" To enhance undergraduate learning in the liberal arts by promoting use of library special collections"

Participating Institutions

Using Special Collections in the Undergraduate Learning Environment

A Teagle Foundation-funded Project [1]

Final Report: September 2006

by

Ann Okerson, Principal Investigator

I. Goals/Assumptions

Academic and cultural institutions possess numerous distinctive and unique special collections of print and other media documents of many kinds. There is abundant evidence, written and anecdotal, that the use of such materials in the undergraduate learning environment can be a rich source of educational benefit. In particular, students can discover themselves as active learners, pursuing lines of original research even at very early stages in their educational careers. The benefits of such engagement can be significant.[2] For example, two of our project partners and colleagues, Linda Lerman (Librarian) and Steven Berizzi (Faculty) at Norwalk Community College welcomed the Teagle grant as an opportunity to work with students to help them "see themselves as researchers, and learn to 'ask the right questions,' skills valuable to anyone in whatever professional or private circumstances." All of our participants share that perspective.

The project proposal began by observing that the state of Connecticut houses many kinds of special collections of potential interest for educators and at the same time is home to a diverse collection of institutions of higher education with interest in the undergraduate learning experience. We believed not only that cooperation and collaboration among academic institutions could devise strategies and best practices that would benefit all, but also that undertaking this project with a group of institutions in one state would enable us to think together broadly about the kinds of collections and resources that could be put to use within the state's institutions. We assumed that students could become engaged with and excited about primary source materials that they could see and examine for themselves, and that this effect would be redoubled when the collections dealt directly with the institutions and communities within which they lived.

A second point of departure was our concern that in an age of increasing reliance on digital resources, there is both the opportunity and responsibility to engage students through attentive study of the traditional artifacts of textual and intellectual culture. The libraries and archives of the future will be distinctive precisely for the unique and special collections they possess and hence will have an increasing focus of mission on preserving such materials and making them available to both the scholarly and broader public. Concern for "the artifact" is widely expressed,[3] but we believed we had a further opportunity to explore concrete possibilities for assuring not just the preservation of traditional materials but also the continuity of the cultural practices that will treasure such materials and thus assure that the necessary steps for their preservation will be taken. Then they can hope to be read and interpreted as vital elements in our cultural heritage.

In our project proposal, we set out to assist students in interacting with special and source collections of primary materials in ways that help them develop their:

• fundamental understanding of the role of historical materials in the shaping of human understanding;
• skills in manipulating such materials;
• ability to interpret documents and artifacts as part of a larger research enterprise; and
• grasp of the history and culture represented by particular artifacts.

Our "deliverables" for a project of limited duration and scope were appropriately modest – and ambitious. We believed that we could put together a community of faculty, librarians, and administrators from a diverse collection of Connecticut institutions, all of whom would be happy to work together to understand and take advantage of opportunities. One set of outcomes (particularly through the workshops) would be positive impact on teaching and institutional practice in those places that joined in the eighteen months of the project. And we also believed that the project was worth doing for what it would teach us about taking the practices more broadly into our institutions, about encouraging other institutions to engage in similar pursuits, and about promoting innovative teaching and learning on a broader stage. During this project, we have made a great start.

II. Methodology

We undertook the Teagle project by:

• Creating a coalition of interested institutions and individuals at those institutions who would work together for the duration of the grant project.
• Identifying some key resources that we could draw upon, the existing strengths and weaknesses of our institutions, and the collections we knew about for advancing the project.
• Constructing and operating a series of workshops that would bring together experts with interested collaborators around a small set of themes and projects and allow focused progress in identifying and making use of materials of prospective high value in undergraduate learning.
• Developing, as appropriate, additional resources (such as reading lists, bibliographies, descriptions of techniques) on which faculty, librarians, and administrators entering this area or looking to deepen their familiarity could draw.
• Recording and reporting our progress as the first step of a more important and sophisticated second stage of assessment of results. We would both do assessment of what we had done but also study assessment of work in this field, with a view to assisting those who pursue special collections-based teaching understand how best to measure their own progress and that of their students. We recognized that this would be challenging and would need to break some new ground. In fact, the assessment part of our project is one that will continue in a modest way and will deliver some post-project results to be added to the description of our work.
• Creating, from the outset, a simple and attractive Web site, to provide a way to communicate effectively with all participants and prospective participants. We have built it consciously as well as a record of the project and its activities. We will preserve the Web site as a record of this project and as a resource for others interested in the topics we addressed. An important component of the site is still to come, in terms of identifying key Connecticut repositories for prospective users, both students and teachers. We also set up a listserv to facilitate communication among the community of participants as it grew over the duration of the project.

