Working as an Embedded Archivist in an Undergraduate Course: Transforming Students into Scholars through an Archival Workshop Series Free

In December 2015, a colleague from the history department at Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania approached me to discuss one of his upcoming courses, American Environmental History. For this 300-level course, he required each student to complete a semester-long research project that included extensive source analysis and independent archival research. However, none of the fourteen students enrolled had previously taken the department's 200-level methods course. While history majors and minors are encouraged to take the methods course early on, some students take the course in their junior or senior year.¹ Additionally, these students represented eleven different majors and minors, and ranged from sophomores to seniors. Half the students were not history majors and had little or no background in historical research methods.² American Environmental History thus served as an elective for students with an interest in understanding the historical context of a variety of environmental issues.

My colleague feared that, without intensive support, his students would not be able to complete the independent research assignment. He asked for assistance in designing a curriculum that would integrate students' acquisition of content knowledge and their development of historical research skills. To accomplish this, I became an “embedded archivist” in the course for the first half of the semester. My colleague and I created a scaffolded approach to archival instruction that, over the course of six weeks, led students through the stages of the research process. Because of the existence of materials in the archives' collection related to environmental history, the workshops and assignments served the dual purpose of advancing students' understanding of course content while also offering hands-on archival training that they then applied to their own independent research projects. This series of archival workshops transformed a group of undergraduates with no historical research experience into budding scholars capable of making meaningful contributions to the existing body of knowledge.

At Shippensburg, all librarians are responsible for specific units within the library and also serve as liaison librarians to academic departments. The university is a small public institution that grants bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees. The undergraduate student body comes from a variety of educational backgrounds and enters college at different skill levels, which requires faculty to build strong foundational skills into their courses. As the archivist and special collections librarian, I both oversee the University Archives and perform general liaison librarian duties such as instruction and collection development for several departments including history. While this arrangement differs from many archivists' positions, working as a hybrid librarian-archivist has led me to approach archival instruction with a more holistic view.

Although archivists have long taught students how to conduct archival research, this is just one element of the research enterprise. For students to become competent researchers able to understand the scope and needs of their projects as wholes, they should learn about archival competencies alongside information literacy competencies. Previously the domain of instructional librarians, there is no reason that archivists cannot also teach these skills using archival resources as a foundation for exploring a variety of information literacy concepts. By combining more general bibliographic instruction with archival resources into a structured unit within a course's curriculum, I was able to show students how archival research fits into the bigger picture of historical research. Archival research does not exist in a vacuum; it should not be taught as if it can be conducted well without a firm grasp of general research skills. To be successful in the archives, students must understand where archival research sits in the overall research process.

This case study demonstrates how archivists can embed themselves into university courses and argues that archivists who work closely with faculty should co-opt the phrase “embedded archivist.” This would recognize the intensity of their work and, more importantly, provide archivists with the space and leverage to meet the student as a whole researcher. Students often approach research projects in finite chunks and fail to completely integrate archival research into their overall research process. This is evidenced every time a student makes a last-minute trip to the archives in the days before an assignment is due to double-check details or citations he or she had not carefully noted in what may have been a first and final visit. Only through embedding oneself in a course can an archivist fully address the needs of student researchers and teach them to treat archival research as a part of their overall research endeavor, which is necessary for academic success.

Many archivists have written about the integration of archival instruction into undergraduate courses and the role of archivists as educators.³ The most common method for increasing students' “archival intelligence”⁴ is through one-shot archival orientation sessions where archivists provide students with an overview of what archives are and how to conduct archival research.⁵ In a case study conducted at Yale University, Barbara Rockenbach describes a spectrum of archival education approaches from single-session orientations to in-depth research experiences. Rockenbach focuses on how the archivists at Yale collaborated with faculty to insert inquiry-based learning strategies into one or two class sessions.⁶ While she found that even a single session could strengthen students' critical thinking skills, a shortcoming of single-session orientations is that they do not provide students with enough time to fully immerse themselves in the historical research experience.

To increase contact time in the archives, some archivists have created credit courses to teach undergraduates archival competencies. At the end of a case study that describes their attempt to design a credit-bearing archival research methods course, Cory Nimer and J. Gordon Daines conclude “We need to engage with faculty on our campuses and become more closely integrated into the core curriculum of their classes.”⁷ They suggest that this is the best way to increase instructors' interest in pursuing more in-depth and longer archival instruction experiences. Workshops are one strategy they recommend. This can be accomplished through embedded archival instruction.

