University Libraries received three years of generous funding from the Library of Congress (LOC) Teaching with Primary Sources Program grant to create a Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) Portal, a central place where instructors can find resources for incorporating primary sources into the curriculum. The project focused on partnering with disciplinary faculty to create teaching materials using digitized primary sources from LOC.

Primary sources are “the raw materials of history,” according to LOC. They are original documents—newspaper articles, photographs, diaries, memoirs, and other records—that were created at the time of an event and tell us about the past.

"Our collaborators included faculty members in the humanities, fine arts, social sciences, and education, as well as the Honors College,” said Mary Feeney, Librarian and Project Director and Co-Principal Investigator for the grant. “Students in any discipline can learn from engaging with primary sources.”

The TPS Portal includes lesson plans, topical primary source sets, and additional resources and tools for teaching with primary sources. The initial set of lesson plans were co-created by pairs of liaison librarians or archivists with disciplinary faculty as part of the grant. These resources can be freely used, redesigned, and repurposed by instructors in their own courses and are meant to inspire and support the use of primary sources in teaching. Resources can be filtered by types of primary sources, time periods or places represented in the sources, or disciplines of the courses.

"We wanted to pair lesson plans with selected primary sources from the Library of Congress,” said Niamh Wallace, Associate Librarian and Co-Principal Investigator. “We hope the portal can be a useful teaching tool for instructors across disciplines." Lisa Duncan, archivist and former University Libraries colleague, was also a Co-Principal on the grant and paired digitized primary sources from the Library of Congress with materials from Special Collections.

During the grant period, the Libraries partnered with 13 disciplinary faculty in 11 different departments, schools, or colleges, reaching 353 students in 14 courses. The courses ranged from general education to graduate-level seminars. 

Other activities during the grant period included a Faculty Learning Community in spring 2022 focused on sharing ideas and strategies for incorporating primary sources into courses and a TPS Symposium held in spring 2023 in which faculty and students discussed their experiences using primary sources.

Although the grant period is nearing its end, the project team will continue to refine and add to the portal. Instructors are encouraged to contact Feeney and Wallace. 

Are you a faculty member, instructor, or graduate student interested in teaching with primary sources in your courses? Join us for coffee and refreshments at Teaching with Primary Sources workshop on Tuesday, Sept. 17.