III. Narrative

The grant was awarded at the end of 2004 and set to conclude at the end of September 2006. We began to tackle the work of solidifying partnerships with the institutions that had joined our proposal and recruiting a half-time program manager in the first quarter of 2005. We also attended a project managers' meeting convened by the Teagle Foundation in March of 2005 at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina.

The recruitment, which was challenging due to its half-time nature and the project's high expectations, resulted in the hire of a continuing staff person, a seasoned faculty member and herself a keen advocate for use of primary materials in undergraduate teaching and learning. She supported the work for several months, but early in the 2005-06 academic year she resigned to pursue other opportunities. At that point, with less than a year remaining, we decided that a new round of recruitment would slow down the work of the project. Accordingly, we engaged the consulting support of two expert individuals [4] and the assistance of a staff research assistant [5] to develop project activities and bring the project to conclusion. Principal Investigator Ann Okerson devoted between 5-10% (variously) of her time over the months of the grant.

Our partners came from Albertus Magnus College, Connecticut College, Fairfield University, Naugatuck Valley Community College, Norwalk Community College, Quinnipiac University, Trinity College, Wesleyan University, and Yale University. As will be evident, this collaborative brought together university and four-year institutions of national and regional reputation with a record of interest in the liberal arts, as well as two innovative and committed community colleges from the state. Originally, we had begun to approach some state universities of the region as well, but we were unable to engage appropriate leadership there within the relatively short time frame of our activity.

At the outset, we called for participants to form a small but dedicated cross-institutional steering-advisory group to help plan and promote the Teagle grant activities. This group met by conference call on a monthly basis during the design and implementation phases of the project. Brief minutes of those conversations are available on the Web site. These individuals were consistently "there for us" with good ideas, responses to questions, and PR, particularly for the workshop events. One could not ask for a finer team.[6] The Web design was done by a former Yale humanities librarian, now a long-time Web consultant; and was supported by a member of Ann Okerson's staff [7] as well as Yale's technical staff.

The bulk of the collaborative work of the project centered on five meetings conducted in 2005-2006: an opening conference, two all-day workshops on ways to locate and use non-print materials, one all-day workshop on issues affecting collaboration between academic institutions and the other cultural institutions (historical societies, museums, archives, etc.) whose collections are of great interest for academic use, and a closing meeting to discuss and review issues of assessment. The schedule of meetings was as follows (and the substance of their work is outlined in the following paragraphs):

1. Opening Conference: June 13, 2005
2. Oral History Workshop: October 22, 2005
3. Eyes on Connecticut – a workshop on visual literacy: March 3, 2006
4. Partnerships with Connecticut Historical Societies, Museums, and Archives: June 16, 2006
5. Assessment issues – reviewing the AX-SNet project and its potential for usefulness in this area: August 14, 2006

IV. Deliverables

The direct deliverables of the project comprised our group activities and the interpretation and assessment of those activities. This report therefore includes only by reference activities now reaching into the classrooms at our participating institutions, as it is outside our scope to do a detailed study of the learning practices of the institutions that joined with us. There are signs of increased connectedness and activity, but we will also review below the constraints under which such activities continue to work.

