Professionals in every discipline use primary sources every day. Finding and evaluating unpublished, rare, and original sources is a critical skill for producing research, defending essential rights, drafting policy, and effecting change in any field of practice.
A visit to Special Collections isn’t just for history students. Our collections of rare books, manuscripts, and objects relate to every area of the university curriculum, from Accounting to Women and Gender Studies.
We engage students with activities and primary sources that connect to their experience as students and community members, as well as their academic interests.
Everyone is welcome at Special Collections.
Class may start with an open-ended question - "What do you notice about this room?" - followed by low-stakes discussion.
Students pointed out the brass mesh on the bookshelves, the wooden furniture, the quality of the air, and the beautiful view of Back Cove. We talked about how these intentional design choices communicate security and value, but can also intimidate students and other researchers, and how we try to work against that. Professor Schmitt connected the exercise with a theme from the course about what counts as an authored text.
Students are encouraged to handle and closely examine material culture.
Students explore the Reading Room, viewing and handling a selection of primary and/or secondary sources from the collections. Selections are pulled from every area of the collections or focused around the class topic.
They might be asked to choose an object for further analysis or engage in a discussion about how the items relate to the course content.
When logistical issues flipped our in-person session to a Zoom visit, we used items from USM Digital Commons to create a series of topical "galleries" in a PDF. Students could view several items at once before clicking one, which took them to the item record on Digital Commons and additional context. In discussion, students could quickly locate and examine the items their classmates described.
Source analysis is the foundation of historical inquiry.
Many classes begin with a simple analysis method called "Observe, Contextualize, Infer," which asks students to distinguish between facts and assumptions, draw on prior knowledge, and form questions. This activity can spark a lively discussion!
Students then complete an in-depth Analysis Form related to an individual item in preparation for group discussion or a course assignment.
After a gallery walk activity, students selected one of the records related to slavery from the Shirley S. and Bernard Kazon Collection of Americana to engage with more closely. Guided by the customized analysis form, they recorded details that would help them to interpret the item and format a citation when they wrote about it later for an assignment. Professor Gibbs and the Special Collections staff answered questions and discussed complex details with each student as they worked.
Primary and secondary sources work together.
Students spend half the class session working with primary sources, and the other half searching for secondary sources using Library databases. They discuss how each type of resource informs the other.
For the specific topic of food-related strikes and boycotts, we found about 12 items for 24 students, so we split the class into two groups. In the Reading Room, Group A did primary source analysis using items from the Lois Reckitt Papers. In the Conference Room, Group B practiced searching for encyclopedia entries in our library databases using assigned keywords like "National Organization for Women," "Sanderson Farms," and "United Farm Workers." We talked about why it might be that the Hormel Strike gets an encyclopedia entry but the Sandserson Farms Strike doesn't. After the groups swapped activities, students chatted about how the primary sources helped them relate more closely to historic events while the secondary sources helped them understand the events in a broader context.
Finding Aids are they key to accessing items in collections.
Students examine a Finding Aid and select one folder from a collection to use to answer a research question. They may go on to request additional folders.
Sometimes, students start by using an item or folder from the collection to come up with their own research question before diving in.
Students worked with pairs of folders that had been pre-selected from manuscript collections in the African American Collection. After practicing primary source analysis, comparing notes with their partner, and forming a few research questions, each pair reviewed the collection's Finding Aid together and selected a new folder in search of more context. Students dealt with a little uncertainty when the new information challenged their assumptions or only raised more questions. In discussion, they reflected on how they would approach primary source research in the future to try to get a more complete story.
Many people learn best when they're solving a problem.
Over the course of one or many sessions, students use items from Special Collections to design an exhibit, write a StoryMap, produce a podcast, record an oral history, plan a lesson, create a work of art, or describe items for a digital repository.
For their final project, students had the option of conducting an oral history interview or doing original research about sites on a walking tour. Session one took place in a computer lab, where students used Digital Commons to practice finding, citing, and analyzing individual items like photographs and newspapers. In session two, a research experience activity in Special Collections taught them to search for similar items in manuscript collections. Some students returned to Special Collections independently to work on their final paper, while others used new subject knowledge to prepare and record oral history interviews for Querying the Past.
ARH 311 Gender Identity and Modern Art
Donna Cassidy
Fall 2018: Students reflected on depictions of gender in photographs from the LGBTQ+ Collection by George Daniell, Robert Diamante, Tom Antonik and Annette Dragon.
Fall 2016: Students examined depictions of gender and sexuality in photographs in the LGBTQ+ Collection by George Daniell, Tom Antonik and Annette Dragon.
ART 281 Introduction to Printmaking: Intaglio & Relief
Damir Porobic
Fall 2016, Fall 2015: Students looked at woodcuts and wood engravings, and copper and steel engravings from the Albert A. Howard Book History Collection.
Fall 2014: The class examined books, primarily from the Albert A. Howard Book History Collection, with examples of intaglio and relief printing used in illustrations and ornaments.
CMS 294 Visual Communications
Christian Vukasovich
Spring 2019: Students conducted a holistic analysis of artifacts considering historical, technical, ethical, and cultural perspectives.
