitting a weekly report on their progress.

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To practice the historical craft, students also completed frequent “Concordia and the Nation” (CNA) short writing assignments. Each week students read chapters in both a standard text 7 and a college history. 8 The CNAs required students to place the history of the college within the broader context of United States history, comparing and contrasting coverage of different historical eras in the college history and the course text. The CNA assignment was presented as a way for students to develop background knowledge for conducting the History Harvest and completing their final online interpretive essays. Joy also emphasized that CNAs revealed how historians describe events and situations in history differently based in part upon the focus and perspective they use to study the past. The class period before the History Harvest, we conducted a rehearsal to make sure our workflows and technology behaved the way we intended. We asked a few alumni who work on campus to come to the rehearsal, so we could trial our strategy. When the alumni arrived for our test, they often brought more than one item (e.g., multiple photographs) or multiple items that were not connected (e.g., a photograph, PowerPoint presentation). The metadata collection form, as originally designed, did not work well for these disparate item types. One change we made immediately was to add checkboxes for various item types to smooth the metadata collection process. The students also practiced conducting oral histories and scanning items, so they could get a true sense of how the process would work. Scanning the materials worked as intended, but we did run into a small challenge with the oral histories. We had used the history department’s Sony digital recorder. While the recorder worked well to capture the oral histories, we had to install special software to get the files off the recorder. After this discovery, we elected to use only Olympus digital recorders that transferred files more seamlessly. The rehearsal taught us a great deal and made the actual event run more smoothly. An additional benefit was that we gathered some items for the Concordia Memory Project that we may not have otherwise collected. When the day of the History Harvest arrived, we had coached each group on their responsibilities and everyone felt fairly well prepared. The publicity group was responsible for greeting donors when they arrived at the library and escorting them to the desk where our data collection team awaited. Each donor was asked to sign a permission form stating that they were donating digital copies of their items and giving us permission to post them online in a digital archive. Students also completed the metadata form that documented the donors’ contact information and brief descriptions of the items they donated. (We used a Google form that was accessible to all of us simultaneously.) Because we were intimately involved in the planning of the Harvest, we were able to step in and assist wherever help was needed. We greeted donors, collected metadata, Joy conducted an oral history, and Lisa scanned materials.

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Once the donor data was collected, students escorted the donors to the appropriate location in the library for scanning/photography and/or oral histories. Donors with photographs, artifacts, and documents were brought to the scanning/photography room where we had two scanners ready (an Epson Expression 11000XL and an Epson Perfection 4490 Photo). We also set up a photography area with drop cloths and lights, so we could capture the best images possible. Donors were also encouraged to complete an oral history interview about their item(s), though not everyone elected to do so (see figure 8.1). Some donors were just interested in providing an oral history, in which case they were escorted to one of three study rooms equipped with video cameras and digital voice recorders. In the end, all of our interviewees did complete their oral histories on video, rather than using the digital voice recorders. We left the oral histories open ended, so donors could talk to us as much or as little as they wished. This approach worked really well. The students who conducted the interviews were all members of the oral history group, and they had created a series of questions about particular elements of student life (e.g., dormitories, student organizations, academics). Thus, they were well prepared to lead interviews about general topics or to ask specific questions about the materials donors brought to the History Harvest. Further, the students in this group worked for longer blocks of time, which allowed us more flexibility in the length of the interviews. After the event was over, students uploaded the items into our Omeka site (http://concordiamemoryproject.omeka.net/) and described each of them. We developed handouts and guidelines that described each Dublin Core field in the metadata set to assist the students with this process. For example, the guidelines provided the format for the date, creator, subject, and format fields as well as described the information to include in the title and description fields. Each student was responsible for uploading and describing two to three items. The metadata process created opportunities for students to learn new technologies and standards and thereby better understand structures of information and information access. For the final assignment of the course, students were asked to write an essay that analyzed one of the items we collected during the Harvest. These essays required students to contextualize and historicize their item and produce digital scholarship. Students whose items were photographs included rephotography as part of their analysis and essay. RESULTS In the end, our History Harvest project resulted in the collection, digitization, analysis, and presentation of nineteen documents, sixteen oral histories, thirty-two images, and twelve objects. What we found really exciting

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Fig. 8.1 A History 112 student conducts an oral history interview with a History Harvest donor.

about this project is that the students completed all four stages with little to no intervention from us. Our role was to guide the students through the process and teach them the needed skills, but they took ownership of producing the collection. The project was very well received on campus and among our alumni. Administrators and staff appreciate the work accomplished gathering primary sources and making them available, and the project will be a feature story in an upcoming campus magazine. Because we have tangible products to demonstrate DH research, faculty members across departments have an increased interest in digital projects and advancing DH in their disciplines. As our work in DH has continued, we have been asked to lead workshops and make presentations, which is a good sign of interest and support among our colleagues. Additionally, the college archives received approximately one dozen physical donations through the History Harvest project with added benefits of increased awareness and advocacy for our repository. The most significant result of the History Harvest project is the success the students achieved. They accomplished their course goals, learned a number of transferrable skills, and enjoyed the project as well. Joy completes a qualitative assessment with her students at the close of the semester. Students are asked to reflect on their work in the course and on the digital history project. The following themes were consistently addressed in these reflections: enhanced research, technological, and analyt-

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ical skills; acquisition of transferable skills; high expectations for quality because the outcomes are public; increased understanding of information structures and systems; and excitement of working directly with items and donors. For example, a student commented, “Doing this History Harvest really broadened my skills on how to analyze and ‘do’ history, other than by just reading a book and learning about it. . . . This history course taught me many things I did not know before like analyzing primary and secondary sources, contributing objects to a digital archive, and to describe historical sources using metadata.” Another student reflected, “Taking History 112 was only to fulfill a core requirement but now this class means more to me than just that. I have gained so much through the course’s objectives.” We are thrilled that students articulated what they learned through the History Harvest project and discussed how valuable and useful these skills will be beyond this course. LESSONS LEARNED On a broad scale, the History Harvest was very successful as evidenced above by the number of items collected as well as the goodwill generated through the project. The main lesson we learned is that nimbleness is required when implementing DH assignments. We have learned that while we would like to have everything planned some aspects have to remain unknown if students are going to contribute to the project. Further, vagueness in some of the course assignments was necessary in order to accommodate the outcomes of the History Harvest. We had no idea what kind of materials or how many items would be collected, so the last segment of the project was not planned until after the event took place. While this ambiguity is challenging, the students felt much more invested in the project, and we were able to tailor the assignments accordingly. Another general takeaway from this project is that we have experienced success in focusing our digital history projects on local subjects and content. We have consistently noticed that centering the assignment on Concordia-related topics has allowed the students to be engaged with the projects at a deeper level because they can directly connect the subject matter to their lives. With this local focus, students are able to situate local history within broader contexts and understand how national and global issues impact their own region. While there were numerous benefits to the History Harvest, we recognize a number of changes that need to be made in future iterations of this project. First, for the pre-event work of planning and preparing the History Harvest, we broke students into groups (publicity, oral history, scanning/photography, and event logistics). The topics of these four groups worked very well in that every group was actively working on a compo-

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nent of the project. What challenged us is that the groups did not have equal workloads at both the planning and implementation phases. For example, the publicity group kept very busy in the weeks leading up to the History Harvest designing posters and bookmarks as well as contacting alumni. During the actual event, however, members of this group were not as actively involved as those in the oral history and scanning/ photography groups. A similar situation happened with the event logistics group who wrapped up their planning very quickly but were very busy during the event itself. Our remedy for this situation is to merge some of the responsibilities and cross-train the students for a more equal distribution of workloads. We encountered another small drawback with the equipment. Though we were able to borrow a digital camera and lights at no cost for our first History Harvest, as we continue to pursue this project, investing in these resources would be wise. Further, we used video equipment and digital recorders from the college’s Digital Media Services (DMS). The staff in DMS needed to use their high-quality equipment for recording campus events (e.g., award ceremonies, concerts, etc.), so we were not able to use the professional-grade equipment. Unfortunately, if we continue to host the History Harvest during Homecoming weekend, we will continue to encounter this problem. Some possible solutions are to purchase our own equipment or to rent equipment from off campus. Another small snafu arose during our oral history interviews when a microphone was not turned on in one of the interview rooms, resulting in three interviews with no audio. Once we discovered this problem, we made sure the students tested the equipment each day to ensure the microphones were working properly and the batteries were fully charged. Beyond the equipment, we encountered some obstacles with technology. We spent the summer of 2013 testing and familiarizing ourselves with Omeka, the software we selected for this project. Despite this experimentation, we still ran into problems when students were working with the software. For example, we ran into complications with uploading items into Omeka because the file sizes were too large, particularly with the oral history videos. We had looked at the software specifications to make sure various file formats could be accommodated but in practice needed to manipulate the size and quality of the file to actually upload the items. Storage space for these large files presented a challenge as well (we decided to digitize the items at very high quality for preservation purposes). We successfully worked with our IT department to establish a network space that could be restricted to the students in the class. Once we were able to get the proper permissions set, the storage worked very well. The students, however, had a hard time remembering how to access it, which was a consistent point of clarification in class sessions and can be remedied with a direct link from the course page in Moodle (the college’s course management software).

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Finally, we feel it is important to be honest about the time intensity of DH projects. We were able to navigate through this challenge because we operated as a team throughout the whole semester. We shared in the planning, implementation, teaching, and evaluation, and doing so made the project more manageable. That said, the History Harvest project did occupy a good portion of our time for nearly nine months. Part of this time-intensity was due to it being our first History Harvest and having to design the project and troubleshoot problems, which hopefully will be lessened in our next implementation. Some might imagine that digital projects require less time to administer than research paper assignments, but we vehemently disagree with that notion. Part of the time-intensive nature, at least when integrating DH projects into courses, is that the quality of the project relies on student work. Students certainly experience added pressure (in a good way) because the results of their work are public. However, student outputs are often uneven in quality, which means faculty must utilize peer review, drafting, and revisions to get the products to a point that they can be shared. Doing so is a significant investment of both class and assessment time. Despite significant challenges, we persevered through the project and the students learned to be adaptable along with us. We were able to truly model an authentic research experience for the students because we did not have all of the answers. This allowed everyone involved to learn that DH assignments require a different approach to teaching and learning. These types of projects require a shifting of authority in the classroom and a degree of risk taking that both students and instructors may find unnerving. Because it is impossible to anticipate glitches and unexpected outcomes, faculty must be comfortable with admitting ignorance of some topics and must be willing to learn alongside students at times. Such coinquiry between faculty and students is not a familiar model for many undergraduates, and faculty and archivists who embark on such projects must be ready both to tolerate criticism and defend the methodology as a high-impact pedagogy. CONCLUSION We are very pleased with our small digital projects but especially with the History Harvest. It was a tremendous amount of work, but in the end, the students had fun, and we all learned a great deal. We are planning a second History Harvest in the fall of 2014, which will again be a course integrated project in the History 112 course, building on the lessons learned in fall 2013. As far as next steps for DH at Concordia College, we continue to study and advance our knowledge in the area. Our efforts include reading recent literature (much of it online) in the field, develop-

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ing grant ideas, creating workshops for colleagues, and focusing our research efforts on how DH connects our disciplines. The History Harvest has been an excellent way for us and our institution to begin engaging with DH. This project has also helped us understand some of the unique challenges of doing DH because we recognized some of the often cited challenges with DH projects. 9 The sustainability of DH projects is a significant concern. Our Omeka.net license is renewable annually; if our funding does not come through to renew the subscription, the Concordia Memory Project will no longer exist in its current form. Further, digital scholarship requires commitment to long-term preservation and the capacity to migrate content. Another reason why we selected Omeka.net is that we can download the metadata for the items should we need to migrate content. We did save archival-quality scans of all of the items on a server that is backed up, which, combined with the exported metadata, will allow us flexibility in the future. The other challenge is that many DH tools are open source. While we have found many very promising DH tools, our IT department does not have the capacity to manage open source platforms. Our institution’s viewpoint is that it is more cost-effective to purchase hosted instances of software than to support a local installation. While this approach is valid, it also limits capacity for customization and control. Much of this challenge is tied to funding because investment in hiring staff and faculty with DH skills is significant. If hiring people with these skills is not possible, funding is still needed to train individuals locally or to support training off-site. Our ability to gain new skills has been hindered by the fact that DH is heavily invested in creating new tools and platforms. While we have been able to learn quite a few of the existing technologies, we regrettably are not programmers. We simply lack the knowledge and skills to be on the cutting edge, and that edge is where the bulk of grant funding for DH projects goes. While the Concordia History Harvest did force us to navigate some of the systemic issues with DH, this project has also given us greater clarity about what DH means for our institution. As noted in the recent monograph Debates in the Digital Humanities, unlike large, public institutions, small liberal arts colleges have been consistently challenged with implementing digital humanities because of the significant resources required to support and sustain DH. 10 And while public universities can support DH centers and labs as well as fund research and development of DH tools, the emphasis of liberal arts colleges is teaching and learning. 11 Because of this mission, liberal arts colleges, like Concordia College, are well positioned to utilize their strengths of teaching and learning to propel DH at their institutions. This approach is exactly what we were able to do with the History Harvest. The Concordia History Harvest allowed our students to engage in the democratization of learning and the exchange of information by creating

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new tools for future learners and distributing information that was once only available in physical form. This outcome resonated with the students that completed the first History Harvest project. The students learned the specifics that go into creating and curating digital content. For example, a student commented, “I thought we just went to a printer and scanned people’s documents. . . . I could not have been more wrong, there are a lot of things that go into scanning and attributing documents to the digital archives.” Another student stated, “This project definitely gave me a lot of insights into technology and following directions. I learned that it took some practice. . . . Now I could upload an artifact in no time. This project has also sparked future interest in digital archives.” One student summarized his or her learning with this statement: “I did not really understand how much work goes into something like archives at Concordia, and finishing it all and learning the proper usage of everything was very rewarding.” Students not only learned the behind-the-scenes work that goes into archives but also how to use archival collections for their research. Many of the students commented on their enhanced archival research skills: “The archives have so much information it’s hard to comprehend it. I learned how to pull information out of there and how to find a source properly,” and “I had to talk to old alumni and search through the Concordia College Archives in order to find relevant information. This caused me to learn about all of the items in the Archives and how to use them.” Finally, the students grasped the role of archives at our college, and more broadly in society, because they witnessed the process of collecting materials and making them accessible. A student stated, “With the History Harvest I learned about the life at Concordia from other time periods. It was awesome to see all of the things that people had donated to the Concordia Archives and how people are passionate about their history at Concordia College. I never thought people would be so passionate about their past and want to display their items in the archives.” Another student commented, “I have learned more in this course than I ever imagined I would before. I’m thankful to have learned more about Concordia’s history. The history of Concordia is much more personal . . . and I will treasure that forever.” The History Harvest also significantly impacted the Concordia college archives. We not only gathered a significant amount of content, but also we digitized, described, and interpreted it all within a few months. This project has also increased awareness of the college archives both on campus as well as with donors. Finally, it was exciting to see so many individuals unite and invest in preserving the history of the institution. Archiving is a shared responsibility of a community, and we did experience this community effort through the History Harvest. We did succeed in animating archives, and even though we may not be on the cutting edge of designing DH tools and frameworks, we are at least in the game.

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The end result of this project is that we are more comfortable and confident in knowing what DH has to offer our students and how we can meaningfully contribute to this emerging field. Lisa M. Sjoberg is college archivist and digital collections librarian, and Joy K. Lintelman is chair and professor of history at Concordia College. NOTES 1. Johanna Drucker, “Intro to Digital Humanities,” UCLA Center for Digital Humanities, accessed May 22, 2014, http://dh101.humanities.ucla.edu/. 2. Kathleen Smith, “Q&A with Brett Bobley, Director of the NEH’s Office of Digital Humanities (ODH).” HASTAC, February 1, 2009, http://www.hastac.org/node/1934. 3. Lisa Spiro, “Exploring the Significance of Digital Humanities for Philosophy,” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, February 26, 2013, http://digitalscholarship.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/spirowhydhapaphilosophy2013fnal.pdf. 4. Anne Burdick, et al., Digital Humanities (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), 47–48. 5. William G. Thomas, Patrick D. Jones, and Andrew Witmer, “History Harvests: What Happens When Students Collect and Digitize the People’s History?” Perspectives on History, January 2013, https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/january-2013/history-harvests. 6. The podcasts and printable handouts are available at: Minnesota Historical Society, “Oral History Guides,” “Becoming Minnesotan: Stories of Recent Immigrants and Refugees,” http://education.mnhs.org/immigration/teacher-resources/oral-historyguides. 7. Mary Beth Norton, Carol Sheriff, and David W. Blight, A People and a Nation, brief 9th ed., vol. 2, Since 1865 (Boston: Cengage Learning/Wadsworth, 2011). 8. Carroll L. Engelhardt, On Firm Foundation Grounded: The First Century of Concordia College, 1891–1991 (Moorhead, MN: Concordia College, 1991). 9. See Bryan Alexander and Rebecca Frost Davis, “Should Liberal Arts Campuses Do Digital Humanities? Process and Products in the Small College World,” in Debates in the Digital Humanities, ed., Matthew K. Gold (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/; and Lisa Spiro, “Exploring the Significance of Digital Humanities for Philosophy,” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities (blog), February 26, 2013, http://digitalscholarship.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/spirowhydhapaphilosophy2013fnal.pdf. 10. Alexander and Davis, “Should Liberal Arts Campuses,” part 5. 11. Ibid.

NINE “A Certain Kind of Seduction” Integrating Archival Research into a First-Year Writing Curriculum Brooke Champagne and Amy Hildreth Chen, University of Alabama

One of the perennial challenges of the composition classroom, now a hallmark of first-year college education in the United States, is the research paper. Students and instructors both complain in evaluations and published academic articles that the rigors of the assignment are too great to cover in the one- or two-semesters allotted for composition instruction. 1 Students must learn quickly to navigate their school libraries and databases, intuit and practice research as a process, compose parts of drafts and discard them when new evidence fortuitously presents itself, revise research questions, and read much more material than they will ever use in their papers. Teachers must stem the frustration created by these elements in order to teach research methodology alongside fluid writing style and sensible organization. In short, this assignment is as difficult to teach as it is to design and grade. But rather than attempting to simplify the assignment in the face of these frustrations, Brooke Champagne, the assistant director of first-year writing at the University of Alabama (UA), and Amy Chen, the Council on Libraries and Information Resources (CLIR) postdoctoral fellow in charge of instruction at UA’s Division of Special Collections, decided to complicate these issues even further. Following the former director of the California Rare Book School Susan M. Allen’s injunction to offer college students “a certain kind of seduction,” 2 we chose to collaborate by re117

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quiring Brooke’s first-year students to locate and analyze special collections materials with Amy’s guidance as a part of their research process. We discovered that while this strategy can compound the challenges of the traditional research paper, it also amplifies the rewards. During summer 2013, as Brooke began to prepare for the two sections of honors first-year writing she would instruct over fall 2013, she concluded she wanted to incorporate primary source research into her syllabus. Her idea to use special collections in her class came after reading Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City, which follows the events surrounding the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. 3 Brooke thought the nonfiction text, which reads like a novel, could become a primary course reader, as it modeled a combination of compelling narrative with extensive primary research. What impressed Brooke the most was the “Notes and Sources” section that concludes the text, in which Larson describes his research process: I do not employ researchers, nor did I conduct any primary research using the Internet. I need physical contact with my sources, and there’s only one way to get it. To me every trip to a library or archive is like a small detective story. 4

In the age of students’ reliance on Internet research, which, in many ways, eliminates their sense of wonder about their chosen subjects, Brooke found it fascinating that a book could be written using only physical items. Brooke thought by reading the book and emulating its technique on a scaled-down level, her students would learn not only how to compose compelling college-level writing but also how to combine research with analysis. Furthermore, she hoped that her students could realize how to write engaging nonfiction narratives that went beyond the relatively dry and prescriptive style of academic composition. But this idea was as challenging as it was unconventional. Larson’s text was certainly not one of the standard readers used to teach composition at Alabama. Brooke suspected that her first-year students would be uncomfortable writing a creative essay that also incorporated rigorous and, for them, unfamiliar research methods. Additionally, Brooke never had conducted archival research herself, much less taught students how to use it. In order to assess how to bring her concept into the reality of the classroom, Brooke contacted Amy to ask for help. Amy moved to Tuscaloosa one month earlier to begin her fellowship after graduating with a PhD in English from Emory University. At Emory, Amy worked for five years in the Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL). As a graduate student, she also designed and taught her own upper- and lower-level undergraduate English courses, all of which incorporated primary source materials.

