Using the university archives to

demonstrate real research

Carol A. Senf
*
The Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
This essay describes an assignment that I used in an undergraduate Victorian studies course and
encourages other instructors to modify it to meet their needs and the needs of their students.
Working with the staff of the Archives and Special Collections Department of the institution where
I teach, I developed an assignment that would allow students to work in the library to perform
genuine primary research on Victorian topics. The result was a written report (5001,250 words)
and an oral presentation to the class. Working with handwritten records, nineteenth-century books
and newspapers, students gained a deeper appreciation for the research process. In addition to
examining a particular assignment, the essay also explores the larger problem of teaching
undergraduate students about research.
Many college teachers are frustrated with the problem of incorporating research
assignments into their courses and equally disheartened by the inclination of some
students to compile material from various sources without thinking why that
material is relevant or useful to their topics. The problem is compounded because
many classes include students with relatively little knowledge of the specific
academic discipline covered in a particular course.
My solution is the following archival research assignment which, although
specific to a course that I regularly teach and to the institution in which I teach,
can be modified to meet needs elsewhere. Indeed, a small but growing bibliography
of articles reveals that other teachers also use readily available materials to
introduce their students to the pleasures of primary research (Kinney, 1970,
pp. 276278; Stebelman, 1987, pp. 2334; Fablo, 2000, pp. 3335; Wells, 2002,
pp. 5564) and recognise that writing a research paper is the result of a process.
1
Thus, while this article focuses on my experiences, my enthusiasm is designed
not to be self-congratulatory but to encourage other teachers to construct similar
assignments that will pique their students interest in research. Finally, I
conclude by looking at the larger problem of teaching undergraduate students
about research.
*School of Literature, Communication, and Culture, The Georgia Institute of Technology,
Atlanta, GA 30332-0165, USA. Email: carol.senf@lcc.gatech.edu
Changing English
Vol. 12, No. 2, August 2005, pp. 297307
ISSN 1358-684X (print)/ISSN 1469-3585 (online)/05/020297-11
# 2005 The editors of Changing English
DOI: 10.1080/13586840500164599
Like most teachers, I seek to construct assignments that encourage students to
think about what they are learning and to apply their research to projects in which
they are genuinely interested. In addition, I want to give them the opportunity for
genuine research, the thrill of going into uncharted waters
2
and the experience of
exploring primary documents rather than merely reading research that has already
been digested by professional scholars, writers and historians. Archival research
immerses students in the period they are studying (here, the Victorian period) so
they can gain a clearer sense of how life differed from today.
Moreover, because plagiarism is easier today than ever, I seek ways to make
it difficult for students to plagiarise. In the past, I sometimes based writing
assignments on relatively minor works (short stories by Gaskell or Hardy rather than
Hard Times, Mary Barton or Jude the Obscure, all of which I have used in past years)
or I attempted to create unique assignments rather than allow students to write one
more analysis of Dickenss response to industrialism in Hard Times or Gaskells
analysis of Chartism. All this activity seemed negative and distrusting and punished
genuinely thoughtful students who would never have considered copying a paper
from another student or an online source.
I am fortunate to work in an institution where the university archives are open to
the public, and the staff are eager to help researchers, and have thus been able to
create assignments that provide students with opportunities for considerable success
with archival research. The mission statement for the Archives and Special
Collections Department at the Georgia Institute of Technology reveals its
openness.
3
Indeed, the department reaches out to its constituency through classes,
tours and an online tutorial.
Moreover, because the institution was founded during the Victorian period,
students can easily see the connection between its creation and the rise of both
science and industrialism, and the library has made a special effort to collect
materials for that as well as subsequent periods. This is clearly documented on the
website, which draws attention to the following materials in the collection: papers of
faculty, staff and alumni related to the schools growth and development, papers
that provide an historical account of the daily administration of the school, a variety
of materials ranging from architectural drawings to black & white photographs,
vertical files of Personalities, sports, and campus organizations, rare books on
mathematics, the history of science and technology, the history of textiles, and
science fiction and memorabilia including cheerleading uniforms and football
helmets (https://www.library.gatech.edu/archives/collections.htm).
