This article discusses the pedagogical opportunities for collaboration between university libraries and teaching faculty, something particularly relevant in the current university climate, when many units are being asked to “do more with less” and to justify the value of humanistic inquiry. The authors propose that digital curation projects are especially conducive to pedagogical experimentation in English departments, as they need not require huge investments of institutional resources. Moreover, the article provides a literature review and detailed case study for how to involve students in curating digital exhibits using library special collections, to explore the role of literary and popular texts in social change. Such projects offer student opportunities to understand cultural history in more complex ways, to develop the ability to collaborate effectively, to “do” interpretation rather than just learn about it, to think through information architecture, and to communicate to broader audiences.
Digital Curation: Pedagogy in the Archives
Jolie A. Sheffer is associate professor of English and American culture studies at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. She also serves as director of the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society, an interdisciplinary public humanities center. She teaches courses in American literature and popular culture since the Civil War, multiethnic American literature, American studies, and literary theory and cultural studies. She is the author of The Romance of Race: Incest, Miscegenation, and Multiculturalism in the United States, 1880 – 1930 (2013). She is currently at work on a book about Karen Tei Yamashita.
Stefanie Dennis Hunker is professor and the digital resources librarian in the Browne Popular Culture Library (BPCL). She holds a master’s degree in library science from the State University of New York at Buffalo and a bachelor of music degree in music history from the Ohio State University. She has been employed at Bowling Green State University since 1995. Her responsibilities include the maintenance and development of the BPCL website, cataloging items in various material formats, organization and processing special collections and their respective finding aids, and instruction with the School of Cultural and Critical Studies. Additionally, she is a former US Marine and a Gulf War veteran.
Jolie A. Sheffer, Stefanie Dennis Hunker; Digital Curation: Pedagogy in the Archives. Pedagogy 1 January 2019; 19 (1): 79–105. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-7173771
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