Instructor: Michaela Ullmann
Location: Los Angeles / UCLA
Mode: In-person
Dates: August 4–8, 2025
Tuition: $1200.00

Description

Colleges, universities, public schools, community archives, and special libraries all over the U.S. have successfully introduced immersive, integrative, collaborative, and active-learning elements into primary source literacy instruction over the past decade. In partnership with teaching faculty, librarians and archivists now play an active role in designing pedagogy featuring in-class activities that teach students archival literacy, information literacy skills, critical thinking skills, and paleography, among other skills for the 21st century student. This course will focus on developing, integrating, teaching, administering and advocating for robust primary source literacy instruction. 

On top of this, Critical Pedagogy and Critical Librarianship (#critlib) has become an integral part of both rare materials theory and praxis. As such, this course will also weave in some of the theories and methods of critical pedagogy. The course will discuss readings that underpin the theories of this movement, and the implementation of the practice of these theories within library environments, classrooms, and community spaces. 

Throughout the course, we will also discuss pedagogy and tools for integrating digital projects as well as asynchronous teaching modules into primary source literacy instruction. 

Using case study projects, participants will gain a sense of how rare book and archives repositories have partnered with faculty in innovative ways. Guest speakers will broaden our conversations, focusing on how librarians can best support their instructional efforts. Class participants will be asked to bring along instructional examples from their home institutions to workshop in a group setting, or if they are not yet in the profession, to imagine a project that would involve faculty collaboration in some substantive way. 

This course is designed to be collaborative in nature and a venue for generating new ideas and to imagine solutions to often-encountered problems in public services and instructional outreach. 

This course is best suited for individuals who just start out with primary source literacy instruction and those who have been teaching classes in Special Collections for a while but who seek a deeper dive into pedagogies that make their instruction more engaging and student-centered, who are interested to learn about new lesson plans, and who want help with managing their instruction workload in a sustainable way. 

Components of the syllabus for the course include: 

• Infrastructure & General Management for building and sustaining a successful instruction program 
• Introduction to Special Collections and Critical Pedagogy 
• Discussion of critical theory and praxis models 
• Establishing meaningful collaboration with librarians, archivists, and teaching faculty 
• Introduction to Curriculum Mapping and syllabus planning 
• Overview of useful tools for instruction and their application 
• Overview & introduction of select digital scholarship tools 
• Best practices and standards (including RBMS and ALA) 
• Establishment & assessment of learning outcomes 
• Field trips 
• Guest Speakers from the field of Primary Source Literacy and Critical Librarianship 
• Panel of instructors who teach courses with embedded primary source literacy 

In order to reduce “lecture” time and to create a more vibrant learning environment, the course will feature frequent breaks, flipped classroom, and workshopping during which participants will work on projects by themselves and/or in groups and return to the classroom for discussions and/or presentations. 

Learning outcomes: 

Participants will 

• Workshop individual projects to implement at their home institutions. 
• Be able to define and implement the basics for a well-functioning instruction program for primary sources literacy; 
• Understand & apply key terms, concepts, models, and theories related to the critical pedagogy, including how critical approaches intersect with professional functions, including outreach and instruction; 
• Understand the key role libraries play in supporting diversity throughout society; 
• Have experienced hands on some of the techniques used to make teaching primary source literacy effective and successful 
• Leave the course with an understanding, the tools, and the confidence to transform their instructional approach while creating less work for themselves; 
• Gain a better understanding of the partnership between teaching faculty and Special Collections librarian or archivist and the roles each plays in it; 
• Gain a basic foundation in digital initiatives that use primary source materials and with selected basic tools they can use to teach primary sources literacy in the digital arena;

Requirements

Offered

2024

Credit

Completion of this course helps to meet requirements for one of the following certificate requirements:

• 1 of 2 elective credit courses for Certificate in Rare Books and Manuscripts, or
• a Pedagogy or Applied course for Certificate in Librarianship, Activism, and Justice
• 1 of 2 elective credit courses for Certificate in Librarianship, Activism, and Justice