As the Victorian studies course that I teach is subtitled Evolution and the
Industrial Age, I am always eager to see exactly what the archives might contain that
will connect with the texts on my syllabus. Because Atlanta has been a transportation
hub since before the Civil War, and Georgia Tech offers degrees in both civil
engineering and textile and fibre engineering, I have found material on early forms of
transportation as well as material on the textile industry that connect to Mary Barton
and The Condition of the Working Class in England as well as to works by Samuel
Smiles. In addition, because I also teach The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
298 C. A. Senf
and know that many students are fans of science fiction, students have been able to
use the collection of early science fiction. Finally, the strong collection of
architectural drawings and the collection on the history of science have been of
interest to the students. Because of the success of the initial assignment, I now
include several essays on education by Thomas Henry Huxley to reinforce the
connection between education and the history of science. As I have discovered the
materials housed in the archives, I have been able to modify the assignment and
direct students to interesting materials.
The archives staff are enthusiastic about helping my students and me.
4
Their
expertise and their knowledge of the holdings have enabled me to develop the
assignment.
5
I ask students to form groups for the project and generally recommend
that the groups include no more than five students. Each group is responsible for
producing both a written report (5001,250 words) and an oral presentation to the
class. The assignment sheet suggests the following topics:
1. Use the General Announcements (similar to the current catalogue) from 1888
to 1901 to report on how life at Georgia Tech was different during the Victorian
period.
2. Use one of the Victorian books (available in the closed stacks in Special
Collections) to demonstrate how the Victorians perceived a subject relevant to
our class.
3. Use the materials in the archives to assess the student body at Georgia Tech
and/or the city of Atlanta during the Victorian period. Pick a subject that
interests you (characteristics of the student body, transportation, campus life,
academic disciplines, social attitudes, safety, dress, behaviour) and demonstrate
how things have changed in the past 100 years.
4. Georgia Tech was founded as part of the larger regional attempt to create The
New South in the post-Civil War period. As a result, Tech students were
expected to be at the forefront of industrial development, especially of the textile
industry. Use material from the archives to explore that connection. Is there any
evidence that the Tech founding fathers had learned anything about early
problems in the British textile industry? You might think of labour issues, safety,
design of factory space, housing of workers, sanitation and transportation.
5. Like so many other institutions, education evolved rapidly during the Victorian
period, with legislation passed to make educational opportunities available
even mandatoryto the population in general. Use the archives to evaluate the
extent to which Georgia Tech was affected by this movement.
6. This course is subtitled Evolution and the Industrial Age. Analyse the holdings
in the archives to determine whether the early days at Georgia Tech (1885
1901) were influenced by either evolution (and the change that occurred in the
sciences as a result of a shifting paradigm) or industrialism.
Although I do not insist that students limit themselves to these topics, I know they
will be able to find information on these topics and on topics logically related to
material we are discussing in class. If any group comes up with an idea that its
Using university archives to demonstrate research 299
members find more interesting, I ask the students to run it by me before doing too
much research, and I circulate among the groups as they work in the archives to
answer questions and help them to focus their research. The result is an assignment
that genuinely features the students desire to learn about a particular topic and
provides an opportunity for a more student-centered classroom, as Bianca Falbo
(2000) notes, arguing that using archival material transforms the traditional
pedagogical model in which the teacher owns and disseminates information the
students lack (p. 33). Finally, the archival project gives the students a stake in
their project and leads to topics for research that an instructor might not have
imagined.