Embedded librarianship began on college campuses with branch libraries providing resources on particular subjects.⁸ This practice evolved as librarians at central campus libraries worked to strengthen their relationships with constituents through collaboration. Geraldine Delaney and Jessica Bates argue that librarians should fully engage with the populations they serve so that information literacy is “embedded in the curriculum.”⁹ This could happen in a variety of ways, whether a librarian teaches students through online platforms, becomes an active member of a research team, or assesses learning outcomes related to research skills. Building partnerships across campus is a core part of library services and is important to archivists as well.

While librarians have long described themselves as “embedded librarians” when they work closely with faculty to provide library support for particular courses, archivists have not yet used the term “embedded archivist” to describe their instructional work. At this point, the phrase “embedded archivist” has only been used to explain how archivists have lent their expertise to assist clients in creating digital repositories. In their study of documentation within the gaming industry, Megan Winget and W. Walker Sampson briefly explored how an embedded archivist worked with game developers to set up procedures for preserving video games.¹⁰ Hannah Kosstrin's review of choreographer Bebe Miller's digital guidebook Dance Fort: A History alludes to how an archivist helped Miller's company create an archive of its choreography process.¹¹

The benefit of being an embedded archivist in a course is that one can “slow down” the pace at which content is delivered so that students have time to fully digest each step of the research process.¹² This teaches students that research is iterative. Archival research is not something to be undertaken in a day, or even at one point in a project. It is a step that may be revisited again after more secondary reading has been completed and the student has obtained more background information on which to base his or her primary source inquiries. Slowing down the research experience teaches students to plan their research strategies, to better understand their information needs, and to visit the archives at opportune moments in the life cycle of their projects.

The curriculum my colleague and I designed for American Environmental History involved embedding me into the course for the first half of the semester, so that I almost served as a co-instructor. The class met three times per week (fifty minutes per session). Over six weeks, we held an archival workshop at the University Archives during the third session of each week. Using a variety of documentation from the archives' collection, I created four sample collections related to environmental history that students would use to develop their understanding of archival practices and historical research. Each week's workshop focused on a different step in the research process and required students to work in groups to answer a research question using their collection materials. Our goals for the workshop series corresponded to the course objectives requiring students to apply the standards of historical research and writing, including basic concepts of archival and primary source research, analysis of secondary source literature, and the fundamentals of completing an original research project.

Each workshop session followed a similar structure. The session began with a lecture, discussion, and review of the homework assignment from the previous week. Students then spent the remainder of class working on their group assignments. I made a libguide for the course containing a page for each session that included the objectives of the day's lesson, relevant resources, assignments, and rubrics. Starting in the second workshop session, students completed a homework assignment that the course instructor graded. This ensured that groups made progress from week to week and allowed us to see if students understood and could apply the concepts covered in that week's class to their individual research projects due at the end of the term. To ensure that students stayed on track with their independent final projects, we required them to meet separately with the instructor and me at several checkpoints over the course of the workshop series. I met with each student twice to provide assistance on his or her own project. These meetings supported students at their points of need, allowing for in-depth instruction on narrowing a topic, how to search library databases, where to find archival materials appropriate for their topics, and how to cite sources properly. Taking our feedback, students individually applied what they learned in the workshops to their semester-long independent research projects.

The workshop series concluded with students informally presenting the findings of their group sample research projects. We also asked the class to reflect on their experience participating in the workshop series. Because we put together the workshop series quickly and developed it over the course of the semester, we were unable to conduct formal assessments such as a pretest and posttest to measure growth in students' competencies. We sought to address this gap by holding a guided discussion with students during the last workshop session. Positive student feedback obtained during this class meeting indicated the success of the workshops. At the conclusion of the workshop series, students expressed that they felt more confident in conducting archival research, analyzing secondary literature, and conducting an original research project.

I began the workshop series by introducing the class to the basic concepts of archival research. As none of the students had previously taken the History Department's research methods course, the instructor and I knew that few, if any, of them would be familiar with archives. My lecture focused on the purpose and mission of archives, how archivists describe collection materials and make them accessible, issues of access and security, the basics of an archival research visit, and archival research strategies.

