Digitized historical content for teaching: library of congress primary sources training
| Published date | 04 December 2019 |
| Date | 04 December 2019 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/LHTN-10-2019-0077 |
| Pages | 10-13 |
| Author | Michelle Kowalsky |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Librarianship/library management,Library technology,Library & information services |
Digitized historical content for teaching: library
of congress primary sources training
Michelle Kowalsky
Introduction
Teaching about history is indeed a
critical thinking activity for students at all
grade levels and of all abilities, as well as
for the adults who direct their studies.
This project sought to use the digitized
resources of the Library of Congress,
which appear freely online to the public,
as a way to engage K-12 teachers and
their students in a discussion of library
searching and the affordances of
technology for sharing historical
knowledge. Rowan University is
currently one of three designated public
research universities in New Jersey, and is
located in the southern part of the state. It
provides a regional teacher preparation
program for undergraduate students, as
well as thriving graduate programs in
education including a doctoral program in
Educational Leadership. Rowan is
recognized as the “go-to” institution for
teacher preparation in the southern part of
the state. These characteristics position
the university well to become a training
site for primary sources searching and a
facilitator of primary source integration
into teaching in the local region.
K-12 teachersare in a unique position
to affect and influence student learning
of technologicaland information literacy
skills, especially those skills which help
young people discern the details of
online propaganda, bias and accuracy.
Topics such as understanding copyright,
analyzing the content of historical
documents, and viewing details of print
and photographproduction are skills that
are both enhanced by new technologies
and complicated by them. Pryor (2015)
concludes that “the literature suggests
rethinking the current silo effect in
which content is isolated into stand-
alone courses or content knowledge is
devoid from its potential application”
(p. 466). The current project espouses
this idea as well.
Students need guided practice to
determine whether posted information
is representative of a time period or
point of view, as well as to ask pointed
questions about how artifacts came to
exist and remain preserved. The Library
of Congress’ teacher professional
development efforts center around
instructing teachers in the “richness of
using primary sources to engage
students and spark their interest in
questioning and further research”
(Lehman, 2014). With use of digital
collections across the curriculum and
along the length of the directed student
learning experience, young adults
can become savvier in discerning
patterns, noting anomalies, identifying
uniqueness and articulating the value of
a strategically digitized culture.
The Partnership for School Success
initiative allows Rowan to lend a
helping hand to those districts in need of
particular services, whether it be in the
form of workshops, training sessions, or
one-on-one assistance from personnel
with the knowledge and expertise. The
university also partners with local
school districts in the Professional
Development School model, with
faculty and students integrating into the
daily operations of multiple elementary,
middle and high schools. Rowan’s
Urban Teacher Academy is a summer
program offered to high school juniors
interested in becoming urban teachers
and/or teachers in high-shortage subject
areas. Through this Library of Congress
grant-funded program, local teachers
are able to engage with their colleagues
to promote increased use of primary
sources to enhance information literacy of
students at all levels, from K-12 to college.
Librarians and archivists have identified
some of the critical knowledge skills and
abilities that students need to use archival
materials (Morris et al., 2016). The project
leaders followed the suggestions of the
many resources which appear at the end of
this article, and as a result were able
to share information about the wealth
of resources available for free online
through the Library of Congress’ digital
collections.
The initial partnership for this project
has brought together personnel from
disparate locations on campus. Project
leaders hailed from the university’s library
services and the university’s teacher
preparation programs, collaborating on
information literacy as an area of mutual
interest. This partnership has resulted in an
infusion of ways to teach various
visual, image, map, and language literacy
skills to teacher candidates, and
subsequently, to their K-12 students. The
host university’s geographic location and
branding as a regional hub helped us to
make teaching with primary sources an
ongoing effort in the state’s southernmost
public university as well as in
surrounding K-12 districts with whom we
enjoy close partnerships. This project was
sponsoredinpartbytheLibraryof
Congress Teaching with Primary Sources
Eastern Region Program, coordinated by
Waynesburg University.
Design/methodology/approach
Rowan University provided staff
time of the Principal Investigators and
assumed all overhead operating costs.
As a result, the university hosted a
series of daylong workshops which
allowed teachers from the region to
interact with each other on a
challenging “big question” in lesson
design – that of essential lesson
structures needed to teach with and
about primary sources in the social
studies and humanities, among other
subjects. Participants collaborated in a
workshop-style setting to create lesson
frameworks which suit many different
types of teaching styles, and their
materials were posted and shared
online, for use by additional New Jersey
10 LIBRARY HITECH NEWS Number 2 2020, pp. 10-13, V
CEmerald Publishing Limited, 0741-9058, DOI 10.1108/LHTN-10-2019-0077
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