The course for which I constructed this assignment, Evolution and the
Industrial Age, is one of several cultural studies classes that students in the
School of Literature, Communication and Culture take towards their under-
graduate degree. As all students at the university must take two humanities courses
to graduate, other students take the course as well. Thus students from a variety
of academic disciplines other than Literature, Communication and Culture,
including the sciences, various branches of engineering, computer science,
and history, are generally in my class. Because the second semester of the first-
year composition course required of all students includes a research paper, I
expect the students in my class to have some experience of working in the library,
but I have found that the research skills they acquire do not necessarily transfer
effectively.
6
I generally allot two and a half 90-minute class periods to the assignment in
addition to the four class meetings during which students present their findings. On
the first day, I hand out assignment sheets, talk about what students might find in
the archives, advise them to visit the archives page online to see what is available and,
at the staff s recommendation, urge students to complete the tutorial.
7
Students
who are well prepared go to the archives already knowing what to expect and are
able to work more efficiently. On the second day, notebooks and sharpened pencils
at the ready, the class meets in the library and splits into three smaller groups to
review the tutorial, tour the archives and explore various materials with a staff
member of the archives.
On the third day, the class meets once again in the archives, this time to work on
their group projects; the archives staff and I circulate through the reading room to
help students fine tune their ideas, and both groups and individuals are encouraged
to come back to work on the project. As it turns out, most groups return to the
archives to work on their assignments, and many group members spend hours
studying material in the archives reading room.
I have been impressed with students discoveries and occasionally amused by what
grabs their attention. Nonetheless, I have been pleased by the diversity of the
assignments and by the fact that most groups connect what they discover in the
library with the coursework. As a result of their work in the archives, the past comes
alive for students and they come to appreciate the value of examining primary
documents and discussing their findings with classmates.
300 C. A. Senf
One group focused on daily student life at Georgia Tech from 1888 to 1901 and
researched the General Announcements (or university catalogues) from 1888 to
1901 as well as copies of the yearbook and the student newspaper. The presentation
included information on the curriculum, the honour code, regulations regarding
student conduct, clubs and organisations and physical education. The whole class
were surprised by the daily room inspections and mandatory chapel services which
were discontinued in 1896 due to the rapid increase of the student body though
Tech still instructed all parents to send their sons with a bible and two dollars to
apply for a YMCA membership.
8
Another project examined the relationship between Georgia Tech, the railroads
and the city of Atlanta, noting that both the railroads and the technical school were
indicators of an era. Examining Announcements from 1888 to 1915 as well as
several histories of railroad construction, this group concluded with a quotation
from the General Announcements for the first year (188889): The Technological
School is the product of the present century.
Yet another project looked at transportation and its effects on Georgia Tech.
Students were surprised to learn that all 129 students enrolled during the
universitys first year were residents of Georgia. Now, Georgia Tech has the largest
number of international students in the state, with 2,825 enrolled during the 2002
03 academic year.
9
Indeed, the students found it difficult to imagine a school that
served only a limited geographical region. However, the presenting group was
careful to bring in the obvious Victorian fact that during the early days the only way
that students could travel long distances was via rail.
Because the university has a School of Architecture, several projects have involved
the campus architecture and have made several unexpected Victorian connections.
In fact, one student located and read both a Masters thesis written by Warren E.
Drury, entitled The Architectural Development of Georgia Tech, and the General
Announcements 188892 and learned that the first building on campus was built by
the architectural firm of Bruce and Morgan (who also designed buildings for Agnes
Scott College and Clemson University). More important from the point of view of
Victorian history, the students discovered that the firm was strongly influenced by
Ruskins architectural ideas. After reading more about architectural styles, both
groups also realised that many of the key features of the architecture of early
buildings, many of which still exist at the centre of the campus, could be classified as
High Victorian. In their presentations, students compared the styles of the British
Houses of Parliament and Georgia Tech and noted the tower as an important
element in Victorian architecture. Even though I have never taught Ruskins works
in this class, their findings have made me consider assigning some Ruskin and
including more material on architecture.
