Gettin Dirty:
Students Dig through Archives to Discover a City and Their University and Create Web-Based Library Media
Romel Espinel, Web Services Librarian, Linda Beninghove, Head of Reference and Research Services, Samuel C. Williams Library, Stevens Institute of Technology PROJECTS (Assessment)
INTRODUCTION In Spring 2013, a Stevens history course was piloted in collaboration with the Samuel C. Williams Library that immerses students in the rich archives and special collections. The course, titled Thinking Stevens: The History of a Family, a School, and a City, enables students to explore the relationship between the university’s founding family and the city of Hoboken. The Stevens family’s significant contributions to technological innovation, business, politics, and law during the 18th and 19th centuries include the T-rail for railroads, improvements for steam engines and steam boats, and the establishment of the America’s Cup yacht races. John Stevens III arrived in colonial America in 1699. Eventually he would purchase the land that would later become the city of Hoboken. Stevens Institute of Technology was founded in Hoboken in 1870. For this course, librarians worked with the professor to integrate information literacy outcomes and assessment by instructing students in the evaluation of primary sources such as historical newspapers, maps, photographs, catalogs, documents, and ephemera. Students made appointments to meet with Special Collections staff to gather relevant knowledge and identify useful historical material to support their projects. Students were required to develop their final projects into web-based media that the library will use to promote the archives and collections by using the library blog, Wikipedia, and videos posted to YouTube and marketed on social media.
ACRL STANDARDS & OUTCOMES STANDARD 2 2. The information literate student accesses needed information effectively and efficiently. 2.1. The information literate student selects the most appropriate investigative methods or information retrieval systems for accessing the needed information. 2.1a. Identifies appropriate investigative methods (laboratory experiment, simulation, fieldwork). 2.2 The information literate student constructs and implements effectively-designed search strategies. 2.2a. Develops a research plan appropriate to the investigative method. 2.2b. Identifies keywords, synonyms and related terms for the information needed. 2.2c. Selects controlled vocabulary specific to the discipline or information retrieval source.
STANDARD 3 3. The information literate student evaluates information and its sources critically and incorporates selected information into his or her knowledge base and value system. 3.2. The information literate student articulates and applies initial criteria for evaluating both the information and its sources.
We collaborated with the professor to evaluate the final projects to see how students had engaged with and used the library collections as their primary sources. We also asked them to create blog posts for the library website to market the collections.
Some of the projects included: 1. Wikipedia entry about Alexander Crombie Humphreys, 2nd President of Stevens 2. Women in Science and Technology blog posts 3. History of fraternities and sororities, mapped in Google 4. History of the Attila the Duck, the Stevens mascot 5. Stevens during World War II
Resources used from Archives and Special Collections: 1. The Stute (student newspaper) 2. The Link (yearbook) 3. Presidential papers 4. Personal Interviews 5. Photos 6. New York Times Archives
REACTIONS TO USING ARCHIVES AS PRIMARY SOURCES “This was my first experience where I was able to be ‘hands on’ with primary sources rather than just viewing online scanned copies.”
“The archives are very extensive and have a LOT of interesting things! It was a lot of fun going through it all.”
“A lot more digging around is necessary when using these archives.”
3.2a. Examines and compares information from various sources in order to evaluate reliability, validity, accuracy, authority, timeliness, point of view of bias.
CONCLUSIONS & RECOMMENDATIONS INSTRUCTION & PRE-TEST In this class there were 13 senior undergraduate students. We used Socrative.com audience response service to gauge students’ awareness of library research and primary sources. The questions sought to identify whether or not students understood the differences between primary and secondary sources. Results indicated that all of them could identify the characteristics of primary and secondary sources given hypothetical examples. However when asked if they had previously worked with primary resources, 6 of the 13 responded either “Not Sure” or “No”. After the pre-test, we gave an instruction session about identifying primary sources and where they could be retrieved from the library. Also, we introduced students to a librarian-created LibGuide for the class (see right). This guide contains links to relevant library databases as well as links to significant historical institutions like Hoboken Historical Museum, Hoboken Public Library, and other local historical resources.
The collaboration with the Thinking Stevens course was successful because it incorporated information literacy learning outcomes and the experience of working with archives as primary sources. This experience was relatively new for most of the Stevens students who mainly work or research in the Sciences and Engineering fields. As a caveat this was a brand new course at Stevens thus much of the content and instruction was piloted and was subject to change during the course of the semester. Recommendations for this type of collaboration to further expose students to the collections and market the archives include: 1. A specific library assignment that would be graded and assessed for learning outcomes, e.g. annotated bibliographies from research projects; 2. Student contributions to social media about their discoveries; 3. Improved coordination with curators so that librarians would know which archives the students are using. Special thanks to Professor Lee Vinsel of the College of Arts and Letters for opening his class for collaboration and to Doris Oliver, Assistant Curator and Leah Loscutoff, Archives and Special Collections Librarian for helping the students find their way. Scan this code to see an online version