Providing Primary Resources to Strengthen Instruction

This week, I attended the New Hampshire State Library Media Association Conference. I was particularly interested in a conference session that discussed how to support teachers by pairing informational books with fiction. I have learned in the past three-years as an archivist in the world of school librarianship that there is often a place here for archivists' expertise. This conference was not an exception.

Beth Fuller from Perma-Bound was passionate and knowledgeable, and it was great fun to listen to her speak about books. She noted that pairing fictional and informational titles is something she loves to do, and she made recommendations for how we can do this better in our libraries. During Beth's talk, she mentioned that librarians may want to coax teachers to check out Google images for primary sources. This would provide more more inspiration and context for their students; Say, pair a lesson about the history of labor with books such as "Fresh and Blood So Cheap," "Ashes of Roses" and "Brave Girl." Lights went off in my brain.

Workers pose for photo
(personal collection of Melissa A. Mannon)

We can do better than Google images.

At the end of the presentation, I spoke up about dp.la and europeana. I mentioned how archives and libraries are working to pull information about their primary source materials together on these sites for easier access. Ears perked up and another audience member asked me to spell out the web sites.

I urge archivists to better promote our resources. Let's bring kids to the sources of information. Let's show that original materials reside in our institutions and not just on the Internet. Let's show how materials are clustered in collections and cared for by professionals and do not just appear online. Let's show students the connections between an event, the creation of material, the true stories surrounding materials, the people who made the original materials, and how our cultural heritage institutions support knowledge about all of these things. When good authors write they use archival materials. They visit our institutions. They correspond with archivists and librarians. Let's show this to young people as part of their early schooling. Let's reach out to local schools, attend librarian conferences, and explore how our professions support each other.

A lesson about the history of labor, for example, can bring in so much. We can learn about the people and times. We can learn about buildings and place. Beth discussed how we can transport kids back to an event by giving them a visual connection. Let's also strengthen the timeline in students' heads by showing the materials that were created as a result of human activity and by helping kids understand the provenance of items. Primary sources are history. Without them, we would not know about our past.

Earlier this month, I tweeted "Is history what we remember or what happened?" Let us ask our students how we "remember" history. Show teachers and librarians the depth of your collections by giving them the information they need to access it in forums where they are listening.