Several groups have included student athletes, so it is no surprise that these groups
were fascinated by the athletic memorabilia in the archives and by the amateur status
of sports during the early years. Reading through the Announcements and copies of
the student newspaper, students learned that football was unknown at Georgia Tech
until 1892. Furthermore they were surprised to find that tryouts for the first football
Using university archives to demonstrate research 301
team were open to the entire school and that the first team (1893) consisted of
students and one faculty member. One group linked the lack of concern for safety in
early factories and the lack of protective equipment used in the games early days and
also told the class about the connection between organised sports and Muscular
Christianity, a subject we had not covered in class. (However, I did mention
Muscular Christianity to this particular group largely in the hope that they would
find something in the archives about the physical education requirement. The group
did some reading on the subject but were ultimately more interested in the
technological advancements of football than in its ideological underpinnings.)
Other groups have explored the connection between Victorian Poor Laws and
conditions in local factories, the development of Coca Cola as a beverage and a
company, infirmary records on campus, the attempt to breed silk worms in Georgia,
the development of the science curriculum and advertising aimed at college
students.
Although I enjoy listening to the presentations and reading the accompanying
reports, I want to make sure that students also find the assignment worthwhile.
Therefore I actively solicit comments during the formal evaluation process, and I
attempt to elicit feedback from students who come to my office or stop me in the
halls. As I suspected, the better students like doing their own research in the
archives. However, all students report that they enjoy hearing other students
present their research and believe that they learn from the assignment. Even the
anonymous formal evaluations show that students respond favourably to this
assignment.
One student commented that the assignment offered as close to a first-hand
view of the times as possible for the class. Another noted the significance of the
hands-on approach: Even though the class was reading a number of works written
during the Victorian period, theres a difference between reading this material in a
shiny new paperback and a yellowed ledger. Several were pleased to observe the
valuable connection between what was happening in England and in Atlanta. In
short, many students recognised that the assignment brought the period alive to
them in a way that reading secondary texts had not. Finally, about half a dozen
students noted that the assignment had opened their eyes to research possibilities
and also made them proud of their university. The following is probably the most
articulate and thoughtful response I received:
The archives assignment exposed us to a branch of Georgia Tech that we probably
wouldnt have known was there otherwise. It also taught me more about the university
that I attend and its interesting history. The presentations changed my perception of
Georgia Tech and how it shifted from a small school with only three buildings to what it
is today.
Ironically this assignment also grounded my perception of Georgia Tech as well. I
sometimes get lost in my classes and school life, and this project showed how the
school I attend relates to the real outside world. Sometimes schoolwork becomes so
all encompassing that students begin to think of it as completely separate from
the rest of life and from history. The presentations effectively placed Georgia Tech
within an historical context and revealed the connection between school and the real
world.
302 C. A. Senf
One unanticipated result of the assignment can be measured by the fact that
students continue to find the archives a resource. Several students have used archival
resources in other classes that I have taught even though they were not required to
do so.
Although responses are generally positive, several students have offered
suggestions for improvement. At least two students advised me to limit the
groups to three or fewer students, arguing that the larger group size makes it
difficult to work around the table and to schedule meetings. Several students
also observed that this kind of research lends itself more to an oral presentation
than to a paper.
The assignment allows students to research subjects that are meaningful to them.
An obvious example is the group of athletes who produced a presentation that
interested them as well as the rest of the class. Most of the other students had never
thought about the technology involved in todays sophisticated protective equip-
ment, and the young men produced a Power Point presentation that included
diagrams of todays helmets and photographs of the virtually unprotected players in
the first football seasons. It was genuine research, and the young men learned that
athletics have a long history at Georgia Tech initially stemming from Victorian
values. Moreover, students in the class now see the campus differently, knowing that
the buildings on the central campus were designed during the Victorian period
according to principles common to Victorian architects. Indeed, all the projects have
provided valuable insights into Victorian culture.
