By and For the Teaching with Primary Sources Community
Free Registration is Open! TPS Fest features attendee-driven sessions on all things TPS. Sign up for any or all sessions across three days.
Highlights practical lessons from the front lines of teaching with primary sources in thematic series of open peer-reviewed articles.
The TPS Collective seeks to maintain a chronological, user-generated bibliography for resources about Teaching with Primary Sources.
Upcoming TPS Community Calls, unconferences, webinars, conference calls, learning opportunities, and other events.
By Jennifer Olguin New Mexico State University (NMSU) Archives and Special Collections (ASC) is situated uniquely in the southern New Mexico community of Las Cruces, just 40 miles from the …
By Anna Holmes When I started my journey into librarianship, I had no idea that I would end up where I am today. I was convinced I wanted to work …
By Taylor Clement and Callie Smith In the spring of 2022, the Professional Writing program at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette began a collaboration with the on-campus Hilliard Art …
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 …
By Dylan McDonald. For cultural heritage institutions, partnerships are the keystone to sustained, effective, and vibrant outreach efforts. In this era of ongoing staffing shortages, budget challenges, and employee burnout, …
The Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) Collective is seeking a new Associate Editor for Notes from the Field, a peer-reviewed blog that highlights practical lessons from the front lines of …
By LaraAnn Canner, Curator of Music Special Collections at Old Dominion University Libraries Noelle Jessup sketching ancient Cypriot vase.(Photograph courtesy of LaraAnn Canner, November 5, 2020) I have been told …
By Brooke Guthrie / Instruction sessions with artifacts are hands-on, interactive, and some of my favorite sessions to teach. At Duke University’s Rubenstein Library, where I work with the History …
By Melissa Chim / Working from home during the pandemic has raised questions regarding the use of physical primary sources in a remote environment…
RBMS’s Instruction and Outreach Committee’s Outreach Toolkit Subcommittee offers the following suggestions to help move the community toward a common set of goals for thinking about how to ethically teach …
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!
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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.
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. …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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: …
Notes from the Field, a publication of the TPS Collective, is accepting submissions about teaching and working with primary sources for three series of peer-reviewed blog posts: “Student Perspectives,” “Accessibility in …
by Victoria Jones and Bailey Mae Rodgers From its early development, a key mission and strategic goal of Florida Gulf Coast University has been to focus on Florida’s unique environmental …
by Bridget Retzloff and Zachary Lewis Students are often asked to share details about their lives. Whether it’s for summer bridge program activities, orientations, workshops, or the first day of …
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 …
A report-back from a presentation at the 2023 RBMS Conference by John Henry Adams, Anne Bahde, Jen Hoyer, Heather Smedberg, and Matt Strandmark