Curriculum Development Initiative for Special Collections
The Friends of the Oberlin College Library have allocated $3,000 annually for a three-year trial program to test the efficacy of providing Oberlin faculty with curriculum development funds for the integration of Special Collections into new or revised courses. Depending on the number of suitable curriculum development applications received, additional funds may be made available by the Director of Libraries to support proposed projects.
Rationale: The use of Special Collections in instruction has the following benefits:
- Special Collections are relevant to a wide variety of disciplines, and especially to those in the Humanities. In addition to the texts they harbor - usually antique and often unique - rare objects have additional value as artifacts that embody the material, technical, aesthetic, economic, and political conditions of their creation. Rare volumes frequently also have value through their association with particular owners, who may have left clues about their past readings of a text.
- Instruction that uses Special Collections can deepen and vivify the understanding of a subject. When set against the context of secondary source textbooks, the evidentiary nature of primary resources can be better appreciated. This has an educational impact comparable in some ways to experimentation in the Sciences. The handling of these rare and frequently fragile items is best learned under the guidance of a faculty member in association with the Library’s staff.
- The use of Special Collections strengthens a liberal education by fostering critical thinking about collection building, documentary evidence, and argumentation. Students are stimulated by the immediacy and authenticity of the materials, and learn about the importance of the preservation of paper (and electronic) records.
The Oberlin College Library provides an extraordinarily information-rich environment for hands-on teaching and learning. The Library’s Special Collections consist of many tens of thousands of bound volumes, pamphlets, maps, posters, works of art, artifacts, and manuscript collections. Recent classes have taken advantage of the Library’s current holdings to study the feminist press movement, the U.S. antislavery movement, nineteenth-century Japanese artists books, medieval manuscripts, the typography of early printing, colonial American history, nineteenth-century popular and literary magazines, Diderot’s Encyclopédie, the history of the book, the eighteenth-century English novel, material religion, texts by missionaries, and other topics. The range of options and ideas continues to grow.
For more detailed information on holdings – or to explore potential projects -- contact Ed Vermue, Special Collections Librarian (x55043, email: ed.vermue@oberlin.edu) or visit the Special Collections web site.