A. The workshops were well attended and particularly well received. The evaluations (available on the Web site) were uniformly high and e-mail messages of thanks were the rule rather than the exception. These events added value as well by the work that had to be done to prepare for them and to document them afterwards, including substantial handouts made available to the participants and the descriptions, to the extent possible, which are available on the Web site at: <www.library.yale.edu/teagle/events.html>. Particularly valuable was the active participation of librarians and faculty who contributed their time and energy in order to understand possibilities they judge important for their institutions and students.

B. In addition, our NELINET consultant made a series of site visits to the nine institutional participants, interviewing key stakeholders (a mix of library and faculty contacts) at each. The written summaries of those site visits are also available on the Web site at: <www.library.yale.edu/teagle/Sitevisits.html> and will be described briefly below.

The least effect and prospect, soberingly, is found in those institutions with few or no special collections of their own nor easily realizable ambitions for them. Naugatuck Valley Community College and Albertus Magnus College both fall into this category. The resistance is not intrinsic, however, for, at Naugatuck Valley, one leader is looking to build an oral history project for the college that will both capture the history of the place and also be done in a way that teaches the techniques and disciplines to students who participate. Norwalk Community College, moreover, has a core number of dynamic individuals with both successes and ambitions, including a plan to connect local history work with a Lifetime Learners Institute associated with the college, where many of the students will themselves come with personal experience and investment in the subject of local history. The Librarian there has done cutting-edge outreach with local historical societies and repositories, from which all of us learned a great deal.

The other smaller institutions in the project have disparate experiences and prospects, again closely correlated to their collecting history and archives. For example, Fairfield University has little or no special collections material, but what they have has been used in some encouraging ways. They reported experience with a college project a few years ago to develop a record of the 1960s and their culture at Fairfield, which produced an interesting collection of material, at the same time as it taught skills and disciplines. Quinnipiac University and Connecticut College resemble each other in having quite small but high quality special collections on particular themes, collections that they have used wisely and well (Connecticut College has materials from Eugene O'Neill and pertaining to the history of New London, while Quinnipiac University has a unique collection dealing with the Irish famine of the 19 th century, whose use by the students and teachers overflows into study tours to Ireland and the like).

Three of the institutions in the project have substantial special collections and make substantial use of them. Trinity College surprises its own faculty with the wonderful riches of the Watkinson Library, incorporated into the college in 1952, and though many faculty use its treasures (especially in 18 th/19 th century Americana and ornithology), others remain unaware of what is there. The library's outreach programs are energetic. Many faculty there (and there is good evidence for this elsewhere) are also interested in using primary source collections in digital form, i.e., ones that come from outside the college. Wesleyan and Yale Universities, not surprisingly, have the largest resources to draw upon and use them actively. The library at Wesleyan estimates that 50 of 350 faculty use special materials regularly with their teaching – a healthy percentage considering that many of the others are not in the relevant humanities and social science areas. Outreach has been one of the special passions of the Special Collections librarian there, and she has been enormously successful at it, generously sharing her tips and experiences with the rest of the group.

At Yale, the project interviewed representatives of Manuscripts and Archives, the Arts Library, the Beinecke Rare Book Library, the Medical Historical Library, the Babylonian Collection, the Oral History Project in American Music, and the British Art and Yale Art Galleries. Of interest were the observations of Medical Historical that their location a distance from the center of campus is a deterrent not so much for location alone as for the lack of a classroom onsite to use for visitors; but we also heard of the practice of the Babylonian collection to provide a "kit" of materials introducing its world-famous cuneiform collections to classes in a way that incorporates concerns over preservation with best practices discerned over the years. And, we made a note to make our own the expression of Pamela Franks in the Yale Art Gallery, who likes to say she practices the "snowball method" to use successes in one area to encourage others to join in using materials in the classroom.