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When Amy held her first meeting with Brooke in July 2013, she was unfamiliar with the collections at Alabama but excited to hear Brooke’s concept of teaching creative nonfiction writing alongside primary source research. Amy thought that while special collections pedagogy frequently centers on how best to meet the needs of undergraduate humanities researchers, it had yet to find a way to nurture beginning researchers in a wider range of disciplines. Likewise, Brooke saw composition instruction teaches writing and research methods, but often neglects to introduce students to working with primary sources. So, despite the short timeline we faced, both of us felt comfortable working together. We began to make plans to incorporate using special collections materials into Brooke’s fall 2013 syllabi with Larson’s book, providing the inspiration for the class project her thirty-six students would face. PLANNING Planning how to incorporate primary source research into the syllabus for Brooke’s two sections of honors first-year writing went rapidly; given our time constraints, we had to develop the writing assignment using a combination of what worked for each of us in the past. Amy developed a best resources guide to describe the collections available to students for their projects while Brooke applied a scaffold method to break the project down into smaller steps more appropriate for beginning researchers. Additionally, we aligned our approach with the learning objectives and assignment types dictated to all instructors in the first-year writing program. The major research assignment directed students to mimic Larson’s method by choosing a single historical figure that would provide a suitable foil for exploring a larger story or theme. To support this approach, Amy generated a best resources guide highlighting fourteen historical figures who each had their own collection in the Division of Special Collections. Students could choose to work on the same person and collection as a classmate if they wished because their research was intended to be driven by their personal interest on a specific, narrowed portion of that person’s history. However, we agreed that students were not allowed to tackle more than one person for the topic of the paper, as we wanted students to practice focusing their analysis on close reading a few primary documents, rather than attempting to understand multiple collections at once. Amy made the decision to preselect collections but not individual items for students to examine. Asking these first-year students to select their own subjects from the hundreds of collections available in UA’s repository simply would be too high of a learning curve. We knew that declining to preselect items within the collections featured on the guide would still induce a difficult experience for the students, but we

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were eager to provide a more flexible and intensive seminar than traditionally is given to first-semester students. Amy had created similar resource guides for the classes she taught at Emory that more closely adhered to best practices in special collections pedagogy, which emphasizes students working with fewer items, especially when they are early in their education. 5 However, Brooke’s class was designed with a different goal in mind: students were composing a creative rather than a purely analytical essay, and learning how to work with a broad range of primary sources was an essential part of the assignment. As a result, we believed it was important for students to make their own determinations about which items were most relevant and, in the process, learn how to explore entire collections themselves. The best resources sheet for the class included a short biography of each individual whose collection could be used for the assignment, the location of the collections, and guidelines for asking for additional help. As the division of special collections at UA is split into two branches—the A. S. Williams III Americana Collection and the W. S. Hoole Library— Amy not only had to provide a manuscript number or reference number but also indicate in which branch the collection resided to remind students where they would need to visit. It was critical at this point to teach students that the procedures of working in special collections as part of a class will differ from their experience using general collections. Our guidelines emphasized the need to email for an appointment prior to coming to the reading room at either Williams or Hoole. While both collections are open to the public and do not require appointments to use, they have more limited hours than are available in the main campus library. With a smaller time frame for visits, we also knew it would be important to regulate the number of students that came into either reading room at one time. We did not want multiple students requesting the same box at the same time since we did not mandate each student work on a different collection. Additionally, we needed to avoid swamping the reference desk as, at UA, only one staff member and page serve the reading room at a time. We also structured the assignment to allow Brooke’s students, who were new to both college-level writing and primary source research, to scaffold from one skill to the next in order to meet the project’s objective. This decision required breaking the project into seven distinct phases: brainstorming a thesis, outlining the paper, meeting for individual conferences with Brooke, presenting to the class, submitting a rough draft, participating in peer review, and then completing a final draft. These tasks were timed to maximize their pedagogical impact. Brooke opted to require a focused research question to be given to her about two weeks after distributing the assignment. A preliminary draft of the essay, consisting of an introduction and informal outline of body paragraphs, was scheduled to be due one week later. Conferences were conducted just

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before rough drafts were turned in, several weeks into the research process. In these conferences, students pitched their project by discussing which facet of their subject’s life they planned to cover and how they wanted to structure the narrative. Then, during research presentations, which took place during the drafting and peer preview process, students discussed their project focus and narrative ideas with their peers. Part of the peer audience’s participation grade depended on their taking notes and asking questions of the presenters, which helped presenters identify the gaps in their prospective narratives. A first full rough draft of the paper using ten sources, half of which should be from special collections, would be due soon after. Rather than using parenthetical citations, as is typical in a Modern Language Association (MLA)-style research paper, students employed endnotes that would contain source citations as well as an explanation of how they were using their sources. Then the process of drafting and peer reviewing would continue for about three weeks until the deadline for the final draft. As Amy is the editor for Cool@Hoole, the Division of Special Collections’ blog, she also wanted to give one student from each section of Brooke’s class the opportunity to publish his or her paper and be interviewed on the blog about his or her research and composition process. Brooke chose the two students who would be featured by selecting the top project from each class, which could then be used as models for future student work. The idea to interview selected students, as well as publish their work, came from “The Apprentice Researcher,” which describes the significance of following what Carol Kuhlthau describes as a students’ “information search process.” 6 Jennifer Bonnet et al. calls the same technique a way to create “literacy narratives” that discuss how “your ideas and methods changed and responded to your research.” 7 Because surveys like the ones administered by Kuhlthau and Bonnet so effectively articulated the challenges students face, we decided to follow their general guidelines by including the following questions for our blog interview: What were students’ first impressions of special collections? How did they conduct research? What problems and opportunities did they encounter? What would they say to future students given a similar assignment? Many of the questions we asked of students on the blog reflect one of the mainstays of the composition classroom, “writing as a process,” which is in turn supported by the concept of “the arc of the semester,” in which writing skills and goals are recursive, both building upon one another and continually revisiting lessons already covered. What we mean by writing as a process is rather self-explanatory: each major writing assignment is thought of less as a final, finished product and more focus is paid to its constituent parts. The final papers ultimately comprise the bulk of each student’s grade, but much time is spent in and out of

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class working on the process, from research question to source hunting to thesis to outline to introductory hook to first draft and subsequent essay drafts, with many revisions of all elements of the project in between. Along the way, each paper evolves as students master new steps and processes. In the case of this particular assignment, students were burdened with the additional task of working with manuscript materials for the first time. Their typical drafting and researching procedures were encumbered by the planning and timing needed to visit the archives. Whereas typical library or Internet research might feel like a seamless approach for students, accessible at any time or stage of their papers, the waiting game inherent in archival research means that moving from thesis to outline and back to thesis revision requires more stopping and starting than they likely are used to, as new archival discoveries tend to be made slowly. The writing process already is difficult and nearly impossible to follow through with in a typical sixteen-week semester: adding this element admittedly made it even harder. IMPLEMENTATION Several weeks into the semester we introduced the assignment to Brooke’s students by combining an overview of the project with a fiftyminute archives introduction session taught by Amy. In this session, Amy described what special collections are, explained the repository’s hours of operation and policies, showed students how to locate information regarding our resources, and passed around a sign-up sheet to schedule appointments in the reading room. The majority of time in this session was dedicated to the way in which students must access information about collections at UA, as it can be quite confusing because UA does not have all of its finding aids digitized. To counteract these difficulties, Amy emulated a search for the class and provided a handout for the students that modeled the information search process she followed. This handout included screen captures of each stage of the search for maximum clarification. Then we waited for the student appointments to arrive and the research process to begin in earnest. All of Brooke’s students came to special collections at least once in the following weeks. Depending on the historical figure chosen, for some students one visit was enough to gather all of the available materials on their subject. For example, one popular topic was a single twenty-page journal written by an anonymous nineteenth-century Blocton, Alabama, woman who recorded instances of domestic abuse by her husband. In a single appointment, students could either transcribe the contents of her journal onto their computers or use their phones or cameras to take a picture of each page and transcribe the journal pages on their own time.

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Other students visiting special collections two or three times reported intensive, hours-long sessions in which they first distinguished useful documents from those they would not need and, after finding their approach to the subject, spent more time pouring over a handful of the necessary pages. While most students averaged about three to four visits, over the ten weeks that the classes signed up for research appointments, some reported visiting the reading room as many as eight to twelve times. This number of visits is extraordinary for any undergraduate researcher, but it is notably high for first-year students. The students’ visits to the reading rooms of Williams and Hoole required that they interact with reference staff at both locations. At the University of Alabama, no one staff member exclusively provides reference support. Kevin Ray coordinates reference services at the W. S. Hoole Library, but Amy aided him during the semester as she gave her business card to all students from Brooke’s class. Often Amy would reply to students who contacted her first, and then, when necessary, she would hand off students to Kevin if she did not know the answer or if the request required more extensive work. This division of labor was necessary, as Amy runs the exhibition program, web presence, and social media profiles of the repository as well as teaching all other classes for the Division of Special Collections. After all, Brooke’s sections represented only two of eleven total classes that came to Hoole during fall 2013. Over at the Williams collection, interim curator Nancy Dupree assisted Kevin. Likewise, a variety of staff members, including Amy, took turns staffing the reference desk at Williams and Hoole. The session during which Amy shared research strategies with the classes paid off: instead of having to discuss the collections on a case-bycase basis when each student came into the reading room, most students were able to identify what manuscript collection and even what box they needed on their own without extra help from the reference desk. Therefore, the staff largely interacted with the students to the same extent they would with any other patron with more advanced research skills. As a result, the staff devoted time to students who either chose to work with the larger collections or the few who felt more overwhelmed by the process of sifting through materials to find a usable topic. These types of interactions were relatively standard in terms of their content and did not differ significantly from the kind of help many patrons require. So, despite the intensive learning curve the first-year students faced when researching and writing, navigating the policies and procedures of the special collections environment proved to be less difficult. As the semester progressed and more students came into the reading room, Brooke incorporated her students’ research concerns as they occurred into classroom discussion. Students revealed that in high school they encountered two basic types of research papers and developed distinctive strategies to deal with each. One was the scenario in which they

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were allowed to choose a topic to argue. With infinite possibilities at their fingertips, students often picked a controversial subject they already felt strongly about and sought research that corroborated their preexisting ideas on the subject. In other words, they did not research to learn but researched to prove already-established arguments. Another typical assignment employed canned topics related to the course’s theme or based on the teacher’s interest. In these cases, students admitted to researching for the teacher, rather than for the student’s own edification. They approached these assignments by guessing, based on discussions throughout the course, the teacher’s position on the subject and sought evidence to corroborate that position because they believed this was the way to garner a high grade. Neither of these strategies would work for the assignment we set before the students, but this did not dissuade students from first trying their previous methods before abandoning them for new techniques. Students admitted that they first tried to conduct the required research by relying on Google, which was their default research tool. They only wanted to come to special collections when they came up with zero results. We were glad to see that in the context of this new type of research assignment, the students were forced to begin with no preconceptions and rely strictly on close reading, their own critical thinking, and a general intimation about their chosen historical period in order to proceed with their work. In other words, the research process Brooke always taught— let your evidence guide your argument—was reinforced more easily by using special collections materials. RESULTS We both considered the collaboration a success because Brooke noted that her students were much more engaged with the special collections assignment than other research essays she assigned in her ten years of teaching. Through discussions with students both during and after their writing and research processes, she believed this was because the nature of the assignment reestablished their sense of wonder and quelled their discomfort in not knowing: they were forced to investigate, much like a journalist or an archaeologist, to find the story or the approach that interested them, and their angles and focuses were completely of their own making. We believe the qualitative strength of our students’ reported and assessed learning outcomes demonstrate our achievement. Brooke also observed increased student engagement due to the particular types of interpretative problems created during primary source research. For example, one student was faced with the following question based on her historical figure, an Alabama lawyer and politician named Lister Hill: which was Hill’s more identity-defining experience—the elec-

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tion he nearly lost or the election he won by a landslide? Given the nature of the assignment, in which there was only space for one element of the historical figure’s life to be retold, students had to make decisions of this kind on their own, and that ownership was reflected in the consideration they placed into their discussion of their subjects. In Brooke’s estimation, this helped them to produce more creative and rigorous projects. The students also became more affectively engaged in their research topics. Another student was reviewing the papers of Alabama journalist Buford Boone when she came across a letter addressed to him and written by Martin Luther King Jr., thanking Boone for his contributions to the civil rights movement. This letter stunned her. What if, she wondered, King’s fingers were placed on this sheet of paper exactly where my fingers are now? She told her instructor she tried not to get too overwhelmed with the moment because she did not want her tears to stain this piece of history. Brooke felt that the excitement generated by spending time in special collections—what Amy described as a feeling of spiritual materialism or what philosopher Jacques Derrida calls “archive fever” 8—inspired students to dedicate themselves to their research and composition. While many archivists may feel these sentiments are too overwrought and dismiss them as naive, we believe it is a mistake to overlook the pedagogical impact of these experiences. Students who care about their subjects are more likely to persist and succeed when facing a learning curve as steep as the one we introduced. Embracing rather than distancing ourselves from the emotions provoked during primary source research allowed us to become more effective teachers. Interviewing the two students Brooke chose to feature on Cool@Hoole gave us the opportunity to learn more about the viewpoint of first-year undergraduates. For example, Shelby Gatewood reported that she struggled when learning new research techniques, particularly research that required multiple trips to gather information. Gatewood noted: This research paper was also different because I had to spend weeks gathering information for this paper rather than simply a few hours or days. The process for this research paper required more effort than any paper that I have written, and I had to adapt my writing process. Usually I think of the focus for my paper, gather all of the information in one sitting, and write the entire paper at one time. However, for this research paper I had to make many visits to Hoole before I was even able to choose a focus. . . . I was also writing sections of my paper for about two weeks rather than writing it all in one day. The many trips that I made to Hoole Library changed my writing process, but they also helped improve my paper. 9

Gatewood’s experience showed that first-year students found the challenge of using special collections came from learning how to conduct

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research that required more knowledge, a greater variety of sources, and a stronger narrative voice than the papers they had been assigned in the past. However, these skills ultimately were obtainable. Gatewood wrote a note of encouragement to future students, suggesting that they should “not be intimidated when visiting Hoole Library because the librarians want to help.” LESSONS LEARNED We both came away from our collaboration with valuable lessons. After fall 2013, Brooke adjusted her spring 2014 syllabus to include more time in class for students to discuss their research, introduced the assignment earlier in the semester, and provided models to help inspire student work. While the first two changes improved the course, the third decision to give students examples, as we explain below, actually backfired and led to less innovative projects. This result shows that pedagogical progress is often two steps forward, one step back. Amy further developed her best practices regarding how to coordinate an instruction program that could support multiple sections of students learning intensive research methods. Brooke’s spring 2014 class benefited from a series of adjustments she made after gathering feedback from the two fall sections. The first adjustment meant allotting about twenty minutes of class discussion per week on the status of students’ research progress. This change gave students the ability to reflect critically on their time in special collections. Class discussions which began in anecdotes concluded in conversations about how to combine intellectual and personal interests in such a way that projects could be both academically rigorous and entertaining to read. Brooke also introduced the assignment to her students much earlier in the spring than in the previous fall. In fall 2013, we did not explain the project to the students until week six; in spring 2014, students learned about the assignment during the first week of class. This shift was precipitated by informal student surveys Brooke conducted throughout the fall that revealed that the students needed more time to adjust psychologically to a new type of research. While both fall 2013 and spring 2014 students wanted more models for their work, and the spring 2014 students benefited from having both author Larson’s notes alongside Smiley and Gatewood’s Cool@Hoole interviews and their sample papers as models, we learned that providing students with more models to work from made them less creative in their approach to the project. For many students, models imply a stringent form of correctness. After reading others’ work, students could not imagine how to generate new types of nonfiction narrative. For example, during the fall, one student from California had worked for some time

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reading screenplays for producers, so she decided to tell the adventures of William Gorgas and his eradication of yellow fever in Panama through the format of a screenplay. In contrast, during spring 2014, a couple of students asked permission to use their topic to write a traditional research paper, as they did not like the idea of telling a story. Some even felt compelled, even after much commenting and peer review, to include a traditional thesis statement. It seemed these students felt the model papers from the fall semester of 2013 were outliers composed by model students: they felt intimidated by these examples of creativity. Fortunately, through both class discussions and individual conferences with students, the spring 2014 class brainstormed other approaches to narrative that deviated from our successful samples from fall 2013, and most students opted for the creative approach. Amy’s lessons consisted of how she could coordinate an instruction program that would give students the information they needed to surmount substantial learning curves while reassuring and guiding faculty members that integrating new pedagogical approaches into their curricula would result in greater student engagement. For Amy, both balanced on maintaining good communication with those providing reference support for classes she coordinated. Without the help of reference services, students would not have the ability to access and browse collections, rather than just coming to the reading room to analyze individual items. Additionally, having reference support available to students showed faculty that the special collections staff was just as invested in improving the learning outcomes of students. Engaging equally with Brooke and the reference staff, and making note of the needs of both parties, allowed Amy to facilitate a collaborative environment that benefitted each stakeholder. CONCLUSION The success of our collaboration, tested over two semesters, enabled us to be able to expand our approach to all Honors College first-year writing classes at the University of Alabama in fall 2014. Each fall semester, a cohort of advanced first-year writing courses within Honors College are theme-based, with all courses sharing a reader and participating in events based on the chosen text. Part of Brooke’s administrative duties within first-year writing includes selecting the text and the theme of each fall semester. Based on the success of special collections research across three sections of composition during fall 2013 and spring 2014, both the director of first-year writing and the associate dean of the Honors College welcomed the opportunity for students to enroll in courses titled In the Archives. This outcome is a huge accomplishment for both the first-year writing program and the Division of Special Collections, for first-year

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writing will be able to provide unique materials for student projects while the Division of Special Collections will obtain a much larger population of undergraduates engaging with its holdings. In fall 2014, in addition to Devil in the White City, students are using B. J. Hollars’s Opening the Doors: The Desegregation of the University of Alabama and the Fight for Civil Rights in Tuscaloosa as their course reader. 10 Hollars is a graduate of the master of fine arts program in creative writing at UA, and much of the research conducted for his book took place in UA’s special collections, so his book provides an important local example of how to integrate primary sources into an exciting narrative. While Amy is thrilled to work with more sections, the increased number of students required her pedagogical approach to evolve from encouraging students to browse collections independently back to requiring that they concentrate their analysis on previously selected items. Even though she was successful in keeping the students from requiring too much reference support during the academic year of 2013–2014, during fall 2014, the number of students present in Honors College sections, in addition to limits on staffing levels and space, makes it impossible for Amy to provide the experience she previously offered. Instead, digital surrogates will allow a greater number of students to work with special collections. We selected individual items found in Acumen, UA’s digital repository, for students to examine in fall 2014. While Amy knew this restriction was inevitable if the collaboration expanded programmatically, and she felt that Acumen offers a rich experience for students learning to integrate primary sources into their research for the first time, she nevertheless felt sad about removing students’ ability to interact with the original items and to enjoy the fun and frustration of freely browsing collections. After all, this experience is what led to some of the most rewarding experiences of their first-year collaborating. However, we both believe this compromise is necessary to offer more students the educational enrichment provided by using primary sources. Using Acumen will open new conversations on what it means to see analog items on a screen, how collections of physical items are represented in computing environments, and even the necessity of considering that not all materials in special collections are available on the Internet. These dialogues will remind students that online repositories are only surrogates for—and not replacements of—physical materials. By bringing the Division of Special Collections and first-year writing together, we integrated the curriculum of different sectors of the University of Alabama, introduced students to rare materials earlier in their college careers, encouraged creative approaches, and more effectively taught composition and research skills. We have continued to maintain our collaborative relationship while evolving our methodology to fit the needs of greater numbers of sections that are supervised by other instructors. By matching students with a course text that demonstrates how

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primary sources reveal new information about local history in addition to Devil in the White City, the original book that inspired Brooke, we hope to continue to seduce new generations of first-year writing students into the pleasures of working with special collections. Brooke Champagne is the assistant director of first-year writing, and Amy Hildreth Chen is the Council on Libraries and Information Resources (CLIR) postdoctoral fellow in charge of instruction at the University of Alabama’s Division of Special Collections. NOTES 1. For example, see Theresa Rooney, “Going to the Source: Research Paper Writing Experience,” Research and Teaching in Developmental Education 16, no. 2 (Spring 2000): 25–33. 2. Susan M. Allen, “Rare Books and the College Library: Current Practices in Marrying Undergraduates to Special Collections,” Rare Books and Manuscripts Librarianship 13, no. 2 (March 1999): 110–11. 3. Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City (New York: Vintage, 2003). 4. Ibid., 395–96. 5. Alice Anderson, Julie Golia, Robin M. Katz, and Bill Tally, “Faculty Learning: Our Findings,” TeachArchives.org, accessed September 26, 2014, http:// www.teacharchives.org/articles/our-findings/. 6. Carol Kuhlthau, “The Information Search Process: From Theory to Practice,” Journal of Education for Library and Information Science 31, no. 1 (Summer 1990): 72–75. 7. Jennifer L. Bonnet, Sigrid Anderson Cordell, Jeffrey Cordell, Gabriel J. Duque, Pamela J. MacKintosh, and Amanda Peters, “The Apprentice Researcher: Using Undergraduate Researchers’ Personal Essays to Shape Instruction and Services,” Portal: Libraries and the Academy 13, no. 1 (2012): 37–59. 8. Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997). 9. Shelby Gatewood, “Pedagogy Series Conclusion: Interview with Shelby Gatewood,” Cool@Hoole (blog), last modified January 6, 2014, accessed July 1, 2014, http:// apps.lib.ua.edu/blogs/coolathoole/2014/01/06/pedagogy-series-conclusion-interviewwith-shelby-gatewood/. 10. B. J. Hollars, Opening the Doors: The Desegregation of the University of Alabama and the Fight for Civil Rights in Tuscaloosa (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2013).

