TPS Collective – By and For the Teaching with Primary Sources Community

TPS Unconference 2021

Come one & all — July 20 & 21
Our 7th year! Two half-days of free, virtual, attendee-driven conversations, covering all aspects of Teaching with Primary Sources.

TPS Events & Opportunities

Upcoming TPS Community Calls, unconferences, webinars, conference calls, learning opportunities, and other events.

Notes from the Field

Highlights practical lessons from the front lines of teaching with primary sources in thematic series of open peer-reviewed articles.

Teaching Tools Library

An ever-growing set of resources useful for teaching with primary sources.

What is the TPS Collective?

The Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) Collective is an online hub that brings together resources, professional development and support for those who teach with primary sources, including librarians, archivists, teachers, cultural heritage professionals, and anyone who has an interest in using primary sources in an educational setting. For more information about the TPS Collective, please visit the About Us page.

Browse Lessons, Activities & Latest News

Newest Submissions

Call for Contributions to Notes from the Field: Summer 2021

Notes from the Field, a publication of the TPS Collective, is now accepting blog post submissions about teaching with primary sources for two series of peer-reviewed blog posts!

Artist's book consisting of a long scroll and a can marked "Beans."

Notes from the Field / Reflective Practice Series

Teaching with Artists’ Books During the Pandemic

By Marsha Taichman / The Artists’ Books Collection at the Fine Arts Library (FAL) at Cornell University is fairly unique, as it is a teaching collection housed in the open …

TPS Unconference 2019 Session Voting at Harry Ransom Center in Austin TX

2021 / Events & Opportunities / Unconferences

Teaching with Primary Sources Virtual Unconference 2021 – July 20 & 21, 2021

Do you Teach with Primary Sources, or want share and learn with other like-minded people with all levels and types of experience? Come join your colleagues for an informative and …

Conference Calls / Events & Opportunities / Live Chats & Twitter Chats

TPS Article Discussion Club – Ongoing – SAA-TPS Committee

The TPS Article Discussion Club is a drop-in, drop-out casual Zoom discussion with your peers where we can share insights and ideas based around a pre-selected article and topic. The …

Notes from the Field / Practical How-To Series

Teaching without Walls

By Ron McColl / The pandemic and the institutional mandates accompanying it have posed unique challenges for special collections librarians and archivists who teach with primary sources. At West Chester …

Screen capture of the Primary Source Literacy at USC Libraries and Beyond module

Notes from the Field / Practical How-To Series

Building a Toolkit for Synchronous and Asynchronous Delivery of Primary Source Literacy Instruction, Now and Post-Covid-19

By Michaela Ullmann / In my role as Instruction Coordinator for Special Collections at the USC Libraries, I oversee our Primary Source Literacy Instruction Program through which we currently teach …

Screenshot of one question from a Fall 2020 semester synchronous Close Looking primary source analysis activity using Zoom and Google Documents. Activity instructions in bold, with in-class student responses below.

Notes from the Field / Practical How-To Series

Structured Close Looking: Modifying a Primary Source Analysis Activity for Asynchronous & Synchronous Remote Teaching

By Blake Spitz / Teaching primary source analysis is a major component of my job as an archivist and educator and often the focus of one-shot instruction for undergraduate students …

Photograph dated 1945 showing the funeral of a Union College President Dixon Ryan Fox in a church, with coffin in the center and the American flag on the left.

Notes from the Field / Practical How-To Series

Remote Individual Instruction During a Pandemic

By Andrea Belair / When the global pandemic hit, Union College adopted a hybrid approach to instruction. For librarians, however, instruction was fully remote due to issues with capacity.

Phillis Wheatley editions used in this lesson

Notes from the Field / Practical How-To Series

Some Thoughts on Online Rare Books “Speed Dating”

By Colleen Barrett / Last fall, I worked with Dr. Regina Hamilton to reimagine a previously in-person rare books active learning exercise for her Introduction to African American Studies course. …

Events & Opportunities / Teaching Tools / Tech Tools

TPS Tech Tools Sandbox Sessions

Keep visiting this page for updates on what tools we’ll be practicing with next: https://bitly.com/TPSSANDBOX What’s a sandbox session? With the help of a session facilitator, we’re exploring some of …

Notes from the Field / Reflective Practice Series

First Time with the First-Years

By Christie Lutz / Archivists and special collections librarians who provide instruction at the undergraduate level are experts in the “one-off” class. Often at the request of teaching faculty, we …

Notes from the Field / Reflective Practice Series

Thinking about Object-based Teaching and Learning

By Rachel M. Straughn-Navarro, PhD / The Medicine Buddha is an artwork that makes viewers move around it to look at it from different angles or rub their fingers together …

Notes from the Field / Practical How-To Series

Space and Place in Special Collections Instruction

By Juli McLoone / The physical attributes of a classroom can seem invisible, merely the background against which the action takes place. However, just as the layout of a website …

Notes from the Field / Practical How-To Series

Plug-and-Play Instruction Modules

By Cynthia Bachhuber / Those of us who teach with primary sources may feel like we operate in a very specialized arena. Our class sessions seem necessarily unique to each …

Notes from the Field / Reflective Practice Series

Learning to teach: Impacts of instruction internships on early career librarians

By Rachel Makarowski / Imagine this: you are a professional, full-time librarian for the first time. It is your second day at work, and you’ve just been asked if you’d …

Assessment Tools / Guidelines Toolkit

Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy Rubric

Assessment of Learning Objectives The Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy present broad learning objectives which are intended to “be used as a whole or in part depending on particular learning …

Guidelines Toolkit / Tools for Educators

Lesson Planning Step-by-Step

This post outlines in brief the process for planning a lesson using principles of backward design and gradual release of responsibility, two widely accepted instructional approaches. Goal conversation. What do …

Guidelines Toolkit / Tools for Educators

A Lesson Plan Template

ABOUT THIS TOOL: This template is designed to encourage instructors to plan instructional sessions that derive from their instructional objectives, also known as “backward design.” An example lesson follows the …

Guidelines Toolkit / Rolling Out the Guidelines

Rolling Out the Guidelines

Tips for rolling out the Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy at your home institution. Host a reading group ‒ Invite members of your department or institution to read the Guidelines …

Lesson Plans

Learning History by Doing History

Submitted by Alison Stankrauff Archivists interested in establishing relationships and collaborations with history instructors to foster teaching with primary sources should assess their archive’s collections considering the following four criteria: …

Featured Tools / Teaching Tools

Teaching Tools Library Feature: Primary Source Literacy Modules at Meriam Library

As part of the TPS Collective Teaching Tools Library, we’ll be offering periodic feature reviews of specific items in the library that may be of use to those who teach …

2021 / Assessment Tools / Events & Opportunities / Webinars

TPS Assessment Open Discussion – July 19, 2021 – SAA-TPS Committee

Assessment Open Discussion sponsored by the SAA-TPS committee on Monday, July 19, 2021 from 2:00-3:30pm ET. Thank you to all the presenters for sharing their slides and the session recording. …