Primary source research and the undergraduate: A transforming landscape

Journal of Archival Organization

Volumn 6, Issue 1-2, 2008, Pages 47-70

  Malkmus, Doris J ^a  

^a PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Archives education; Digitized sources; History teaching; Primary sources; Teaching methodologies primary sources; Undergraduate education

Indexed keywords

EID: 67650361086     PISSN: 15332748     EISSN: 15332756     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/15332740802235125     Document Type: Review

References (78)

1. Mary Sheldon Barnes, one of the few women working in history in her generation, popularized teaching history through sources. She authored several widely available history textbooks that followed a Pestalozzian-like, activity-based, experiential theory of learning. The American Historical Association Committee of Ten Report of 1892-1893 recommended teaching with primary sources, although in 1898 the influential Committee of Seven retracted that recommendation, arguing that sources were useful primarily as adjuncts to enliven a survey or textbook. Osborne reported that teachers found Barnes's methods difficult, and lack of training prompted them to continue to teach from textbooks (Ken Osborne, "'Victims of the Source-book Fever"': Teaching History through Primary Sources, 1885-1919 [unpublishedmanuscript], 20-30).
2. Osborne also noted that educational psychologists increased the sense of alienation in the 1960s by asserting that students' cognitive ability for formal reasoning was not sufficient for doing historical thinking until 16.5 to 18.2 years of age (Ken Osborne, "Archives in the Classroom," Archivaria 23 (Winter 1986-1987): 20).
3. Robert E. Keohane, "The Use of Primary Sources in the Teaching of Local and High School," Mississippi Valley Historical Review 33, no. 3 (December 1946): 455-460; see 455 and 456.
4. In 1980, the Educational Excellence Network appointed what became the Bradley Commission to make American, Western, and world history central to the secondary curriculum. The 1988 Bradley Report favored history for national and humanistic identity (Paul Gagnon and The Bradley Commission on History in Schools, Historical Literacy: The Case for History in American Education [New York: Macmillan Publishing Company and London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1989], 8-10).
5. The History Teaching Alliance history is described at length in the Organization of American Historian online Magazine of History at http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/anniversary/harlan.html (accessed September 3, 2007.)
6. Peter N. Steams, Meaning Over Memory: Recasting the Teaching of Culture and History (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1993).
7. National History Day became a national organization in 1980. See its history at the National History DayWeb site at http://www.nhd.org/ NHDHistory.htm for details.
8. Sean Wilentz, review of History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching of the Past, by Gary B. Nash, Charlotte Crabtree, and Ross E. Dunn, New York Times, November 30, 1997, http://www.nytimes.com/ (accessed August 7, 2007).
9. Eric Rothschild, "The Impact of the Document-based Question on the Teaching of United States History," History Teacher 33, no. 4 (2000): 495-500.
10. Julia Hendry explains inquiry-based teaching methods in "Primary Sources in K-12 Education: Opportunities for Archives," American Archivist 70 (Spring/Summer 2007): 114-129, esp. 117. Constructivism, a widely implemented learning theory, was articulated by Lev Semenovitch Vygotsky. It holds that people construct their own understandings through experience and reflection.
11. Samuel Wineberg, Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001), quote on page 77.
12. Samuel Wineburg, "Historical Problem Solving: A Study of the Cognitive Processes Used in the Evaluation of Documentary and Pictorial Evidence," Journal of Educational Psychology 83, no. 1 (1991): 73-87
13. Samuel Wineburg, "On the Reading of Historical Texts: Notes on the Breach between School and Academy, American Educational Research Journal 28, no. 3 (Fall 1991): 495-519
14. Peter N. Stearns, Peter Seixas, and Samuel Wineburg, Knowing, Teaching & Learning History: National and International Perspectives," (New York: New York University Press, 2000)
15. Frederick D. Drake and Sarah Drake Brown, "A Systematic Approach to Improve Students' Historical Thinking," The History Teacher 36 (August 2003): 465-489
16. Bill Tally and Lauren B. Goldenberg, "Fostering Historical Thinking with Digitized Primary Sources," Journal of Research on Technology in Education 38, no. 1 (Fall 2005): 1-21.
17. Gaea Leinhardt, Isabel L. Beck, Catherine Stainton, eds., Teaching and Learning in History (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 1994)
18. Kathleen McCarthy Young and Gaea Leinhardt, "Writing from Primary Documents: A Way of Knowing in History," Written Communication 15 (January 1998): 25-68.
19. For example, see the discussion of classroom methods in Susan Leighow Meo, " 'In Their Own Eyes': Using Journals with Primary Sources with College Students," The History Teacher 33, no. 3 (May 2000): 335-341.
20. David Pace, "The Amateur in the Operating Room: History and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning," American Historical Review (October 2004): 1171-1192, quote p. 1179.
21. Ibid.
