teaching and learning at king’s college london using archives and special collections
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Teaching and learning at King’s College London using Archives and Special Collections
Katie SambrookGeoff Browell
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Special collections at King’s• Around 180,000 items, mainly books but also
MSS and photographs• Housed in the Foyle Special Collections
Library, a self-contained dedicated wing of the main library building
• Items range in date from 1483 to the present day
• Span humanities, social sciences and sciences, with notable strengths in world history, languages / literatures and medicine
• Historical library of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) our largest collection
• Significant rise in teaching involvement in past five years
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Why use special collection in teaching? • Raises institutional awareness of collections
and reinforces their value as scholarly resources
• Introduces undergraduates and taught PGs to primary sources
• Often an inspiring experience for students• Builds links with academic colleagues through
partnership working • Fosters innovative teaching methods /
academic content• Develops teaching, research and
communication skills of Special Collections staff
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Some things to consider • Risk of damage to items, through
inappropriate handling• Space – do you have a suitable seminar room
or will you need to close the Reading Room?• Significant time commitment to deliver
effective teaching in a subject area in which you may not be a specialist
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What has worked for us?• Building the use of special collections into
academic curriculum / assessed coursework• Introductory sessions for taught PGs in some
disciplines to sow ideas / whet appetites for dissertation topics
• Set upper limit on class size, ensure adequate supervision and provide supports for large or fragile items
• Present jointly with academic colleagues• Include house rules, catalogue searching tips,
useful resources online• Include a practical exercise• Offer follow-up consultations
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What have we found?• The potency of the physical object• Common student questions: How are books made?
What is the paper made of? How is a binding made? How many copies would have been printed in an edition? How is a woodcut made? What is an engraving?
• Increased emphasis on the history of the book / descriptive bibliography / book as object
• Rapid increase in take-up of our teaching offer, fuelled by:– Growth of taught PG courses– Growth of interdisciplinary humanities degrees– Growth of 3rd year dissertations
• Special collections seminars now feeding directly into teaching content in some disciplines
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Archives at King’s
• 5 million items• Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives &
institutional, research and personal paper collections• Military, medical, psychiatric focus• Integrated records management and digital provision• Growing collections• Strand & Drury Lane locations• Outreach focus
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Outreach & teaching• Online catalogues since 1996• Full outreach programme requiring the development of new IT:
for example DAM and new cataloguing software with presentation at the forefront – Celum and Archios
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Focus on graduate & ECR training
• Archival skills – link with Moodle VLE• London Cultural Connections - AHRC• Language & Access - AHRC
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Key findings• Focus on the value and experience of working with original
documents• Broad approach to learning – e.g. U3A, Nightingale & nurses,
WW1 – mixing research with archives – leveraging expertise• Link with modules – for example Summer School• Need for advocacy within an organisation• Focus on fundraising• Commitment to collaboration & building communities (AIM25)
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Thank you
• Geoff Browell: geoffrey.browell@kcl.ac.uk• Catalogues: www.kingscollections.org/catalogues• Exhibitions: www.kingscollections.org/exhibitions• AIM25: www.aim25.ac.uk
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