By Alexandra Wieland

Introduction

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. At the Simon Fraser University Library, where I work, my colleagues and I add additional digitized materials annually, often through research grants or grant-funded digitization projects. Many archives and special collections make some portion of their holdings available remotely. This serves researchers of all levels of experience, who, for any number of reasons, may not be able to spend large amounts of time in reading rooms. 

In this hybrid environment, archival and special collections researchers, including students, need to be equipped with the ability to think critically about the affordances of digitized vs. physical archival and rare book materials. In addition, students need to be able to understand the representations (such as finding aids, descriptive metadata, or library catalogue records) that accompany both physical and digitized materials.

In this hybrid environment, archival and special collections researchers, including students, need to be equipped with the ability to think critically about the affordances of digitized vs. physical archival and rare book materials. In addition, students need to be able to understand the representations … that accompany both physical and digitized materials.

Given this need, I have been looking for activities that support the learning objectives outlined above, and that incorporate digitized materials into the physical classroom. In my teaching practice I strive to respond to James Roussain’s encouragement to engage “students in critical thinking through an active learning or inquiry-based approach.”[1] At the same time, the constraints of my work mean that I need activities that require little time or effort to prepare, are flexible, and can be easily tweaked to fit into courses from various academic disciplines. An early version of this activity was part of a day-long workshop on Archival Research Best Practices in 2022. Since then, I developed a modified version that I have used successfully with a number of classes at both the undergraduate and graduate level, including in History, English, and a general research methods course.[2]

An example of a handout for this activity, mapped onto the Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy co-created by RBMS and SAA, is included in Appendix 1.

Between digitized and physical primary sources

For the activity, I select items to which I have access to:

1) the physical item,

2) a representation in the form of an archival description, library catalogue record, or other source of metadata, and

3) a representation of the item in digitized form.

I create separate workstations, each with the physical item, the description, and the digitized version of the item.

The class breaks into smaller groups, and each group is assigned to a workstation. Although the activity is divided into three separate stages, each stage builds upon the last. The first stage asks students to consider only the finding aid or the catalogue record that describes the item. I provide a handout on which they can record their responses to prompts such as,

• What intrigues you about the description?
• What questions do you have about the physical item that you would want to investigate when viewing/handling it?

Students then turn their attention to the digitized files. Depending on the digitized item, the description/metadata may be displayed at the same time. For other items, I ask students to keep the description in mind, or to refer to it as they respond to the following questions:

• What can you learn about the physical item from viewing the digitized files?
• What is helpful or useful about the digitized files? What are some of the challenges of working with digitized images?
• How does the digitized image match what you learned about the item from the description? How does it differ?

For the third phase, students examine and interact with the physical item, which has been hidden (for photographs or textual records, I place a piece of paper over the item; for artefacts or items, I keep them in their storage box until they’re needed). Students consider what the description and digitization captured and what elements might be missing. Questions on the handout for this stage of the exercise include,

• What do you note about the item that was not obvious from the catalogue description?
• How would you describe things about the item that are not in the description?
• If you were presented with this item, how would you go about digitizing it?

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Reflections

I return to this activity again and again for a number of reasons. It is fun to facilitate because students engage with the materials and with one another in conversation. There is a buzz in the classroom as they consider aspects of digitization and description that they had not considered previously. I can pull the materials and set up the activity fairly quickly, so it works especially well for last-minute requests for instruction. I can use a wide range of archival or rare book materials. To date I have used photographs; t-shirts from the Vancouver Punk Collection; an 18th-century manuscript recipe book; artists books; ephemeral materials such as pamphlets, postcards, or posters; and other textual archival materials. This range of materials allows for some customization, depending on the course discipline and topic.

However, the activity has some downsides. I am not sure whether it would scale up very well for larger classes (e.g., 75 or more students). Since the two spaces I can book for instruction have a maximum capacity of 16 or 50 people, respectively, I have not had the opportunity to test whether it would work for larger groups. I am limited in the items I can choose, because only a small portion of our overall holdings are digitized. Finally, many but not all students have laptops with full charge (electrical outlets are scarce in one of the classrooms) to use to access the library catalogue and the digitized item. I now make sure to borrow a few laptops from the library’s main desk to have on-hand in case a group needs to use it.

Their responses display an appreciation for the constructed and interpretive nature of archival description and library cataloguing.

Conclusion

While the activity is not perfect, and I am working on developing a formal assessment for it, the lively wrap-up discussions, informal in-class assessments, and student and instructor feedback give me some reassurance that the learning objectives of thinking critically about digitized vs. physical, and understanding how descriptions relate to both digitized and physical items are being met. Students reflect on the decisions staff make when describing and digitizing items. They think about likely causes and effects for those decisions. They discuss the types of research questions they can ask of physical items, digitized items, or both and are able to connect their discussions to the research topics in their respective courses. Their responses display an appreciation for the constructed and interpretive nature of archival description and library cataloguing. I have already shared this assignment with colleagues at nearby institutions and am excited to share it more widely in this post.

References

Lester, Ken. “Vancouver Punk Collection: Special Collections and Rare Books.” Simon Fraser University Library, last modified September 6, 2023. https://www.lib.sfu.ca/about/branches-depts/special-collections/exhibits-projects/punk

Roussain, James. “Pedagogue in the Archive: Reorienting the Archivist as Educator.” Archivaria 90 (November 2020):70-111.

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Appendix

Working with digitized and physical primary sources – suggested prompts for in-class activity

1. (Description – [name of item that is being described]:

Read the catalogue description (scroll down to “description”). / Read the provided “scope and content” in the finding aid. / Read the description (click on the “details” tab under the digitized item.

1. What intrigues you about the description?

2. What questions do you have about the physical item that you would want to investigate when viewing/handling it?   (Learning outcome 3C)

2. (Digitization):

Look at the digitization of the [name of item].

1. What can you learn about the physical item from viewing the digitized files? (Learning outcome 2C)

2. What is helpful or useful about the digital files? What are some of the challenges of working with these digital images? (Learning outcome 3C)

3. How does the digitized image match what you learned about the item from the description? How does it differ? (Learning outcome 2C)

4. What else would you like to know about the item in this file?

3. (Physical item):

Take your time examining the item. You’re welcome to handle it. Please be careful with the item and follow the handling rules we spoke about earlier.

1. If you were presented with it at an archive, how would you begin to describe the item? How would you go about digitizing it? (Learning outcome 4E)

2. What else might you like to know? What additional research might you do, to better describe this item? (Learning outcome 1B)

3. Now that you’ve seen the object, how well does the digitized file represent the object? What are we missing when we only view the digitized file? What are the benefits of publishing digitized versions of an object? (Learning outcome 4E)

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[1] James Roussain, “Pedagogue in the Archive: Reorienting the Archivist as Educator,” Archivaria 90 (November 2020): 89.

[2] I am grateful to my colleague Michelle Levy, a faculty member in the Simon Fraser University Department of English, with whom I collaborated on an early version of this activity as part of a day-long workshop on Archival Research Best Practices in 2022.

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Alexandra Wieland is the Processing and Reference Archivist at Simon Fraser University Special Collections and Rare Books, where she is responsible for coordinating instructional activities. She holds a Master of Archival Studies from the University of British Columbia and an MA in Renaissance Studies from the University of Warwick. With Corinne Rogers, she is the co-editor of Archival Science in Interdisciplinary Theory and Practice.