Sara Whitver (First Year Experience Librarian), Kate Matheny (Digitization Outreach Coordinator), and Jennie Vaughn (Graduate Student Administrator, First Year Writing Program) will be presenting on this great topic at the Association of College & Research Libraries 2013 annual meeting in Indianapolis, on Friday April 12th (this week!)
Their poster describes an honors freshman writing course developed in collaboration between a first year writing program and a library. The course they developed utilizes digitized collections as the primary text, an alternative textbook choice that engages students with the information cycle and facilitates visual and rhetorical analysis. Information synthesis skills are developed through the incorporation of popular and scholarly sources in a semester-long local research project, and information literacy is integrated into each graded assignment . (Handout also available).
Go Local! Using Digital Archives as Alternative Textbooks in First-Year Writing
(Right click and download to see readable version).
As we move more and more into providing online access to special collections and archives, this type of collaboration and outreach becomes critical in building the audience for our content and justifying the expense of ensuring long-term access. Congratulations to Sara, Kate, and Jennie!