22. Interesting articles in the Journal of American History include the following: Kriste Lindemeyer, "Using Online Resources to Re-center the U.S. History Survey: Women's History as a Case Study," Journal of American History 89, no. 4 (March 2003): 1483-1489
23. Michael Coventry, Peter Felten, David Jaffee, Cecilia O'Leary, and TraceyWeis, with Susannah McGowan, "Ways of Seeing: Evidence and Learning in the History Classroom," Journal of American History 92, no. 4 (March 2006): 1371-1402. Other organizations that concern teaching history include The National Center for History in Schools at UCLA, The National Council for History Education, The History Teaching Alliance, The National Coalition for History, and the National History Education Clearinghouse at GeorgeWashington University Center for History and New Media (CHNM), which also houses the Visible Knowledge Project (VKP) to address issues within the digital environment.
24. Kathleen Roe, Teaching with Historical Records (Albany: University of the State of New York, 1981)
25. Kathleen Roe, Teaching with Documents: Using Primary Sources From the National Archives (Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 1989)
26. Kathleen Roe, "Public Programs," in Managing Archives and Archival Institutions, ed. James Gregory Bradsher (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 218-227, see 221-222
27. Ann Gordon, Using the Nation's Documentary Heritage, The Report of the HistoricalDocuments Study (Washington, DC: [distributed by] National Historical Publications and Records Commission, 1992).
28. Library of Congress, "About," American Memory Project, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/about/index.html (accessed February 5, 2008).
29. Originally named the "Colorado Digitization Project," the success of the program soon expanded it beyond the state borders and it is now called the BCP's Collaborative Digitization Program. BCP's Collaborative Digitization Program, Teacher Toolbox, http://www.cdpheritage.org/educator/ (accessed February 5, 2008).
30. Osborne, "Archives in the Classroom," quote p. 28.
31. Articles include: Katharine T. Corbett, "From File Folder to the Classroom: Recent Primary Source Curriculum Projects," American Archivist 54 (Spring 1991): 296-300
32. Sharon Anne Cook, "Connecting Archives and the Classroom," Archivaria 44 (Fall 1997): 102-117
33. Marian Matyn, "Getting Undergraduates to Seek Primary Sources in Archives," History Teacher 33, no. 3 (May 2000): 349-355
34. Anne J. Gilliland-Swetland, "An Exploration of K-12 User Needs for Digital Primary Source Materials," 142, 145 (Gilliland- Swetland conjectured the reason might be because academic archivists, who authored most published studies, did not consider K-12 teachers among their clients.)
35. Anne J. Gilliland-Swetland, Yasmin B. Kafai, and William E. Landis, "Integrating Primary Sources into the Elementary School Classroom: A Case Study of Teachers' Perspectives," Archivaria 49 (Fall 1999): 89-116
36. Julia Hendry, "Primary Sources in K-12 Education," 124-126.
37. Corbett, "From File Folder to the Classroom," 296-300.
38. Cook, "Connecting Archives and the Classroom," 106.
39. Gilliland-Swetland, Kafai, and Landis, "Integrating Primary Sources." "The Primary Source Institute was sponsored by UCLA's University Research Library's Department of Special Collections and UCLA's laboratory elementary school. Gilliland- Swetland relied on Paul Conway"s proposed fivemethodologies for gathering information about user satisfaction. His first four stages included ongoing study of registration, surveys of user satisfaction during reference interviews, surveys of random samples about satisfaction, other materials, and the impact of use. His fifth stage included interviewing groups of representatives from user, or potential user, communities, in effect opening the door to an interactive relationship with users.
40. Paul Conway, "Facts and Frameworks: An Approach to Studying the Users of Archives," American Archivist 49 (Fall 1986): 393-407, see 397.
41. Hendry, "Primary Sources in K-12 Education," 124-126.
42. Mary Jo Pugh, "The Illusion of Omniscience: Subject Access and the Reference Archivist," American Archivist 45, no. 1 (Winter 1982): 33-44.
43. Ibid.
44. Freeman, now Freeman Finch, was then Director of Academic, Professional, and Public Programs in the Education Division of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Elsie T. Freeman, "In the Eye of the Beholder: Archives Administration from the User's Point ofView," American Archivist 47 (Spring 1984): 111-123
45. Gordon, Using the Nation's Documentary Heritage. Gordon reported on a survey sent to associations of genealogists, local historians, public historians, American historians, and legal historians. Gilliland-Swetland noted that the entire 1986 issue was devoted to users. Gilliland-Swetland, "An Exploration of K-12," 142
46. William Maher, "The Uses of User Studies," Midwestern Archivist 11 (1986): 15-26
47. Paul Conway, "Facts and Frameworks," see 397
48. Paul Conway, "Partners in Research: Improving Access to the Nation's Archives (Pittsburgh, PA: Archives & Museum Informatics, 1994), 66-67. Conway asked users how they found out that the information they sought was at the National Archives. More than half of new users found out about sources through word of mouth, suggesting that social networks connected researchers to the sources.
49. Lawrence Dowler, "The Role of Use in Defining Archival Practice and Principles: A Research Agenda for the Availability of and Use of Records," American Archivist 51 (Winter Spring 1988): 72-86, quotes 80-81.
