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Events > Opening
Conference
Teagle Grant for Improving Liberal Arts Education Through Use of Special Collections
in the Classroom
Yale University Library
June 13, 2005
Conference Report
The conference began with a welcome by Ann Okerson, Yale Library's
Associate University Librarian for Collections and the Teagle
Proposal's author and principal investigator. She presented
an overview of the aims of the Teagle Foundation and a PowerPoint
presentation showing what the Teagle Grant proposes to accomplish.
Harriet Bergmann, the recently appointed project grant manager,
added to the welcome and spoke of the thrill that still resides
for her in the handling of original materials.
Session I: Using Special Collections
Suzy Taraba , Head of Special Collections at the Wesleyan
University Library, led off the first panel by detailing her
methods for getting greater participation from faculty for
using special collections. Upon arrival at Wesleyan, she found
that these collections gems were underutilized. She studied
the curriculum catalog and wrote letters (real letters!) to
faculty members, inviting them to make specific uses of Wesleyan's
special collections in the courses they would be teaching in
the coming semester.
Suzy described some of the exercises she has
developed for helping students learn how to use archival
materials. For example,
in her "mystery book" exercise, she takes students
from specific questions about a book or object to more general
ones, showing them how they can learn to evaluate an item.
In another exercise, students are asked to prepare a new annotated
edition of a book and write its introduction. Students might
be asked to situate an object in an exhibition and write the
accompanying materials. One student created an archive of queer
materials which a number of students now use for activist purposes.
In conclusion, she noted some challenges with opening up such
collections to wider use: the issue of use versus preservation;
scheduling of the use of rare book rooms and archivists; and
insuring that the use of original materials doesn't become
simply a "field trip."
Abigail van Slyck, Dayton Associate Professor
of Art History and Director of the Architectural Studies
Program at Connecticut
College, then described her "State Street course," in
which she uses a cultural landscape approach to look at New
London's main street to document the purposes to which the
street and its buildings have been put since New London's founding.
She has taught the course once, and she shared her sense of
amazement at the ways in which it grew rapidly and unpredictably.
Her students used primary sources -- including oral histories
-- which they began to do quite on their own. They used maps
and town records as well.
An interesting outcome of the course was the way in which
it brought the students and the community together. When students
organized an exhibit of their portfolios, they were able to
see that they had contributed knowledge and insight to the
community. The Thames Club, a local business organization,
even asked for a special presentation to the club. Looking
back, Abby feels that the students did not mine the maps enough
for all the information they held. She also observed that the
assignments were a little overwhelming, so in redoing the course
she would tailor it more carefully.
Rich Hanley, Director of Journalism and Interactive
Communications at Quinnipiac University, then spoke about
why he requires
his journalism students to "think primary" (sources).
Using as an example the recent uncovering of "Deep Throat," he
talked about ways in which recent journalism has failed to
present local resonance of the Watergate situation and how
use of primary sources would have improved reporting. When
an audience wants more depth in a news story, what they need
is context, and Rich sees special collections as a way to provide
context. Students are adept at using text online, but visiting
a special collection to see the graphics of a time provides
important insights into the temper of that time. Creating a
worthwhile web archive requires the use of special collections.
One issue that arises over and over in his documentation work,
and an area in which he instructs students, is that of copyright:
anything that is going to be used on a publicly available website
needs to be cleared for copyright, and students need to understand
the reasons and the importance of this.
In questions and answers, participants asked how much contextualization
is possible for students who are historically semi-literate,
who may not know when World War II happened, for example. This
is clearly a pedagogical problem, although working with seniors
(who are likely to have more information and sophistication)
may mitigate it somewhat.
Cecilia Bucki asked how to get around the impatience that
students seem to feel in a world of instant gratification-by-Google.
Abby responded that when her students realized the overwhelming
task of trying to digitize all the information in the street
directories, they collaborated on entering these data electronically,
so that they could be used in a variety of ways.
Suzy tries to prepare the students for the fact that using
special collections is not instant or self-serve, and she tries
to get faculty to pre-select some of the books or objects that
will be most useful. Rich agreed that this was a difficulty,
especially for journalism students who think that all that
is important is what happened yesterday.
Session II: Creating Special Collections
Andy Horowitz, Director of the New Haven Oral History Project,
talked about the triple focus of his initiative: education,
preservation, and community-building. All interviews for the
project are done by students, and the individuals who are interviewed
are usually rather pleased to be included in the project. Some
New Haven figures might be over-interviewed -- the people at
the Yankee Doodle average ten interviews a semester!
He told the story of a Jewish man who, as a boy, went to a
New Haven public school where he was offered a ham and cheese
sandwich for lunch. Because the big boys ate it, he ate it
too, but was afraid to leave school, certain that he would
be struck dead as soon as he set foot outside.
Community-building has some unexpected payoffs. Rather than
operating on the soup-kitchen model, in which privileged students
offer help to the less privileged, students go into the community
as students-- learning from their interviews, taking the bus,
eating lunch at a local cafe in the community.
