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Archives, Documents, and Hidden History:
A Course to Teach Undergraduates the Thrill of Historical Discovery Real and Virtual
Sandra Roff
Baruch College, City University of New York
| TREASURES AWAIT students and researchers on the shelves of libraries and archives across the country, but unfortunately they often remain unknown to the "modern" researcher who limits his/her research to using the Internet. The process of physically going to the library stacks and browsing the shelves in a subject area is on the decline and more and more students expect that all their research can be done on-line at home. These missed sources of valuable information are called "hidden collections," and include materials that have not yet been entered into on-line catalogs or listed in on-line archival finding aids. They can include primary sources and they can be any format from microform and videos to print or graphic materials. "They represent millions of items and collections –
untapped knowledge resources –
that are inaccessible to scholars. In this age of access and increasingly digital access, these collections are becoming increasingly hidden since the chance of someone coming across them physically in the stacks is diminishing."1 |
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My library class was recently offered an example of what browsing the stacks can reveal when Barbara Chernow, who was working as an Associate Editor for the Hamilton Papers, set out to track down all the possible information related to Alexander Hamilton found what she was looking for quite unexpectedly. In her determination to find a genealogical clue to one of the players in Hamilton's life, she perused the stacks of Butler Library at Columbia University. In the section on New York State county history she came upon a small book which still had uncut pages that revealed the information for which she had been looking.2 Her special moment of discovery took place in the library of a university, but this scene has been duplicated countless times in the past in other archives when discoveries were made that cast a new light on history. |
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Those of us who are archivists or librarians and have worked in historical society libraries, special libraries, or university libraries are familiar with the wonderful discoveries to be found in these places. I worked for a time at the New-York Historical Society Library where one day I found among an assortment of ephemeral material the original Constitution of the Brooklyn African Woolman Benevolent Society, adopted March 16, 1810. The consensus before I made this find was that the society was founded in 1818, but this early date meant that free Afro-Americans took a pro-active role in providing for their own fellow workers, earlier than was previously thought.3 It was a thrilling moment, but it would never have happened if I had not had the opportunity to browse the library stacks. |
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The privilege of browsing the stacks in a special library or archive is usually unavailable to the majority of undergraduates, but finding "hidden history" is still possible when students are provided with the proper research skills necessary to locate materials in libraries and archives. They must be warned that working in archives "is not a straightforward process of retrieving information. You may open a bag of manuscripts and confront information in the form of letters or diaries or memos. But this raw material isn't raw at all. It's cooked. Every document embodies some rhetorical convention, argues for some hidden agenda, must be read between the lines and related to all the surrounding documents."4 |
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Of course the ease of turning up information on the Internet has its own problems. "Anyone who has gone to an Internet search engine with a real if imprecisely worded query and gotten thousands of 'hits' in response knows that too much information is as bad as none at all."5 I would argue that an experienced archivist or librarian can be of help with these problems as well as with archival research, but the focus of this article is on the hidden treasure in archives and the importance of not allowing students to graduate who do not know how to use a library, catalog, or an archive finding aid. Therefore "educating researchers on how to use archival and manuscript materials and to navigate repositories is an important component in [any library] reference and outreach program."6 Although not a new concept, librarians and archivists have been slow to push for a teaching mission for the archive in which they work. Ronald Schuchard in a 2002 article said, "What I wish to see is a revolution in special collections, a teaching revolution, one that says special collections libraries have a vital teaching mission in the university as well as a research and preservation mission, and there is evidence that the revolution has begun."7 He goes on to argue for cooperation between librarians or archivists and faculty and suggests offering special seminars for undergraduates in the use of archives and special collections.8 |
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Working in an archive environment is different from in a library and one with which few students are familiar. "It also requires them to learn new techniques of discovery and creates a real sense of intimacy with people of a different time."9 The keys to unlock these hidden treasures of the past are "finding aids," which students need to learn how to use. Although many have been made available online, without the benefit of instruction by a qualified archivist, students may not be able to navigate them to their best advantage. Archivists have the opportunity to help students develop investigative skills and refine their research strategies. |
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Archivists can also teach students how to use and search for material evidence from the past. Artifacts can survive in archival collections and they may or may not be listed in finding aids. An example of how surprising the unexpected discovery of an artifact can be occurred at the British Library when traces of the gunpowder Guy Fawkes and his compatriots intended to use in 1605 to blow up Parliament were found among the papers of a 17th century diarist and member of a gunpowder manufacturing family.10 After the appropriate instruction by an archivist, the possibility of discovery awaits every student given the opportunity to use an archival collection. |
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The traditional role of an archivist was to serve as a link between the collections/ books and the researcher. Archivists would conduct reference interviews in order to help researchers plan out their research strategy. They often possessed an unwritten memory of the institution, knowing what was catalogued and what was not. If these staff members left the organization, access to the materials could be compromised.11 However, as the organizers of primary sources that are stored in an archive, they are also uniquely qualified to conduct a class or a workshop to teach critical thinking skills. Marcus C. Robyns identifies two steps in critical thinking which can be taught by an archivist –
