Reaching Out to Undergrads at UNCG
Erin Lawrimore, University of North Carolina-Greensboro, SAA RAO Steering Committee Member
Current SAA President Kathleen Roe kicked off her "Year
of Living Dangerously with Archives" initiative at the 2014 annual meeting
in Washington, D.C., by strongly encouraging all archivists to take bold
actions in promoting the significance of archives and archivists to society.
She stated that "if we are going to get beyond the point where archives
and archival records are used in modest amounts, for a modest number of
purposes by a modest range of users, then we also have to raise awareness of
their value and importance."[1]
At the University of North Carolina at Greensboro's Special
Collections and University Archives, we've taken Kathleen's challenge to heart.
While we do have projects that are aimed at increasing awareness of our
resources to University faculty, staff, and administrators, we're purposefully trying
to increase awareness among our student body population (particularly
undergraduates). While we certainly aren't the first archives to do any of
these outreach activities, we are in all likelihood the first (and probably
only) who will reach our student
population. Some examples of our activities aimed at raising awareness among
the undergraduate population include:
·
Pop Up
Archives. Like popular "pop
up" restaurants, our "pop up" archives exhibits are well focused
in terms of content and strategically planned in terms of location. We want to
be where the foot traffic is. The university center, the student recreation
center, and even the sidewalk outside of the library building are great locations
for engaging students. Each exhibit is tailored for the location (history of
athletics at the student recreation center), is up for only 90 minutes or so
(timed to coincide with lunch or a change in classes to increase foot traffic),
and is small enough to fit on a card table (making planning and transportation
simpler).
·
Campus
Tours for First-Year Classes. While many first-year students might not make
use of the archives as a research resource, many are quite interested in
learning about the history of the place that will betheir home for the next
four years. To engage these students, we work with instructors teaching the
University's Foundations for Learning (FFL) courses, which are required of all
incoming students, to schedulea historic walking tour of campus during one of
their class sessions. During the tour, we provide the standard facts about the
University's history - but the piece that most students love most is that we
also incorporate our three campus ghost stories into the general tour. In Fall
2014, we conducted tours for 18 FFL courses (approximately 250 students).
In addition to these types of targeted activities, we're
taking an approach of "archives everywhere." We want our records and
knowledge of our department's work to be spread across campus. We are using
exhibit cases and bulletin boards in the library as well as in the university
center to display reproductions of selections from our holdings. Our social
media accounts are followed and retweeted/reblogged by the main University accounts
as well as other accounts that reach large numbers of students (Admissions,
Student Government Association, student newspaper, etc.). Our digital signage in
the library building includes frequent references to University Archives and
our current exhibits. And our promotional postcards, which include a historic
photograph as well as links to our social media and digital collections, are
available at all of the library's service points.
These approaches don't require a significant change to the work we've done in the past, but they do extend our reach far beyond the small percentage of students who physically come into the archives for a class. While we may have some students who graduate and remember only the "awesome ghost story the lady from the library told me," we've made an impression and, for many more, hopefully sown a seed of awareness for archives and the work of archivists.
[1]
Kathleen Roe, "The Year of Living Dangerously with Archives" (speech,
Washington, D.C., August 16, 2014), Society of American Archivists Annual
Meeting, http://www2.archivists.org/history/leaders/kathleen-roe/incoming-presidential-remarks-the-year-of-living-dangerously-for-archives.
For more information on the "Year of Living Dangerously with
Archives" initiative, see http://www2.archivists.org/living-dangerously.
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