TEN Not Just for Students An Archives Workshop for Faculty Rachel Grove Rohrbaugh, Chatham University

For archivists working in academic environments, outreach to faculty is essential to connecting with your student population and a topic that deserves greater attention and discussion. Much of the growing body of literature on teaching with primary sources is decidedly student centered, focusing on ways to make archives and special collections more approachable with examples of hands-on activities and innovative assignments. 1 While this literature helps us understand how to improve our instruction techniques and keep students engaged in work with our collections, for any archivist hoping to build an instruction program from the ground up, the first consideration needs to be outreach to faculty and specifically how we can build relationships that lead to meaningful collaboration. My perspective is based on experience as a brand new archivist working to build faculty relationships at an institution with little history of faculty or student use of the archives and special collections. Much of my success can be attributed to the goodwill engendered by the subject of this case study, an archival workshop created specifically for faculty. In the spring of 2009, during my first year at Chatham University, librarians were offered the opportunity to develop continuing education workshops for faculty members as part of a month-long series offered by the Office of Academic Affairs. As the university archivist and a member of the library staff, I was included in this program and proposed a workshop that would introduce faculty to the teaching and research potential 131

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of Chatham’s archives and special collections as well as literature on the benefits of archival research, particularly for undergraduates. A common theme in the archival literature is students’ unfamiliarity and even anxiety when first confronted with research in archives and special collections. 2 Yet many professors, and particularly those outside the humanities disciplines, are themselves unfamiliar with archival research or uncomfortable creating assignments that incorporate the use of archives and special collections. First and foremost, this workshop aimed to mitigate those concerns while introducing faculty to the subject strengths of Chatham’s archives and special collections more broadly. Yet as I reflect on the experience of offering this workshop over several years, the most significant benefit was how it helped me as a new archivist develop relationships with Chatham’s faculty and ultimately increase faculty and student use of our archives and special collections. PLANNING Chatham University, founded in 1869 as Pennsylvania Female College, is a small liberal arts institution located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Chatham has growing coeducational graduate programs, but the undergraduate college is currently open to women only. 3 As of the 2013–2014 academic year, there were 977 undergraduate and 1,193 graduate students with just over 1,700 full-time equivalents. There were 106 full-time and 219 part-time faculty members. 4 At the time I proposed and began planning the faculty workshop, I had been Chatham’s archivist for just over six months. For decades, Chatham’s library collected and stored rare books and archival materials, including both college records and a number of manuscript collections. The library had occasionally hired part-time project archivists to digitize photograph collections and complete the grant funded processing of papers related to Chatham alumna Rachel Carson, but until I was hired in the fall of 2008, the university archives had never been administered by a professional archivist. Most of my first six months were spent assessing our largely undescribed archival holdings and uncataloged rare book collection while simultaneously managing my general library responsibilities outside the archives. Yet I also quickly realized that archival reference, instruction, and any efforts to support the teaching mission of the university were high priorities for my supervisor, the library director, and the library staff as a whole. In the archives, the bulk of our research requests were coming from nonacademic campus departments and outside researchers interested in the history of the college and our alumnae. While students occasionally made their way to archives and special collections through word

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of mouth, up to this point, no faculty members were bringing in their classes for instruction in the use of primary sources. When Academic Affairs solicited professional development workshop ideas, I was already thinking about ways I might connect with more faculty members and promote Chatham’s archives and special collections. All of the six full-time library staff members have liaison assignments to specific departments and are encouraged to work directly with faculty and students in the classroom. For librarians this often means setting up tutorials in navigating library databases, providing guidance on evaluating sources, and training students to write bibliographies and create proper citations. For my work with faculty (and not just my liaison areas but faculty in any department), I had something more in depth in mind, namely assignments based on our archival and rare book holdings, class visits to the university archives and special collections, one-on-one consultations with students writing their required senior theses, and possibly collaborative exhibitions in the library display space or in the university art gallery. The library director was supportive of these admittedly ambitious goals and immediately approved my plan to get involved in the workshop series. I had approximately a month to prepare for the workshop, which would be offered twice in the month-long professional development schedule. This series was set to take place immediately after the spring semester during a short semester (called Maymester) just before graduation and the summer term. Not all faculty teach during Maymester, but those who do tend to teach intensive, experimental courses that meet five days a week in either the morning or afternoon. With this in mind, two separate sessions were suggested with the hope that at least one day and time offering would meet the needs of most attendees. Other workshops in the professional development series included technology instruction, grant writing for specific fields, and a workshop on library resources for distance education, which was offered by one of my colleagues in the library’s reference department. With a rough idea of what I wanted to cover in the hour allotted for the session, I wrote the following description, which was distributed by Academic Affairs via all-campus email. Introducing Your Students to Research in Archives and Special Collections Attend this session to learn more about the holdings of the Chatham University Archives, the Special Collections of the Jennie King Mellon Library, and other local repositories. We will review some of the highlights of these collections and discuss how to incorporate primary source research into your lectures and assignments. Both offerings of this workshop will include a tour of the Special Collections room and the Archives. Faculty members from all disciplines are welcome.

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With this description I hoped to communicate that the workshop would be both a general overview and an opportunity to discuss potential projects and assignments. Knowing that we would not necessarily have materials relevant to all disciples taught at Chatham, I included the reference to “other local repositories.” Chatham’s collection strengths include institutional history, women’s education, Western Pennsylvania topics, Mesoamerican exploration, and the African American experience in the twentieth century. 5 These materials hold a variety of research and teaching potential, but I also wanted to make sure faculty were aware of the significant collection strengths of the University of Pittsburgh and other major research universities in the area as well as large museums and historical societies like the Senator John Heinz History Center. As my preparations and review of the existing literature unfolded, I also came to include references and suggestions for accessing primary sources online. 6 While encouraging the use of Chatham’s own collections was a high priority, reaching more students and promoting primary source literacy was the overarching goal. In both preparing and promoting the workshop, I had two distinct advantages. First, because I have a dual appointment in both the archives and in general library work, I was already a familiar face to faculty members in a number of disciplines, including the English and science departments, my areas of responsibility as a liaison librarian. I handle some collection development, sit on the library reference desk for several hours a week, and occasionally show students how to use our databases and other general library resources during class-based instruction sessions. While my many responsibilities can be hard to juggle at times, involvement in a variety of arenas is a clear advantage when it comes to outreach, promotion, or just simply getting your name out there. 7 A second advantage was Chatham’s generally small class sizes and faculty focused on teaching—a situation favorable to faculty–archivist collaboration. As Doris Malkmus notes, “Liberal arts colleges have a significantly different environment from research universities in relation to using primary sources to teach.” 8 Archivists who are looking to work with faculty at smaller colleges and universities benefit from classroom dynamics that encourage discussion and engagement as well as an overall institutional culture that places value on teaching excellence. Also, in terms of classroom logistics, it’s much easier to help ten students (as opposed to a lecture hall filled with more than two hundred) examine a rare book, document, or image. Because I was relatively new to the archival field and very new to teaching with primary sources, one of my first tasks during the planning stage was a review of the available literature on archival instruction with undergraduates. The number of research papers, case studies, conference presentations, and book chapters in this area has exploded in recent years, but in early 2009, I was only able to find seventeen references in the

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more recent literature, a respectable number but not an overwhelming amount of material to review. 9 Overall the literature emphasized that work with primary sources promotes critical thinking skills and increases student confidence, interest, and motivation. 10 There were a number of excellent examples of faculty librarian collaboration (including articles coauthored by faculty and library or archives staff), but I found little addressing how relationships with faculty were established. All workshops in the Chatham professional development series were allotted just one hour, so I was limited in how much material I would be able to cover. I also wanted to leave plenty of time for questions and a tour, so I tried to keep my outline focused and relatively succinct. I also realized the session would be a good opportunity for me to learn what faculty were already doing in their classrooms. Since the workshop was not required, I had to assume that many of the attendees would already be engaged in primary source instruction of some kind. Ideally, we would be able to find ways to support and enhance what they were already doing with collections found at Chatham. After a brief introduction, both my outline and the accompanying PowerPoint presentation began with an overview of the literature I had read on the benefits of archival research for students. I knew my faculty attendees would be interested in incorporating archives and special collections into their teaching and assignments, but I still thought it would be helpful to review why this work was beneficial and ultimately worth their time and effort. In this regard, I stressed research showing how archival research promotes critical thinking and increases student engagement. I also planned to discuss how archival research helps students produce original work and prepares undergraduates for graduate study. As I mentioned earlier, all Chatham undergraduates are required to write a senior thesis, and the university prides itself on the number of undergraduates who go on to graduate school. Faculty are always looking for new projects for their students, and I realized it would be important to emphasize the archives and special collections as one source of inspiration when it came time to select senior thesis topics, particularly in the humanities. Following this overview of the literature, the bulk of the prepared outline and presentation consisted of an overview of collection highlights beginning with the university archives and then moving into the library’s special collections. Because none of our faculty was bringing students in to use the collections, I had to assume that everything we have would by and large be new to them. Fortunately, we have been able to digitize a fair number of materials, including items from our Rachel Carson Collection and numerous photograph collections, so this portion of the presentation would be filled with exciting images to keep their attention. I also planned to intersperse this section with questions for my faculty attendees. For example, “How does this material fit with what you are already

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teaching?” and “How could you see using something like this in your classroom?” Throughout the entire workshop, I hoped to encourage the faculty members to pose their own questions and discuss the content with each other. This would help us all understand the variety of activities and assignments we could do and promote a collaborative environment. After reviewing Chatham’s own materials, I also included a few slides about other collections in the Pittsburgh area as well as a few major online collections like American Memory from the Library of Congress. I had two objectives here. First, I was interested in making faculty aware of these resources, but I was also interested in finding out how many of them were already using these kinds of materials in their classrooms and perhaps in their own research. I was particularly interested to see if any of them were already using Historic Pittsburgh, a cooperative local history site that includes content from Chatham. Before the tour portion of the workshop, the last section of the presentation described some of the kinds of projects we could possibly undertake. This discussion included online and on-the-ground exhibitions curated by students, document-centered explorations, as well as projects centered on an entire collection. I noted that I was open to everything from instruction sessions with an entire class to one-on-one consultations with individual students. In later iterations of the workshop, I also added content to this section about the kinds of projects we had already done, including specific course assignments and how students had used the archives and special collection in their senior theses. As the spring semester came to a close and Maymester approached, I put the finishing touches on my PowerPoint and scheduled a classroom with a projector in the library. I also prepared our closed special collections storage space for tour visitors and tidied up our reading room/ processing area where the faculty would view materials from the archives. Finally, I personally sent an email message to several faculty members who I had either expressed interest in the archives and special collections previously or were teaching in a humanities discipline (namely English, history, and art history) where they were likely to already be using some primary sources in the classroom. In most cases, I had met these faculty through my library work or campus events, but in a few cases, this was my first communication with them. A few of the faculty members responded, thanking me for the message and expressing interest in the workshop. Others replied to let me know that they would be away from campus during Maymester but would be interested in setting up a meeting with me to talk about the archives and special collections another time.

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IMPLEMENTATION When the faculty workshops were first offered, there was no registration process, so I was left to wait until the day of the session to see who would show up. 11 During the first session, held on a Wednesday afternoon in mid-May, just one person came, a tenured faculty member in art history. It turned out she had worked with a collection of early Pittsburgh prints in special collections years prior but was interested in learning more about the collections more generally, particularly what we had available in the university archives. Since it was just the two of us, I had to make some modifications to the format I had previously planned. Instead of working from the front of the room with a projector, I opened my presentation on a computer in the classroom and sat down next to her. I still progressed through the slides, but I approached the workshop more as a conversation, less as a lecture. She was receptive to the information about the benefits of teaching with primary sources and took notes throughout our discussion. She was particularly engaged as I went through the information on Chatham’s collection highlights, and we immediately began talking about the kinds of assignments we might be able to create with these materials. In my presentation, I noted that we have a full run of the nineteenth-century women’s magazine Godey’s Lady’s Book. The professor commented that she had used these magazines for her own dissertation research and could see them being helpful in her American art classes and especially those focusing on women and gender studies. When it came time for the tour, I was able to tailor the experience to her needs and pull some of the Godey’s volumes in special collections. When we visited the archives, we were also able to look at items in our scrapbook collection, which she mentioned she might be able to use with her museum studies students. We planned to keep in touch throughout the summer and work together as she finalized her syllabi for the fall semester. The next offering of the faculty workshop showed better attendance with three faculty members joining us. All were full-time, and subjects taught included history, creative writing, and landscape architecture. With this slightly larger group, I was able to stick more closely to my presentation and the original outline. One modification was that we did take time at the beginning for everyone to introduce themselves and briefly talk about what they teach at Chatham. This helped me get to know my audience better and also helped them get comfortable with each other. Some of them had explored our website and were fairly familiar with our collections already, but it was still helpful to run through all the collection highlights and get everyone up to speed. There were a few surprises in this second session. The most rewarding of these was when the history professor spotted material relevant to his own research during our walk though the special collections storage

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space. These books had been inventoried but were not yet cataloged, so it was unlikely he would have found them before this tour. In addition to setting up an in-class instruction session for his students the following fall semester, he ended up making several appointments throughout the summer term to view these materials, which he later referenced in a conference presentation. From the very beginning, I have always tried to remain in contact with the faculty who have attended the workshop. Depending on their needs and questions they asked during the session, I have alternately sent them a copy of the presentation or finding aids and inventories to relevant collections. In most cases, if they express interest in developing an assignment or scheduling an in-class instruction session, I have made sure to schedule a follow-up appointment with them when possible, so we can discuss the details and examine relevant materials together. RESULTS Since May 2009, the faculty workshop has now been offered four times and has come to be an important piece of my larger effort to build an instruction program and develop relationships with faculty. While actual participation has been modest, additional faculty members (and ultimately their students) have found the archives and special collections through the positive word of mouth the Maymester workshops have produced each year. In the first year the workshop was offered (end of 2008–2009 into 2009–2010), student use of the archives and special collections increased over 142 percent, and use by faculty for their own personal research was up 50 percent. During 2009–2010, three intensive in-class instruction sessions were scheduled, reaching fifty-four students. Three sessions were again scheduled during 2010–2011, reaching fifty-two students. Five of the six sessions over this two-year period were scheduled by faculty members who had attended the workshop. The remaining session was scheduled by an adjunct who had heard about the archives from a faculty member who was able to attend. By the 2011–2012 academic year, the numbers jumped to six total sessions (with eighty-one students reached). We then had another increase in 2012–2013 with seven total sessions (102 students reached). A total of nine faculty members have attended the workshops, and while this is a small percentage of Chatham’s full-time faculty, the impact has been significant. Eight out of the nine attendees have asked me to come in to speak to one of their classes, required students to visit the archives or special collections, or worked with me to create an assignment incorporating primary sources from our collections. A few faculty members who have been unable to attend due to travel or teaching com-

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mitments have also responded to my personal email messages advertising the workshop and asked if they could work with me. Faculty have come from a variety of subject areas, including disciplines traditionally associated with research in archives and special collections (such as history, art history, and English), but we have also seen faculty from sociology, landscape architecture, creative writing, and sustainability. Some of the most rewarding collaborations have occurred with the art history professor who was the lone attendee at the very first workshop. Overall, she has been our most consistent user. That first fall semester after the faculty workshop, she had students in her American art class come to special collections as a group. They examined the Godey’s Lady’s Books and talked about how the magazines represent the art, literature, and cultural expectations of the time period. For their final papers in the course, each student was assigned a volume, and they had to find one American art trend to discuss and explore through further outside research. This session and assignment was successful enough that we repeated it when this particular class was offered again in fall 2012. Another faculty member and I were also able to modify this Godey’s exercise for use in another course, Gender and Family in America, which was offered in fall 2010. One specific goal I had was to work with students to create an exhibition of some kind, and the art history professor and I were able to make this happen in fall 2012. Her students in a museum education class visited special collections in three separate sessions to discuss our holdings of early printed views of Pittsburgh. Select prints were later transferred to the university art gallery, and the students designed the exhibition space, wrote label copy, and held an opening for the exhibition. This exhibition was not only a wonderful learning opportunity for these students but also an excellent chance to promote our special collections holdings in a new venue on campus. The exhibit was even covered and positively reviewed by a local newspaper’s art critic, who called it “a must-see for those interested in the history Pittsburgh, antique prints or both.” 12 Another goal I had in mind was to have students do research in the archives as part of their preparation for their senior thesis. With faculty encouragement, several students have done so, including an English student who used the Godey’s Lady’s Books as research material for her thesis on nineteenth-century music. We have also seen more than one student research the historic architecture on campus, including an art history student who created a walking tour highlighting families who lived in campus buildings that were originally intended as private residences. More recently, an undergraduate majoring in interior architecture wrote her senior thesis on the Tudor-style architecture on campus. In all of these cases, I was able to reach out to faculty in these departments through the Maymester workshop.

