“Diving into Archives!” explores how to build partnerships between archives and educators to encourage place-based learning and historical thinking. Teaching students how to work with primary sources can have a significant impact on information literacy and archival research skills. A recent assessment of the Library of Congress’ Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) Regional program, which works to improve LOC primary sources in a variety of educational settings, reported that:

81 percent of TPS educators said that their students are better able to do research because of their TPS-related teaching. 87 percent said that their students are better able to analyze primary sources to identify point of view and evaluate bias and 77 percent said their students are better able to explore their personal curiosity in the archives.

In today’s hybrid information environments, students might encounter primary sources on their phone, or on a website, or in a physical archival collection. Effective navigation of these environments, and the interpretation, evaluation, and use of primary sources, requires a number of competencies. In a 2024 report on teaching US history in secondary schools, The American Historical Association notes that the increase in document-based inquiry has produced “collateral damage” where “sources come disembodied from their original contexts and in heavily excerpted formats” (p.104).

The impact of primary sources on educators remains understudied, despite the importance of such endeavors. Archives provide essential spaces for historical and contemporary engagement for educators. At the same time, archival studies educators and teaching archivists are well-prepared to provide instruction and training to educators on how to teach using primary sources. The importance of preserving context, a uniquely archival quality and characterization tool, is threaded throughout the SAA’s Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy. Working directly with educators can help to build foundations for collaborative exploration in at least two areas of practice-informed research: a) how to teach students critical, multimodal skills and literacies required for evaluating born-digital and digitized archival sources and navigating complex information environments and b) use an understanding of the information needs of current educators to inform how archives can best deliver primary source content, including thematic lesson plans with integrated sources, for educators.

Project Team

Alex Chassanoff, Project Director

Elliott Kuecker, Archival Literacy Curriculum Lead

Lyric Grimes, Doctoral student and graduate researcher

Gabi Benedit, Masters student and graduate researcher

Samone Jacobs, Doctoral student and graduate researcher