I have also found, however, that I need to work harder to teach documentation as
many students are uncertain about how to footnote their findings.
10
In fact, even
though the tutorial includes good, detailed information on documenting sources, the
students either have not gone through the tutorial or given it sufficient care. Even
students who are capable of documenting more common sources (books, journals
and websites, for example) have trouble with less familiar materials. Their problems
have revealed my limitations in teaching research and documentation, a limitation
that, according to Stebelman, is shared by most English teachers:
Teaching the Methods of Scholarship course presents uncommon challenges to English
instructors. Most faculty, having the doctorate, are extensively trained as literary critics;
they are probably more familiar and comfortable discussing exegetical and theoretical
issues germane to literature rather than determining solutions to bibliographical
problems. They may be aware of the most frequently consulted bibliographies within
their disciplines or within their specialization, but are not familiar with the panoply of
tools and technologies that now assist scholars involved in humanistic research.
Although discussing the Dictionary of National Biography or the National Union Catalog
may excite bibliographers and librarians, these topics less frequently arouse the interest
of graduate students. For many of them, the MLA International Bibliographyadequate
in generating citations on most writers and literary subjectsis the ne plus ultra of
scholarly research. (Stebelman, 1987, p. 23)
Thus, if English instructors are poorly prepared to teach graduate students in our
own discipline, we are certainly not prepared to teach students in other disciplines.
Nonetheless, as Stebelman observes of his own experience with graduate students,
Using university archives to demonstrate research 303
there is something gratifying about letting students loose in the library and allowing
them to experience the range of materials available to them:
The hands-on experience of the students was perhaps the most valuable element;
students could use the analytical skills gained to assess the adequacy of new tools they
discovered within their specializations as well as those that cut across disciplines.
(Stebelman, 1987, p. 29)
What students learn as they ponder primary materials are skills that they can use in
other disciplines as well, a fact noted by Shapiro and Hill, who teach bibliographic
methods to sociology graduate students. They too discovered that student anxiety
toward libraries tended to be transformed into genuine enthusiasm for doing library-
based documents research:
Upon completion of this seminar, the students were no longer intimidated by the
library. To the contrary, they indicated a sense of exhilaration over the resources they
had discovered and a more self-confident and optimistic view of their own capacities to
do research. (Shapiro & Hill, 1979, p. 78)
This excitement about learning through research is clearly a positive experience.
Both my experience with the archival assignment and my reading on the topic of
teaching research suggest a number of ways to improve it. For example, an article by
Buxton, which is primarily a review of Suzanne Keens Romances of the Archive in
Contemporary British Fiction, suggests that students may already be predisposed to
archival research because they are familiar with works that glamourise the archivists
job (Buxton, 2003, pp. 345346). Buxton argues that Keens study presents a
compelling case for the fictional revitalization of the figure of the amateur scholar,
and a corresponding focus on the archive as the site of romance quests that are as
heroic as those of earlier imperial adventure stories (p. 345). She notes that the
novels featured in Keens study unabashedly celebrate traditional scholarly methods
and the researchers who engage them (p. 345) and that in British fiction of the last
two decades Edward Casaubon is reborn as Indiana Jones (p. 346). Thus, the
archival assignment may build on student interest in solving problems as well as their
knowledge of novels and films that feature archival detection.