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Another outcome of the workshop, largely unanticipated but immensely rewarding, has been the number of faculty who have now used the archives or special collections for their own research. In one notable case, an English professor was excited to discover several helpful first editions in our Snowdon Mesoamerican Collection during the tour portion of the faculty workshop. He went on to use these materials from the Snowdon Collection in an article and later a book on nineteenth-century exploration. This English professor, a department head who was recently promoted to a dean position, has been one of the most vocal advocates for special collections on campus. He frequently encourages the honors students he advises to use our collections, and he highlighted the role of special collection in his own research during a presentation to his fellow faculty members and university staff. An additional unforeseen benefit has been the three Chatham students who have now completed semester-long internships with me in the archives. All of these students were recommended by faculty who attended the Maymester workshop and worked with me on assignments and in-class instruction on the use of the archives and special collections. LESSONS LEARNED While we have been pleased with the faculty response to the workshop, there have been a number of challenges. Though we intended the workshop to be accessible to faculty in all disciplines, the majority of our participants have been in humanities disciplines. We have had a few requests for sessions with classes in the basic and social sciences, but these have all had a strong humanities component. For example, I worked with a chemistry professor on a history of women in science course. Each of the students in this course created poster presentations incorporating primary sources on an influential female scientist. Another issue has been reaching adjunct faculty. All of our workshop attendees have been full-time professors. And while I was able to get an adjunct onboard with an assignment that required her freshmen students to visit the archives to view our architectural files, when her contract to teach the course was not renewed the following year, I proceeded to see an overall drop in individual student users of the archives and special collections. I have to wonder if marketing to new adjuncts is worth the time and effort when so many leave after just teaching for a year or two, but with more and more classes taught by adjuncts, it seems unreasonable to give up the opportunity to work with their students. 13 Time management overall has been critical. It continues to be important to maintain the relationships with full-time faculty developed through these workshops, but preparations for class sessions and the additional reference traffic take up a large portion of my day. I still need

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to check the course offerings for obvious connections to the archives or special collections and call or email faculty regularly. The faculty outreach component is largely what made these workshops so worthwhile, but this effort is an ongoing project. While I would have liked to have seen even more faculty participate in the workshop, I could have very easily been a victim of my own success. At this point, Chatham really does not have the staffing to support a more extensive archival instruction program. As for logistical concerns, I have also found that I cannot count on Academic Affairs to schedule rooms and advertise the workshops. While they continue to offer the Maymester series, with leadership changes in the department we have seen declining levels of commitment. For this reason, my messages to individual faculty have become even more important, and at some point, the library may need to consider running an independent workshop series. Chatham is a small university, and as more faculty members have now taken the initial workshop, it makes sense to develop and repackage it further to encourage faculty to perhaps come back years later to gain a refresher. In follow-up offerings, we could add more hands-on activities and a discussion of how to effectively design assignments that promote information literacy in the archives. Yet if we approach adding more content, the single-hour session will not be adequate. A full-day or multisession workshop may be necessary. 14 CONCLUSION Over the past several years, the faculty workshop has increased the visibility of the archives and special collections on campus and strengthened relationships with the individual faculty who attended. We have seen a steady increase in the number of faculty requesting instruction in their classes as well as the number of students using materials in the archives and special collections. While Chatham’s archival instruction program is not huge, we have come to find that, to a certain degree, less really is more. Keeping the program manageable has allowed me to cultivate meaningful one-on-one relationships with the faculty who utilize our archives and special collections, relationships that help me better understand the needs of their students. For a new archivist in a brand new position, the Maymester workshop ended up being more than anything else an invaluable tool for engaging a core group of faculty members. In those early years of my career, I found few examples in the literature of how exactly to build those critically important relationships essential to developing an instruction program and advocacy for the archives in the long term. As our literature on teaching with primary sources grows, now is an excellent time to explore

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this component of archival work. Increased discussion of techniques for developing the faculty–archivist relationship will benefit new academic archivists, those building new programs, and anyone looking to improve their skills in this area. This is also a topic well suited to mentorship, where experienced college and university archivists can share what has worked (as well as stories about any less successful strategies) with new and less experienced archivists entering the field. Building and maintaining faculty relationships is incredibly time intensive but an invaluable element of archival instruction and gathering support for the archives and special collections more generally. By working with faculty, academic archivists can prove our value by directly supporting the teaching and research mission of our parent institutions. Strong relationships make for a more collaborative and integrated approach to teaching with primary sources and can impact student interest, engagement with archives and special collections, and learning. Rachel Grove Rohrbaugh is the archivist in the Hess Archives at Elizabethtown College. Until September 2014, she was the archivist and public services librarian at Chatham University.

NOTES This case study expands upon a professional poster presented at the 2011 Society of American Archivists Annual Meeting. The full poster is available for download at http:// saa.archivists.org/Scripts/4Disapi.dll/4DCGI/events/eventdetail.html?Action=Events_ Detail&Time=229207960&InvID_W=1908.

1. A number of excellent case studies in this vein can be found in Eleanor Mitchell, Peggy Seiden, and Suzy Taraba, eds., Past or Portal? Enhancing Undergraduate Learning through Special Collections and Archives (Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries, 2012). 2. A summary of common student concerns and ways to address these concerns can be found in Greg Johnson, “Introducing Undergraduate Students to Archives and Special Collections,” College & Undergraduate Libraries 13, no. 2 (2006): 91–100. 3. Undergraduate coeducation was approved by the Board of Trustees in May 2014 and will be enacted in fall 2015. 4. Chatham University Office of Institutional Research, “Common Data Set 2013–2014,” https://my.chatham.edu/documents/documentcenter/CDS_2013-2014.pdf. 5. For more on Chatham’s Archives and Special Collections, including our digital collection, see http://library.chatham.edu/screens/asc.html. 6. For a discussion of the challenges educators deal with when teaching with online primary sources and ways archivists can help, see Jeffrey W. McClurken, “Archives and Teaching Undergraduates in a Digital Age,” in A Different Kind of Web: New Connections between Archives and Our Users, ed., Kate Theimer (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2011), 243–54. 7. The benefits related to outreach are the most commonly cited by dual archivist/ librarians. See Mary Manning and Judy Silva, “Dual Archivist/Librarians: Balancing the Benefits and Challenges of Diverse Responsibilities,” College and Research Libraries 73, no. 3 (March 2012): 172–73, http://crl.acrl.org/content/73/2/164.abstract.

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8. Doris Malkmus, “‘Old Stuff’ for New Stuff Teaching Methods: Outreach to History Faculty Teaching with Primary Sources,” Portal: Libraries and the Academy 10, no. 4 (October 2010): 422. 9. In comparison, as of the most recent update in June 2012, the “Teaching with Primary Sources Bibliography” distributed by SAA Reference, Access, and Outreach Section includes sixty-eight individual references: http://www2.archivists.org/groups/ reference-access-and-outreach-section/teaching-with-primary-sources-bibliography/. 10. Three of the most helpful articles included Marcus C. Robyns, “The Archivist as Educator: Integrating Critical Thinking Skills into Historical Research Methods Instruction,” American Archivist 64 (Fall/Winter 2001): 363–84; Susan M. Allen, “Rare Books and the College Library: Current Practices in Marrying Undergraduates to Special Collections,” Rare Books and Manuscripts Librarianship 13, no. 2 (1999): 110–19; and Elizabeth Yakel, “Information Literacy for Primary Sources,” OCLC Systems and Services 20, no. 2 (2004): 61–64. 11. In more recent years, I have been able to provide a link for attendees to register in advance through the university’s online events calendar. Registrations come directly to my email and allow me to plan accordingly. I am also able to contact registered attendees ahead of time to remind them of when and where the workshop will be held. 12. Kurt Shaw, “‘Printsburgh! Printed Views of Pittsburgh, 1826–1885,’ a Surefire Treat,” Trib Live, December 12, 2012, http://triblive.com/aande/museums/3112414-74/ pittsburgh-prints-art#ixzz3FHVHkkn0. 13. For more on the issues surrounding working with adjunct faculty see Susan Avery, “Adjunct Faculty and the Library: A Challenge for Change,” College and Undergraduate Libraries 20 (2013): 25–39. 14. See Ielleen R. Miller, “Turning the Tables: A Faculty-Centered Approach to Integrating Information Literacy,” Reference Services Review 38, no. 4 (2010): 647–62.

ELEVEN Web Archiving as Gateway Teaching K–12 Students about Archival Concepts Tanya Zanish-Belcher, Wake Forest University

Archivists know that the World Wide Web presents a unique preservation challenge. For all of us who rely on the web every day, determining its historical context and value can be difficult. How do we choose what to collect, and what good is saving this material if the generations following us have no idea of what it means? Context is all-important for the archivist, and yet, what used to be a fairly linear process of connecting the dots between individuals, organizations, and subjects in a traditional paper-based document, now expands into a complex virtual world. How do sites and webpages relate to other content? How do we assess what is of value or how individuals from time periods valued the information? However, the web also presents archivists with a secondary, and perhaps no less daunting, challenge. In a world in which many people assume that “everything” is online, how do we, as archivists, successfully make the case to younger people that archives are important and relevant? For K–12 students, the ubiquitous online content available through the web bears no relation to any concept of “old and dusty” papers and records. And yet, as our archival literature reflects, capturing and preserving online materials is just as important for many archives as preserving older paper-based holdings. How do we connect K–12 students with the concept that online content is also worthy of preservation? And how do we share complex concepts such as appraisal, selection, and preservation with K–12 students? How can we communicate both that what’s

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on the web needs to be preserved and also that the information that was created before the web (and isn’t on it) is also still important? The K–12 Web Archiving Project, established by Archive-It and the Internet Archive, is an early effort to tackle some of these issues and better educate students about the historical value of websites. This school-based program enables groups of K–12 students to select websites for preservation based on whatever criteria are important to them. This case study focuses on my experience with the project and what I consider to be its limitations. While the fundamentals of the program have the potential to serve as a springboard for archivists to better integrate themselves into the teaching process and assist in educating the next generation about the value of records, I found this potential remained unfulfilled. Reflecting on my dissatisfaction inspired me to create my own ideal lesson plan and goals to introduce students to the potential archival context of online information. I hoped to connect archival issues such as appraisal and digital preservation, which the students would learn in the context of web archiving, with the decisions archivists make every day. I envisioned a reconceptualized advocacy and instruction program that could fully engage K–12 students, as well as their teachers, while broadening the understanding of what archivists do and what kind of challenges we face. While my idealized curricula may not be easily implemented due to a lack of resources or time, I hope these ideas can serve as a starting point for discussion for how we might improve our connections with the K–12 audience. K–12 WEB ARCHIVING PROJECT: AMES MIDDLE AND HIGH SCHOOL Program Description Archive-It is a fee-based website preservation service that allows institutions to select and capture snapshots of html-based webpages. 1 Created by Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive, the goal of Archive-It is to save born-digital information on websites and to serve as a web archiving tool for institutions. In 2008, the Archive-It team developed the K–12 Web Archiving Program in collaboration with the Library of Congress, giving an opportunity for K–12 students (primarily third through the twelfth grade) to explore “digital preservation” in a new way—by selecting and saving websites for the future. 2 As of 2013, nearly fifty schools in twenty-three states have participated, and some schools have participated for multiple years. Many different school types have been selected, including charter, religious, private, and public middle and high schools. Students are organized into groups of between five and twenty and collaborate on the selection of websites

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for preservation. The topics they choose to document vary widely, but the focus is on demonstrating the varied interests of students today. The sites selected by the students are then made available via an Archive-It webpage for each institution including the school’s information and location, with their selections and links. The K–12 Web Archiving Program also introduces the concept of a webpage as a historical document, noting “the innovative program provides a new perspective on saving history and culture, allowing students to actively participate and make decisions about what content will be saved, that might not be archived in the traditional archive environment. The decisions the students make help them develop an awareness of how the Web content they choose will become primary sources for future historians studying our lives.” 3 Initial Planning In 2006, Iowa State’s special collections department began using Archive-It to select and preserve the university’s website. 4 After implementation of an annual subscription, I received an announcement about this new collaboration between Archive-It and the Library of Congress. After successfully completing a pilot program working with K–12 students to select and preserve websites, they were expanding the program nationally and were calling for applicants. I immediately thought that the city of Ames schools should participate in such a program. I saw it as offering a potential opportunity for us to broaden outreach to our local K–12 community without a significant time or budgetary commitment for my department. Using the web—something students used every day—as a starting point for introducing the numerous preservation issues relating to digital content was also very appealing. I saw this as a genuine opportunity for collaboration between our department and the selected teachers and students. I referred the opportunity to the ISU Library’s assistant to the dean, whose background was in K–12 assessment. She contacted the Ames school district about participating, and the technology director at the Ames Community School District completed the application. Ames was one of nine community schools selected for 2009. After approval, high school and middle school participants were selected by the director of the extended learning program, which oversaw the student groups. I was excited that the Ames schools had been chosen, and I certainly hoped to provide an introduction to some of the larger issues to consider in their selection work and some basics about digital preservation. However, for whatever reasons, the school’s contact didn’t choose to involve me directly.

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Implementation The Ames extended learning program administers a variety of accelerated learning opportunities and oversaw the K–12 Web Archiving Program. The students were organized into groups and met regularly (sometimes weekly) during school hours using Archive-It to select and crawl the websites they thought best represented their experiences and should be preserved for the future. Each group decided on large categories, and the students then recommended URLs that they thought should be preserved for historic purposes. The topics selected ranged from local interests, such as local businesses and the city of Ames, to broader teenage interests, such as academic resources, current events, and Internet culture. During the first year of participation, the Ames High group archived 16,869,783 URLs, and the Ames Middle School group archived 19,240,220. Their selections appeared on individual webpages dedicated to their particular group. 5 At the end of the project’s first year, the dean’s assistant coordinated a visit to special collections department by one of the middle school groups participating in the project. 6 In addition to the usual tour of the archives and displaying rare books, the students and I discussed the proliferation of electronic records and the selection and storage issues for born-digital materials. The students were enthusiastic and demonstrated great interest in digital preservation challenges, and I could not help but think of how an earlier discussion might have influenced their choices. As it was, our discussion did not impact the students’ project in any way. Results According to school administrators who accompanied the school group on their visit, the Ames students took the project seriously and were diligent about selecting websites to be included. They also expressed great enthusiasm about not only participating in a project to determine sites to be preserved but also that their opinions were considered. Comments appearing on the Archive-It website for the Ames schools included student Moriah C.: “It feels like what you were doing actually counted for something, because future generations will be able to see what was important to us. It’s a record.” Middle school student Laura G. said she “realizes how important the internet is to our generation.” 7 During the project’s Archive-It subscription, administrators also presented the project at a televised school board meeting, which certainly raised its visibility in the community.

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Limitations of the Program From the perspective of the Ames schools and Archive-It, this could be considered a successful project. The K–12 Web Archiving Program website included an observation from one of the teachers at the Ames Middle School who said, “I loved how this project changed my students’ view of history. They felt empowered to speak for their generation about what was important at their school, in their community, and in the larger American culture. It brought real world learning into the classroom.” 8 However, I would suggest there are numerous weaknesses in this program that limit the opportunity to truly introduce the participants to the concept of digital content as a record and the need for long-term digital preservation. The most obvious weakness, for me, was the absence of a designed curriculum with specific learning objectives or goals as to what the students should actually comprehend. Students selected websites they used frequently, which can certainly demonstrate a social context; however, does this truly educate K–12 students about the value of the documentary record and all its complexity, in the manner in which archivists would like? In the original description of the program, there is a definite emphasis on how it may benefit historians in the future but little or no mention of how archival work intersects with the preservation of these sites. The program also focuses on students documenting their own interests and lives (i.e., choosing=preservation), but this means little without the muchneeded context that could be provided by archival professionals. This lack of collaboration with archivists is one of the program’s major limitations. Teachers and archivists coordinating the course content together would help the students place their activities in a broader context and make connections to larger issues. Archivists would also assist in orienting the students’ historical understanding of the World Wide Web and how selecting and preserving websites relates to the broader field of archives and digital preservation. This could also be an important opportunity for students to understand the challenges related to appraisal, for either analog or digital records. Finally, the lack of assessment for the entire project demonstrates that the overall goal of the project is limited in what it purports to teach and what the students are supposed to learn. The comments from the educator and students were shared with the public on the school’s Archive-It website but were not the result of any true assessment of the learning process. Other than hearing that the students enjoyed the experience, how can we determine if any learning objectives were met?

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K–12 WEB ARCHIVING PROJECT: FORMULATING AN IDEAL CURRICULA As noted, I thought that this program offers a tremendous opportunity to connect with K–12 students. It was obvious they enjoyed the experience of selecting websites and were enthusiastic about their potential impact on future research. But the big question is how to convert this potential into something tangible, with benefits for the students, educators, and archivists? After reviewing my experience and the overall results, as well as my observations about the problems with the program as implemented, I thought it would be an interesting exercise to imagine how I would have organized this project. My focus would be on developing learning objectives with hands-on activities, explaining the archival challenges accompanying records in digital form and getting students to think about creating selection criteria. I considered what I would want out of this kind of project, such as building an archivist/teacher collaboration and partnership, the opportunity to introduce archival concepts to a new audience, and finally, implementing assessment throughout the project to monitor learning success, with a final evaluation. Archivist/Teacher Collaboration The key to my successful K–12 education project would be creating a true partnership with a teacher. 9 This would be a real opportunity for me to connect with the community and explore sharing my collections and profession. Collaborating with a K–12 teacher is much like working with a donor: it is essential to meet one-on-one and build a relationship in order to reach a specific goal. Based on past experiences, I believe my successful partnership would include a shared interest in history and clear communication about our expectations and goals. Equal levels of participation and input would reflect a give and take between our two viewpoints, and I would hope we would both possess a vested interest in learning and sharing ideas with students. Since the Archive-It K–12 program also includes nonpublic institutions, such as private schools and homeschooled children, I would also review those as possibilities for future collaboration. Their curricular requirements and schedules could be more flexible, and a specialized project such as this might be of great interest. Once I found the right partner, we could then move forward on developing a curriculum. 10 The biggest issues for teachers in implementing a special project such as this would be the already overwhelming demands on their time in the school system. I would expect the more we could integrate this new project with existing educational standards, the more likely it would be that our partnership would succeed. Of course, a lack of time and resources could also be issues for the archivist too. However,

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the effort placed in developing a partnership such as this could result in an exciting project, which could introduce K–12 students to not only developing a more-informed analysis of information sources but also conceptualizing their relationship and connection to records and archives. Preparing for and Developing Learning Objectives Designing a K–12 lesson plan requires solid background knowledge of how students can work with archives, and it would be important for me to review archival literature on the topic. While the specifics of how primary sources are introduced to these students will differ depending on whether they are physical documents or digitized materials, many of these ideas can certainly be used to inform planning for working with students. Another part of my responsibility would be introducing my teacher partner to archives and digital preservation concepts. In addition, together we would review websites dedicated to working with K–12 students, such as the American Memory site developed by the Library of Congress and National History Day. Another key part would be discussing the relevant educational standards that are specifically relevant to my partner’s school system. The state of North Carolina, for example, operates under NC Essential Standards, and this kind of project would fall under American history as well as information and technology learning objectives. 11 Again, using North Carolina as an example, the Division of NonPublic Education provides information about curriculum requirements that would be relevant if I were working with a private school or homeschooled children. Finally, examining resources dedicated to the concepts of digital and cultural literacy in the context of archives, libraries, and museums would assist my partner and me in developing even more effective learning objectives. 12 While I may struggle due to time constraints, I do try to develop learning goals for any course I am teaching or even one-time visits to the archives, and this project would be no exception. Remembering these are K–12 students, I wouldn’t necessarily want to go into too much detail or depth but rather focus on introducing basic concepts and connecting them with actual experience. K–12 students, depending on their age, can require a whole new set of teaching skills. Working with eight-year-olds can be quite different from interacting with those in high school. ArchiveIt’s primary goal is certainly to “educate students about the value of the Web as a historical document.” But expanding beyond that very basic goal, I would use the following as the basis for developing our curriculum:

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Understanding the value of webpages as historical and information resources • • • •

Critical thinking skills Assessing authenticity Context of web content Concept of history as a continuum

Understanding the technology issues related to digital and electronic records preservation • Digital preservation • Access issues

Comprehension of basic archival concepts • • • •

Values for permanent records Purpose of appraisal Lifecycle of records Access

Comprehension of basic collection development concepts • Understanding of context • Identification of key elements of sites (such as authors, audience, purpose)

Working with peers to select and preservation sites • Interactive and collaborative work to select websites Integrative and Hands-On Learning K–12 students learn best when they are involved in interactive, inquiry-based learning. For my program, options for these kinds of class sessions include providing short informational lectures focusing on key elements followed by interactive segments. These segments could vary depending on student interest. I also believe it would be worthwhile to include some individual and group exercises related to appraisal and decision making or from a potential future researcher’s perspective requiring the searching and utilizing of selected websites. In addition to short, informational lectures, I would also include time for students to write about their experiences in some kind of journal or even explore using clickers. Clickers could provide a less-intrusive way for participants to honestly share their opinions. 13 Small discussion groups are another possibility that would include directed questions and exercises. Integration of Archival Concepts Introducing basic archival concepts and placing the students’ work in the broader context of archives work is important. I would focus our discussions on how records can have administrative, fiscal, historical,

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and legal value and how those can inform what choices the students make for preservation. Sharing how archivists appraise the documentary record and what our role is in their lifecycle can also educate them about the responsibility of choices and decision making. Finally, teaching about the potential technical issues and challenges for digital preservation can not only help with this project but also put electronic records into perspective. I certainly would not want to dictate what websites were chosen, but educating students about the thought processes of prioritizing for selection would certainly have assisted them in understanding the context of digital preservation. Assessment and Evaluation One of the primary weaknesses of the K–12 Web Archiving Project is the lack of any in-depth assessment or evaluation. Integrating assessment into the course allows the instructor to determine whether the students are learning and retaining basic concepts. 14 Using the learning objectives, I would include a question or two after each learning event and also explore different ways of obtaining their answers. These could include online survey questions or clickers in class. Below are some examples, accompanying their specific learning objective.