C. Finally, some of the workshop presentation materials and other resources, which have independent value, are available on the Web site. These include:

• On the home page, a lengthy, annotated bibliography about teaching with special collections.
• Reference in the workshops to projects and activities that interested persons can follow up, for example, Abigail van Slyck's State Street course at Connecticut College; Andy Horowitz's New Haven Oral History Project; the Connecticut State Library's History Online project (CHO); or the several "visualization" course projects at Yale.
• Bruce Stave's (Stave is a leader in use of oral histories in documentation and classrooms) reading and resources list; the Davis-Funded Yale project's reading list of digital images in and around Connecticut; Linda Lerman's detailed list of online Connecticut resources; Llyn Kaimowitz's practical advice about students' use of repositories.

D. A less tangible, but nonetheless key, deliverable of the project is embodied in the community of those who have come to know one another and find common purpose in the course of this work. Across the nine academic institutions, but also among the community of collections owners and managers in Connecticut, we now have a better idea of where allies and sources of expertise are to be found. Much more work can and should be done, of course. We will address in the next section the afterlife of this project, but have to signal that a number of the individuals and groups involved will be in their continuing efforts an important part of that afterlife.

E. Assessment. Assessment was an important part of the project from the start. The opening conference included a presentation on appropriate measures for the project. If successful, assessment should be an integral part of any project, and data gathering was suggested at different moments as the project moved forward. Based on the goals and planned activities of the project, the following measures were suggested:

1. Impact of each of the workshops on future courses using primary sources and on activities initiated within libraries (special collections departments if existing). This proved hard to do, given time and resource constraints.
2. Satisfaction of the attendees with each of the workshops.
3. Satisfaction with cross-institutional collaboration within the project and impact of the project on future collaboration.

At the second workshop, which focused on visual literacy, William Rando closed the workshop with a lecture on assessment " Using Assessment to Enhance Instruction and Library Service." The lecture reported on research concerning the impact of using images in teaching. As part of the ELI project conducted at Yale, an assessment model had been developed and field-tested in a collaborative setting with faculty, teaching center staff and librarians. The model consists of different rubrics and tries to map the intended learning outcomes with the way the teacher actually uses images in teaching and appropriate library services.

Assessing the Teagle Project: the workshops.

In general, each of the participant institutions was represented by one or more librarians and faculty members. In some cases attendants would represent other departments of their institutions, such as a Learning and Teaching Center. For some of the workshops, representatives from outside the Teagle participating institutions were invited and some attended (see the participants' lists for 'Eyes on Connecticut' and 'Partnership'). In one case, a faculty member brought students. The total number of attendees including speakers ranged from 19 to 43.

The participants of the workshops were handed evaluation forms at the end of each workshop. The following questions were asked:

1. How did you hear about the workshop?
2. Please tell us what particular needs you have that the workshop fulfills (for example, courses you are teaching or planning, projects you have).
3. What would you have liked to change about the workshop (for example, scheduling, speakers, subject matter, location, and anything else important to you)?
4. The Teagle Foundation seeks to enhance liberal arts education. This Teagle grant is specifically aimed at "Enhancing undergraduate liberal arts learning through the use of library special collections." What other workshop topics would help you to accomplish this goal on your campus?

For the first workshop on Oral History, the participants were also asked to rate the presentations (the rating for the lectures of the Oral History workshop were very positive). This question was later eliminated from the evaluations. The surveys focused mainly on how the workshops met specific needs of the participants or could do so through future programming, and on information that would help improve procedures and facilities. This information was used to schedule events throughout the project. The evaluation reports for each of the workshops are published on the Teagle Website. To give a taste of the feedback:

• The Oral History workshop was useful for faculty who are seeking to integrate oral history in their courses, in some cases writing classes, in others local history courses. Others indicated they had acquired knowledge they would use in starting up their own oral history project: "hearing from experts was broadening".
• Many of the attendees of the Visual Literacy workshop seemed to already work with images in their teaching. One person used the model William Rando presented in her feedback when mentioning she is using "images as evidence," while someone else remarked that it was interesting to see what other faculty do. Other attendees are creating digital image collections for use in teaching and want to learn about the different ways these materials are used in teaching in order to better support faculty.
• The last workshop, on partnerships between cultural institutions, provided ideas for courses that are being taught with respect to sources and methodology. The workshop also helped the attendees enhance understanding of the opportunities and challenges inherent in museum archives collaboration and provided the opportunity network with regional professionals.

