Presentation:

Introduction - Speaker Jill McKinstry

Ms. McKinstry discussed the importance of involving librarians in curriculum design, general education, and research. The educational community aims to teach students how to write, speak, and perform research, and collaboration between librarians and faculty are effective ways to achieve these goals.

Ms. McKinstry described a partnership at the University of Washington among Undergraduate Academic Affairs, the University libraries, and the College of Arts and Sciences. The Deans report to the Provost, who appointed a committee on “How to Enhance the Undergraduate Experience.” Rather than focusing solely on the student experience within the classroom, the goal of the partnership is to analyze and enhance the undergraduate experience beyond the classroom. She described several initiatives at the University of Washington.

The ‘Library Research Award’, started at Berkeley, awards monetary prizes to students for research (students self-nominate and have a faculty sponsor). The University of Washington offers six $1,000 awards, divided between thesis and non-thesis work.  Additional awards of $750 are given to freshmen, sophomores, and juniors.  Through this competition, students and faculty have the opportunity to work on projects that carry beyond the classroom.

Ms. McKinstry also described a one-hour session open to the campus community, in which faculty discuss their research. Students are given credit for the session and are able to explore different kinds of research and inquiry. This idea is known as ‘research exposed’, and received a positive response as a collaboration between the libraries and Undergraduate Academic Affairs.  

A third project that Ms. McKinstry discussed is the “Common Book” at the University of Washington, an initiative that allows students to engage in conversations with faculty and other staff.  

The fourth and final example of a partnership is the Distinguished Librarian Award. A recent recipient was a history specialist who worked on a website research project that produced positive results not just within the library, but on the campus at large.

These examples highlight the importance of partnerships across colleges and schools that serve to break down barriers.

Speaker - Trevor Griffey

Mr. Griffey described the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project.  It is both an online publishing vehicle and a teaching tool.  It was the first to make the local Seattle civil rights history movement publicly accessible.  It forerounds topics that otherwise might have been treated as to antiquarian subjects about local history and relegated to archives.  The idea for the Project came from UW Professor Jim Gregory, who designed a history seminar in which he published student research papers on the web.  This approach yielded the basis for a kind of online encyclopedia that could be expanded in future courses. The educational goal was to transform students “from consumers into producers of knowledge”.
Undergraduate research projects are the foundation of the Project’s website; and their publication is  recognition of high quality student work.  A student’s experience in working with a faculty member on a research project may be one of the more memorable experiences of their college career. To be acknowledged for good work is both powerful for the student as well as a means by which their own career can advance in any number of ways.

A number of other projects, which have been aggregated into the Civil Rights Project are all based on the local labor history. These include projects on the Labor Press in Seattle, the history of communist movement in Washington State during the 20th Century, and workers and unions at the University of Washington.

Mr. Griffey charted the transformation of the Project from only creating undergraduate research exercises to sending students into the community to collect oral histories. Often, oral histories typically are deposited into archives, whose complexity can be intimidating for contemporary undergraduates and also are not easily accessible to people outside the University. Archives are technically open, but their hours might be quite limited.  The Project helps to address these problems.  Its oral histories complement archives and special collections and empower undergraduates to do independent studies in areas they may never have anticipated. Along with video excerpts of the student’s oral histories, the website also makes individual biographies available online, with only minimal editing.

 In addition to research reports, the Project has generated a series of special sections. One of the more popular sections Mr. Griffey described is a history of the Blank Panther Party in Seattle. The series includes historic photographs from the local chapter, newspaper articles, and congressional testimonies. Other series in the special section include the Filipino Cannery Unionism Movement, Chicano Movement Project, the Asian American Movement, and the KKK in Washington State in the 1920s.  This last section in particular has generated new materials for public school teachers, as well as an undergraduate’s series of films, on the history of segregation in Seattle.  The films have been published online and made available to teachers. The student created video documentaries about the African American experience, Asian American activisms, and has worked on others as well.

Discussion:

The discussion focused on the following topics:

1. Quality control, accuracy, and evidentiary basis of the material posted on the website.
2. Analytical conclusions drawn from the web material and its value to graduate education.
3. Grading of student work.

Mr. Griffey explained that the material posted on the web is not “100% unmediated.”   Materials are not excluded for ideological reasons, and, while the Project does not review all the sources the students have examined, the principal criterion for posting is that the research project has made a coherent claim based on evidence.  Student papers are often largely reportorial.   Ms. McKistry noted that along with faculty assessment, the students also read one another’s work, and there thus is multiple input on quality control.  The Project seeks less to produce analytical conclusions than to digitize both new knowledge and the primary sources that went into the knowledge production and to set them alongside one other.  Though the project tries not to spread falsehoods, it also tries to respect the integrity of peoples’ testimonies.  In this connection, Ms. McKistry observed that multiple and conflicting voices and testimonies spur additional research.  Mr. Griffey noted that the presence of multiple primary sources is of value to graduate students and complements, but does not replace, their work in the archives.  Students’ research papers are graded as history papers, and students’ multimedia work is graded pass-fail.

Recommendations:

For Individual Campuses

• Use websites to develop multidisciplinary opportunities for students to do and post their primary research. 
•  Explore the possibility of digitized public history that link the university with its community.

For The Reinvention Center

• Devote a plenary session to digitized history.

Resources/References:

Websites

1. The Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, University of Washington: http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/.