Understanding the value of webpages as historical and information resources • Why is context important? • What can historians and scholars learn from webpages when they examine them in the future? • How did your websites represent your life and experience?

Understanding the technology issues related to digital and electronic records preservation • What important skill or fact did you learn about preserving digital records? • Do you think it is easier to save traditional papers as opposed to records available in electronic form, such as websites? Why or why not?

Comprehension of basic archival concepts • • • • •

Can you describe one archival value? How do archivists decide what to keep permanently? Why is context important? Can you describe the lifecycle of records? How can archivists maintain access to historical websites?

Comprehension of basic collection development concepts • What do you think is the most important issue you should consider when selecting a website for permanent preservation?

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• What is the most effective way to learn about who created a website and why? • Did you ever disagree with one of your classmates about selecting a website for inclusion in the project? If so, why? While assessing the success of how students retain concepts, it is also important to evaluate the overall impact of a course such as this. A final evaluation would examine student perceptions of what they learned and how they could utilize it in the future. Questions could include a variation of the following questions, in short essay or multiple choice: • • • • • • • •

Why were you interested in participating in this project? Describe something you learned during the course of this project. Do you look at or think about websites differently? Has this project changed how you think about history and the kinds of documentation needed to do research on the past? What are some of the challenges involved with selecting websites? Discuss your decision-making process when selecting websites. How do websites fit into the lifecycle of records? If you had to pick the one thing you will take away from this project, what would it be?

In addition to surveying the students about their experience, I would definitely interview the teacher/partner as a component of the final evaluation. Questions could focus on what worked and what didn’t, what was the best part about working with an archivist, or what they wish had been done differently. It would even be worthwhile as part of a long-term research project to follow up with the students in five to ten years to evaluate the project significance for student learning or whether there had been any impact on cultural institutions supported by the participants as adults. Assessment and the evaluation of learning experiences need to be integrated completely into any archival teaching. Otherwise, it can be difficult to assess the success of any programming or to consider long-term implications for revising the curriculum. CONCLUSION As currently constituted, the Archive-It K–12 Web Archiving Program does provide a preliminary introduction for K–12 students to the complicated issues of preserving the World Wide Web. Most importantly, it educates them about the importance of preserving the web as a cultural record. However, consider how effective such a program would be with an archivist and teacher actively and collaboratively engaged in developing an organized curriculum! If you found the right partner, I could even see easily expanding into additional course projects. Introducing K–12 students to the complicated concept of appraisal and how to choose for

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permanent retention would help them see the World Wide Web in a completely new light. And I do not doubt these students would provide insight for me as an archivist, to see the broader impact and importance of my work. More holistically, this program could be viewed as educating the next generation of collections caretakers—not necessarily to become archivists themselves but as taxpayers and volunteers and potential supporters of cultural institutions. It would behoove every archivist to think seriously about how to connect with the younger generation to nurture these kinds of connections. Certainly, any advocacy and outreach programming should reach as broad an audience as is possible, and I believe that educational programs can be thought of as laying the groundwork for future advocacy. If the adults of tomorrow never learn about archives and the difficulties of preservation, then how will they comprehend the value of archives to society? These kinds of programs provide an excellent opportunity for archivists to practice a proactive form of advocacy. As Anne Gilliland states, working with K–12 students offers us the chance to “expand the relevance of archival repositories within society” and “promote the role of archivists as active participants in the communication of cultural heritage,” among others. 15 The archival profession is just now beginning to realize that the long-term viability of records preservation depends in a large part on the awareness of an educated and tax-paying citizenry, and finding creative ways to engage with K–12 students and make archives relevant to their lives is a good way to start creating that awareness Tanya Zanish-Belcher is director of Special Collections and Archives at Wake Forest University. Until 2013, she was head of Special Collections at Iowa State University. NOTES 1. “Archive-It,” accessed September 5, 2014, https://www.archive-it.org/. 2. “Archive-It K–12 Web Archiving Program,” Archive-It, accessed September 5, 2014, https://archive-it.org/k12/. While the Library of Congress was an initial partner in this project, they are no longer acknowledged on the website. This may have been an effort to raise awareness of the Library’s Web Archiving efforts, accessed September 5, 2014, http://www.loc.gov/webarchiving/index.html. 3. Archive-It K–12 Web Archiving Program, accessed October 1, 2014, https:// archive-it.org/k12/. 4. Paula Van Brocklin, “University Archives Captures ISU Web History,” Inside Iowa State, August 29, 2008, http://archive.inside.iastate.edu/2008/0829/archiveit.shtml. 5. “2010 Ames Middle School,” Archive-It, accessed July 10, 2014, https://archiveit.org/k12/9AmesMS.html; “2011 Ames Middle School,” Archive-It, accessed July 10, 2014, https://archive-it.org/k12/10AmesMS.html.

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6. The Archive-It K–12 Web Archiving website states that each group from the Ames Middle and High School (2009–2011) visited Special Collections prior to beginning their selection of websites. This is inaccurate. When dealing with any underage student, you must also consider privacy and confidentiality issues. During one of the visits to the archives, we took some photographs of students interacting with both digital and analog materials. When planning some public relations efforts, we did contact the schools to obtain permission. We were allowed to reproduce photographs for our print newsletter but were denied permission to use the images online. 7. These comments were available on an earlier version of the K–12 Web Archiving Program website and are no longer available. 8. Comment available on website front page, accessed October 15, 2014, ArchiveIT K–12 Archiving Program, https://archive-it.org/k12/. 9. I am currently working on another potential project focusing on the thirdthrough sixth-grade group. I contacted education faculty at Wake Forest, and they are connecting me with teachers in the North Carolina school system. 10. I have found the following to be helpful when considering curriculum development: Claire E. Huntley, “Archives and K–12 Education: Opportunities for Collaboration” (master’s thesis, Western Washington University, 2013); and Jenny E. Robb, “The Opper Project: Collaborating with Educators to Promote the Use of Editorial Cartoons in the Social Studies Classroom,” RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts and Cultural Heritage 10, no. 2 (2009): 70–94. 11. State Board of Education, Public Schools of North Carolina, “K–12 Curriculum and Instruction/NC Standard Course of Study,” accessed October 5, 2014, http:// www.dpi.state.nc.us/curriculum/. 12. North Carolina Department of Non-Public Education, accessed October 5, 2014, http://www.ncdnpe.org/. 13. The following are resources I would certainly consider using if designing this kind of course: Cassie Hague and Sarah Payton, Digital Literacy across the Curriculum: A FutureLab Handbook, 2010, accessed September 5, 2014, http://www2.futurelab.org.uk/ resources/documents/handbooks/digital_literacy.pdf; “Interactive Classroom Activities,” Brown University, accessed September 5, 2014, http://www.brown.edu/about/ administration/sheridan-center/teaching-learning/effective-classroom-practices/ interactive-classroom-activities; “12 Clicker Tips for Teachers,” accessed September 5, 2014, http://www.colorado.edu/sei/documents/Workshops/Handouts/K12-teachertips.pdf; and What the Research Says: Using eInstruction’s CPS to Support Effective Instruction, a summary of independent research prepared by Interactive Educational Systems Design, Inc. for eInstruction (April 2010), accessed September 5, 2014, http://www.einstruction.com/files/default/files/downloads/cps_white_paper3.pdf. 14. See Julia Hendry, “Primary Sources in K–12 Education: Opportunities for Archives,” American Archivist 70 (Spring/Summer 2007): 114–29, for an overview of how to incorporate archival materials as a teaching tool. Hendry discusses using document-based questions as part of assessment. Also see: Eleanor Dickson and Mathew J. Gorzalski, “More Than Primary Sources: Teaching about the Archival Profession as a Method of K–12 Outreach,” Archival Issues: Journal of the Midwest Archives Conference, 35, no. 1 (2013): 7–19; and Richard J. Cox, Janet Ceja Alcalá, and Leanne Bowler, “Archival Document Packets: A Teaching Module in Advocacy Training Using the Papers of Governor Dick Thornburgh,” American Archivist 75 (Fall/Winter 2012): 371–92. The majority of archival literature has focused on assessing the undergraduate experience, such as Magia G. Krause, “Undergraduates in the Archives: Using an Assessment Rubric to Measure Learning,” American Archivist 71 (Fall/Winter 2010): 507–34. There is a definite need for further research on assessing the K–12 experience with archives. 15. Anne Gilliland-Swetland, “An Exploration of K–12 User Needs for Digital Primary Source Materials,” American Archivist 62 (Spring 1998): 137.

TWELVE Evocative Objects Inspiring Art Students with Archives Yuki Hibben and Wesley Chenault, Virginia Commonwealth University

Superman. Students. Lamps. What is the relationship between the three? More than one might initially think. The Special Collections and Archives Department at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) is a busy hub for both graduate and undergraduate students. 1 While many of them visit the department to complete traditional research assignments, a growing number of art students are accessing unique materials and primary sources for creative projects. In spring of 2013, for example, students from VCU’s School of the Arts’ Department of Interior Design and Department of Craft/Material Studies formed teams to design and build LED light fixtures capturing the visual and material qualities of specific collections: a comic arts inspired lamp mimicked the panels from Superman; a beehive-shaped fixture made out of layered book pages referenced an artist’s book. At the end of the semester, the lamps were exhibited in the James Branch Cabell Library. Regardless of one’s familiarity with art and design disciplines, the takeaway was simple. Archives and special collections can inspire and inform creative practices. That artists and designers use of archives for creative work is nothing new, though one might say that in the ebb and flow of ideas, the notion of “archive” or “archives” is on trend in the art world writ large. In a recent article, “How the Art World Caught Archive Fever,” the editors discuss this subject, outlining prominent themes in “archival art,” a phrase art historian Hal Foster argues comprises a genre in his 2004 essay “Archival 157

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Impulse,” and, later, scholar Sven Spieker expands and expounds in his 2008 monograph, The Big Archive: Art from Bureaucracy. 2 As the editors note in the article, some works in this genre are products of traditional historical research and document analysis, while others attend to forms of memorialization, such as monuments. Also included are works that create fictional archives and those that turn to the Internet as a metaarchive of sorts. A diverse group that spans the globe, artists whose work is considered to comprise the genre include the lesser-known and the renowned. E. G. Crichton, Stan Douglas, Thomas Hirschhorn, Zoe Leonard, Lynn Marshall-Linnemeier, and Walid Raad are but a few examples. Naturally, programs and curatorial practices of the past few years have also demonstrated interest in exploring both sides of this relationship. In 2008, the International Center for Photography in New York hosted Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art, an exhibit curated by scholar Okwui Enwezor. Three years later, the Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York held the symposium “Artists’ Records in Archives.” On the West Coast, also in 2011, the Getty Research Institute presented, “Artists and Archives: A Pacific Standard Time Symposium.” In our own community, in fall of 2013, artist E. G. Crichton, who is artist-in-residence at the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco, gave a talk at VCU Libraries about her work, including “Migrating Archives: LGBT Delegates from Collections around the World,” a traveling exhibit then installed on the first floor of Cabell Library. 3 Instruction sessions featuring special collections and archives resources are in high demand by the VCU’s School of the Arts faculty, who request approximately sixty sessions each year. Our nationally significant collections of comic arts and artists’ books are the most requested materials for instruction, but university archives and manuscript collections also serve as sources for research and inspiration. Collaborations between School of the Arts faculty and special collections and archives staff have resulted in a rich variety of projects and resource-based courses. In addition to the design course about light fixtures, examples include Collaborating on Comics, a class that paired undergraduate students from the English and communication arts departments to create visual narratives, and Portrait as Community, a course in which students researched primary sources to inform their photographic portrayal of community groups. These educational initiatives have prompted a new level of risk taking and experimentation focused on creative practice. 4 During the summer of 2013, Roy McKelvey, professor in the graphic design department, contacted Yuki Hibben to propose a senior seminar that would make extensive use of the department’s unique holdings. The senior seminars in graphic design involve a small group of students examining a specific topic related to design theory or practice through readings and discussions. This seminar, Evocative Objects, Personal Narra-

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tive, and the Meaning of Things, would explore our emotional and intellectual relationships with objects as vehicles for memories, affect, meanings, and ideas. Based on the Evocative Objects class, this case study focuses on a design project that Roy and Yuki developed, one that utilized the libraries’ manuscript collections in special collections and archives. PLANNING Although the general topic for the Evocative Objects seminar had already been determined before special collections and archives was asked to participate, the course content and syllabus were still under development. Roy requested to meet with Yuki to discuss ideas and come up with a plan. This was an ideal time to begin the collaboration. In contrast, the professor who taught the interior design class to build light fixtures had already devised the project and prepared the syllabus, approaching special collections and archives only just prior to the beginning of the class. We had to scramble to figure out how to educate students about the collections and provide access to students who were examining materials based on primarily visual characteristics. While the students were able to create lamps that reflected aspects of the collections successfully, the process was less than smooth because of the lack of advanced planning and collaboration. During the summer, Yuki met with Roy at least three times and actively exchanged emails with him to develop the course syllabus. Much of the first meeting involved discussing the core topic and objectives to make sure that we were both on the same page. The seminar would invite students to participate in contemporary discourse related to the value and meaning of objects in the conception of ourselves and others. They would consider the role and meaning of objects as mementos, talismans, idols, and surrogates for the living. Students would also examine the reasons why people form emotional bonds with objects and the extent to which this connection can inspire thought, as well as the human impulse to accumulate, curate, and preserve materials imbued with different values. Roy drew inspiration from a recent volume edited by MIT professor Sherry Turkle, Evocative Objects: Things We Think With, a collection of essays by scientists, humanists, artists, and designers that describes their relationships with specific objects. 5 He was also motivated by the literary and anthropological experiment Significant Objects, a project designed to show the effect of narrative on the monetary value of things. Organizers Robert Walker and Joshua Glenn purchased cheap thrift store items and asked writers to invent stories about the objects. When offered on eBay with their fictional histories, the thrift store finds received bids that were

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far higher than their actual value. 6 Roy had already compiled a substantial list of readings and resources for the class and shared this for our discussions. Our initial meetings helped to define course objectives, but more importantly, these conversations served to generate ideas and excitement. Roy’s first thought was to use rare books and artists’ books to illustrate ideas and to serve as inspiration for a design project. Yuki introduced the idea of using manuscript collections instead of published materials, convinced that the artifacts, ephemera, diaries, scrapbooks, and letters in many collections, particularly personal papers, would have more applications as a resource for the course. The importance of individual items within the context of the fonds and the significance of the materials to the creator seemed to coincide perfectly with the course objectives. Roy had not used archival materials for research and was initially concerned about how students would access and use these materials for a creative project. After several discussions, he agreed to take the risk to incorporate this unfamiliar resource. Yuki had recently team-taught another art class that used primary sources to create research-based artworks. Portrait as Community was an upper-level photography course in which students used both primary and secondary resources to research local organizations and communities. Throughout the semester, each student compiled a “research portfolio” of her or his findings. These portfolios included copies of articles, documents, and images as well as sketches, transcripts from interviews, and research notes. The students developed their creative work based on this research. Concurrently, they explored precedents and problems related to documenting and portraying communities as introduced from the photographer’s and archivist’s perspective. Lectures and readings on documentary photography supplemented their studio activities. The course culminated with students creating multimedia installations portraying their chosen communities, which were shown at an art exhibition curated by the class. This experimental class set new ground for both the libraries and the VCU School of the Arts in terms of collaborative teaching and resource-based learning. Despite the successes of this class, there were also areas for improvement that were useful in planning Evocative Objects. There was a buzz about Portrait of a Community prior to registration, and the students who enrolled came to the class with a community in mind. Although Yuki encouraged students to research organizations represented in VCU’s archival holdings, students were already excited about specific communities that ranged from inmates at a local prison to a support group for families with missing children to members of a burlesque club to undocumented Latino immigrants. The students required a great deal of one-on-one assistance with their research because of the complexities associated with locating resources to support their topics. The process

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was messy and the outcomes uncertain. Issues such as safety, privacy, confidentiality, and the portrayal of a community by an outsider were some of the challenges students encountered. Although the undergraduate students were exceptionally motivated and ambitious, the class was probably more suitable for graduate students. For the graphic design seminar, we constrained the students’ research to personal papers located in the special collections and archives departments of the Cabell and Tompkins-McCaw Libraries. Fifteen collections were chosen to limit but also provide choices for the class of thirteen. Yuki consulted with archivists at both libraries to identify personal papers that would be most appropriate for use. Those selected for the list included rich visual content in a variety of formats. The people represented by the collections were also interesting and likely to intrigue undergraduate students: an allegedly corrupt FBI field agent, a prominent artist and suffragist, a comics scholar, and a civil rights activist, among others. After several conversations about how to best incorporate personal collections into class objectives, Roy and Yuki came up with a project that seemed to have great potential. Each student would choose a collection from the list of fifteen personal papers to research throughout the semester. The student would examine individual items within the context of the collection to learn about the creator. Using scanned text and images selected during research, she or he would design a twelve-page, largeformat publication, similar to a magazine, that would communicate her or his findings. The publication would not be a simple biographical summary but a well-designed and compelling visual interpretation. Students were expected to draw conclusions about the creator and communicate their findings effectively through a design narrative. Roy’s project handout states, “The publication should be thought of as a visual essay that, while containing pertinent textual information, captures some essence of the archive as it is experienced in person.” A similar project was coordinated by E. G. Crichton, during her artist’s residency at the GLBT Historical Society archives in San Francisco. In “Lineage: Matchmaking in the Archive,” Crichton paired living artists with the deceased through personal papers. 7 Artists engaged with the papers conducted research in accordance with their own artistic practices and responded with a creative work. The resulting artworks have been displayed in three exhibitions, performed in several public events, and presented on three continents. Crichton describes her project as “a model for reclaiming historical memory through individual lives, a way to bring archives off the shelf into unexpected creative visibility.” 8 Similarly, Evocative Objects aimed to introduce archives as both a source of research and as a concept. Undergraduate art students who had no prior experience with archives would be exposed to a new world of our documented past and collective memory. They would learn new research methods and document analysis techniques to enhance their design

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skills. Also, students would have the opportunity to reimagine the significance of the creators’ material legacy through design. IMPLEMENTATION The course syllabus included several introductory weeks of readings, lectures, and discussion before the students’ first visit to special collections and archives. Although the students had been reading and discussing theoretical and philosophical works related to “archives” and the “archival impulse,” none had hands-on experience using archival collections. Because of the wide use of artists’ books and rare design books in the graphic design curriculum, the majority of the students had visited the department before and had some knowledge of special collections (publications and printed works), but the archives (personal papers, organizational records, photograph collections, and university archives) were a complete mystery to them. While current literature in archival instruction questions the efficacy of “show and tell” sessions, this older standard seemed appropriate for this group of highly visual learners. Basic definitions, formats, and principles of organization were better understood when students could see items housed within folders and boxes. Following an overview of reading room policies, the care and handling of materials, and a basic introduction, Yuki began by showing the class one document from the papers of Theresa Pollak. A painter from Richmond, Pollak taught the first art classes for VCU’s predecessor, Richmond Professional Institute, and later founded the School of Arts. 9 Students read a letter from the university director, denying Pollak’s request to use nude models in her drawing classes. Next, Yuki asked students basic document analysis questions such as those developed by the education staff of the National Archives and Records Administration. 10 These included “What type of document is this, who is the creator, and when and why was it created?” She also asked questions about facts and possible interpretations that could be gleaned from the particular document, including, “What social norms were in place for female art students at that time?” and “Why do you think Theresa Pollak restricted this document until after her death?” This method of posing analytical questions specific to the document is recommended by the Brooklyn Historical Society’s TeachArchives.org website, a valuable resource for introducing undergraduates to primary sources. 11 Next, students were shown the printed finding aid for the Theresa Pollak papers, opened to the page listing the folder and box containing the letter. Working backward, Yuki talked briefly about the contents listing and the collection’s arrangement. The Pollak papers are not extensive, and the guide to the collection is relatively short and simple. She then

