Collections Collaborative Workshop on the Use of Primary Sources in Teaching at Yale
November 9, 2007 HGS119
First session: Presentations by librarians/curators/archivists:
Pamela Franks, Curator for Academic Initiatives at the Yale University Art Gallery:
 Her position is fairly new – YUAG responding to recommendations of Committee on Yale College
Education; additional position is being added
 Approximately 400 class sessions per year in the gallery
 Approx. 1/2 of sessions are discussion sessions for large survey courses
 Many sessions related to History of Art or School of Art & Architecture but 1/4 to 1/3 are
beyond arts area – mostly in humanities; humanities sessions involve more input from gallery
staff
 9-10 staff involved, including support staff
 Curators are involved but necessary to have a central coordinator
 Main issues are how to manage volume and how to balance quantity and quality
 Seminar size classes are ideal but only reach approx. 12 students as opposed to 100 or more in
large survey courses
 Sometimes create small installations to facilitate writing assignments
Lisa Ford, Associate Head of Research, Yale Center for British Art
Julia Marciari-Alexander, Associate Director for Exhibitions and Publications, YCBA
 Lisa is default point of contact for faculty or students wanting to use YCBA resources
 Study room at YCBA provides ideal space for sessions [viewing objects from collection]; can
also go out into galleries. Also have 2nd floor classroom for class sessions or class meetings for
entire term.
 Coordination of logistics recommended because galleries may be very full at times
 Have created selected handlists that provide specific examples of art works illustrating
various issues, e.g., social perspectives, propaganda; would like to engage post-docs or graduate
students in creating more such guides to facilitate access and also provide museum experience
and opportunities for students.
 Useful to get syllabi from faculty and suggest specific resources that correlate
 Would like to encourage faculty to design courses around special exhibits or permanent
collection
 Need to educate faculty that YCBA collection can be used broadly, not just for British art
 Need to increase comfort level of using art as primary sources
Diane Kaplan, Head of Reference Services, Manuscripts and Archives
 Strategic goal of MSS&A to “market” their holdings so that collections are more widely used
 Sessions typically focus on Freshman seminars, Junior seminars, Graduate students, sections
of lower level courses
 Use personal contact with faculty to encourage use & email to instructors
 Also useful to contact administrative assistants in departments
 Look at course offerings to see which courses might benefit from MSS&A holdings
 New faculty are invited to a luncheon in the fall
 Feedback session in early May with faculty who have been engaged – again with food…
 Prizes offered for senior essays that use MSS&A materials
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Sessions with classes – try to expose them to “great stuff”; work with material in hands-on
fashion around seminar table, with documents in folders for students to examine individually; in
other cases has to be more “show and tell.”
MSS&A archives staff usually choose the materials to show, rather than faculty
Try to introduce students to tools for finding materials, expose them to the challenges of
reading handwriting, needing to browse large amounts of material
Trying to make sessions more interactive
Sessions are much better if faculty are present
Would be great to have lists of collections by subject area, across various repositories at Yale
Would like to develop structured exercises on using primary sources materials, e.g., how
different types of documents provide different perspectives
Real struggle to find space in MSS&A for sessions to be held; often has to be in main reading
room, which can disturb other researchers
Alternative is to bring surrogates to classrooms but a dimension is lost
Important to teach across the collections and to meet student needs
George Miles, Curator of Western Americana Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
 Various levels of integration; least integrated are single sessions/orientations with classes –
tend to be “shock and awe” events or focused on something very specific; BRBL has dozens of
these each semester
 Faculty develop surrogate collections for use in teaching – e.g., digitized images or photocopied
primary sources/documents reader such as John Faragher has done.
 More integrated mode is when classes have an assignment focused on a strength of the BRBL
collection and students need to work with specific materials; immerses students in working
with primary material but has the potential of damage to collections because of overuse.
 More integrated are research seminars focused on collections that meet regularly at BRBL
 Most integrated are Master Classes for graduate students held in May; noncredit, one week
courses that supplement the Yale curriculum; experts brought in.
 Need to have space to commit to the program; BRBL took this into account when doing
renovations a few years back
 Bibliographic instruction (or research education) can’t be the principal focus for
curators/librarians when working with faculty to incorporate primary materials in courses; At
that point, faculty aren’t that interested in BI. Need to engage with the material for its
subject focus and relevance to course. Independent or distinct BI sessions essential in their
own right.
General discussion:
 Librarians/archivists/curators need to be aware of the larger academic picture in order to
know how to fit in
 Important for us to know how different disciplines or fields approach and analyze materials
 Important for us to understand the pedagogical objectives of the faculty
 Freshman seminars might be an important inroad; good to catch them young…
 ClassesV2 (Sakai) could be an important way to integrate with courses but currently the
resources associated with courses go away after the course is finished
 Need to figure out a good way to capture and provide access to the “handlists” and primary
source research guides that are developed
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Would be great to have a secure space for teaching with primary sources that is convenient
and available to various repositories
Research education does have an important role – need to get students to ask the right
questions
What would facilitate “teaching across collections”?
Cross-collection searching will be useful but still a need to put things into context, teach
students how to evaluate materials, etc.
Second session: Presentations by faculty members
Janice Carlisle, Professor of English
 Has enjoyed teaching courses at YCBA, e.g. Victorian Prose: The Conditions of England
 Important skill set for students to integrate images and text
 Real value in seeing original resources in place
 Coordination and logistics sometimes tricky
 Museums tend to have a different time sense; don’t react with immediacy in the way that
faculty might desire
Seth Fein, Assistant Professor of History
 Demonstrated how he has integrated primary sources into his courses that focus on culture in
U.S. international and transnational histories, the idea of the Western Hemisphere, and film
and history; lectures utilize PowerPoint presentations with digital surrogates
 Uses Media sets in ClassesV2
 Academic and Media Technology staff have been very important in helping him provide access
to materials
 Uses Portfolio to organize his digital assets
 Uses a blog so that students can upload a primary source and share perspectives
 Relationships with librarians/archivists/curators important for faculty and students; need to
meet them face-to-face
 Would like to bring classes into repositories more but semester is very short; not enough time
to visit various places
 Very time consuming for him to identify and integrate primary sources into his teaching but he
thinks it is worth it and he always learns as he is doing it
John Mack Faragher, Arthur Unobskey Professor of American History
 Demonstrated how he has integrated images as historical items in his courses, e.g. The
American West
 Images are more than illustrations; important to understand their medium, distribution &
reception, context, etc.
 Benefited greatly from ELI program that partnered faculty, curator, technology. Library
scanned many important resources from BRBL collection.
 Finds images with Google as well as more academic resources
 Primary sources are part of a triangulation: primary sources, interpretive (secondary) works,
questions
General discussion
 Electronic database of primary sources searchable by subject would be very useful
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Need to integrate what is available at Yale with what is available outside of Yale
How do graduate students learn how to use images in teaching? – both the technological skills
and pedagogical aspects
Curatorial help is useful to faculty in putting things together, but content of lectures is always
evolving, sometimes at the last minute. Things have to be cataloged and described sufficiently
in order to be identified and utilized
How do archivists/librarians/curators learn about the categories faculty are using to pose
questions, e.g., rhetoric, discourse, context?
Integration of primary sources takes a lot of time; easier if faculty teach the same course
several times but this is not always possible
Need a centralized way to request and obtain reproductions of materials
Need a clear path for getting things digitized & need financing for this
Too many different types of technology; time wasted in pursuing methods that don’t pan out
Important to reach out to Teaching Fellows and graduate students
A “teaching museum” such as they have at Skidmore would be useful – a place where materials
could be brought from various collections
What should our priorities be?