For the last half of the session, I divided the class into four groups and assigned each group a research topic: 1) environmental science; 2) activism/Earth Day; 3) energy sources; and 4) activism/Big Spring Watershed Association. I gave each group a topic sheet that provided an overview of the topic, a broad research question that the group would work to answer, and a list of materials from the University Archives related to their topic (see  Appendix A for each group's topic sheet). Groups spent the remainder of the session familiarizing themselves with their collections and began to develop strategies for conducting their research.

Because identifying archival materials related to a specific topic across an institution's entire holdings is an advanced skill that requires an understanding of the hierarchies of record groups and series, I selected items from the collection for students to use in their sample research projects. In choosing materials for each group, I attempted to strike a balance between records that would provide students with clear starting points and items that would require them to practice analyzing content for context and relevance. For example, Group 1 was tasked with explaining how the study of environmental science developed at Shippensburg in the 1970s. While I provided this group with files from the early days of the environmental science program, I also gave them University Curriculum Committee proposals and course catalogs to sift through. This allowed group members to feel confident early in the research process by getting their bearings with the program files and then forced them to use what they had learned by reading the program files to skim through the broader set of archival materials looking for relevant information.

The second workshop set archival research in the context of the larger historical research process. In this session, we taught students how to prepare a prospectus. We opened the session by showing students how to use Zotero, a citation management system, to track their sources. Students often struggle when citing archival sources, which is sometimes due to not understanding all the bibliographic information necessary for a complete citation. Zotero is a useful tool that students could use as a prompt to record citation information for the archival materials they discovered in their sample collections. Each student created a Zotero account that they connected to a group library so they could share sources with their groupmates. Students invited the course instructor to view their Zotero libraries so he could monitor their progress. I then provided students with a brief overview on how to find secondary sources for their projects using the library's databases and several freely available online environmental history resources.

We closed our initial segment of the workshop by explaining what a research prospectus should include and what it should look like. We instructed students to prepare for their prospectuses by conducting surveys of their archival materials and by gathering information from their collections to write draft prospectuses for their group topics as homework (see  Appendix B). The prospectus required students to define their local case studies and to set them within a broader historical context, forcing them to think early on about what types of information they would need to address their research questions and to determine whether that information would come from the primary sources in their archival collections or from secondary sources. In the overview paragraph of their prospectuses, groups had to use their projects' topic descriptions as a framework and then make their own deductions about the kinds of narrower questions they would need to answer to address the overall research question. In addition to the overview paragraph, each group had to include a basic annotated bibliography comprised of a couple of secondary sources and a representative sample of primary sources they had identified in their materials from the University Archives.

The third workshop focused on how to evaluate secondary sources. We spent the first half of class breaking down the various types of secondary sources that historians use so that students would understand the difference between sources that provide background information, historical context, and historiographical context. Background sources, which might include published local histories, retrospective newspaper articles, and other types of nonscholarly writings, are similar to primary sources in that they provide information about the specific events at the heart of a study. Scholarly sources relating to historical context, which might include textbooks, biographies, and topical encyclopedias as well as scholarly books and journal articles, help explain the broader political, cultural, social, and environmental forces shaping a study. Finally, historiographical sources, generally journal articles and historical monographs, may or may not relate directly to a study's specific focus, but help to place the themes a researcher is exploring within the broader evolution of changing interpretations and methodologies. Using a sample topic and books from the instructor's personal collection, the class practiced identifying which books would count as these different source types. We asked students to explain what information they would expect to find in each book based on its title and introduction and why it would fall into the category in which they had placed it.

We then taught the class how to construct focused research questions that would help them understand and answer the broader research questions they received in the first workshop. Groups spent the majority of this session conducting research in their archival collections so that they could determine what questions they could not answer with primary sources alone. For homework, each group completed a preliminary annotated bibliography of secondary sources (see  Appendix C). The annotated bibliography pushed each group to recognize the limits of their archival materials, to understand the types of questions that could be answered using primary or secondary sources, and to engage with the secondary literature to become conversant in the intricacies of their topic.