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gave an overview of the purpose and use of finding aids. In smaller groups, the students were given an opportunity to examine other items and corresponding finding aids. Although students were given a quick demonstration on how to search finding aids online, the first session focused on the visual and material qualities of items tied to the lives of their creators. The purpose of the session was to link the theory and ideas introduced in the seminar with the real “evocative” objects. The next step was for students to choose a collection for their projects. The class visited special collections and archives for a second instruction session to begin this process. We distributed a handout with short descriptions of the fifteen personal papers from which the students would choose one collection. Each description included information from the biographical history in addition to the scope and content note of the finding aid. Yuki also gave students a refresher on how to locate and search finding aids online. Students read through the handout to narrow their choices, then examined print or online finding aids to learn more. By the end of the class, a few students were ready to request boxes to review. Over the course of the next week, students were required to visit one of the two special collections and archives departments individually to explore a few boxes from their chosen collection. Their first assignment was for each to give a ten-minute presentation that included biographical information, a summary of the parts of the collection examined, and a description of items that point to further investigation or which tell a particularly interesting story. Roy’s project handout made it clear that each collection contains far more material than could be examined in a half-semester project. In it, he went on to specify that, “We are not, nor is this class, focused on these archives and objects with respect to constructing a verifiable history of them or their owner. Rather we are interested in constructing visual and verbal narratives derived from the raw material.” Yuki shared the class syllabus and various handouts with the special collections and archives staff on both campuses before the student visits. Students were also advised to make appointments for their first visit and at times when they needed personalized research consultations. Two students chose papers housed at the Tompkins-McCaw Library, which has slightly different hours and fewer staff than Cabell Library. Both of the students were very conscientious about making appointments throughout the semester to work with archivists there. Yuki served as the main contact person for Cabell Library, though students worked with several different staff members during their visits. While the class focused on creative outcomes, the needs of the art students, in terms of access and assistance, were identical to most undergraduate students with limited experience using primary sources. Following their presentations, students began working on their core assignment, the twelve-page publication. They were given specific direc-

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tions for identifying themes or patterns within the papers based on a subject, organizational approach, or format. Initially, many students were overwhelmed by the volume of materials and their lack of familiarity with primary sources. They felt compelled to read every document within a folder or box, and some misunderstood that they had to explore every box in the collection. Other students became sidetracked verifying information and checking facts. Although research was a necessary component of the project, students needed reminders to limit their research to a specific aspect of the person’s life or activities. As the project handout warned, “Given the vast number of objects, documents and ephemera in these collections, it is impossible to absorb or convey them in their entirety—and, even if this were possible, it is unlikely that this would result in a very compelling presentation.” Students also needed encouragement to trust their design instincts and approach with a creative end in mind. To keep students on target, Roy and Yuki held three-work sessions in special collections and archives. These meetings helped the students narrow and refocus their research toward a creative outcome. A critique was held mid-semester, and Yuki was invited to participate and provide feedback on the projects underway. It was immediately clear that students who had spent extensive time in special collections and archives presented more successful design projects. They were better able to develop ideas, pursue hypotheses, critically analyze their findings, and successfully interpret them. These students created work that was insightful and, in general, more compelling than students who had spent less time with their research. The few students who did not spend sufficient time in the departments showed projects that lacked a strong visual or conceptual thread and conveyed only basic facts about the person represented. Fortunately, the large majority of class projects were progressing well, and the students had become more comfortable and confident with their research. A particularly exciting project in-progress was by a student researching the papers of renowned, award-winning poet Larry Levis. After exploring a wide variety of materials in the collection, she noticed a pattern across formats that seemed to indicate the dualities of his personality. In addition to letters from Levis’s ex-wife gushing with love and affection, the student also found letters filled with accusations and insults. The love letters and hate mail were composed by the same hand, one that sometimes displayed more delicate line work, other times strong, angry strokes. The student examined artifacts in the collection and noticed a tweed jacket with a professorial sensibility alongside black cowboy boots and a leather jacket alluding to a more rebellious nature. These visual cues were significant within the context of a collection that also includes pages of rough drafts and corrections along with flawless published works. This visually oriented student had realized something that other researchers had not. She was able to identify and connect visual patterns

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across formats and series and to communicate this knowledge through design. During the next few weeks, the students worked to address issues brought up in the midterm critique, make revisions, and complete their final designs. Many returned to special collections and archives to reexamine materials or fill gaps in their research. Yuki was invited to participate in the final critique and was very impressed with the range and quality of the student publications, in particular how the creators of these personal papers were portrayed in creative works. Many students were able to use a range of different materials to tell a story. One who had worked with the papers of Evelyn Bacon, a lieutenant and lead nurse of the Army Nurse Corp during World War II, used an image of Bacon’s dog tags as the sole item on her cover design. She also layered graphics and diagrams over images from letters, photographs, and maps to illustrate Bacon’s activities and movements across Europe through the end of the war. Three different students chose to work with the papers of Edward Lawler, the FBI field agent who was alleged to have been involved in criminal activities and was found murdered in his home in the 1980s. Each student focused on a different aspect of Lawler and applied unique design sensibilities to tell a story. One student concentrated on fingerprinting as a unifying visual and narrative theme related to Lawler’s investigative work. Another turned photographic scans of mug shots into bold black or red silhouettes, evoking the look of a mid-century crime novel (see figure 12.1). The third student scanned documents and text from Lawler’s investigations, filling in blanks and redacting text to pose questions related to authority and truth. The student who had examined the papers of poet Larry Levis depicted the dualities of his character on opposing pages of each spread (see figure 12.2). She borrowed from fashion magazines to design a layout of apparel depicting Levis the professor and Levis the rebel poet. Each item was photographed, placed on a flat ground, and marked with an oversized number corresponding to a key at the bottom of the page. Another publication portrayed Calvin T. Lucy, the founder of Richmond’s first radio station and an important local figure in twentieth-century broadcasting. The designer repeated text and graphics found on pamphlets, tickets, and other ephemera to build a rhythmic thread through the narrative. Less successful projects used more predictable layouts. Several resembled magazine feature stories, with a photograph of the person on the cover, the narrative arranged in text blocks, and straightforward, unmanipulated images with captions. Overall, however, the projects were outstanding and far surpassed our expectations for students new to primary sources. We were thrilled to hear many students express their en-

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Fig. 12.1 Michelle Lee, John Edward Lawler, 2013. Spread from student publication project, color inkjet print on paper, 11 x 17 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.

thusiasm and thanks for having the opportunity to learn about and experience the archives. RESULTS The most valuable results of this project are the significant learning outcomes for students. The fact that studio art students and artists conduct research for creative purposes is well understood by subject librarians, but rarely do they include primary sources in their library instruction sessions. This course gave undergraduate art students an opportunity to learn how to use, analyze, and synthesize information drawn from primary sources. Students with no exposure to archival materials learned the core reasons why archives are collected, preserved, and made accessible. They learned what primary sources are and how they are distinct from other sources of information. They also learned how archives shape the historic record, scholarship, and new knowledge. Not only did they learn new research methods to enhance their artistic process, they also used critical thinking and design skills to communicate conclusions. While developing this experimental class, Roy and Yuki were often figuring things out along the way and neglected to develop an assessment tool outside of the standard course evaluations. Only one student completed the voluntary online evaluation, and thus, a meaningful as-

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Fig. 12.2 Alyson Rua, Larry Levis, 2013. Spread from student publication project, color inkjet print on paper, 11 x 17 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.

sessment could not be made. The majority of students in the class did respond positively to the project and were enthusiastic about their research. Several of their projects were accepted for display in the university’s annual Undergraduate Juried Fine Arts Exhibition. Roy also sent some feedback after the course, and while yet to be explored, he suggested an interdisciplinary project in which history and design students could leverage skills from their respective disciplines to learn from each other. At this juncture, the long-term impact of teaching art students with archives is difficult to discern. However we have seen that a former student from the 2012 Portrait as Community class continues to incorporate concepts related to archives and artifacts in his artistic work with impressive results. Mark Strandquist’s project, Some Other Places We've Missed: Windows from Prison, evolved into an ongoing endeavor that received the 2014 Society for Photographic Educators’ National Conference Image Maker Award, a Photowings/Ashoka Foundation Insights Changemaker Award, and the VCUarts’ Dean’s Award. The project was recently featured in the New York Times and Washington Post. 12 Evocative Objects also provided an opportunity for two separate special collections and archives departments on different campuses to work together on an educational initiative. Every one of us, from hourly assistants to department heads, helped students in the graphic design senior seminar to some degree. As a result, we shared the excitement of seeing the student publications and felt a sense of ownership and pride in the success of the projects. Staff who rarely or who have never worked with

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art students had the opportunity to provide access to collections and offer services for a new purpose. LESSONS LEARNED The senior seminar reminded us that all students, regardless of discipline, can learn from carefully analyzing the visual and material qualities of primary sources. As demonstrated by the student who had worked on the Larry Levis papers, the identification of visual themes and patterns across series and formats can lead to new discoveries. The art students approached their research with a visual outcome in mind. Consequently, they were highly attuned to the visual qualities of the materials and what they could mean. Not only were the design students more attentive to images and forms, but also they paid close attention to textual documents. From typed excerpts showing the flaws of a machine to a signature drawn with a frail and delicate hand, students scanned and used text from primary sources to convey visual cues about a time, subject, feeling, or an individual’s character. The ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education provides an excellent framework for every student, regardless of discipline, to be both a “critical consumer of visual media and a competent contributor to a body of shared knowledge and culture.” 13 Archivists and special collections librarians can build opportunities to teach both information and visual literacy fluency to all students through resourcebased instruction. A lesson from arts pedagogy that can be applied to other disciplines is the in-progress critique. The opportunity to receive faculty and peer feedback can provide valuable insights and new directions for students. Midway through a project is an ideal time to help students who are stuck, lost, or misdirected in their research. In the Portrait as Community art class, students pinned copies of primary sources to the wall for an inprogress critique, in the same way that they would evaluate artworks. It was fascinating to hear classmates analyze the research affixed to the wall, commenting that the research was too thin or was off-target. Students also offered ideas and shared advice based on their research experiences. Critiques are standard fare in the art classroom but can easily be adapted to disciplines where students tend to work in isolation and do not receive consistent feedback from their peers or professors. The course also taught us that archivists and special collections librarians should not hesitate to offer instruction to disciplines outside of the usual suspects. While art students may synthesize and communicate their findings visually, their instructional needs regarding primary sources are indistinguishable from other students. Those unfamiliar with archives will need instruction covering the handling of materials, navi-

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gating finding aids, search methods, document analysis, and other topics that are within our expertise. Ideas and concepts that are new or unclear can be resolved by working closely with faculty. In order to increase our educational impact on campus, we should make sure that our outreach efforts don’t privilege certain disciplines at the expense of others. Finally, can too many educational programs and outreach be a bad thing? With finite resources (staff, space, time), scalability is a real concern for many institutions, but there can be advantages to pushing the limits. For several years, Cabell Library’s Special Collections and Archives struggled to provide adequate space for researchers, classes, and events. Because the reading room doubled as an instruction and occasional event space, staff frequently had to ask researchers to move out of the reading room to work in a conference room or at a table in the lobby area. On numerous occasions during the past year, the reading room, the conference room, and the lobby were at full capacity with users needing our services for a variety of reasons. When demand necessitated staff being exceptionally nimble and creative, all chairs and surfaces were utilized, including those in the department head’s office. Special collections and archives staff photographed and documented these moments to inform the library administrators of the popularity of our services and collections and our need for additional space. After years of managing overcrowded conditions, the positive outcome is that a dedicated room for instruction will be provided for special collections and archives as part of a major expansion of Cabell Library. CONCLUSION The Evocative Objects class was not only an outgrowth of long-standing relationships with faculty in the School of the Arts, it also was an opportunity to see how far our department might stretch to meet growing demands with finite resources and to more meaningfully align with the educational missions of VCU and VCU libraries. A current focus at Virginia Commonwealth University, among other institutions, is generalizable education, that is education that has a meaningful and enduring impact beyond any particular course, major, or degree. “A truly generalizable education crosses domains and expands the boundaries of what the learner considers possible. Like ripples in a pool, generalizable education spreads its influence in ever-widening circles.” 14 For archivists and special collections librarians to advance generalizable education, they must cross disciplinary boundaries to serve a wider community of users. As scholarship and the creation of new knowledge become increasingly collaborative and interdisciplinary, information specialists should look beyond traditional modes of scholarly output and embrace new manifestations of knowledge, including, but not limited to, creative works.

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Across our diverse and varied profession, archives today are as much sources of historical research and inquiry as they are creative practices and design. There are those among us who steward records of artists, who develop and curate collections of art, and who plan and implement educational programming around these unique materials. This is certainly the case with special collections and archives at Cabell Library. But a larger number in the profession safeguard and make available personal papers, organizational records, photographs, maps, and more—format and content rich materials that, in the eyes and hands of creative individuals, inspire magazine-style publications, contemporary photography of underrepresented communities, sequential art—even lamps. Yuki Hibben is assistant head, and Wesley Chenault is head of Special Collections and Archives in James Branch Cabell Library at Virginia Commonwealth University. NOTES 1. VCU Libraries at Virginia Commonwealth University, located in Richmond, Virginia, comprises two libraries, James Branch Cabell Library and Tompkins-McCaw Library for the Health Sciences. Both have special collections and archives departments. Unless otherwise noted, the content and context of this case study pertains to special collections and archives in Cabell Library. 2. “How the Art World Caught Archive Fever,” Artspace, last modified January 22, 2014, accessed September 2, 2014, http://www.artspace.com/magazine/art_101/the_ art_worlds_love_affair_with_archives; Hal Foster, “An Archival Impulse,” October 110 (2004): 3–22; Sven Spieker, The Big Archive: Art from Bureaucracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008). 3. “Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art,” International Center of Photography, accessed September 2, 2014, http://www.icp.org/museum/ exhibitions/archive-fever-uses-document-contemporary-art; “Artists’ Records in the Archives: A Two Day Symposium,” Archivists Roundtable of Metropolitan New York, Inc., accessed September 2, 2014, http://www.nycarchivists.org/event-377414; “Artists and Archives: A Pacific Standard Time Symposium,” Getty Research Institute, accessed September 2, 2014, http://getty.edu/research/exhibitions_events/events/artists_ archives/index.html; and “Migrating Archives: LGBT Delegates from Collections around the World,” VCU Libraries, accessed September 2, 2014, http://www.library. vcu.edu/about/events/2013-14/migrating-archives-lgbt-delegates-from-collectionsaround-the-world.html. 4. Caitlin Puffenberger, “The Visual and the Verbal: New Class Teams Artists and Writers to Create Comics,” Virginia Commonwealth University, January 2, 2014, accessed September 2, 2014, http://news.vcu.edu/article/The_visual_and_the_verbal; and “Collaborative Course Showcases Innovative Student Work in ‘Portrait as Community’ through Dec. 9 at Anderson Gallery,” VCU Libraries, accessed September 2, 2014, http://www.library.vcu.edu/about/news/2012/collaborative-course-showcasesinnovative-student-work-in-portrait-as-community-through-dec-9-at-andersongallery.html. 5. Sherry Turkle, ed., Evocative Objects: Things We Think With (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007). 6. Significant Objects’ webpage, accessed September 2, 2014, http:// significantobjects.com/.

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7. “Lineage: Matchmaking in the Archive,” E. G. Crichton’s webpage, accessed September 2, 2014, http://egcrichton.ucsc.edu/recent/?p=65. 8. Ibid. 9. “Remembering Teresa Pollak: An Exhibition on the Founder of VCUarts,” VCU Libraries Gallery, accessed September 2, 2014, https://gallery.library.vcu.edu/exhibits/ show/remembering-theresa-pollak. 10. “Documents Analysis Worksheets,” National Archives and Records Administration, accessed September 2, 2014, http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/ worksheets/. 11. TeachArchives.org’s webpage, accessed September 2, 2014, http://www. teacharchives.org/. 12. Rena Silverman, “Windows without Prison Bars,” New York Times, last modified July 23, 2014, accessed September 2, 2014, http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/23/ windows-without-prison-bars/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0; and Nick Kirkpatrick, “What D.C. Prison Inmates Wish They Could See from Behind Bars,” Washington Post , accessed October 7, 2014, http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/ 2014/10/06/what-d-c-prison-inmates-wish-they-could-see-from-behind-bars/. 13. “ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education,” Association of College and Research Libraries, accessed September 2, 2014, http://www.ala. org/acrl/standards/visualliteracy. 14. “Quality Enhancement Plan, Executive Summary,” Virginia Commonwealth University, accessed September 2, 2014, http://www.sacs.vcu.edu/qep/.

THIRTEEN Documenting and Sharing Instruction Practices The Story of TeachArchives.org Robin M. Katz, Brooklyn Historical Society

Across the profession, archivists and special collections librarians spend a great deal of time and effort teaching undergraduate students. Surveys of the profession have demonstrated that the vast majority of collections (from 83 percent to 96.5 percent, depending on the population) engage in instruction activities aimed at undergraduates, graduate students, K–12 students, and the general public. 1 There has been a spike in articles on archives-based instruction since 2005, 2 and edited volumes such as Past or Portal?, 3 Using Primary Sources, 4 and this book have more recently enhanced the literature. From 2011 to 2014, I served as codirector of Students and Faculty in the Archives (SAFA), a grant-funded education project that both reflected this increased interest in collections-based pedagogy and which, through the creation of lasting end products, has helped contribute to knowledge on this subject. SAFA was funded by a three-year, $750,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) 5 and was based at the Brooklyn Historical Society (BHS). In collaboration with Long Island University Brooklyn, New York City College of Technology, and St. Francis College, more than 1,100 early-career students in a wide range of sixty-five undergraduate courses made over one hundred visits to the BHS library and archives during the 2011–2012 and 2012–2013 academic years. These students conducted hands-on primary source research using over 1,000 items from BHS col173

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lections. SAFA also offered summer research fellowships to select undergraduates and in-depth professional development opportunities to local and national partners. Through SAFA, we learned a great deal about how to teach effectively with primary sources. Together, I (an archivist) and my codirector (Julie Golia, a historian) crafted a teaching philosophy 6 and identified best practices 7 for implementing the SAFA approach. Along with our eighteen-partner faculty, 8 we designed hundreds of lesson plans, visit agendas, and course assignments. We showed that the SAFA model benefitted both students and faculty. Independent evaluators found (by conducting interviews and observations, soliciting reflections, and analyzing campus assessment data) that SAFA students were more engaged and performed better academically than their non-SAFA peers 9 and that retention rates were higher for SAFA students with well-matched comparison sections. 10 SAFA students improved their foundational document analysis skills, and SAFA faculty improved their pedagogical strategies. 11 SAFA’s success was recognized by winning the 2013 Education Use of Archives award from the Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York. Despite the recent increase in literature about teaching with archives, we concluded in the course of our research for SAFA that easily accessible documentation of instruction practices is needed across the profession (especially, but not exclusively, when created for grant-funded work). After all, teaching is traditionally ephemeral in nature. Standard records of higher education like syllabi and course catalog descriptions cannot fully capture the steps taken to generate the learning that transpires in a course. Instructors’ preparations such as lesson plans and lecture notes are, if saved, rarely shared. Group discussions are virtually never recorded, and student work is typically protected by privacy laws. While course management software often collocates course materials (for authorized users only), the technology is generally understood to be a solution to access and not preservation. The instruction that happens in archives (which lack registrars or course catalogs) does not fare much better. Archivists may share pull lists, citations, or visit agendas with other repository staff, but this information is currently hard to discover or analyze from the outside. While some archives may publish statistics on the number of students, faculty, or courses served, further details about teaching collaborations are not normally presented in any systematic way. In our work with SAFA, we wanted to make a start toward changing this environment. This case study shows how we turned local ideas and discoveries into high-quality content accessible to a global audience via TeachArchives.org, a website that shares SAFA and its findings with a diverse audience of instructors, administrators, librarians, archivists, and museum educators. Our goal for both TeachArchives.org and this case study is to convince special collections librarians and archivists to find

