By and For the Teaching with Primary Sources Community
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 teaching with primary sources.
By Miah Clark / The phrases “fine press” and “book arts” don’t always give students something to hold on to, but luckily as primary source educators, we can! When teaching with fine press material, I’ve found success in highlighting not subject material, but the physical material: the highs and lows of book quality throughout history that gave purpose to the presses of the late 19th and early 20th century.
By Mae Casey / Requests for instructional sessions are common in special collections libraries, but archivists with teaching experience are often not. The idea of instructing can be daunting, and it is normal to feel overwhelmed. How do I start planning?
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: TPS in K-12 …
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 fun day, with a variety of attendee-driven conversations, covering all aspects of Teaching with Primary Sources!
By Caitlin Goodman / In May 2025 I taught my first book-making workshop for a Special Collections class visit.
By Alessandro Meregaglia / This post will discuss the current limitations of using AI to search digitized and born digital primary sources––like newspaper databases, the Wayback Machine, and archival digital collections. I will show examples of how AI fails to identify information in these primary sources, even though they are available online and navigable by humans. My goal is to equip other primary source instructors with a general overview so they, in turn, can inform their students, who might be tempted to think AI is an exhaustive tool for primary source .
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: “Art and Creative …
By Sarah Carrier, Nadia Clifton, and Emily Kader / Librarians at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s University Libraries founded and hosted the Primary Sources Teaching Fellowship (PST Fellowship), a learning program for master’s in library and information science students funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services’ (IMLS) Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program.
By Alexandra Wieland / In recent years, educators in archives and special collections have added online teaching to their instructional offerings. As educators, we are supported in this work by efforts to increase accessibility to holdings through digitization projects and programs.