1. Works in Progress: The Bentley Historical Library on Teaching with Primary Sources
Terrence J. McDonald, Ph.D., Director
Cinda Nofziger, Ph.D., Archivist for Academic Programs and Outreach

2. From Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow
“Fast” Thinking: Unconscious, automatic, without reflective awareness; the home of stereotypes and unwarranted conclusions. But we are here most of the time! “Google knowing,” Twitter.
“Slow” Thinking: Attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it –agency, choice, concentration, interpretation. But we are only rarely there!

3. Citizenship Demands Slow Thinking from Michael Patrick Lynch, The Internet of Us:
“Knowing is having a correct belief (getting it right, having a true opinion) that is grounded or justified and which can therefore guide our action.”
Institutions that facilitate and encourage the construction of grounded belief – interpretation of sources, data, etc. – “are doing the work of democracy.”

4. Our challenge:
To produce an experience of the production of grounded belief based on primary sources that engages “effortful” thinking and empowers our students to be autonomous operators in the world of hard won knowledge production and evaluation.

7. Impact Over 600 images of Bentley materials used in the final website
Class was so successful it has become a model for other research intensive courses at the Bentley
High undergraduate engagement continued after the class ended

8. The state of the field New Programs Need for professional development
Assessment
Collaboration
Commitment

9. New Programs Creating stronger instruction positions, and programs
Creating communities of practice.
RBMS Instruction and Outreach
TPS Unconference (August 2, 2019, Austin, TX)
TPS Collective Resource Exchange
SAA-ACRL/RBMS Joint Task Force on Primary Source Literacy

10. Need for Professional Development
Learning skills to teach pedagogically informed, active learning, hands-on, ethical classes.
Librarian Active Learning Institute—Archives and Special Collections, Dartmouth
Society of American Archivists workshop on active learning
Robin Katz’s Library Juice Academy course on primary source pedagogy
Duke’s Rubenstein Library’s Code of Ethics for Instruction Sessions

11. Assessment
Recognition of its value, but not always a will or a way to get it done.

12. Collaboration
Strong interest in collaboration with colleagues within institution—faculty, librarians, archivists and curators.
Atlanta University Center GLAM Center for Collaborative Teaching and Learning at the Robert A. Woodruff Library
UGA Special Collections Library Faculty Fellows Teaching Program with the Center for Teaching and Learning

13. Commitment
Pride in the work we are doing and the changes that have occurred over the past few years
Desire for increased recognition in the profession

14. Bentley’s Engaging Undergraduates with Archives Program
Faculty Seminar
Collaboration
Archivists, faculty, researchers
Advancing pedagogical uses of archives
Research component
Impact on Faculty
Impact on Archivists
Impact on Students

15. Engaging the Archives Faculty Seminar
Three semesters of the seminar
Fifteen archivists
Three research scientists
Sixteen faculty members from ten departments
Eleven iterations of courses

16. Research: Impact on Faculty
[I will ] “work much more closely… with archivists at the Bentley in constructing the syllabus and be much more deliberative about tapping on them… at different touchpoints…” (Women’s Studies Professor)
“Getting the archivist involved when you’re planning the course is more important than anything they may do once the course starts.”  ( History Professor)

17. Research: Impact on Archivists
“But I think the biggest part is really understanding that I’ve never made a syllabus…And how they know how their students learn and how their students work and just seeing that deeper level of everything it takes to plan a class, to come to the Bentley.”– Reference Archivist
“Just being familiar with the library’s collections was probably the biggest asset I brought to it. We had some good discussions in the seminar itself, with [two professors] in particular. I would say we offered them a lot of good suggestions that I think will be useful for them.” – University Archivist
“I think more about my end users.” –Curation Archivist

18. Research: Student Impact
Intercultural Engagement
Creativity
Ethical Reasoning
Communication
Self-agency

19. Research: Student Impact
Student scores saw the greatest increase in Intercultural Engagement
Further effort is necessary to ensure adequate post-course response rates

20. Paths Forward: Conferences, Unconferences, Seminars:
TPS Unconference:
Dartmouth College’s Librarian’s Active Learning Institute—Special Collections and Archives:
Teaching Undergraduates with Archives, University of Michigan Symposium, November 2018: it.org/5476/ /

21. Paths Forward, cont.
Shared Bibliographies:
Positions in Archives specializing in education and outreach.
Getting to know you: Archival and Departmental faculty in the same “room” discussing pedagogy.

22. From Patricia Garcia, Joseph Lueck, and Elizabeth Yakel, “The Pedagogical Promise of Primary Sources: Research Trends, Persistent Trends, and New Directions” The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 45.19, March 2019.

23. Obstacles: (a few and mostly about us):
Our own professional training and instincts--
our “taken for granteds” -- can impede our understanding of where students start. Failure to recognize the challenges students face in their attempts to be successful users of the archives. Finding things, when interpretation begins, etc.

24. Obstacles, cont.
2. Time Pressure: Our own desire for coverage of material may not leave enough time for students to master the tasks.

25. Obstacles, cont.
3. Failure to acknowledge the partnership necessary between instructional faculty and archivists to provide a successful, empowering experience for students. The traditional one-shot archival orientation may be the enemy of success!