50. Dennis Meissner, "First Things First: Reengineering Finding Aids for Implementation of EAD," American Archivist 60 (Fall 1997): 372-387, quotes p. 374. In 1993, archivists under Daniel Pitti began to develop a standard to encode findings aids to enable advanced searching and online presentation. Encoded Archival Description (EAD) version 1.0was released in 1998.Apreponderance of archival attention focused on developing the technical means to search and present finding aids online.
51. Anne Gilliland-Swetland, "Popularizing the Finding Aid: Exploiting EAD to Enhance Online Discovery and Retrieval in Archival Information Systems by Diverse User Groups," in Encoded Archival Description on the Internet, ed. Daniel V. Pitti and Wendy M. Duff (Binghamton, NY: The Haworth Press, 2001), 199-225
52. Andrea Rosenbusch, "Are Our Users Being Served? A Report on Online Archival Databases," Archives and Manuscripts 29 (May 2001): 44-61, quote on p. 44.
53. Wendy M. Duff and Kent M. Haworth, "Advancing Archival Description: A Model for Rationalizing North American Descriptive Standards," Archives and Manuscripts 25 (November 1997): 194-217
54. Claire Gabriel, "Subject Access to Archives and Manuscript Collections: An Historical Overview," Journal of Archival Organization 1, no. 4 (2002): 53-63
55. Anne Gilliland-Swetland, "Evaluation Design for Large-Scale, Collaborative Online Archives: Interim Report of the Online Archive of California Evaluation Project," Archives and Museum Informatics 12, no. 3-4 (September, 1998): 177-203.
56. Meissner, "First Things First," 374.
57. Elizabeth Yakel, "Listening to Users," Archival Issues 26, no. 2 (2002): 111-127
58. Elizabeth Yakel, "Are Finding Aids Boundary Spanners or Barriers for Users?" Journal of Archival Organization 2, no. 1/2 (2004): 63-77
59. Wendy Duff and Penka Stoyanova, "Transforming the Crazy Quilt," Archivaria 45 (Spring 1998): 44-67
60. Meissner, "First Things First," 374.
61. Lisa Coats' article provides a valuable bibliography of user studies in archival literature. Lisa Coats, "Users of EAD Finding Aids: Who Are They and Are They Satisfied?" Journal of Archival Organization 2, no. 3 (2004): 25-39
62. Duff and Stoyanova, "Transforming the Crazy Quilt"
63. Yakel, "Listening to Users," 111-127.
64. Participants each completed a survey of demographic information, including their level of experience in archives. They then performed nine preset tasks (thirtyfive observed onsite, fifty-four offsite and unobserved) and onsite participants were interviewed. The two tasks consisted of finding a collection and finding a folder in a collection located at four different institutions, each with different finding aid formats. Christopher J. Prom, "User Interactions with Electronic Finding Aids in a Controlled Setting," American Archivist 67 (Fall/Winter 2004): 234-268.
65. Wendy Scheir, "First Entry: Report on a Qualitative Exploratory Study of Novice User Experience with Online Finding Aids," Journal of Archival Organization 3, no. 4 (2005): 49-85.
66. Elizabeth Yakel and Deborah A. Torres, "AI: Archival Intelligence and User Expertise," American Archivist 66 (Spring/Summer 2003): 51-78.
67. Ibid.
68. Duff and Stoyanova, "Transforming the Crazy Quilt," 44-67
69. Yakel and Torres, "AI," 52-53
70. Wineburg, "On the Reading of Historical Texts," 495-519.
71. Yakel and Torres, "AI," 71
72. Wendy Duff and Catherine A. Johnson, "Accidentally Found on Purpose: Information-seeking Behavior of Historians in Archives," Library Quarterly 72, no. 4: 472-96.
73. In 2003, Tibbo found that historians as a group primarily preferred to search from repository Web sites and e-mail archivists for assistance when searching for a topic instead of a name. Helen Tibbo, "'Primarily History': American Historians Search for Primary Materials," American Archivist 66 (Spring/Summer 2003): 9-50.
74. Gilliland-Swetland, Kafai, and Landis, "Integrating Primary Sources," 89-116.
75. Osborne also suggested that the structure and standards for instructional sessions should be developed by organizational linkages between teachers and archivists. Osborne, "Archives in the Classroom," 27-28
76. Hendry, "Primary Sources in K-12 Education," 114-129.
77. Joint Committee on Historians and Archivists of the American Historical Association, Organization of American Historians, and Society of American Archivists, "Historians and Archivists: Educating the Next Generation,1996," http://www.oah.org/pubs/archivists/ historiansandarchivists.pdf (accessed July 29, 2007). The core competencies for historical research do not necessarily apply to other researcher groups, such as genealogists.
78. The online Visible Knowledge Project is a collaborative project of the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS) at Georgetown University, with American Studies Association and the American Studies Crossroads Project, American Social History Project (CUNY Graduate Center), Center for History and New Media (George Mason University), Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and the TLT Group with the American Association for Higher Education. It focuses on student learning through improving the quality of college and university teaching in technology-enhanced environments. Visible Knowledge Project, http://crossroads.georgetown.edu/vkp/. The National Council for History Education serves as a clearing house for matters related to teaching history, primarily at the secondary level. NCED home is at theWoodrowWilson National Fellowship Foundation.