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ways to create and share resources documenting their teaching materials, tools, and pedagogical best practices. Our experiences with SAFA and TeachArchives.org are presented here as just one example of a discoverable resource that broadcasts instruction successes and shares lessons learned. PLANNING While the SAFA grant called for dissemination activities, the original strategy was one of depth, not breadth. National partners (a group of teaching faculty as well as repository staff from several northeastern areas 12) visited Brooklyn in June 2012 for one of the SAFA Summer Institutes, an annual professional development opportunity organized through the grant. 13 Afterward, they started to plan to implement SAFA’s approach back home. In some cases, these budding collaborations have bloomed, 14 but the grant did not provide the necessary support or time for robust implementation. But even with more time or money, we realized our national partner pilot collaborations would not have broad impact or do much to share SAFA’s pedagogical and logistical methods. As would be expected, the grant also called for and supported presentations and publications. 15 We actively presented on SAFA throughout the course of the project, but conference expenses quickly add up, and even larger meetings reach comparatively limited audiences. While adding to the literature was very important to us, publications are slow to come to print, and we wanted to share SAFA’s exciting findings more widely before our grant-funded positions came to an end. The U.S. Department of Education has a process that is intended to achieve widespread dissemination. All evaluation reports of grants are posted on the FIPSE database, 16 available on a public website. However, the information from the database is displayed in a clunky and poorly designed interface; its oblique language is hard to understand, and its faceted searching is challenging to navigate. As early as a year into the project, my codirector and I knew that we wanted more than these limited methods of dissemination. We felt the work we were creating needed to reach a bigger audience more quickly. In other words, we wanted to showcase SAFA’s extensive teaching efforts online. We pictured a thorough list of all SAFA courses accompanied by syllabi, a detailed schedule of SAFA class visits to the archives, and some kind of centralized repository of in-archives activities and documents used. Soon, after conversations with other educators and archives professionals, we realized we wanted to capture our insights on pedagogy and logistics in article form, as well. We saw an opportunity to document our teaching philosophy, and we soon assumed we would interpret

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our evaluator’s reports for a wider audience. In our first year of teaching, a vague vision for a stand-alone website began to take shape alongside other aspects of the SAFA project. As our plan began to coalesce, about halfway through the three-year project, we realized we would need a significant amount of time in order to produce the kind of website we were now imagining. However, the grant narrative had planned for us—the 2.5 grant-funded project staff— to teach in the fall semester of 2013, right up until the very end of the grant on December 31, 2013. In retrospect, this would have been bad planning even without our new ambitious plans for a website as a final wrap-up period is always needed to publish and present and write final reports for a grant. With this in mind, we successfully advocated to the BHS president and library director that we not teach that final semester. Our FIPSE grant officer at the U.S. Department of Education also approved this change. We had already made other adjustments to staffing models and had experimented with the mandated digital component of the grant, 17 so when we approached our grant officer with clear, logical reasons why we wanted to slightly alter our project timeline (and our budget), she was fully supportive. We identified two main audiences we wanted to reach with our website: (1) instructors teaching at all levels who wanted to learn how to integrate visits to archives into their pedagogical design, and (2) archivists and librarians who wanted to scale up their instruction efforts and learn from our considerable experience. We also knew a third audience, composed of BHS staff, SAFA partners, and instructors who would want to continue to use BHS collections in person, would also be some of the most active users of the site. Early on, however, we decided that we would make creating a site that was easily discoverable and approachable to all our audiences our first priority. This helped us decide to select a URL and site name that was not attached to SAFA or other project lingo. Any variation on Students and Faculty in the Archives would have felt too long, too connected to a short-lived grant project, and too focused on postsecondary education. We were thrilled to find that TeachArchives.org was available, and we came up with the site tagline “Teaching effectively with primary sources” to broaden the mission beyond “archives,” a term that might be too narrow for the potential audiences we wanted to reach. While we were pleased with TeachArchives.org, we needed to consult with our administrators as well as the BHS-wide Technology Committee about the decision to use a URL that was not either a directory or subdomain of BHS’s main site, www.brooklynhistory.org. BHS had generously agreed to pay up front for hosting of the site for a defined period of time, and we wanted clear guidelines and a consistent naming policy. Cultural heritage and education institutions have to balance the legitimate desire

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to brand everything under their main URL with other considerations. For one, grants and projects with long names are hard to translate into good web text; shorter, meaningful URLs are easier to find and remember. For another, collaborative projects with other institutions sometimes demand neutral URLs. Several other innovative projects at BHS were dealing with similar issues, 18 and so, as part of the Technology Committee, I led the establishment of an institution-wide URL naming policy that allowed for such exceptions. As one of the first steps of active planning, my codirector and I spent a day brainstorming off-site with our part-time employee. After a year and a half of thinking about the project and its findings, of taking notes in meetings with faculty members and in class sessions about what worked and what didn’t, and of casually discussing a vision for the website, we conducted a day-long “brain dump.” This was a hugely useful exercise, and we found that even months later, we continued to consult photocopies of each others’ initial notes from this day. In this session, we generated ideas for everything from the larger arguments we wanted to make to the small observations we wanted to be sure to point out. We imagined articles written by us about teaching as well as about project management, reflections from participating faculty about their experiences, and polished in-archives exercises that could serve as sample lesson plans (or that could be used in person with BHS collections). We wanted to include some digitized collections to illustrate the exercises, but we were not interested in comprehensive digitization of collections, of all materials used in a given class, or of creating a searchable digital research library. We wanted project documentation to be exhaustive, but not overwhelming. Finally, we agreed that the look and feel of the site should be bright and clean and modern. IMPLEMENTATION Teaching through SAFA was an iterative process, and creating TeachArchives.org was no different. While there were clearly stages and milestones that needed to be reached, the shape of the website took form over the course of the entire project. The main stages were to hire a designer; to gather, edit, and finalize faculty contributions; to write our own articles; to write “paratextual” website elements (footers, home page, about page, and summaries); to gather and edit author page information; to gather, organize, and create project documentation; to digitize and describe select items from the collections; and to populate all website content. Many of these stages overlapped and informed others. While we took the first steps toward making the site a reality about halfway through the three-year grant, implementation began in earnest in the spring of 2013, with just over six months remaining. During the summer

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of 2013, we focused on working with the designer and with faculty contributors; we spent most of fall 2013 semester on website production. With so little time available, we selected a designer who had done previous work for BHS and with whom we already had a working relationship. Building on the ideas we had generated in our “brain dump” session, we discussed our overall imagined structure for the site with our designer. He helped us strategize about how to best present a large amount of information and yet maintain the clean and minimal look that we desired. We identified a visual reference site, Stocksy, 19 that had the look and feel we were going for: clean, bright, flat design. Though it was not an educational site, it fit with the modern look that we wanted more than sites with similar content (like DocsTeach 20 or TeachingHistory.org 21). In fact, we didn’t want our site to look much like most academic or archives sites, which we feel are usually weighed down by too much text and too often use outdated design elements. It was also a given to us and to the designer that the site should be responsive (meaning that it would display well on a variety of devices and screen sizes). In thinking about pulling together the content for the site, it was clear from the start that while my codirector and I would create the bulk of the content on TeachArchives.org, it would rely heavily on contributions from partner faculty and our evaluators. The site is a place to showcase a highly collaborative project, and the success of the site, like the project as a whole, is thanks to our many talented contributors. At the 2013 Summer Institute, we scheduled time to discuss the implementation plan for the then-unnamed website. Faculty were asked ahead of time to consider what topic they would want to write an article about (we gave very little direction as we wanted to see what they would come up with) and which of their class activities they would want to polish into published exercises. During a facilitated discussion about everyone’s ideas, those who were undecided gained clarity and advice, and others changed their plans based on group feedback. In a short presentation, we shared our overall vision for the site and solicited input. Our main takeaway for faculty was that we had spent two academic years exploring our teaching practices together, and we wanted to share all this good work with as many people as possible. Most SAFA participants had focused on refining and tweaking activities over that time, and while they were much improved, we wanted everyone to use the website as opportunity to really finalize and edit their work for publication and for public consumption. We wanted even the faculty with the strongest exercises to spend the summer cleaning up the list of documents they used, writing clearer learning objectives, and reflecting on the greater meaning of their exercises. We provided all contributors with guidelines for content. For the articles, we asked faculty to keep it short (750–1,000 words). We also presented a checklist of components needed for the exercises; the final template

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took shape based on feedback from faculty at the Summer Institute and on initial drafts. In general, we asked faculty to use their own voice and to consider the wide range of intended audiences. We selected examples of academic and teaching blogs with a writing style and tone that we wanted to emulate. 22 We also told faculty that we reserved the right to heavily edit or reformat their work but that they would be credited as author and would have final approval. We asked partner faculty to submit their first drafts in August 2013. On a rolling basis, we provided feedback and edits. Most contributors went through two or three rounds of drafts between August 2013 and late October 2013. Articles were easier to finalize, but the complex nature of the exercises required a great deal of work on our part and the part of our faculty contributors. We used track changes on Microsoft Word for most drafts and sent a link to a final, live version for faculty approval. We asked professors to revise any relevant course materials (such as assignment instructions, in-archives handouts, blog prompts, or rubrics) for publication alongside their exercises. I took the contributors’ raw Word files of handouts, assignments, and other course materials and created site-branded PDFs by standardizing font and colors and also heavily editing these documents for clarity and brevity. As part of project documentation, we also collected syllabi for all SAFA courses, which I did not reformat. Exercises include a complete list of the documents used from BHS collections. This allows a local researcher to find and use the same materials, and it demonstrates to global audiences the amount of documents used and how they were spread out over small groups or stations. We wanted to provide some digitized images of archival materials to better illustrate the exercise and perhaps to even enable remote users to replicate the exercise using online or printed surrogates. For this reason, digitized images were only linked out to exercises. There is no digital library, digital collection, or browsable gallery of all of the images on TeachArchives.org because we wanted to retain the pedagogical context of those individual items. We asked faculty to indicate which items in particular they thought were most illustrative or to provide feedback on whether they would rather digitize one document from each group or digitize an entire group’s materials. We took their input into consideration alongside feasibility issues like size and condition. In just a few cases, digital surrogates already existed. Money from the grant was used to pay for both outsourced digitization and in-house imaging. This work took place over fall semester of 2013 and included typical digitization workflow. Some extra steps were added for TeachArchives.org, namely the use of a separate file naming convention that was better suited to site URLs (shorter, more meaningful titles). 23 As a result, TeachArchives.org features 60 items comprised of 132 individual

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image files with very basic metadata (a complete item citation, dimensions, and links to download or view high-res files). We wanted a simple home page that drew people in, so we settled on one large image and three buttons to the main content areas: “Articles,” “Exercises,” and “The Project.” (The navigation bar on every page links to these three sections as well.) We grouped faculty written articles into five topical groups (“Engaging First-Year Students,” “Designing Your Visit,” “Digging into the Collections,” “Building Real-World Skills,” and “Models for History Survey Courses”) all under the heading “Success Stories.” For the articles, my codirector and I would write together, we used our initial brainstorming list to start. Once we finalized the number of articles we would write (a couple of the “final draft” list were cut due to overlap with other articles or time constraints), we were able to collaborate with our designer to lay out the articles landing page. We wanted to highlight two articles in particular: one on our teaching philosophy 24 and another cowritten with our independent evaluators on our findings. 25 We accomplished this by creating a box around those titles, using a bigger font and an accent color, and including an excerpt about the articles. These important articles are often linked internally throughout the site (in about pages, the footer, and elsewhere). “Project Documentation” was the last section of content that we created, and we ended up calling it simply “The Project” on TeachArchives.org because “Documentation” is too long a name for a welldesigned menu bar. “The Project” came last in our timeline not only because it by nature summarized the project but also because it required no contributor involvement and therefore little outside communication. Like with our articles, we started by brainstorming, grouping like ideas together, and drafting and editing content. For this landing page, our designer helped create an infographic that communicates basic statistics about SAFA’s scope. To highlight the work of our faculty collaborators, one of our main specifications to our designer was to link from an author’s byline and headshot to a page containing title and affiliation, a bio, headshot, and links back to all of the content that person authored. We gathered headshots and author page information from faculty, and we standardized or slightly edited language. We allowed contributors to opt in to a “contact me” email link, as well. Designing for good navigation requires setting priorities. On each of the three landing pages, choices had to be made about how content is ordered and highlighted. Our footer features a link to “Our Teaching Philosophy” article because we imagined that, if someone sent a link directly to an article or an exercise, we would always want a visitor to be able to find information about the underlying approach of the project.

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RESULTS While our profession lacks benchmarks for comparing site analytics, we feel our statistics so far qualify the site as a success. Google Analytics reveals that, to date, 26 TeachArchives.org has received over 28,000 page views, over 23,000 unique page views, and has an average time on page of 1:25. The site has a bounce rate (the percentage of users who visit a site and leave, instead of exploring deeper) of 56 percent, and an exit rate (users who visit a site and leave by actively clicking from a link on that site) of 33 perent. About one-third of all TeachArchives.org visitors have visited the site before. Nearly half of the sessions come directly to TeachArchives.org, almost a quarter begin in search engines (virtually all of these are searches for versions of the site’s name or URL), almost 10 percent are referrals from other sites, and the rest come via social media channels. Site usage peaked around the launch in February 2014 (up to 400 sessions per day). Other peaks represent conferences or workshops at which we are presenting the site (for example: about 100–150 sessions per day around the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section annual meeting). Since it launched, there has never been a day that no one visited TeachArchives.org; on a normal day, usage fluctuates near fifty sessions per day. Our hopes for a global audience seem to have been realized. While the bulk of users (80 percent) are based in the United States, there are also a substantial number of visits (2–3 percent each) from Canada, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Brazil, and Australia. Twenty-five other countries logged more than ten sessions each, and we have seen traffic from an additional eighty-six countries. TeachArchives.org has also received attention and praise from a variety of key audiences. In their final report, SAFA’s independent evaluators state that “TeachArchives.org is the most substantive and well-designed web dissemination resource we have seen in any educational development and implementation project of this scope.” 27 The site has unquestionably helped a range of people interested in teaching with primary sources learn about SAFA. We have been contacted by site visitors associated with a wide range of cultural heritage institutions, from campus special collections departments to the Digital Public Library of America. A PhD candidate at UCLA contacted us through the site and subsequently interviewed us about SAFA for her dissertation on the use of archival materials in elementary school classrooms. K–12 teachers attending BHS professional development opportunities have expressed surprise that such a high quality resource is available online for free, and a librarian participant in a workshop called it “a masterpiece of marketing.” A review from the Society of American Archivists 28 praises the site’s design and accessibility and notes its function as “an excellent resource” for underprepared teaching archivists. By “moving beyond anecdotal

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data to conduct a three-year study,” the review states, TeachArchives.org “makes an important contribution to the world of archival scholarship.” The reviewer’s concluding wish that “other institutions will pilot similar projects and add as substantively to the professional conversation” mirrors our own. Google Analytics provides deeper insight into use of site content. 29 Of the three main sections, articles are the most viewed, followed by exercises. Project documentation pages lag significantly further behind, and the project landing page itself is visited about as frequently as the “About” page. “Our Teaching Philosophy” is the most visited article on the site (this is unsurprising as it is highlighted in the footer, on the home and about pages, etc.), followed by “Our Findings” (which is also featured prominently throughout the site). “What Is Document Analysis?” comes in third, which is interesting because it is not featured more prominently than other headlines on the articles landing page. Overall, the how-to articles written by staff are more visited than the faculty success stories, undoubtedly because of navigation. The choice to group success story articles thematically (and to therefore require click-throughs to see individual article headlines) was a decision made in the design process. Ideally, user experience testing (via methods such as card sorting) would have factored in the priorities of potential audiences, but there was not enough time to conduct such research. The traffic directed to individual exercises does vary somewhat, but it is unsurprising that the most visited exercise by far is the first one listed. It can be assumed that since no exercises are highlighted in the way that some articles are, new visitors browse the site by reading the first listed exercise. The fourteen exercises on the site are ordered alphabetically by author last name in an effort not to prioritize any research subjects or assignment models. Again, with more time for user experience research, other display choices might have been made. Because the decision was made to only link to digitized collection items from exercises (and not to create a separate gallery or digital library), it is unsurprising that digitized materials are not the most frequently viewed content. However, analytics show that about a quarter of the visitors looking at an individual exercise will click to examine digital surrogates of BHS collections. A survey sent to faculty contributors 30 to TeachArchives.org shows that SAFA faculty partners have a universally positive opinion of the site. One hundred percent of respondents either agreed (36 percent) or strongly agreed (64 percent) with the statement “I think that TeachArchives.org was a worthwhile use of Students and Faculty in the Archives (SAFA) time and resources.” Almost all agreed (50 percent) or strongly agreed (29 percent) that the site “has been or will be a useful resource to others in my field,” 31 and the majority of respondents (65 percent) reported publi-

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cizing the site “to friends, colleagues, and/or professional networks.” In comments, many faculty praised the site itself: It looks great, and I am proud to be a part of it. Hopefully others, new to the site, find it as accessible as we do. It provides an excellent culmination of all the hard work of faculty across campuses. I like having all the resources in one, easy-to-find place. Others reflected a belief that TeachArchives.org was the best way to disseminate findings and end products related to SAFA: The whole point of the grant, it seems to me, was to figure out a way to replicate what we did so that more and more students and teachers will use the archives. Without TeachArchives.org, we would have failed in that mission. I think it is very important to make available the materials and tools developed in SAFA. The website seems like the perfect medium to accomplish that goal. SAFA faculty also found the experience of contributing to the site personally enriching. All survey respondents except one indicated that they either already included or will include contributions to the site in their professional documentation (CVs, e-portfolios, or promotion/tenure dossiers), and most (57 percent) agreed that “having my contributions featured on TeachArchives.org has been beneficial to my career.” Perhaps most importantly, faculty felt they improved as teachers by participating in the site. All respondents except one agreed (50 percent) or strongly agreed (43 percent) that “contributing to TeachArchives.org (reflecting on pedagogy, refining in-archives exercises, writing and editing articles) has helped improve my teaching.” In comments, several contributing faculty members indicated that this benefit extended to nonSAFA teaching as well: It helped me crystallize some of the ideas that I had been thinking about for a while and helped me tighten up the lessons in several of my classes. Writing my own exercise for the site and reading the contributions of others has led me to reexamine some of my assignments for other classes I teach. LESSONS LEARNED Based on my experience creating TeachArchives.org, I feel its most important lesson is that creating and sharing accessible end products should be part of the planning from the beginning of any education venture and should become part of routine workflow design. Because creating the site

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was not part of our original plan, we were short on time and therefore unable to conduct vital user research. Ideally, we would have explored the needs of our target audiences through surveys or focus groups. We should have tested content, design, and navigation with different users before the launch. With just a few more months, we could have used this information to better guide decisions about delivery, such as the order of the exercises or how to prioritize the articles. Because we produced a static website under a grant that is now over, we also did not have time to make edits based on contributor feedback. For example, we learned from our contributor survey that site visitors are not contacting faculty as we had hoped. At this point, it is unlikely we can make major changes to the display of the author page or contact links. We did make a small change in the link language from “View author bio” to “view bio + contact info.” When planning for deliverables, always include enough time for a round of feedback and editing. Solicit and take advantage of feedback, and work with your designer to plan for the parameters around making changes. You will inevitably want to tweak a website after launch. Upon using our site internally for a few weeks, we realized that a search bar would help us (if not users), so our designer was willing to add a search function. This needed to be refined when we saw how results would yield (for example, we learned to exclude some landing pages from the search). Again, if we had had a longer timeline, we would have been able to plan for both internal and external testing and establish parameters for the inevitable edits. Our designer was willing to work with our iterative process, where decisions were made as content came in; and we, in turn, respected our designer’s expertise and judgment. A good relationship with your designer is key. We faced a challenge in designing TeachArchives.org that is common in educational sites: how to provide large amounts of rich content and yet still make the site easy to navigate. In our field, we are used to long names of titles, collections, and repositories. We want to allow for nuanced ideas, and we are used to print publication formats. Yet the web requires concise and direct writing, and we often need to learn to break up long blocks of text into easy-to-scan, short paragraphs for online readers. The issue of easily displaying a massive amount of content was most challenging with the exercises on our site. As I have learned from other editing projects, it is very hard to take a wide variety of lesson plans and fit them into a template. In fact, it was very useful that my codirector and I were on the “other end” as contributors to Using Primary Sources during the time that we were editing our faculty’s exercises. There were moments when we were frustrated by having our exercise forced into a sometimes ill-fitting template, but from working on TeachArchives.org, we knew the overall success would depend on a consistent, easy-to-navi-