Spring 2019: Students analyzed images from the Farm Security Administration photographs documenting life in New England during the Great Depression. For their final project they were given a shooting script similar to the ones presented by Roy Stryker to the FSA photographers to go out and capture scenes from modern day Maine.
COR 101 Stories of Health and Illness
Amy Amoroso
Fall 2019: Students reflected on narratives of illness in books from the John and Bonnie Fossett History of Nursing Collection and use the story as a springboard for a free writing exercise.
COR 101 Rainbow COR Lab
Phoebe Price
Fall 2019: Students completed a scavenger hunt to gain familiarity with the types of materials in the LGBTQ+ Collection and played board games from the collection.
EDU 200 Education in the US
Julie Canniff
Spring 2012, Spring 2011, Spring 2010, Fall 2004: Students examined readers from the Textbook Collection (as well as the Howard Book History and General collections) ranging from The New England Primer (1844 edition) to Dick and Jane allowing them to follow changes in the history of education.
ENG 140 Reading Literature
Lynn Eckersley-Ray
Fall 2019, Spring 2019, Fall 2018, Spring 2018: Students selected a chapbook from the Albert A. Howard Book History Collection and wrote a sales pitch as a chapman to sell the sensational tale.
Spring 2017, Fall 2016: Students examined materials from the collection to consider the book as a physical object and its impact on the experience of reading.
FSP 200 Food, Power and Social Justice
Kelly Spring
Fall 2019: Students analyzed a document from the Lois Reckitt Papers individually then discussed in small groups to broaden their understanding of issues related to agricultural workers' rights.
GER 101 Beginning German I
Leonore Bronson
Spring 2019: Students practiced reading Fraktur and completed a scavenger hunt for grammatical structures in German texts from the collections.
Fall 2017: Students wrote questions for items in the collection and then answered questions written by other students.
Fall 2015: Students completed a document analysis form using materials in German from the Early 20th-Century German Print Collection and from several Rare Book Collections.
HON 101 Race: Reflection & Reality
Rebecca Nisetich
Fall 2019: Students analyzed a document related to slavery from the Kazon Americana Collection, then looked at a book or pamphlet to shed more light on the context. In small groups they discussed how the documents informed on one aspect of slavery and reported to the class.
Fall 2018: Students looked at materials from the African American Collection on the KKK individually, discussed in groups to make connections between their items and connections to themes covered in their course and reported to the class.
Fall 2017: Students examined an artifact from the African American Collection to research and write a description to be posted to Digital Commons.
Fall 2016, Spring 2015: Students examined primary sources related to race from the Gerald E. Talbot Collection and other collections from the African American Collection of Maine.
HON 101 Sexuality in US History
Ashley Towle
Fall 2016: Students selected a button from the LGBTQ+ Collection to reflect on and write a Facebook post.
Fall 2018, Fall 2017: Students worked with items from the LGBTQ+ Collection related to the murder of Charlie Howard. They shared what they learned with the class to create a larger understanding of the event and the impact it had in Maine.
Fall 2018, Fall 2017: Students completed an exercise in which they chose an item from the LGBTQ+ Collection to add to a hypothetical LGBT History Museum.
HTY 380 The 1960s
Amy Smith
Fall 2019: Students analyzed books and pamphlets from the Kazon Americana Collection related to LBJ and Goldwater and then discussed how the candidates were presented and what issues were raised.
LAT 310 Seminar in Latin Literature
Peter Aicher
Fall 2014: Students examined Latin and Greek books from the Albert A. Howard Book History Collection and completed a Material Analysis Form.
NUR 100 Introduction to Professional Nursing
Karen Zuckerman
Spring 2020, Fall 2019, Fall 2018, Fall 2017, Fall 2016: The class examined memoirs/biographies of pioneers in American nursing, and nurses in wartime, using the Material Analysis Form. The books are from the John and Bonnie Fossett History of Nursing Collection.
SOC 301 Qualitative Research Methods
Wendy Chapkis
Fall 2018: Students conducted individual research related to the oral history interview they were preparing for to include in the Querying the Past collection.
Fall 2016: Students listened to segments of oral history interviews from the Sisters Bar Research Project and Home Is Where I Make It Oral History in preparation for their involvement in an oral history project in the local LGBT community.
SWO 651 Social Work Practice IV
Natallie Gentles-Gibbs
Fall 2019: Students worked with documents from the Lois Reckitt Papers related to domestic violence to discuss and build a narrative of the issue from public awareness, legislation, early research and feminist perspectives.
WGS 335 Gender and Health
Julianne Siegfriedt, Fall 2018
Students analyzed books from the Fossett History of Nursing Collection and considered how gender is constructed in the medical field.
These guidelines articulate crucial skills for navigating the complexity of primary sources and codify best practices for utilizing these materials.
The Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy were produced by the SAA-ACRL/RBMS Joint Task Force on Primary Source Literacy in 2018.
Engaging the Senses: Object-Based Learning in Higher Education by 
Using Primary Sources: Hands-On Instructional Exercises by 