A recent article in PMLA by Blouin reveals the extent to which archival collections
are linked to our sense of the nature of knowledge itself and illustrates that work in
the archives may remind students of how much the foundations of their discipline
have changed over a given historical period. Blouins brief essay begins by examining
the history of archives and commenting on their authority:
The idea of authority embedded in the notion of an authentic record privileged the
archives as an authoritative source in understanding the past Authority in coming to
an understanding of the past rested on an acceptance of the archive and on a faith in the
authenticity of its holdings. On occasion, that faith could be shaken but the
fundamental link between the purpose of the archive and the purpose of history stood
firm. (Blouin, 2004, p. 296)
Blouin observes that lately, particularly in the post-Vietnam era, absolute
authority has come into question and that people have come to question the
veracity of the historical record:
304 C. A. Senf
If society and its internal interactions were indeed culturally based, then was not the
archive, too, a product of the same cultural dynamic? What, then, is the authority of
the records in validating a historical understanding? What is not there? What is the
authority of the absence in affirming broad cultural realities? The archive thus moves
from being a place of study to becoming the object of study. (p. 297)
The limitations of the historical record become especially clear when one
considers how that record has been constructed. Blouin reveals, for example, that
The National Archives of the United States now retains less than two percent of the
records produced by government (p. 297). As teachers open the archives to
students, we need to inform them of this and remind them that most archives
include only those materials that someone chose to donate and that some librarian
chose to preserve. It may be as important to consider what is absent from the
archives as to consider what is there. This discussion may bring us to consider what
is missing from other kinds of printed records and to think about the nature of
knowledge in general.
It is a rare pleasure to be able to construct an assignment that excites students and
encourages them to learn. For that reason, I would urge other teachers to take
advantage of archival holdingsuniversity, public library, historical society, even
organisations such as sororities, fraternities and clubsto provide students with the
opportunity to perform primary research. Instead of reading what professional
historians or literary theorists have written, students who work in the archives have
the opportunity to conduct their own research and draw their own conclusions from
what they have read. At the same time, they gain a greater awareness of the
difficulties of such research, including illegible handwriting, gaps in the record and
difficulty locating information. Students come away from the project having
experienced the thrill of research. They have gained an awareness that research is not
easy as well as a greater understanding of the course material and a stronger sense of
connection to the Victorian period.
Notes
1. Stebelmans essay connects the teaching of research to the developmental and process-
oriented learning theories of Piaget and Bruner (Stebelman, 1987, pp. 2425).
2. Several feminist scholars and teachers describe their students excitement at locating rich and
compelling archival sources. Among them are Keener (1982), Kleinman (1995) and Burk
(1996). Other writers describe their thrill at discovery as well. Most notable among this group
is Brentano (1997). Brentano illustrates the pleasures of undirected exploration in the
archives though his essay is specifically about the pleasures of small archives:
And some of my problems were in understanding precisely those documents which I would never
have asked to see, never thought I wanted to see It underlined for me a difference between the
researcher who works in the great composite archives of Europe and England and the one who
pokes through small provincial archives: the first goes to look for something; the second goes to see
what is there. They are different casts of mind.
(p. 6)
3. The mission statement includes the following objectives, many of which reach out to both the
campus community and the community at large:
to collect and preserve the history of the campus;
Using university archives to demonstrate research 305
to promote research and scholarship through collections relating to the academic curriculum;
to provide a research experience for students in the use of primary sources;
and to preserve the legal and administrative documents of the Institute.
(https://www.library.gatech.edu/archives/index.html)
4. Foremost among them are Anne Salter, formerly Head of Georgia Tech Archives and Special
Collections (previously Director at the Atlanta Historical Society) and now Director of the
Libraries at Oglethorpe University, and Jody Thompson, Interim Director. Although I
worked most with Anne and Jody, who helped me explore the collection and construct the
assignment, the rest of the Archives Staff have been equally willing to assist.
5. Examples of essays that touch on using the archives to teach research include the following:
Kinney (1970), Rogers (1980), Kleinman (1995), Burk (1996), Falbo (2000) and Wells
(2002).
6. One of the best articles on how and when to teach undergraduate students how to do research
is Rogers (1980), who observes that there is no agreement at what point in a students college
career he or she should be instructed in research strategies and notes also that some
commentators recommend instruction be geared to upper-division students who have
selected a disciplinary area of study or to elementary freshman-level students (Rogers,
1980, p. 70). She also points to considerable uncertainty about who should assume the
instructional task (p. 78). As a result of this lack of consistency, instructors are likely to
encounter students who are indifferent to or even hostile to the library as well as those who
have no experience with research.
