Rare Books and Special Collections Instructional Support Guide

This 56-minute webinar from the Bibliographical Society of America provides an introduction to the Archaeology of Reading database intended for anyone – experts and non-experts – wishing to learn how it can be customized for on-line teaching and directed research at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Using resources on the Archaeology of Reading site, these exercises (with related reading assignments) examine collectors and readers and the ways marginalia interacts with a printed text.

These lesson plans draw on archival materials to engage participants in activities geared towards preventing history repeating itself.

BibSite is an open access digital repository for discovering and sharing bibliographical research and pedagogical materials. The platform is designed for scholars, instructors, professionals, and students of bibliography, in the broadest sense of the term, to easily find materials that can further their own research, teaching, and studies.

A selection of videos (from earlyprintedbooks.com) that help illustrate various processes of book-making activities.

This exercise (from earlyprintedbooks.com) encourages students to think about what sort of context might have shaped the reception of a book when it was published.

Thousands of old library books bear fascinating traces of the past. Readers wrote in their books, and left pictures, letters, flowers, locks of hair, and other things between their pages. We need your help identifying them in the stacks of academic libraries.

Created by teachers for teachers, these ready-to-use materials provide easy ways to incorporate primary sources into instruction. Resources include primary source sets, lesson plans, and more.

You can have a hand in history by using Co-Lab: a brand-new tool to transcribe, tag, translate and describe digitized images in Library and Archives Canada’s collection.

This video from the Centre for the History of the Book, University of Edinburgh takes a look at the decisions and processes of digitizing textual objects.

A scratchpad for referencing known uses of CC licensing and material in the GLAM sector: Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums. Please add to the list and turn compelling uses into Case Studies.

Offers high-resolution downloadable images from Shakespeare’s First Folio and a virtual printing house that walks users through the collation process. Users experience challenges faced by early modern printers and practice folding/unfolding printed sheets.

Introduces the working knowledge of early modern printers through interactive exercises and downloadable content. In a virtual printing house, users can make their own quarto edition of Hamlet!

This project from the New York Public Library allows participants to transcribe 19th and early 20th century real estate records from the Emigrant Savings Bank.

These guidelines articulate the range of knowledge, skills, and abilities required to effectively use primary sources. While the primary audience for this document is librarians, archivists, teaching faculty, and others working with college and university students, the guidelines have been written to be sufficiently flexible for use in K-12 and in general public settings as well. The guidelines articulate crucial skills for navigating the complexity of primary sources and codify best practices for utilizing these materials.

The History of the Book is a networked resource focused on the production and reception of materials related to the history of the book and literacy technologies, broadly conceived. This ongoing project is being developed by Professor Johanna Drucker, working with staff and students based at UCLA to provide an online environment for research and learning.

From the Medieval England and France, 700–1200 project, this article includes information and videos on every step of the manuscript production process from crafting writing tools to binding.

6-minute video from the Getty Museum about the manuscript making process.

This curated selection explores medieval manuscripts that were digitised as part of The Polonsky Foundation England and France Project: Manuscripts from the British Library and the Bibliothèque nationale de France, 700–1200. Discover stunning highlights of illuminated manuscripts set in their cultural and historical context and explored in a range of articles.

Join 22,729 "volunpeers" to add more to the total 582,445 pages of field notes, diaries, ledgers, logbooks, currency proof sheets, photo albums, manuscripts, biodiversity specimens labels that have been collaboratively transcribed and reviewed since June 2013.

Resources and exercises on teaching with primary sources, from the Brooklyn Historical Society.

This research guide from the Rubenstein Library at Duke University suggests creative ways to offer students embodied, physical experiences with the books, artifacts, papers, and objects in their own spaces while introducing them to the possibilities and limitations of the archives.

Created by librarians and archivists and intended for anyone teaching with primary sources, the TPS Collective invites educators to exchange ideas, cultivate relationships, reflect on pedagogy, learn from other practitioners, contribute lessons and resources, and engage with your community.

Transcribe is the Nova Scotia Archives’ collaborative online workspace where the public can participate in enhancing access to our collections documenting over 300 years of Nova Scotia history, people, and culture. This is a great opportunity for participants to deeply experience our collections and transcribe hand-written historical materials.

Transcribe gives you the opportunity to make the Royal BC Museum’s extensive collections more accessible, all from the comfort of your home! The transcriptions you create will become searchable data, facilitating learning and research around the world.

Allows members of the public to explore some of the beautiful and fascinating early-modern books within East Anglia’s libraries in the comfort of their own home, as well as providing fun, family-friendly creative activities inspired by the books

This exercise (from earlyprintedbooks.com) encourages students to look at digital images of books as images, rather than as transparent representations of a book.

A how-to lesson on working with Early English Books Online and Eighteenth-Century Collections Online, focusing both on the basics of searching and navigating interfaces and on thinking about remediation on how EEBO and ECCO represent material texts.

ArcGIS StoryMaps allows users to bring together maps, photos, videos, and text to create a digital narrative that informs and inspires.

Upload videos, images and PDFs. Instructors can then organize media into playlists or assign them to specific student groups.Students can flag important points in a video or draw around key features in an image to start a conversation. CLAS creates a collaborative space by allowing students to share their annotations, creating opportunities for peer review and instructor feedback.

Open-source, web based, multi-window image viewing platform with the ability to zoom, display, compare and annotate images from around the world.

Omeka provides open-source web publishing platforms for sharing digital collections and creating media-rich online exhibits. Omeka.net offers a free trial trial plan that includes a single site, with limited themes and plugins. *Please note: Because Omeka.net is hosted on US servers, use of Omeka.net must be voluntary. Students must be reasonably informed that their personally identifiable information may be exposed on US servers. They must also be given an opportunity to use a non-identifying alias and given the choice to use an alternative tool to Omeka.net that is equally relevant to their coursework.*

Make beautiful boards, documents, and webpages that are easy to read and fun to contribute to. Free.

PubPub is an open-source, hosted, free-to-use content management system designed to help knowledge communities of all types collaboratively create and share knowledge online.

Scalar is a free, open source authoring and publishing platform that’s designed to make it easy for authors to write long-form, born-digital scholarship online. Scalar enables users to assemble media from multiple sources and juxtapose them with their own writing in a variety of ways, with minimal technical expertise required.

Scribe is a highly configurable, open source framework for setting up community transcription projects around handwritten or OCR-resistant texts.

StoryMapJS is a free tool to help you tell stories on the web that highlight the locations of a series of events. *Please note: A Google account is required. Because StoryMapsJS is hosted on US servers, use of StoryMaps JS must be voluntary. Students must be reasonably informed that their personally identifiable information may be exposed on US servers. They must also be given an opportunity to use a non-identifying alias and given the choice to use an alternative tool to StoryMaps JS that is equally relevant to their coursework.*

TimelineJS is an open-source tool that enables anyone to build visually rich, interactive timelines. *Please note: A Google account is required. Because Timeline JS is hosted on US servers, use of Timeline JS must be voluntary. Students must be reasonably informed that their personally identifiable information may be exposed on US servers. They must also be given an opportunity to use a non-identifying alias and given the choice to use an alternative tool to Timeline JS that is equally relevant to their coursework.*