In session four, we taught the class how to analyze primary sources as historical evidence. We discussed how to evaluate the source's author, point of view, intended audience, purpose, and significance. Each group then continued to conduct research in their sample archival collection and began selecting several items to analyze for their homework assignment (see  Appendix D). For this assignment, students needed to select five different types of primary sources from their archival collections and write annotated bibliographies listing the sources. In a paragraph below each source, they were instructed to use the analytical tools discussed in class and in their outside readings to critically analyze each primary source.

For students who were not history majors in the class, thinking of archival records as evidence was a new concept, and learning to unpack primary sources was critical. We taught the class to question their sources by evaluating each source for author bias, intended audience, purpose, and significance. It was important for students to realize that although the documents in their sample collections had been selected to help them answer carefully crafted research questions, the records did not exist in a vacuum. Critically analyzing sources would be a key component of the students' independent projects later in the semester, and this assignment provided them with a chance to practice this skill in a group setting using sources they knew.

In the penultimate session, we assisted students in revising their original research prospectuses (see  Appendix E). The revised prospectus allowed each group to refine their original proposal using the additional information they had learned, and sources they had gathered, over the previous weeks. By expanding their topic descriptions and lengthening their bibliographies, groups fleshed out their projects and prepared to present their research to their classmates. The purpose of this assignment was to have groups revise their prospectuses and preliminary annotated bibliographies based on our previous feedback. They were asked to expand their prospectus narratives from one paragraph to one page and include explanations of the process they would use to answer their research questions with the sources they identified. Their bibliographies had to include at least ten secondary sources and ten primary sources representing the range of materials necessary to successfully complete the sample research project. We also required a two-sentence annotation alongside each source explaining what the source was and how they intended to use it.

By asking students to revise their original prospectuses, we forced them to revisit their initial assumptions about their research topics and processes. After five weeks of working with their sample archival collection, each group had a thorough understanding of their topic and a firm grasp of their sources. Reworking a prospectus shows students that the research process is iterative—while they may start out with an idea of where they hope their research will go, they cannot anticipate the result. Learning to reflect on one's work is critical to completing a successful research project.

The workshop series concluded with each group informally presenting their revised prospectus. Three groups answered the initial research questions posed to them in a satisfactory manner. The fourth group only partially answered their research question as they struggled to connect the primary source evidence in their collection with the secondary literature. However, the course instructor and I were both impressed with the groups' work. Most of them delved deeper into their sample research projects than we had anticipated, and they could have gone on to further develop their work into independent projects.

We then spent the remainder of the class period in an open-discussion format where students explained to us what they learned throughout the workshop series. Many students commented that the in-depth nature of the workshops made them feel more confident in their research abilities than they were at the start of the semester. Several students appreciated the time spent on citations; they felt Zotero allowed them to easily keep track of their groups' archival sources and that they had a better understanding of how to cite archival materials in Chicago style. Other students mentioned that the workshops helped them to better map out their archival research strategies, which would be beneficial for future projects. Most students said they never realized how time consuming archival research is and wished they would have managed their time better. The class agreed that they wanted more time to work with their sample collections and felt constrained by the short class period.

Spending the first half of the semester as an embedded archivist was time intensive. It would not be possible to conduct this workshop series for every history course. However, it would be worthwhile to strategically re-create the workshop series for an introductory research methods class or for a course in which the majority of students lack the training necessary to complete a required long-term research project. The instructor felt that incorporating an “embedded archivist” into the course impacted the students' success, and the collaboration achieved our goals. Students demonstrated their ability to conduct archival and primary source research, analyze secondary literature, and conduct original research projects on their own. Course grades show that students who performed better on the sample archival workshop project earned higher marks on their individual final term papers.

Much room remains for further research about the impact of embedded archival instruction and its application, particularly regarding the long-term benefits to undergraduates. As a starting point, it would be ideal to develop an embedded archival instruction unit in advance, with firm outcomes and objectives. This would allow the archivist and course instructor to implement a variety of assessments to determine the effectiveness and impact of the embedded archival instruction on students' performance. Collecting quantitative data through a pretest and posttest that could be compared would be useful. Interviewing several students to gather qualitative data would add richness to the archivist's understanding of how students benefited from the experience. In the long term, archivists should seek to track how students exposed to the embedded archivist experience perform in later classes that require archival research.

