LITS Faculty Guide: 2020-2021 FIT

Archivists in Archives and Special Collections work with faculty across all disciplines to meet a wide variety of learning goals and support teaching with Mount Holyoke's unique materials. We are available to help you design engaging and meaningful synchronous and asynchronous classroom activities and assignments that make use of digitized and born-digital collections. We are committed to creating student learning experiences that are equitable and accessible. In addition to traditional research projects, ASC can support a wide variety of digital engagement projects including online exhibits and transcribing historical documents.

Here are several examples of how you can use materials from Archives and Special Collections in your courses, and we are always happy to design new activities with you as well:

Understanding Digital Collections, Images, and Facsimiles in Context
Introduce your students to Archives and Special Collections and primary source research online. Use digital collections and surrogates to help students understand the context of a digital source, engage with data, and make connections between digital materials and course themes.

• Incorporate a classroom activity, such as Exploring ASC’s Digital Collections or Defining Digital Images.
• Think about the questions to consider when engaging with a digital collection and building bridges to critical reading in a digital context.

Primary Source Literacy, Document Analysis, and Transcription
Use primary source sets for students to interpret and engage in document analysis, build narrative between sources, and contribute to scholarly communications through transcription, annotation, and other activities.

• Explore examples of primary source lesson plans in Using Primary Sources: Hands-on Instructional Exercises and at TeachArchives.org, as many of these are easily adaptable to an online environment.
• Engage with available crowdsourced transcription projects, including: Zooniverse People-Powered Research Projects, Smithsonian Digital Volunteers, LOC’s By the People Project, UIowa’s DIY History or contact Head of Archives and Special Collections Leslie Fields for options from Mount Holyoke’s collections—and don’t forget these useful tips for reading old handwriting.

To inquire about relevant Archives and Special Collections materials for your courses, discuss learning goals, and to schedule remote class sessions with an archivist, please contact Leslie Fields, Head of Archives and Special Collections.