Lessons Learned by a First-Year Special Collections Librarian
By Maureen “Moe” Weinman / I started in my role as the Special Collections Librarian at SUNY Geneseo’s Milne Library in the summer of 2025.
Spirits in the Stacks: Exploring Collaboration and the Occult through Rare Books
By Theadora Soter / The Rare Books Department at the University of Utah’s Marriott Library holds over 80,000 items ranging from 4,000-year-old cuneiform tablets to twenty-first-century artist’s books. When I started at the J. Willard Marriott Library in the Spring of 2025, I was eager to forge new avenues of collaboration between our Special Collections department and the broader Salt Lake community.
Teaching the Limitations of AI in Primary Source Research
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 .
Engaging with Video Games in Primary Source Instruction
By Kyle Neill / In late 2018, the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point Archives began curating a collection of video games. After recognizing an on-campus need for video game related research and receiving much support from faculty and students, archivists successfully presented a proposal to begin development of our Historic Video Game Collection.
Integrating Primary Source Research in Collective Syllabus Design: A Model for “Play” in the Archives
By Elizabeth Coen and Mary Manning In the winter of 2023, I (Elizabeth Coen) partnered with my colleagues in the University of Houston Libraries, Mary Manning (Performing Arts Curator) and …
Sustainably Teaching Outreach through Book Arts Demonstrations
By John Henry Adams / One of the things that we often try to convey in special collections instructional sessions is the concept of the “book as object” rather than as a vessel for text.
Tales Out of School: Special Collection Instruction in Middle School Field Trips
By Clare Starkey, Haley Lykins, and Kelli Hansen Introduction The University of Missouri’s division of Special Collections holds over 100,000 items, dating from the eighth century to the modern era, …
Utilizing Student-Negotiated Curriculum for Archival Internships
By Victoria Jones Last year, I had the opportunity to join a community of practice that focused on the scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) through Florida Gulf Coast University’s …
Disposability, Precarity, and Institutional Memory in the University Archives
By Sam King-Shaw In the spring of 2022, the focus of my teaching assistantship was to help the chair of my department, Global Gender and Sexuality Studies, in organizing a conference to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Women’s Studies College at the University at Buffalo (UB).
Curating an Archival Internship for the Undergraduate Cultural Heritage Experience
By Zoe Shelby When arriving at McDaniel College’s Esther Prangley Rice Gallery, patrons experience the main space by viewing contemporary art in circulating exhibitions. However, visitors rarely notice the collection …