The Special Collections Classroom in the Time of Covid-19
Posted by Cait Coker
This post is tan addition to Kate Ozment’s round-up last month on “Teaching Materiality with Virtual Instruction”. This is a post with additional thoughts, specifically for librarians in the audience who are suddenly finishing up their teaching terms virtually, and who are going to be spending the better part of the summer figuring out what to do in the New Normal where we may not have always have access to our materials or classrooms.
NB. This is by no means meant to be an encyclopedic round-up of special collections library-focused teaching resources, but rather a shorter series of materials that I found really useful, and hope that you will too.
What Our Colleagues Are Doing
“Moving Archival and Special Collections Instruction Online TPS Community Crowdsource Document” by the Teaching With Primary Sources Collective (created jointly by the Instruction and Outreach Committee of RBMS and the Reference Access and Outreach Committee (RAO) of the Society of American Archivists)
This is a living document chronicling our field’s attempts to keep our necks above water at this time. There are many, many links on going virtual, including links to software, notes towards developing best practices, pandemic-related teaching assignments, and write-ups of the weekly zoom call series they have been running. I’ve found the weekly series both rewarding and kind of comforting in the past month.
Managing Technology
“ACRL Distance Learning Section Instruction Committee: Instructional Design for Distance Librarians” by Amanda Ziegler (2019)
“Getting Started Teaching with Document Cameras and Original Primary Sources” by Heather Smedberg (2019)
For those libraries who don’t already have some sort of document camera already in-house, current circumstances lay out an extra solid case as to how useful they can be. Smedberg wrote this post on how document cameras can assist in teaching last year, and rounds up a bibliography of step-by-step instructions, possible lesson plans, and even a case study for use in distance learning. Doc cameras are also great to use as a preservational tool to minimize handling of fragile items. This post runs comparisons across several different models of cameras, including resolution, recording functions, and maneuverability. The RBMS Blog also has a Practical How-To Series that is of related interest.
“Teaching & Learning Guide: Creating Teaching Video Tools” by Anatolia College Libraries (2020)
Some colleges are providing a number of teaching resources and tutorials for making recordings of lectures and so on. If your institution doesn’t have access to paid resources, this LibGuide collects a number of free options with tutorials and helpful links.
Experiences and Reminders
“Out of the archives, onto Zoom: Some early notes on teaching online with special collections in a time of quarantine” by Michael Morand (2020)
Morand shares his experiences using Zoom with several different classes at the Beinecke Library in April. This piece underlines that both faculty and students still need and want instruction with special collections even in the time of Covid, reinforcing that library teaching is a necessity for many classes.
“Accessible Teaching in the Time of Covid-19” by Aimi Hamraie (2020)
This article provides tips and resources for keeping your class accessible: There are apps that can generate transcripts of recordings and tools to double-check your content’s accessibility.
Do you have experiences with library teaching in the time of Covid you want to share? Let us know in comments.
About the Author
Cait Coker is Associate Professor and Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and will soon receive her doctoral degree in literature from Texas A&M University. Her current projects include journal articles on women's labor in the book trades in seventeenth-century England. She also frequently publishes on SFF and popular culture including editing the forthcoming collection The Global Vampire in Popular Culture. Contact her at: cait.coker (at) gmail (dot) com.
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October 2022
- Oct 16, 2022 Teaching in the Maker Studio Part Two: Safety Training and Open Making
- Oct 16, 2022 Teaching Book Forms
- Oct 16, 2022 Teaching Letterpress with the Bookbeetle Press
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September 2022
- Sep 24, 2022 Making a Scriptorium, or, Writing with Quills Part Two
- Sep 16, 2022 Teaching Cuneiform
- Sep 4, 2022 We're Back! Teaching Technologies of Writing
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June 2020
- Jun 1, 2020 Black Lives Matter
- May 2020
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April 2020
- Apr 1, 2020 Teaching Materiality with Virtual Instruction
- March 2020
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February 2020
- Feb 1, 2020 Making the Syllabus Zine
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January 2020
- Jan 1, 2020 Teaching Print History with Popular Culture
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December 2019
- Dec 1, 2019 Teaching with Enumerative Bibliography
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November 2019
- Nov 1, 2019 Finding Women in the Historical Record
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October 2019
- Oct 1, 2019 Teaching in the Maker Studio
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September 2019
- Sep 1, 2019 Graduate School: The MLS and the PhD
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August 2019
- Aug 1, 2019 Research Trips: Workflow with Primary Documents
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July 2019
- Jul 1, 2019 Research Trips: A Beginner's Guide
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June 2019
- Jun 1, 2019 Building a Letterpress Reference Library
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May 2019
- May 1, 2019 Teaching Manuscript: Writing with Quills
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April 2019
- Apr 1, 2019 Why It Matters: Teaching Women Bibliographers
- March 2019
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February 2019
- Feb 1, 2019 Roundup of Materials: Teaching Book History
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January 2019
- Jan 1, 2019 Building and Displaying a Teaching Collection
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December 2018
- Dec 1, 2018 Critical Making and Accessibility
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November 2018
- Nov 1, 2018 Teaching Bibliographic Format
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October 2018
- Oct 1, 2018 Teaching Book History Alongside Literary Theory
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September 2018
- Sep 1, 2018 Teaching with Letterpress
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August 2018
- Aug 1, 2018 Teaching Manuscript: Circulation
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July 2018
- Jul 1, 2018 Setting Up a Print Shop
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May 2018
- May 1, 2018 Teaching Manuscript: Commonplace Books
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April 2018
- Apr 1, 2018 Getting a Press
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March 2018
- Mar 1, 2018 Teaching Ephemera: Pamphlet Binding
- February 2018