7. The tutorial can be found online:
https://www.library.gatech.edu/archives/tutorial/index.html. Since students often dont take
this preparation as seriously as I would like, I am tempted to construct a brief quiz on that
material in future.
8. When I read the first assignments, I immediately saw that I should have spent more time
covering documentation. For example, I dont know exactly where the students got these
quotations though I suspect that I could track them down if I absolutely had to. I also dont
know when the administration stopped encouraging parents to send their sons to school with
a bible.
9. Sheila Schulte, Associate Director for International Students and Scholar Services at the
university, is quoted in a news release (http://www.gatech.edu/news-room/release.php?
id5157; 24 July 2003).
10. All the students in my class had taken at least one college class in which they learned about
research and documentation, and many of the third and fourth year students had written
many research papers. Nonetheless my experience confirms the experience of numerous
other writers on the difficulty of teaching research methods even on the graduate level. For
example, Shapiro and Hill, writing about a class they taught to sociology graduate students,
describe their students as poorly prepared in library research skills:
While students in the social sciences frequently master the nuances of the laboratory experiment and
the subtleties of the survey interview, they all too often are incapable of employing the library as an
effective tool for scholarly work. Yet bibliography and literature searching constitute the foundations
of all scholarship, documents are the raw material of all research imbued with a sense of history, and
library resources are the most essential tools for the production of knowledge. Ill-equipped to
investigate the present as history, students of society tend to gravitate toward static, inadequate, and
frequently misleading descriptions of contemporary events and social relationships.
(Shapiro & Hill, 1979, pp. 7576)
Notes on contributor
Carol A. Senf received her PhD in Victorian literature from the University of Buffalo
and has been employed at Georgia Tech since 1980. She has written articles on
306 C. A. Senf
the Brontes, George Eliot, Dickens, Bram Stoker and Stephen King, as well as
several books on Stoker. She also edited an edition of Sarah Grands The Heavenly
Twins. She is currently working on two unrelated projects, one on Victorian
women poets, the other on changing ideas of adolescence.
References
Blouin, F. (2004) History and memory: the problem of the archive, PMLA, 119(2), 296298.
Brentano, R. (1997) The pleasures of provincial archives, in: J. Brown & W. Stoneman (Eds)
A distinct voice: medieval studies in honor of Leonard E. Boyle, O.P (Notre Dame, University of
Notre Dame Press).
Burk, B. (1996) New avenues in womens studies research: using public records, Feminist
Collections: A Quarterly of Womens Studies Resources, 18(1), 1516.
Buxton, J. (2003) Casaubon revamped: contemporary adventures in the archive, Contemporary
Literature, 44(2), 345352.
Falbo, B. (2000) Teaching from the archives, RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and
Cultural Heritage, 1(1), 3335.
Keener, K. (1982) Out of the archives and into the academy: opportunities for research and
publication in lesbian literature, College English, 44(3), 301313.
Kinney, A. (1970) New tricks for an old dog: some fresh approaches to the bibliography course,
College English, 32, 276278.
Kleiman, L. (1995) Writing our own history: a class in archival sources, Feminist Collections, 16(3),
1618.
Rogers, S. (1980) Research strategies: bibliographic instruction for undergraduates, Library
Trends, 29, 6981.
Shapiro, B. & Hill, R. (1979) Teaching sociology graduate students bibliographic methods for
document research, Journal of Academic Librarianship, 5(2), 7578.
Stebelman, S. (1987) Teaching manuscript and archival resources, Literary Research, 12(1),
2334.
Wells, S. (2002) Claiming the archive for rhetoric and composition, in: G. Olson (Ed.) Rhetoric
and composition as intellectual work (Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press).
Using university archives to demonstrate research 307