ITHAKA S+R Announces New Research Project on Teaching with Primary Sources

From an Ithaka S+R Blog Post by Danielle Cooper and Rebecca Springer:

We are excited to announce a new research project designed to support effective teaching with primary sources. Teaching undergraduates with primary sources promotes student engagement and critical thinking skills and is a key ingredient in the current pedagogical push toward “inquiry-based” or “research-led” learning.* Although leveraging physical collections remains important, technological affordances have additionally transformed possibilities for teaching with primary sources: not only by increasing content availability, but by enabling digital discovery, curation, and annotation. The proliferation of born-digital content has also expanded the definition of what primary sources are and how they can be used as evidence.

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Academic libraries and archives are ideally placed to support faculty teaching with primary sources by drawing on expertise across the organization – from special collections, to subject liaisons, to instruction – and by employing a variety of support models, including resource provision, consultation, and embedded librarianship. Ithaka S+R’s primary sources project builds on a host of existing initiatives, such as the Digital Library Federation’s pedagogy subgroup on Digital Primary Sources, the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL)/Rare Books & Manuscripts Section (RBMS) and Society of American Archivists (SAA) Joint Task Force on the Development of Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy,  ACRL’s Research Library Impact Framework, and the recent symposium on Teaching Undergraduates with Archives hosted by the University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library. Our project will contribute to this growing community knowledge by centering faculty needs and facilitating cross-institutional collaboration to develop a vision for innovation across the support service landscape.

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We are thrilled that Brown University, California State University Northridge, Dartmouth College, Indiana University Bloomington, Johns Hopkins University, Northern Michigan University, Pennsylvania State University, Princeton University, Texas A&M University, the University of Virginia, Washington and Lee University, Williams College, and Yale University will be among the participating institutions for this project.

Learn More, Read the Complete Post (NOTE: Ithaka S+R is Looking for Additional Research Partners)

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