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gate layout. Our website likewise demanded that the exercises be consistently formatted. We also learned that actually seeing our content on the site as it was being built brought up issues we hadn’t expected. In our case, we did not anticipate that we would need to provide one to two sentence summaries of the faculty’s exercises and articles. But we learned as we were populating content that it was really necessary to have an at-a-glance understanding of a given page (for example: “A photography professor argues that research in the archives is an ideal way to teach design students to synthesize content and communicate meaningful ideas”). This was used at the top of article and exercise pages and also on landing pages where titles and authors were listed. This short excerpt helps readers decide if they want to click through and read more. Although we were trying to reach a wide range of educators, we weren’t sure how to balance the needs of professors and instructors at other levels, all of whom we thought would benefit from learning about our project’s findings. We knew that words like “teaching kit” and “curricula” would speak to a K–12 audience but would probably alienate college faculty. Ultimately, this meant that we would have to use neutral language (“instructor” as opposed to “professor” or “teacher”) as much as possible and that we would have to explicitly state that lessons could be adapted for students ranging from middle to graduate school. Whether your project’s end product is an exhibit, a book, or a website, it is important that you have physical promotional materials to hand out. We worked with our website designer to create and print 3,000 bookmarks and 2,000 tri-fold brochures. While online outreach only needs a link to point people to a website, in-person events and meetings greatly benefit from having sleek tangible promotional materials. When someone shoves a good-looking brochure or bookmark in their bag at a conference, they may remember to actually visit the site later. And extra copies never hurt so that you can enlist contacts to help spread the word as well. We ran out of the 2,000 brochures just four months, five workshops, and one major conference after the site launched in February 2014. Finally, while I was prepared to deal with the tight schedule producing our website required, in retrospect I would have appreciated more time to assemble the content from our many contributors. I was surprised at how much time editing a collaborative website takes. For anyone undertaking it, I advise doubling your time estimate on how long it will take to edit contributions! CONCLUSION While our professional literature has become richer than ever with new documented examples of instructional practices, more is needed. I be-

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lieve that all archives and special collections should work toward providing some level of information, available online, about the instruction they provide. This documentation should be aimed at both instructors and fellow professionals. We can use extensible archival processing as an analogy for this kind of dissemination about instruction. A “minimal level” of description would include enough information about instruction activities so that I would know if I want to send an email to find out more information. Ideally, I should be able to find a statement of teaching philosophy, basic orientation information about visiting or using the collection, how I would bring in a class if I wanted to, sample materials used in teaching, successful examples of collaboration, ready-to-go activities, or other learning objects. A “rich” set of documentation would also include syllabi, class visit agendas, lesson plans, collection pull lists, meaningful statistics, and outcomes. Creating this kind of content would mean asking collaborators to share their work, creating incentives for publishing learning objects, and setting regular deadlines for launching new content. Sites could be made more meaningful with features like “op ed” style articles that engage in questions about pedagogy, akin to TeachArchives.og’s content. Dedicating time and money to this effort would benefit both our own institutions and the profession at large. More resources like TeachArchives.org could help “address the pedagogical strategies for, and benefits of, scheduled class visits” 32 or “determine the specific instruction techniques that most effectively engage students.” 33 Assessment data is especially vital to share. Elizabeth Yakel has long called for “empirical work evaluating the outcomes of different types of archival user education,” 34 which, as Anne Bahde and Heather Smedberg point out, could be used across the profession to demonstrate “evidence of a clear return on . . . investment of an instruction program.” 35 I was most excited to join SAFA because I knew it would provide the profession at large with much-needed evidence of how collections-based instruction can impact the bottom lines of higher education issues like student retention and academic performance. Sharing documentation and resources is also a way to address the fact that many archivists and special collections librarians report that they do not feel prepared to teach well. 36 Despite widespread instruction efforts, the profession faces a training problem, and “archivists and curators are mostly self-taught.” 37 Professional development opportunities are few and far between, 38 and cost and geography pose significant barriers to those that do occur. For the good of our users, coworkers, funders and administrators, other librarians and archivists, and the profession at large, document your instruction practices, publish your work, share your data, and join the conversation!

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Robin M. Katz is head of Reference and User Services at Brooklyn Historical Society. NOTES 1. See Susan Allen, “Rare Books and the College Library: Current Practices in Marrying Undergraduates to Special Collections,” Rare Books and Manuscript Librarianship 13, no. 2 (1999): 113; Brian Dietz, “Getting Undergrads into Archives: Educational Outreach Efforts of University Archives, Manuscript Departments, and Special Collections” (master’s thesis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2005), 33; Anna Elise Allison, “Connecting Undergraduates with Primary Sources: A Study of Undergraduate Instruction in Archives, Manuscripts, and Special Collections” (master’s thesis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2005), 26. 2. As seen in a bibliography called “Teaching with Primary Sources” started by a committee of the same name under the Reference, Access, and Outreach (RAO) section of the Society of American Archivists (SAA). A “live” version of the Zotero bibliography is maintained at https://www.zotero.org/groups/teaching_with_primary_sources. This is the more up-to-date version than the “formatted” one posted on SAA’s website at http://www2.archivists.org/groups/reference-access-and-outreach-section/teachingwith-primary-sources-bibliography. 3. Eleanor Mitchell, Peggy Seidan, and Suzy Taraba, eds., Past or Portal? Enhancing Undergraduate Learning through Special Collections and Archives (Chicago: American Library Association, 2012). 4. Anne Bahde, Heather Smedberg, and Mattie Taormina, eds., Using Primary Sources: Hands-On Exercises (Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited, 2014). 5. Students and Faculty in the Archives (SAFA) is supported by grant #P116B100331 from the U.S. Department of Education. However, the TeachArchives.org website does not necessarily represent the policy of the U.S. Department of Education, and you should not assume endorsement by the federal government. The grant period occurred between January 2011 and December 2013, and BHS was given a no-cost extension through 2014. Additional support for SAFA was provided by JPMorgan Chase. 6. For more information on our hands-on, directed approach, see Julie Golia and Robin M. Katz, “Our Teaching Philosophy,” TeachArchives.org, published February 2014, http://www.teacharchives.org/articles/our-teaching-philosophy/. 7. See Julie Golia and Robin M. Katz, “Eight Best Practices,” TeachArchives.org, published February 2014, http://www.teacharchives.org/articles/best-practices/. 8. SAFA faculty were incredibly diverse: they taught history, composition, literature, American studies, religious studies, art history, photography, architectural technology, and speech. They held all ranks, from adjunct to tenured professor. Some had conducted extensive archival research for their own scholarship, and others were completely new to archives and special collections. 9. Alice Anderson, Julie Golia, Robin M. Katz, and Bill Tally, “Our Findings,” TeachArchives.org, published February 2014, http://www.teacharchives.org/articles/ our-findings/. 10. Education Development Center, Inc., “Final Evaluator’s Report (2014),” TeachArchives.org, forthcoming December 2014, http://www.teacharchives.org/project. 11. Anderson, et al. 12. For a full list of local and national partners, see “Participants” on the “About” page at TeachArchives.org, published February 2014, http://www.teacharchives.org/ about/. 13. For more information on the Summer Institutes, see Julie Golia and Robin M. Katz, “Summer Institutes,” TeachArchives.org, published February 2014, http:// www.teacharchives.org/project/summer-institutes/.

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14. History professors at St. Joseph’s University brought courses to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP) starting in the fall of 2013. In October 2013, my codirector and I led a workshop at HSP to train more Philadelphia area faculty and staff. A full-day workshop was also held at the University of Vermont for national partner teaching and library faculty, with courses planned for fall 2014. 15. Up-to-date lists of SAFA-related publications and presentations are linked from the Project page at TeachArchives.org, published February 2014, http:// www.teacharchives.org/project/. 16. U.S. Department of Education, FIPSE Database, http://fipsedatabase.ed.gov/ fipse/. 17. While the grant narrative had imagined that first-year survey courses and topical seminars would each be able to do hands-on research in the archives and produce Omeka digital exhibits, that was unrealistic. Not all faculty (who had a wide range of comfort with educational technology) had bought-in to that idea, and besides—the only successful examples of such course-produced websites were in courses that were somehow dedicated to curation, museum studies, or digital humanities. Over time, we morphed this concept into class blogs to allow our evaluators to see students’ reflections. Another change we had already implemented regarded support for these blogs. The narrative called for a team of part-time undergraduates workers to provide technical support to faculty; we thought one graduate student would be easier to manage. While that position did assist with the initial networked installation, I soon took on the full responsibility for website maintenance and support. 18. Including, In Pursuit of Freedom (http://pursuitoffreedom.org), a multi-partner collaboration about abolitionism in Brooklyn; and Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations (http://cbbg.brooklynhistory.org), a large oral history and programming site about mixed heritage families and cultural hybridity. 19. Stocksy, accessed fall 2013, http://www.stocksy.com/. 20. National Archives and Records Administration, DocsTeach, http://docsteach.org/. 21. Center for History and New Media, George Mason University, TeachingHistory.org, http://teachinghistory.org/. 22. These were: Claire B. Potter, Tenured Radical (blog), The Chronicle of Higher Education, http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/tenuredradical/; ProfHacker (blog), The Chronicle of Higher Education, http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/; American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning, City University of New York, and the Center for History and New Media, George Mason University, History Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/; National Archives and Records Administration, Docs Teach, Center for History and New Media, George Mason University, TeachingHistory.org, http://teachinghistory.org/, http://docsteach.org/; KQED, Mind/Shift (blog), http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/. 23. I created a crosswalk between TeachArchives.org filenames and locations (links) to BHS filenames and citations. See “Image Files Crosswalk,” TeachArchives.org, published February 2014, http://www.teacharchives.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/images-crosswalk.pdf. 24. Julie Golia and Robin M. Katz, “Our Teaching Philosophy,” TeachArchives.org, published February 2014, http://www.teacharchives.org/articles/our-teaching-philosophy/. 25. Anderson, et al. 26. Using the “overview” report on site activity from February 13, 2014 (launch date) until February 12, 2015. 27. All SAFA grant reports are available online on the Project page at TeachArchives.org, published February 2014, at http://teacharchives.org/project. 28. Abigail Nye, review of TeachArchives.org, The American Archivist Reviews, published August 7, 2014, http://www2.archivists.org/sites/all/files/TeachArchives.org_.pdf.

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29. Using the “content drilldown” report on site activity from February 13, 2014 (launch date) until August 25, 2014. 30. All but one of the fifteen faculty contributors completed this online survey during the summer of 2014. 31. The remainder of responses (21 percent) were neutral on this question; none disagreed or strongly disagreed. 32. Ann Schmiesing and Deborah Hollis, “The Role of Special Collections Departments in Humanities Undergraduate and Graduate Teaching: A Case Study,” Portal: Libraries and the Academy 2, no. 3 (2002): 465. 33. Wendy M. Duff and Joan M. Cherry, “Archival Orientation for Undergraduate Students: An Exploratory Study of Impact,” The American Archivist 71 (2008): 504. 34. Elizabeth Yakel, “Listening to Users,” Archival Issues 26 (2002): 119. 35. Anne Bahde and Heather Smedberg, “Measuring the Magic: Assessment in the Special Collections and Archives Classroom,” RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage 13 (2012): 152–74. 36. See Ken Osborne, “Archives in the Classroom,” Archivaria 23 (1986): 27; Carini, 46; Krause, 248 Peter Carini, “Archivists as Educators: Integrating Primary Sources into the Curriculum,” Journal of Archival Organization 7 (2009): 45. Magia Krause, “Learning in the Archives: A Report on Instructional Practices,” Journal of Archival Organization 6, no. 4 (2008): 235. 37. Krause, 248. 38. I recently taught a full-day workshop on designing effective instruction programs at the 2014 RBMS Preconference, and it sold out—twice (the cap on enrollment was raised due to high interest). Rare Book School in Charlottesville, Virginia, has taught “Teaching the History of the Book” nine times since 1997, and regional opportunities do occur. For example, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference (MARAC) hosted a workshop in March 2014. See also Anne Marie Lane, “Books IN History; Books AS History: Teaching Undergraduates in the Toppan Rare Books Library, University of Wyoming,” in Past or Portal? Enhancing Undergraduate Learning through Special Collections and Archives, eds., Eleanor Mitchell, Peggy Seidan, and Suzy Taraba (Chicago: American Library Association, 2012), 219–20, for a personal reflection on seeking out professional development opportunities.

Index

Abraham Lincoln Foundation, 53 ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards, 168 Allen, Susan M., 117 Appalachian State University, ix, 1–14 “archival impulse”, 59, 157, 162 Archival Metrics Toolkit, 39 “the archive”, x, 59–72, 157 Archive-It, 146, 147, 148, 149 Archives Education Institute, 87–102 Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York (A.R.T.), x, xi, 87–102, 158, 174 assessment, 12, 38–40, 54–55, 78, 82–83, 83, 84, 98, 110, 124, 149, 150, 153–154, 166 audience development, 17 Bahde, Anne, 186 blogs, 37, 80, 83, 121, 125, 126 Bobley, Brett, 87 Brooklyn Historical Society, x, 162, 173–189 Browning, Greta Reisel, ix, xi, 1–14 Bunde, Janet, x, 87–102 California Rare Book School, 117 Carter, Rodney, ix Cary, Amy Cooper, ix Center for Jewish History, 95–97 Champagne, Brooke, ix, x, 117–129 Chatham University, x, 131–143 Chen, Amy Hildreth, ix, x, 117–129 Chenault, Wesley, ix, x, 157–171 Common Core State Standards, 78–79, 81–82, 85, 88, 90, 95, 97, 98, 101 Concordia College, ix, xi, 103–116 consultants, use of, 15–29 CONTENTdm, 106 copyright, 93, 101

Cruz, Pamela, 98 Cultural Fieldwork Initiative, ix, x, xi, 47–58 Cumbria Archive Service, ix, x, xi, 15–29 curriculum guides, 90, 99, 100 curriculum standards, xi, 20, 22, 23, 27, 43, 53, 150, 151. See also Common Core State Standards Daniels, Julie, 89 Davies, Jane, ix, 15–29 Davy, Jennie, ix, 31–45 Derrida, Jacques, 59, 61, 125 digital history projects, 103–116 digital humanities, 103, 104, 114 digitization, problems with, 2–3, 9 donations, 38, 103–116 Dublin Core, 107, 109 Dupree, Nancy, 123 Early English Books Online (EEBO), 2, 3–4, 10 educational programs: and advocacy, 155; art used in, x, 15–29, 73–86; copies used in, 21, 27, 92, 128, 179; digital resources used in, 1–14, 136; sharing products of, x, xi, 173–189; using personal papers in, 15–29, 73–86; using rare books in, 1–14. See also educators; students educators: as contributors to a web resource, 173–189; feedback from, 9, 21, 23, 27, 40, 42, 69, 149, 182–183; planning education sessions with, ix, 5, 16, 18–19, 20, 21, 26–27, 33, 33–34, 40, 41, 42, 47–58, 60–61, 63, 70, 74–75, 79, 150, 154, 159–161; workshops on using primary sources, ix, 87–102, 131–143 191

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Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), 2, 3 emotion, when interacting with collections, 4, 8, 11, 19, 23, 80, 125 Emory University, 118, 120 Emporia State University, ix, x, xi, 73–86 evaluation, 25, 70, 154. See also assessment exhibitions, 18, 20, 21, 158, 167; curated by students, x–xi, 31–45, 136, 139 field trips, 73–86, 97 Flickr, 34, 37, 67 Fonthill Castle, 48 Foster, Hal, 59, 61, 157 Foucault, Michel, 59, 61 Fragnoli, Kristi, 89 Franklin, Michelle, ix, 73–86 Gadd, Ian, 10–11 Gilliland, Ann, 155 Girl Scouts National Historic Preservation Center, 98 Google Books, 2, 5, 7 Google Lit Trips, 77 grants, 16, 19, 55, 80, 104, 173–189 Hibben, Yuki, ix, x, 157–171 Historic St. George’s United Methodist Church, 53 Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 48, 51, 53, 57 History Harvest, 103–116 innovation, viii Internet Archive, 2, 146 Iowa State University, 147, 148 iPads, 4, 5, 8, 9 John J. Wilcox Jr. LGBT Archives, 48 K-12 Web Archiving Program, 145–156 Katz, Robin, x, xi, 173–189 Keener, Andrew, 3, 4 Kichuk, Diana, 2, 3 Lacher-Feldman, Jessica, 31, 32 Larson, Erik, 118, 119, 128

learning objectives, 36, 149, 150, 151–152, 153, 178 learning outcomes, 5, 8, 78–79, 124 lesson plans, 53, 90, 174, 184 Library of Congress, 69, 136, 146, 147, 151 Lintelman, Joy K., ix, 103–116 Malkmus, Doris, 88, 134 McNally, Anna, ix, x, 59–72 media coverage, 17, 25, 43, 110, 139, 167 Meyers, Melanie, x, 87–102 National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), 162 National Archives at New York City, 89, 90, 91, 92 National Archives at Philadelphia, 47, 48, 57 National Constitution Center, 48 National History Day, 47–48, 48, 49, 50, 51–52, 91, 151 Neele, Adriaan C., 3 New York Archives Week, 87, 88, 91 New York State Archives, 88, 89 New York University, 93–95 Niles, Rebecca, 1 Omeka, 44, 104, 105, 106–107, 109, 112, 114 optical character recognition (OCR), 3 oral histories, 106, 107, 108–109, 109, 112 outreach events, 38, 43, 103–116. See also New York Archives Week Parnes, Brenda, 88, 89, 91 Pennsylvania Hospital Archives, 48 Pennsylvania State University, 88 Philadelphia Museum of Art, 48 Priddle, Charlotte, x, 87–102 primary source databases, 1–14 Ray, Kevin, 123 Reidell, Andrea, ix, x, 47–58 reference services, impact on,C09.22C09.23 C09.38 C12.7 Rohrbaugh, Rachel Grove, x, 131–143

Index Saint Rose, College of, 89 Schindler, Amy, ix, 31–45 Scribner, Shari, ix, 73–86 Senator John Heinz History Center, 134 Siegel, Steven, 88 Singer, Chandi, 34, 36 Sjoberg, Lisa M., ix, 103–116 Smedberg, Heather, 186 social media. See blogs; Flickr; Twitter Society of American Archivists, 181 Spedding, Patrick, 3 Spiro, Lisa, 103 Steinitz, Andy, x, 87–102 students: in colleges of education, 47–58; of cultural and critical studies, x, 59–72; elementary school, ix, 15–29, 73–86, 145–156; feedback from, 23, 25, 39–40, 54–55, 81, 82, 110–111, 115, 148; graduate, ix, 1–14, 47–58, 59–72; secondary school, ix, 51–52, 94–95, 96–97, 145–156; undergraduate, ix, 31–45, 47–58, 63–64, 70, 74, 103–116, 117–129, 157–171, 173 Students and Faculty in the Archives (SAFA), 173–189 Summey, Terri, ix, 73–86 Tate Archive, 60–62 TeachArchives.org, xi, 162, 173–189

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Temple University, 47–58 Todd-Diaz, Ashley, ix, 73–86 Tullock, Janice, ix, 15–29 Twiss-Houting, Beth, ix, x, 47–58 Twitter, 65, 69 University of Alabama, ix, 117–129 University of Pittsburgh, 134 University of Westminister, ix, 59–72 Virginia Commonwealth University, ix, xi, 157–171 Wainright, Alfred, 15–29 Wake Forest University, ix, xi, 145–156 web archiving, 145–156 web resources, 24–25, 28, 53, 101, 173–189 web tutorials, 10, 11 William & Mary, College of, ix, xi, 31–45 Woyshner, Christine, 47–58 Wyck, 53 Yakel, Elizabeth, 186 Zanish-Belcher, Tanya, ix, x, xi, 145–156 Zarr, Christopher, 89

About the Editor

Kate Theimer is the author of the popular blog ArchivesNext and a frequent writer, speaker, and commentator on issues related to the future of archives. She is the editor of the Rowman & Littlefield series, Innovative Practices for Archives & Special Collections, in which volumes on management, description, outreach, and reference and access were published in 2014. She is also the author of Web 2.0 Tools and Strategies for Archives and Local History Collections and the editor of A Different Kind of Web: New Connections between Archives and Our Users, as well as having contributed chapters to Many Happy Returns: Advocacy for Archives and Archivists, The Future of Archives and Recordkeeping, and the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Archival Science. She has published articles in the American Archivist and the Journal of Digital Humanities. Kate served on the Council of the Society of American Archivists from 2010 to 2013. Before starting her career as an independent writer and editor, she worked in the policy division of the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, Maryland. She holds an MSI with a specialization in archives and records management from the University of Michigan and an MA in art history from the University of Maryland.

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