Andy spoke about the preservation of the interviews.
He is currently using text anchoring, a way of pinning text
on screen
to sound, so that someone who reads an interview as text is
able to hear the words spoken aloud, so as to understand the
meaning and inflection of a statement. He also talked about
how to "close" an interview, i.e., not allow its
use for a designated number of years. No participant has yet
requested this, but the option needs to be presented.
Llyn Kaimowitz, Historical Society Consultant, offered practical
advice on working to extend special collections by using the
resources of historical societies and other repositories. She
has worked to enhance networking among such societies in Connecticut,
founding a group called the Committee on Hartford Historical
Resources. The Connecticut River Archives Group she founded
lasted twenty years, superseded finally by the kinds of resources
that can be put on the Web. Nonetheless, it did have the important
effect of getting local curators to know each other. This contact
enabled information and resource sharing. Some linked for purchasing;
for example, the network enabled people to see gaps and areas
in which they were over purchasing as well.
Finally, Ken Wiggin, State Librarian of Connecticut,
described one of the newest online resources, the Connecticut
History
Online (CHO) project. It began as an online collection of images,
but now includes broadsides, maps and charts, and a database
of military questionnaires. The "journeys" button
enables a selective tour of the site. An interesting insight
into funding issues is that Mystic Seaport relies heavily on
the sale of its intellectual property -- its high quality images
-- for funding. If CHO begins to include high-quality digitized
images, this might conflict with Mystic's needs. A series of
committees from the participant institutions explores and develops
policy on these and other key issues.
The great benefit of CHO is its ability to highlight the complementary
strengths of the libraries and museums of Connecticut. Sustaining
CHO over time will require a business plan, perhaps non-profit
incorporation, and other innovative funding.
In Questions and Answers, Ken responded to the question of
how content is selected and added into CHO, and he noted the
biggest challenges are for the small historical societies.
The group walked to Sterling Memorial Library for box lunches
and lively discussion.
Session III: Assessment
Anja Smit , NELINET Consultant, presented the topic of assessment,
one that the Teagle Foundation regards as critical. Her PowerPoint
presentation [LINK HERE] showed the importance of building
assessment into a project from the very beginning. Assessment,
she noted, is not about numbers, but about knowing what one
want to accomplish. Results can either aim at achieving a standard
or at establishing continuous improvement. Reporting externally
is useful internally as well. She suggested that this group
consider using the ACRL standards of information literacy as
one way of thinking about what students had achieved.
Is the Teagle grant aimed at student outcomes, or is it aimed
and faculty and librarians? Anja engaged the group on the question
of what we need the Teagle grant to accomplish. To focus on
that topic, the group divided into three for more detailed,
recorded discussions and an hour later these groups reported
back.
The group that had stayed in Room 102 was
interested in how to develop records of student use, in sharing
resources among
and between teachers, creating models of effective practices,
and keeping in mind the key goal of helping students to think
critically. The group that went to Room 101 discussed librarians'
responsibility for "marketing" special collections.
The group from Room 104 focused on parts of the Teagle grant's
mission: what does "use" mean in this context? How
would we know we had "enhanced" student learning?
Indeed, how could we define such "learning?"
The asymmetry between schools with underused special collections
and those with essentially no special collections began to
show through the discussion, and questions of the effective
use of overworked staff arose. Could we realistically send
students to each other's schools and guarantee that their use
would be supported? That discussion led to the topic of educating
students to use special collections with respect and seriousness;
students will need to understand that there is an etiquette
to this sort of scholarship, and that behavior might also differ
between the home school and another one.
Other themes that emerged included a need
or desire to think not only about books or manuscripts, but
also non-textual materials
such as photographs, illustrations, and objects. Several participants
asked for a "tips and techniques" workshop: what
do you do in your institution to promote the use of special
collections; what works and what doesn't? Some time was devoted
to discussion of our responsibility to the public, and how
success might be determined there (more funding to the State
Library? NEH? NEA?). It was agreed that outreach to the public
is a goal, but not a primary goal for this grant. Nonetheless,
participants definitely wish to utilize local resources of
groups such as historical societies and museums and to advance
the visibility of those institutions. There was discussion
about a benchmarking survey that could be created to distribute
to the faculty at participating schools, to determine the extent
to which special collections are currently used, so that it
can be administered again 1.5 years from now.
Some of the measurable Teagle goals articulated during the
afternoon sessions included:
1. Foster greater cooperation between librarians and faculty.
2. Increase use of special collections overall.
3. Transform pedagogy; develop critical thinking skills of
students.
Finally, a small steering committee was proposed to help refine
the goals of this project. A Teagle listserv will be established,
and Harriet Bergmann is developing a Web site to be available
soon. A questionnaire will be sent by the end of the week to
all conference participants, asking for their feedback and
further suggestions.
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