General assessment of the project

The general final survey conducted in September 2006 measured the overall impact of the project on practices in the participating institutions regarding the use of special collections in undergraduate teaching, as well as satisfaction with the deliverables within the project. The survey was sent out to all Teagle librarians.

Different workshops seem to have had a different impact on the attendees, probably in part due to the differences between the institutions. Most respondents indicate that specific workshops or presentations were useful to them on a practical level. For example, one respondent indicated that he/she has begun to incorporate some of the ideas with faculty and library staff.

The opportunity to network and collaborate within the project has inspired participants to think of how the network could be sustained and broadened. Some state a definite need for more communication among institutions. Comments include:

• "It would be good to have more gathering among sister institutions relating to special collections."
• "It might be worthwhile considering the development of a statewide special collections organization to arrange meetings one or two times a year, so we can get to know each other better and keep in touch."

For some institutions, the interviews conducted on location with librarians and faculty also created an opportunity for the participating librarians and faculty internally to share and exchange views. The Project's Web site is generally useful to participants, and could increase its value once the assessment model is added.

The topics respondents learned most about were 'models for using special collections in undergraduate teaching' and 'creating special collections'. For some librarians, the project was a starting point to think about cataloging and promoting special collections; for others, the project created awareness of the wealth of materials in their own libraries and those available in Connecticut. As a follow-up, respondents are looking at contacting colleagues and keeping in contact.

Creating a model for assessment of the use of primary sources

In search of how assessment may help the Teagle participants in their goals regarding the use of their own special collections, a project has been identified, which focuses on assessment of using primary sources in learning and teaching. The AX-SNet (Archival eXcellence in Information Seeking Studies Network) is a Mellon-funded international collaboration of researchers working: (1) to improve access to primary sources; (2) to explore the ways users seek information in archives; and (3) to develop new ways to teach people about how to do effective archival research. The AX-SNet Project seeks to develop a standardized tool for evaluating archival services. The project currently is in its second phase, in which the actual instruments will be created and tested. For this phase of the project, college and university archives and special collections have been selected as the target population, because they form the largest segment of the archival population.

The AX-SNet Project invited the Teagle participants to join the testing of the instrument-in-development. A meeting was organized on August 14 with representatives from the AX-SNet, Teagle, and ELI/Davis Foundation-funded projects.Key questions for the Teagle participants were identified:

• To what degree are faculty aware of collections of primary sources available for them in their own institution and in Connecticut? (Possibly also: to what degree are other departments within the institution aware of these collections? E.g. IT, center for teaching and learning.)
• To what degree do faculty view primary sources (special collections, archival materials) as useful sources in their teaching? What are their expectations?
• How do faculty introduce primary sources in teaching? How do they get access to the materials? What support do faculty need? What introduction and support do students need?
• What are faculty perceptions of the impact of the use of primary sources in teaching on student learning?
• What is the impact of the use of primary sources on teaching methods?

A survey was designed for faculty of the Teagle participants to research their use of primary sources and satisfaction with library support (based on their collection of questions). The list will be reviewed and redacted in September/October 2006, after which it will be ready for use and posted on the Web. Use of the list could lead to a model for assessing the use of primary sources in undergraduate teaching in a variety of institutions, ranging from libraries with an extensive special collection to colleges lacking special collections and working with collections available elsewhere in Connecticut.

V. Afterlife

Our intention throughout this project was not simply to meet and talk, then write a report and move on. We sought deliberately to build a community of practice and awareness in Connecticut, but also to plant seeds, provide resources, and offer best practices that can animate further work by participants, by others in our institutions and by other faculty and librarians in Connecticut and beyond. Two areas of activity have been particularly pursued with this goal in mind.