external and internal criticism. External criticism asks who wrote the document and where, when, and why was the document written. Answers to these questions provide the context for its creation. Internal criticism involves reading and interpreting the document itself. Aided by an archivist, a student can learn how to discern its real meaning, whether the author harbors any prejudices which control his/her opinions, and whether more information is needed to understand the document.12 Using an archive as a laboratory, internal and external criticism can be taught using an assortment of documents. Even using the Internet it is important that students learn to distinguish the reliable from unreliable sources of on-line information, and also to evaluate what they do find. The archivist can update students on new web sites and also keep them abreast of projects that will make more archival collections and finding aids available digitally. Some archives that have established a presence on-line only post their finding aids and do not make actual documents available to the Internet community, which means that students might then decide to visit another institution to further pursue his/her research. Before deciding to go, however, it would be wise to contact the institutional archivist and explain the research project to learn whether collections that are available for viewing are likely to have useful information. |
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I believe that Baruch College of the City University of New York, which has been a pioneer in library education for undergraduates since the 1970s, can serve as a good model for how archivists can teach these skills. In 1973, the College began offering a basic techniques and library skills course for two credits. This course was successful and evolved into other two credit courses in the 1970s which included separate sections for business research and for social sciences and humanities research. By 1980, there were two three credit courses offered –
Introduction to Library Research in Liberal Arts and Education and Introduction to Library Research in Business. In 2005, a minor in Information Studies was approved and new courses were designed to help students meet the challenges of the information age by developing "skills in identifying information needs, retrieving information effectively and efficiently, evaluating information, creating information products, and understanding the social, economic, political, and ethical aspects of information."13 The courses proposed were important, but still missing was a course that would expose students to historical research techniques. |
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The Baruch College library department is committed to information literacy, and our latest strategic plan is evidence of this. Because we believe that information research skills are fundamental to the preparation of citizens and future employees in the information age, the Newman Library has established a rich array of instructional offerings grounded in the principles of Information Literacy and the wide-ranging implications of this concept in higher education. We believe that it is "the library's mission to develop information literacy skills in the Baruch community," and serve "as a catalyst to integrate information literacy across the curriculum."14 |
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To meet this broad goal, I have developed a course entitled "Archives, Documents, and Hidden History." Offered for the first time in the fall of 2005, the course objectives were for students to learn the difference between primary and secondary sources, to encourage the use of archival/and or primary sources in their research, to teach the use of archival finding aids, both real and virtual, to instruct in how to use archival and/or primary sources to help interpret historical issues, and to teach the organizational skills needed to solve research problems. The course requires readings, field trips, writing, and oral presentations. Baruch College is in the heart of New York City, and the libraries, archives, museums, galleries, and other cultural organizations that are available, make this an ideal setting for such a course. The course was an experiment in integrating themes in American history and culture with research using primary sources. The course was not aimed only at history majors, but aimed to enroll students who could transfer the skills they learned to other disciplines. In a recent article, Jill D. Jensen explored the problems of students relying on the Internet to conduct research, and observed: "Students have trouble producing good research because they have not been given the foundation necessary for doing so in a world where research of the available literature, traditionally conducted hands-on in an actual library, is now conducted almost exclusively by looking at a computer screen."15 |
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The only prerequisite for my course is the completion of the introductory level English course, taught in many sections at Baruch College. Consequently, students taking the class come with different levels of library competency and basic library skills which need to be reinforced. "An obvious starting point for any research project is to think about how information is disseminated in the discipline, and where it is located."16 To introduce my course, I read a portion of a preface from a current non-fiction history book. The students see that in addition to profusely thanking editors, family, and friends, the authors list libraries and archives where they have researched their work and occasionally make special note of archivists who have uncovered sources or recommended avenues of research. Often for the first time, students can see that history and archives are closely linked and that learning to use archives effectively will help them to be better able to conduct historical research. "Every archive is not just a row of acid-free boxes but a manifestation of a quixotic yet indispensable aim: that we can give generations that we will never meet, under circumstances that we cannot foresee, what they will want to know about us."17 |
