Creating DIY Museum Audio Guides with Students
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 …
Taking the Archival Show on the Road: A New Mexico Story
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, organizations should focus on collaborative efforts, whenever possible and prudent, as a viable way to accomplish their core mission.
Webinar Planning during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Using the Special Collections in Remote Learning
By Melissa Chim / Working from home during the pandemic has raised questions regarding the use of physical primary sources in a remote environment…
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 University Libraries Special Collections, our initial plans to host smaller classes and ensure safe handling practices were rendered moot when students did not return to campus in the fall.
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 between 100 and 150 instruction sessions annually.
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 at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. I love discussing analytic and emotional frameworks for engaging primary sources because I believe those encounters are potent moments, as each new person’s reaction and dialogue with a source is unique to them.
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.
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. This in-person activity asked students to examine a variety of 18th and 19th century African American materials in small groups during short periods of time alongside a worksheet that asked questions about the provenance and paratextual aspects of the items
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 affects its usability, so too does the arrangement of physical space affect people’s experience. Given how central materiality is to special collections, it is all the more important to reflect on how our instruction spaces can enhance our lesson plans.
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 group with little that transfers from one to another. The class on mid-20th century Chicana activism simply can’t use the materials and lesson plan developed for the class on economic history in the early American colonies…except maybe it can.