Embedded archivists have the potential to greatly enhance the learning and success of undergraduate students. In the archives, context is critical. As educators, archivists should teach archival research within the context of the research process. By becoming part of the American Environmental History class, I was able to get to know students and their research interests, and to assist them on a deeper level. I have seen these students go on to pursue more intensive work in their upper-level courses. They do not shy away from bigger projects that require more thoughtful planning and concentrated study. For this cohort of American Environmental History, embedded archival instruction turned students into scholars.

Over the course of 5 workshop sessions, your group will work with archival materials on the topic described below. You will use these primary source materials, along with secondary sources, to answer the research question posed to your group. During the 6th session, you will present your findings to the class.

University curriculum constantly evolves to reflect the concerns and interests of contemporary society as well as educational trends. As environmental awareness rose in the public consciousness during the 1960s and 70s, academic departments throughout the United States, including Shippensburg, began to weave an “environmental” focus into their courses.

How and why did the study of environmental science at colleges and universities such as Shippensburg University develop in the 1970s?

• RG 19 College of Arts & Humanities, Sub-Group 3 Geography & Earth Science, File Box 1, Folder 5 Course Proposals—1973 Soils

• RG 19 College of Arts & Humanities, Sub-Group 3 Geography & Earth Science, File Box 1, Folder 13 Environmental Science

  • ○

    Other relevant folders in this box on Curriculum, Courses, Visiting Speakers, 5 Year Program Review will be useful as well

• RG 22 School of Mathematics & Natural Sciences, Box 1, Folder 3 Curriculum & Program Proposals

• RG 22 School of Mathematics & Natural Sciences, Box 1, Folder 4 Environmental Education

• RG 22 School of Mathematics & Natural Sciences, Box 1, Folder 5 Environmental Sciences

• RG 22 School of Mathematics & Natural Sciences, Sub-Group 4 Department of Chemistry, File Box 1, Folder 16 Environmental Sciences Committee

• RG 4 Provost & VP for Academic Affairs, Sub-Group 1 Academic Affairs, Series 8 Academic Programs, Box 2, Folder 6 Environmental Education Program

• Course catalogs—1970s

• Curriculum Committee proposals—1970s

Over the course of 5 workshop sessions, your group will work with archival materials on the topic described below. You will use these primary source materials, along with secondary sources, to answer the research question posed to your group. During the 6th session, you will present your findings to the class.

The 1960s and 1970s saw the rise of activism among college students in a variety of areas including the Civil Rights movement, Women's Rights movement, the anti-war movement, and environmentalism. Earth Day arose out of the environmental movement and was first celebrated on April 22, 1970; Shippensburg University students and faculty participated in Earth Day activities in a variety of ways.

How did college students such as those at Shippensburg University engage in environmental activism, including Earth Day, during the late 1960s and early 1970s?

• RG 19 College of Arts & Humanities, Sub-Group 3 Geography & Earth Science, File Box 2, Folder 5 Earth Day

• Underground student newspapers (particularly the Shippensburg Free Press from early 1970s)

• The Slate—1970s

• The Cumberland—1970s

Over the course of 5 workshop sessions, your group will work with archival materials on the topic described below. You will use these primary source materials, along with secondary sources, to answer the research question posed to your group. During the 6th session, you will present your findings to the class.

When the Cumberland Valley State Normal School was founded in 1871, many homes and buildings were heated using coal. Over the last 140 years, a variety of other energy sources have been introduced into the marketplace, including natural gas, oil, solar, and wind energy. However, the university continued to use coal as its primary heating source until switching to natural gas in 2014.

How and why did institutions such as Shippensburg University make decisions regarding energy sources?

• RG 1 Board of Trustees/Council of Trustees, Series 5 Financial Affairs, SubSeries 4 General Records, Box 1, Folder 10 Water Agreements (1910s–1950s)

• RG 1 Board of Trustees/Council of Trustees, Series 5 Financial Affairs, SubSeries 4 General Records, Box 1, Folder 16 Standard Oil Agreement (1944–1945)

• RG 1 Board of Trustees/Council of Trustees, Series 7 McCune Collection, SubSeries 1.1 CVSNS Business Associates, Box 5, Folder 12 Gas Light Co. (1879–1881, 1883–1884)

• RG 1 Board of Trustees/Council of Trustees, Series 7 McCune Collection, SubSeries 1.1 CVSNS Business Associates, Box 5, Folder 33 William King Oils (1873–1876, 1878)

