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

Participating Institutions

Yale University Library Press Release
March 15, 2005

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Teagle Foundation Grant Funds Yale to Lead Connecticut Partnership for Enhancing Liberal Arts Education

The Teagle Foundation has awarded $98,830 for “Strengthening Liberal Education through Special Collections” to the Yale Library. Liberal arts colleges and research universities share the mission of educating their students in the basic methods of research. All of these institutions grapple with the challenge of finding stimulating means to engage students in the research process and to foster an understanding of how knowledge is constructed from numerous original resources. The grant from The Teagle Foundation will allow Yale Library and several Connecticut colleges and universities to form a partnership that will explore and develop best practices for successful student learning using Library special collections. The project will bring together librarians, faculty, curators and other professionals who will explore current practices and define the basic challenges of using special and original collections.

The project will be launched with an initial seminar for participating institutions, followed by in-depth small group workshops, concluding with a final symposium for the entire group. According to Barbara Shailor, Deputy Provost for the Arts, “At the center of our project is the proposition that active learning by students is an optimal product of the nexus between objects and other scholarly materials and between teaching and the classroom.”

For more information about Special Collections at Yale, please visit: http://www.library.yale.edu/special_collections/

For more information on this project, contact:
Ann Okerson, Principal Investigator
Associate University Librarian, collections and international programs
ann.okerson@yale.edu
Phone: 203-432-1764
Fax: 203-432-8527

Yale University
Sterling Memorial Library
P. O. Box 208240
130 High Street
New Haven, CT 06520-8240

THE YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY:

One of Yale’s distinctive strengths is its rich spectrum of library resources, including more than 11 million volumes, and information in all media, from ancient papyri to electronic databases. The Yale University Library is an important international research library, visited by scholars from all over the world, and a highly valued partner in teaching and research at the University. The Library is engaged in numerous ambitious projects to expand access to its collections. Housed in 22 buildings including the Sterling Memorial and Beinecke Libraries, it employs a dynamic and innovative staff of nearly 600. For additional information on the Yale University Library, including its hours of service and digitized versions of some of its unique collections, please visit the Library’s web site at: www.library.yale.edu.