BUILDING ON EXCELLENCE IN SPECIAL COLLECTIONS Classes in the Collections DURING CLASS VISITS throughout this last academic year, hundreds of OU students enjoyed the opportunity to learn more about rare books and other original materials held in the 5th floor special collections. During these visits, curators engaged students with hands-on viewing of unique objects from the Bizzell Bible, Bass Business, History of Science and Nichols Literature Collections. While most faculty members bring their classes for a general introduction to rare books and archival materials. This year, the curators experimented with a new approach to instruction - a workshop format which included multiple class visits. Students in two undergraduate classes, Brent Tweedy’s Biology Capstone and Jennifer Davis’ Atlantic Revolutions course, visited the collections multiple times during the semester, working on individual projects and in groups. These ongoing visits facilitated students’ in-depth exploration of topics and engagement with collection materials. Jennifer Davis wanted students in her Atlantic Revolutions course to have an opportunity to immerse themselves with a particular primary source over the course of the semester. The plan developed in collaboration with the curator, JoAnn Palmeri, was to have the class visit the collections four times during fall 2019; initially, for an orientation visit with viewing of representative materials, and subsequently, for three visits in which they worked on selecting and studying an original resource. During these visits students worked individually but also
benefited from a workshop format, which encouraged conversations and interactions with each other as well as the professor and curator. Notably, students from this class presented their research at the 2020 Oklahoma Association of Professional Historians Phi Alpha Theta Regional Conference on campus in February. OU senior Katie Sahlstrom said her time visiting the special collections helped her narrow her area of research and hone her investigative skills by learning how to ask certain questions of sources. Katie also received a digital scholarship internship with OU Libraries to create an online
exhibit for her project, 1908 Merry Widow Hats. She said her research benefited from her internship with the digital scholarship team because it helped her see how digital scholarship tools and resources, like online exhibits, apply to current scholarship and connect to a larger community.
“It was really amazing to actually touch, smell, and see works from the eighteenth-century which related to our course study...One of the sources, written from a British perspective, laid out the events of the American Revolution and included sketches of figures such as Benjamin Franklin and King George III. I was struck by how each figure was portrayed through their clothing and wondered why some looked more ‘rag-tag’ while others looked very ‘put-together.’ This inspired me to look into the ideas clothing can help portray to certain people and the importance of this portrayal during the American Revolution. I was able to go back through some of the sources on my own time, in particular, one that showed amazing pictures of the French Revolution. Through this experience, I was able to see ways that French and American fashions may have conversed with one another throughout this particular time period and specifically in regards to the American Revolution...Part of what makes researching so much fun is enjoying the sources that you have to work with and I definitely enjoyed working with the primary sources I had for my topic.” – KATIE SAHLSTROM OU LIBRARIES 2019–2020 PROGRESS REPORT 17