First, early in the course of the project, we gathered results of two surveys of faculty and of librarians for their expertise, judgment, and advice. Their comments and our experience and attention to the issues raised gave us a perspective from which it would be possible in the future to construct such a survey with sharper focus and better attention to the critical issues. We also found the results richly instructive about both opportunities and challenges for work of this kind. The surveys are presented on the Web site at: </www.library.yale.edu/teagle/surveys.html>.

Nineteen librarians responded to the survey designed for them at the start of the project (June 2005). The survey results provide information on current situation regarding the use of special collections. As many as twelve librarians indicate that their local collection could welcome more users. Therefore, when asked about what aspect of the use of special collections the Teagle project should address, 84% of the respondents identified "encouraging use" as the most important. Growth areas seem to exist especially within the humanities and any course with a historical component. Many librarians regard personal contact and awareness of the courses taught crucial for successful outreach.

That unmet challenges definitely exist is demonstrated by the survey for faculty. Out of 137 respondents from assorted disciplines, 47% indicated that so far, they have not used special collections in their undergraduate teaching. 55% of these faculty members have a local collection available but many have never consulted with their local librarian about the options available to them. The use of materials of collections outside their institution is even less common. In general, barriers to the use of primary sources in teaching include lack of awareness of relevant materials, time constraints and lack of technological expertise needed to use digital collections.

We would have liked to do more assessment work of this sort, had time permitted.

Second, we have begun building and will continue to build and maintain a Web site about the "repositories" (our neutral word) of special collections in Connecticut. This index will comprise libraries, historical societies, archives, museums, and other holders of materials of relevance. We hope to create a resource of sufficient quality to attract attention of a broader community of scholars, teachers, and readers in Connecticut and look forward to discussing how such an index and be of most use to the community. With Teagle support, this work was begun by our consultant. The Web page was redesigned to accommodate such an information source; a template was designed and is being used; questionnaires were developed and sent by the consultant to literally hundreds of special collections repositories in the state. Many replies have been received and entered into the correct format and a follow-up mailing has been done both by letter and e-mail. The actual mounting of the information on the Teagle project Web site will be done before calendar year end, as with the current design it is more efficient for us to put up the majority of the responses at one time, rather than as they are received. This should be an immense resource for teachers and students in the state and will give more exposure to these repository organizations. However, maintaining such a site will prove challenging after the grant ends.

VI. Lessons Learned

There is widespread and substantial excitement about the possibilities for bringing students directly in touch with materials that will engage their curiosity and provide faculty with the opportunity to refine their disciplinary abilities. Some of that excitement was already present, some was fanned by the Teagle project, and we hope some was ignited by our work. We did not find any faculty or librarians who were opposed to the introduction of special collections materials into the undergraduate learning experience, but naturally, some faculty remain less interested in engaging in such work for themselves or for their own students (for several reasons, such as lack of ready resource, the time needed to re-vamp classes, or perhaps that special collections do not exist for their particular courses), and some librarians have reservations about the appropriateness of introducing undergraduate-level students to certain categories of scarce and valuable resources. One continuing theme is the opportunity provided by digital sources of information to enable contact with primary sources, both through inspiration (digital representations encourage an interest in the "real thing") and through access to metadata (information that reveals the existence and accessibility of materials in which faculty and students will take interest). This section of our report will be a bit more speculative than the factual outline above, but is grounded in the specifics of our experience.

A. Opportunities:

1. Opening and improving access to locally interesting collections exciting to students;
2. Introducing to students materials (oral, visual) not normally part of a "library" experience;
3. Giving students an appreciation for the uniqueness of archival and rare materials;
4. Giving students practical experience with handling high-value materials in various media;
5. Arousing excitement through access to materials that aren't "in the textbook" – asking questions of materials where there is no existing "correct answer", but where the student's work under faculty supervision is genuinely original and creates new knowledge;
6. Creating of the habit of attention to materials of the kinds utilized in this project and thus an appreciation of the value of unique artifacts in a world increasingly populated by digital representations of such artifacts and artifact-free digital information; and
7. Experience and inspiration that translates into continued engagement with historical and cultural studies during the community college or undergraduate career and beyond.