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The first unit of the course focused on what archives are and how archives and archivists organize their information. We then define basic archival terminology and discuss the different types of archives and why researchers visit an archive instead of relying solely on web based collections. One of the first sessions consists of a field trip to a special library or archive where students are exposed, often for the first time, to primary sources that they can look at, and physically examine. The next unit deals with the importance of the visual in historical research. Students learn that prior to the 20th century, the media often used to transmit a story included paintings, photographs, advertisements, woodcuts, and lithographs. Whether stored in archives or libraries, housed in museums, or even part of our architectural landscape, these visual remnants provide insight into the life and times of past generations. Since hidden history is not restricted to written or oral artifacts, but can be found in the physical remnants of the past, material culture is the next theme studied in the course. Students are taught to view these objects as "materials" of the past and to interpret them in the context of the lives of individuals and the society that used them. |
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The course then explores more specific subject areas where a variety of primary materials can be used to document American culture and society. The class learns to view advertisements and other artifacts of consumer culture in terms of the social, economic and political climate of the period. Another unit covers race, gender, and class, and even in the few lectures that are devoted to these topics, students are made aware of their impact on every aspect of American culture. By studying written documents and historical memorabilia, the attitudes and beliefs of Americans are revealed. Students learn how to document attitudes using archival and other primary source materials. A discussion of the American narrative tradition follows and includes diaries, letters, autobiography, travel accounts, spiritual confessions, slave narratives, and captivity stories –
all potential historical documents. The final unit is literature and history –
how works of literature since the 17th century have impacted American society. The class studies how literature can be a primary source of information, and that archival collections both real and virtual can be used to verify the facts. |
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Although librarians have been involved in educating students at Baruch College and other colleges and universities across the country, many archivists have felt that teaching goes beyond their job responsibilities. This idea is changing and archivists are slowly developing courses to aid students to make use of archival materials. "Archivists can and must be more than simply a bridge between our patrons and our collections. Certainly the time has come for proactive archivists involved in education to move beyond showing students how to find and access information in archives and toward greater instruction in critical interpretation and analysis of that information."18 |
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Archivists have the potential to have a great impact on the way others study and see history. Making students aware of the wealth of information available in archives, "real" and "virtual" is a contribution that archivists can make to the future. Edward Tenner remarked, "Because I have learned so much in and through archives, I am excited by the opportunities every generation has to pass the same experience to its successors. Archives can, and sometimes must, be magisterial and official, but they can also be touchingly human, fixing gloriously chaotic change."19 Archivists and librarians must adapt to the changes of the 21st century and the influx of information. We must say goodbye to the days when archives and archivists were relevant only to the seasoned scholar, but must instead welcome a new age that embraces archives as a window into the past able to be viewed by all levels of researchers. It is important for archivists and librarians to share their knowledge with students through course work, seminars, or workshops. I consider that my "Archives, Documents, and Hidden History" is just a beginning for teaching students historical research skills, and that other courses can and should be developed. Nevertheless, students who prior to taking this course were unaware of what was available in an archive, museum, or the stacks of a library, leave the course with newly acquired skills to do research. By the end of the course, instead of thinking of an archive as a dusty room, filled with old, brittle documents, students view archives in a new light –
as a place alive with endless possibilities for discovery. |
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Notes
1 Elizabeth Yakel, "Archives and Manuscripts: Hidden Collections in Archives and Libraries," OCLC Systems & Services: International Digital Library Perspectives 21 (2005): 95, 99.
2 Dr. Barbara Chernow was an associate editor of The Papers of Hamilton, Vol. 17–29.
3 For additional information on the African Woolman Benevolent Society see: Sandra Shoiock Roff, "The Brooklyn African Woolman Benevolent Society Rediscovered," Afro-Americans in New York Life and History 10 (1986): 55–63.
4 Robert Darnton, "No Computer Can Hold the Past," editorial, New York Times, 12 June 1999, p. A15.
5 Deanna B. Marcum, "We Can't Save Everything," New York Times, 6 July 1998, p. A11.
6 Elizabeth Yakel, "Information literacy for primary sources: creating a new paradigm for archival researcher education," OCLC Systems & Services: International Digital Library Perspectives 20 (2004): 61.
7 Ronald Schuchard, "Excavating the Imagination: Archival Research and the Digital Revolution," Libraries & Culture 37 (Winter 2003): 61.
8 Schuchard, 61–62.
9 Marian J. Matyn, "Getting Undergraduates to Seek Primary Sources in Archives," The History Teacher 33 (May 2000): 349.
10 "History in the Media," History Today 52 (June 2002): 10.
11 Yakel, "Archives and Manuscripts: Hidden Collections in Archives and Libraries," 96; Yakel, "Information literacy for primary sources: creating a new paradigm for archival researcher education," 61–62.
12 Marcus C. Robyns, "The Archivist as Educator: Integrating Critical Thinking Skills into Historical Research Methods Instruction," The American Archivist 64 (Fall/Winter 2001): 377.
13 Undergraduate Bulletin 2004–2006, Baruch College. Baruch College, CUNY: Baruch College Office of Communications and Marketing, 2004, p. 146.
14 Stanton Biddle, Janey Chao, Gerry Jiao, Sandra Roff, faculty and staff of the Newman Library, The Library Strategic Plan 2006–2011. The William and Anita Newman Library Bernard M. Baruch College, The City University of New York. 9 March 2006, pp. 6–7.
15 Jill D. Jenson, "It's the Information Age, So Where's the Information?," College Teaching 52 (Summer 2004): 108.
16 John W. East, "Information Literacy for the Humanities Researcher: A Syllabus Based on Information Habits Research," Journal of Academic Librarianship, 31 (March 2005): 135.
17 Edward Tenner, "A Continuing Education in the Value of Archives," Chronicle of Higher Education 49 (15 August 2003): B13.
18 Robyns, 365.
19 Tenner, B14.
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