Using Primary Sources in Digital and Live Archives

Activity 1. Explore the website

• Do they have a section for educators? This is a great place to start. Example: Montana Historical Society 

• Are lesson plans or resources already assembled for classroom use? Example: Museum of International Folk Art (Santa Fe, NM)

• Does the institution welcome groups of visitors? A regularly offered tour or a customized field trip may suit the learning objectives of the class. Example: Maine Historical Society

Activity 2. Contact staff

• Use the preferred contact method, which could be an individual’s email or a contact form, to get a timely response. 

• Contact well in advance and follow up if you don’t hear back. Some libraries, museums, or historical societies are short-staffed, so have patience. 

• Communicate your needs explicitly, such as providing 

  • The name or scope of the class you teach.

  • The grade level of your students.

  • The content that aligns with the institution’s holdings.

  • How a visit to the cultural center will be beneficial for you students.

• In some cases when a visit is not possible, museum staff may be able to digitize records for you. This is dependent on staff availability, other demands, and restrictions on the material. 

Note: Don’t get discouraged if the institution cannot process educational requests at the time of your inquiry. At the very least, teacher inquiries will alert the institution that there is a need for access to certain parts of their collection. In many cases, a digital collection may be available for classroom use. 

Activity 3. Prepare students

• Explain what primary materials are held at the institution. 

• Show students a preview of objects or similar objects.

• Make connections between your lessons and readings, and what they will see at the institution.

• Students can generate a “Top 3” list of what they look forward to experiencing on the visit, from examining the handwriting of a famous author, to seeing a piece of jewelry from another part of the world, or simply interacting with experts.  

View the above video "Telling The Story Of Slavery: A Visit To The National Archives" to lean more about working in archives with historical documents and artifacts. 

Activity 1. Logistics of the visit

• Illustrate to students what they can and cannot bring to the site.

• Encourage appropriate dress, if applicable. Some areas of an institution, such a research or conservation room, might be very chilly. Conversely, a botanical garden might be very warm and humid. 

• Review the institution’s code of conduct.

• View the video "How to Visit an Art Museum, The Art Assignment" produced by PBS Digital Studios to identify topics or logistics that you may not have considered. Students can view the video to contribute to the planning and to think about what they will focus on during the visit. 

• Ensure that you will have enough time to process the items, whether you have arranged for a staff-led tour or personalized archive visit. Providing students with a little time to follow their curiosity, while supervised, can yield exciting results, if permitted by the institution. Use your discretion given the age and skill level of the students. 

Activity 2. Exploring the collections

• Check for learning throughout the visit. Students may miss key information in the excitement of the visit. 

• Ensure students take notes, pictures (if applicable and permitted), and record information during the presentation.

• View the video "For Educators: Your Museum Visit, Art Institute of Chicago" to inform how you organize a museum visit and prepare students for viewing exhibits. 

• If students are able to spend a good deal of time with objects, refer to the following Library of Congress guides for how to observe, reflect, and generate questions about many common archival object types. 

• Make sure students ask all pressing questions before leaving the site, and provide them with contact information for future questions, if permitted. 

• Thank the staff for the visit.

Step 3. Debrief student learning

• Provide students time to review their notes and journal about their experience, as well as reflect on what they have learned and record questions they have that could inform future research.

• Validate affective as well as intellectual impressions. Some students may feel very moved, especially if they have been looking at objects from their own heritage or history. Other emotions may be shock, joy, disappointment, or confusion. Provide students a space to process and articulate their reactions.

• Discuss how the visit shed light on one or multiple aspects of the course. Chart explicit connections (the chair in which Thomas Jefferson sat) and implicit connections (a newspaper advertisement for railway jobs during the Industrial Revolution).

Activity 4. Peer presentations 

Once the research is complete, consider implementing one or more of the following assessments:

• Presenting individually to the class.

• Curate an exhibition at your school site.

• Write a “textbook feature” centered on an individual object.

• Create a concept map with various pieces of a larger topic.

• Construct an in-class gallery with posters and invite other classes or parents to view it.

• Share your final projects with the institution with a thank-you note. 

Activity 1. Preparing for the lesson

• Download webpages and images beforehand. A slow connection can derail this lesson.

• Review "Using Digital Library Collections in the Classroom, Bryn Mawr College" prior to modeling with students and starting the student-centered portion of the activity.

• Provide a hyperlinked itinerary or road map for students on a shareable online document or spreadsheet. Because it is easy to get lost on a website with just a few clicks, an itinerary will keep the class on track. 

Activity 2. Model how to explore an object online

Using the Library of Congress guides, 

• Create a description of the object.

• Contextualize the object in its parent collection.

• Explore online image options:

  • Can you download or manipulate the object in any way? 

  • Compare it to similar objects? 

  • View it from various angles? 

  • See it in its original surroundings? 

Activity 3. Practice with guidance

Walk students through the following site functions:

• Search for objects.

• Return to the home page or search page.

• Explore other resources on the site.

Activity 4. Independent or pair research 

• Clearly communicate your research objective(s) to students.

• Depending on the skill level of the students, you may assign them all the same object to examine or individual objects. 

• Give students plenty of time. It may take them a while to become oriented to the site, and no two archival sites are alike.

• Start with a description, just like catalogers and preservationists do. Descriptions will be especially important if some students are visually impaired. 

• Create a bibliography for the object. Where can one find more information about the object from secondary materials, including course materials? 

Activity 5. Debrief with students

• Just as after an in-person field trip, provide students times to review their research and journal about their experience. 

• Validate affective as well as intellectual impressions. Some students may feel very moved, especially if they have been looking at objects from their own heritage or history. Other emotions may be shock, joy, disappointment, or confusion. Provide students a space to articulate and process their reactions.

• Discuss how the visit shed light on one or multiple aspects of the course. Chart explicit connections (the chair in which Thomas Jefferson sat) and implicit connections (a newspaper advertisement for railway jobs during the Industrial Revolution).

Activity 6. Peer presentations

Once the research is complete, consider implementing one or more of the following assessments:

• Presenting individually to the class.

• Curate an exhibition at your school site.

• Write a “textbook feature” centered on your individual object.

• Create a concept map with various pieces of the whole.

• Construct an in-class gallery with posters, invite other classes or parents.

Activity 7. Thank the institution

Even if you were not able to visit the institution or view their collections in person, thanking staff for making their materials digital and illustrating the value these materials had in your classroom will reinforce the need for educational access and reward the labor of the digitization team. 

The National Endowment for the Humanities provides grants to make collections of primary sources more accessible. Recent digitization projects funded by NEH include:

• Colored Conventions Project (University of Delaware)

• Freedom on the Move: A Crowd-sourced, Comprehensive Database of North American Runaway Slave Advertisements (Cornell University)

• Freedom Summer App (Miami University) which documents the historic events of 1964 that took place at Western Women's College

• Immigrant Stories (University of Minnesota)

• Mission US (WNET) 

• World History Commons (George Mason University)  

• The Ancient Graffiti Project: A digital resource for studying the graffiti of Herculaneum and Pompeii (Washington and Lee University) 

• Livingston Online (University of Nebraska) 

• Curating East Africa (Cleveland State University)

• Virtual St Paul’s Cathedral Project (North Carolina State University)

• WorldMap (Harvard University)