B. Constraints:

Everyone who participated in this project (apart from a small number of experts and consultants who were compensated for the work they did to benefit the larger group of participants) was acting "on their own time". Time constraints are the most challenging, because faculty and librarians find that introducing students to the unique artifact and the unusual collection requires more time and attention than traditional rote and textbook learning. Issues include:

1. Support for librarians in academic institutions who wish to acquire and maintain expertise in working with faculty on access to special collections for students;
2. Support for librarians in working with faculty drawing upon that expertise;
3. Support for faculty in both generally developing acquaintance with this material and then time and support for course development to take advantage of them;
4. Support for faculty in getting appropriate recognition and reward for time and effort invested in nontraditional pedagogy;
5. Support for faculty and students in managing time and access issues – down to the level of providing bus fare for students to go from their campus to a more or less remote location;
6. Concern for security and preservation of rare and/or valuable materials subjected to additional handling and scrutiny – down to the level of providing extra security staff and hours at collections.

VII. Over the Horizon

We cannot take leave of this project, which has engaged and inspired a group of colleagues who are now friends or better friends than we were before, without thinking a bit about the kinds of steps we would like to see taken next, to continue to ground this work and assure its continuation and propagation.

First, we have worked hard and used our support well, but we now feel the frustration of not having one more opportunity to bring together a group of people, this time a substantially larger group of people from at least within our own institutions, but ideally from across Connecticut, to hear and see what we have been able to do together. Several of the participants and advisors have advocated for a one- or two-day event with a designedly larger audience, not now simply exploring but actively presenting and advocating the possibilities, with concrete examples from our own communities. Such a "conference" could be a very effective use of the time and energies both of those who have worked hard on this project until now and also of those from our institutions who have not been able to participate till now. The effect would assuredly be the propagation of techniques and inspiration to a much broader group in the shortest period of time.

Second, with such a conference as a model, we would like to explore how best to communicate more widely the core ideas and findings of this project. This is in some ways easier (does not require booking a hotel or paying for catering or attracting a day of the time of busy people), but at the same time challenging us to find the right venue. We will continue to explore this possibility and may look to Teagle to offer a "reference" with an appropriate editor or publisher.

Third, and most perplexing, we leave a question that is more widely and urgently shared by many others in academe today. At a moment when we are challenged as a profession by such well-intentioned critics as participants in the Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education, the so-called "Spellings Commission/Report"[8] to be more cost-effective and more accountable in higher education, how can we best support faculty and students seeking to innovate and expand the range of what is possible in such education? The resources objectively required to support faculty seeking to innovate and extend their teaching in these directions, and in others that are identified nationally as among best practices for undergraduate learning, are not immense by comparison with our existing investments. The marginal dollar for innovation, however, is among the hardest to find, even when the documented value of the innovation is great.

Within higher education, competing models implicitly vie for funds with each other. Many large questions loom, for example: How shall a Provost best spend the next dollar that becomes available? By hiring a new faculty member with a new area of expertise that enriches the faculty's sense of the richness of program it can offer? This can have the pedagogical benefit of reducing aggregate class sizes (assuming a steady state student population) but has the disadvantage of being financially challenging (new tenure-line faculty positions are among the most expensive personnel hires measured against any quantitative unit of productivity in an institution). By contributing to support for faculty research (on the assumption that one benefit among many will be enhanced education for undergraduates)? Or by contributing to support pedagogical activity that will demonstrably enhance learning outcomes but will likely not lead to increased visibility or economic advantage for the faculty member?

We have little special authority to speak on this vexed topic nor do we expect easy answers. At the same time, we do want to report our frustration at seeing clearly that it was precisely those faculty with the greatest percentage of their time in direct connection with the education of students whose academic success is least assured, who had the greatest difficulty in identifying time and resources that would enable them to take steps they believe would strengthen their ability to deliver on their central professional responsibility – that is to say, on the vocation that has brought them into and keeps them into the undergraduate and community college classroom.

