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Teaching and learning at King’s College London using Archives and Special Collections

Katie SambrookGeoff Browell

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Special collections at King’s• Around 180,000 items, mainly books but also

MSS and photographs• Housed in the Foyle Special Collections

Library, a self-contained dedicated wing of the main library building

• Items range in date from 1483 to the present day

• Span humanities, social sciences and sciences, with notable strengths in world history, languages / literatures and medicine

• Historical library of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) our largest collection

• Significant rise in teaching involvement in past five years

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Why use special collection in teaching? • Raises institutional awareness of collections

and reinforces their value as scholarly resources

• Introduces undergraduates and taught PGs to primary sources

• Often an inspiring experience for students• Builds links with academic colleagues through

partnership working • Fosters innovative teaching methods /

academic content• Develops teaching, research and

communication skills of Special Collections staff

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Some things to consider • Risk of damage to items, through

inappropriate handling• Space – do you have a suitable seminar room

or will you need to close the Reading Room?• Significant time commitment to deliver

effective teaching in a subject area in which you may not be a specialist

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What has worked for us?• Building the use of special collections into

academic curriculum / assessed coursework• Introductory sessions for taught PGs in some

disciplines to sow ideas / whet appetites for dissertation topics

• Set upper limit on class size, ensure adequate supervision and provide supports for large or fragile items

• Present jointly with academic colleagues• Include house rules, catalogue searching tips,

useful resources online• Include a practical exercise• Offer follow-up consultations

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What have we found?• The potency of the physical object• Common student questions: How are books made?

What is the paper made of? How is a binding made? How many copies would have been printed in an edition? How is a woodcut made? What is an engraving?

• Increased emphasis on the history of the book / descriptive bibliography / book as object

• Rapid increase in take-up of our teaching offer, fuelled by:– Growth of taught PG courses– Growth of interdisciplinary humanities degrees– Growth of 3rd year dissertations

• Special collections seminars now feeding directly into teaching content in some disciplines

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Archives at King’s

• 5 million items• Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives &

institutional, research and personal paper collections• Military, medical, psychiatric focus• Integrated records management and digital provision• Growing collections• Strand & Drury Lane locations• Outreach focus

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Outreach & teaching• Online catalogues since 1996• Full outreach programme requiring the development of new IT:

for example DAM and new cataloguing software with presentation at the forefront – Celum and Archios

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Focus on graduate & ECR training

• Archival skills – link with Moodle VLE• London Cultural Connections - AHRC• Language & Access - AHRC

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Key findings• Focus on the value and experience of working with original

documents• Broad approach to learning – e.g. U3A, Nightingale & nurses,

WW1 – mixing research with archives – leveraging expertise• Link with modules – for example Summer School• Need for advocacy within an organisation• Focus on fundraising• Commitment to collaboration & building communities (AIM25)

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Thank you

• Geoff Browell: geoffrey.browell@kcl.ac.uk• Catalogues: www.kingscollections.org/catalogues• Exhibitions: www.kingscollections.org/exhibitions• AIM25: www.aim25.ac.uk