VIII. Conclusion

The work of this project has been inspiring and rewarding and leaves us with the benefits of inspiration and association: inspiration, in that we see more clearly what we surmised at the outset, that we have just within our grasp the opportunity to make teaching and learning more effective and rewarding on multiple levels for students in many different kinds of institutions; and association, in that we have built a community of "unindicted coconspirators" among the scholars and librarians of Connecticut that will live beyond this grant period and continue to share its inspiration with students in our institutions.

The Principal Investigator has found this work exhilarating and encouraging in many ways and knows that she speaks for all her colleagues and collaborators in expressing warmest thanks to the Teagle Foundation for its leadership and support in making this project possible. The work of the Foundation remains of personal and institutional interest and it would of course be a pleasure and a privilege to be able to continue our work together in the future.

9-24-06

Notes

1. The project Web site is: <http://www.library.yale.edu/teagle>. [Return to text]

2. In the Reading List that was compiled for this project and available on the home page of our Teagle Project Web site <www.library.yale.edu/teagle> we find citations that assume such benefits and pursue the question of how to create or improve the experience. Fewer accounts of actual benefit were found, but descriptions of achieved benefit can be found in the following articles: Susan M. Allen, "Rare Books and the College Library: Current Practices in Marrying Undergraduates to Special Collections," Rare Books and Manuscripts Librarianship vol. 13 no. 2 (spring 1999); Carol Toner, "Teaching Students to Be Historians: Suggestions for an Undergraduate Research Seminar," The History Teacher vol. 27 no. 1 (Nov. 1993) 37-51; Ann Schmiesing and Deborah R. Hollis, "The Role of Special Collections Departments in Humanities Undergraduate and Graduate Teaching: A Case Study," Libraries and the Academy vol. 2 no. 3 (July 2002) 465-480. Speakers at our Opening Conference and the three workshop gave numerous accounts of classroom enrichment using special collections tools and techniques. [Return to text]

3. See, for example, the widely cited Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) report, entitled "The Evidence At Hand." Washington, DC, November 2001, with full text at: <www.clir.org/PUBS/reports/pub103/contents.html> [Return to text]

4. Anja Smit is an executive consultant currently working at NELINET. During her work as University Librarian in the Netherlands, Smit was previously known to senior Yale Library staff for her work in reader services, strategic planning, and assessment. She was delighted to put her expertise to use for the project and proved an invaluable and enthusiastic resource. Llyn Kamowitz, formerly a practicing librarian in Connecticut, has been for over a decade a consultant who helps and supports not-for-profits, particularly repositories, in their work. Kaimowitz created, some 20 years ago, the first handbook of CT archival repositories, and continues to be a superb resource for our project. [Return to text]

5. Jessica Slawski was hired to support two Yale Associate University Librarians (Danuta Nitecki, Reader Services and Ann Okerson, Collections). We were able to put some of her time towards the Teagle Project and benefited greatly from her organizational skills. [Return to text]

6. The Advisory Committee included: Steven Berizzi (History Department, Norwalk Community College); Danuta Nitecki (Yale University Library, AUL for Reader Services); Ann Okerson (Yale, PI); Anja Smit (NELINET); Suzy Taraba (Special Collections Librarian, Wesleyan University); David Vallone (History Department, Quinnipiac University); and Susan Walker (Assistant Librarian and Head of Public Services, Lewis Walpole Library). Jessica Slawski (Yale Library) served as recorder. [Return to text]

7. Sarah Prown is principal at ReedSparrow Web designers. A brief description of their services can be found at: <www.reedsparrow.com/>. Additional support (both Web and content) was provided by Graziano Krätli, Yale Library's International Program Support Librarian; and also the Library's Web and Workstation Support Services team. [Return to text]

8. This work is available at: <http://www.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/hiedfuture/index.html>. [Return to text]