• RG 1 Board of Trustees/Council of Trustees, Series 7 McCune Collection, SubSeries 1.4 CVSNS General Business, Box 2, Folder 2 Correspondence—Heating & Plumbing Specs 1872–1873

• RG 1 Board of Trustees/Council of Trustees, Series 7 McCune Collection, SubSeries 1.4 CVSNS Financial Matters, Box 3, Folder 6 Water Works (1877–1878)

• RG 23 Vice President for Administrative and Student Affairs, Sub-Group 6 Director of Public Relations and Publications, Box 6f (News Releases—2010s)

• RG 23 Vice President for Administrative and Student Affairs, Sub-Group 2 Director of Alumni Affairs, Box 1 (University Magazine—2010s)

• RG 24 VP for Administrative Finance, Sub-Group 8 Director of Physical Plants, Box 1, Folder 26 Heating Plant (early 1970s)

• The Slate—2010s

Over the course of 5 workshop sessions, your group will work with archival materials on the topic described below. You will use these primary source materials, along with secondary sources, to answer the research question posed to your group. During the 6th session, you will present your findings to the class.

Over the past few decades, nonprofit organizations have played an increasing role in advocating for conservation of culturally and ecologically sensitive sites. Following a successful campaign to close a state fish hatchery that was polluting Big Spring Creek, the Big Spring Watershed Association turned its attention to the restoration of a vacant limestone building known to locals as the “Barrel Factory.”

How did nonprofit environmental organizations such as the Big Spring Watershed Association mobilize to preserve culturally and ecologically significant sites?

• BSWA Collection, BSWA Minutes Folder

• BSWA Collection, Barrel Factory Packet

• BSWA Collection, Barrel Factory Folder

• BSWA Collection, B. F.-Lease Agreement Folder

• BSWA Collection, B.F.-Press Folder

• BSWA Collection, Barrel Facto-PHMC Folder

• BSWA Collection, B.F.-Presentation Plans (Incl. Originals) Folder

• BSWA Collection, SPOOM Grant-B.F.- Folder

• BSWA Collection, B.F.-Tourism Cares for Tomorrow-Folder

• BSWA Collection, B.F.-PA Economics Development Grant Folder

• BSWA Collection, Alex Stewart-Barrel Factory-Folder

• BSWA Collection, B.F. Grant Possibilities-Folder

• Barrel Factory-Repair Folder

• Barrel Factory/Photos

Your archives project prospectus should consist of a 1-paragraph topic overview and a basic annotated bibliography (two sentence annotations) that includes secondary (at least two) and primary sources (a representative sample of at least four) that you have identified. Your overview paragraph should use your project's topic description as a basic framework supplemented by additional logical deductions about the kinds of questions you will need to be able to answer in order to address your overall research question. Your project should be situated within a broader historical context and so the information you will need to address your research question will come not only from the primary sources in your collection but also from the existing scholarship (i.e., secondary sources). Each group will submit one prospectus, which will be evaluated according to the following rubric. The prospectus is due in class on Wednesday, Feb. 10.

Group # __________________ Grade ____________

Excellent Good Fair Poor

Overview paragraph explains the project clearly and contains proper spelling and grammar.

1. Bibliography includes at least two appropriate secondary sources.

2. Bibliography includes at least four primary sources that demonstrate a range of materials.

3. Notes are properly formatted in Chicago bibliography style.

4. Annotations for each source are complete and contain proper spelling and grammar.

In addition to archival materials and other primary sources, historical researchers need to explore and understand three broad types of secondary sources: background, historical context, and historiographical context. Background sources, which might include published local histories, retrospective newspaper articles, and other types of non-scholarly writings, are similar to primary sources in that they provide information about the specific events at the heart of your study. Scholarly sources relating to historical context, which might include text-books, biographies, and topical encyclopedias as well as scholarly books and journal articles, help explain the broader political, cultural, social and environmental forces shaping your study. Finally, historiographical sources, generally journal articles and historical monographs, may or may not relate directly to your specific focus, but help to place the themes you are exploring within the broader evolution of changing interpretations and methodologies.

For this assignment, you will begin by digging into your archival collection in order to get a clearer sense of the limits of your primary source base. Put together a list of at least nine questions that will need to be answered using the three categories of secondary sources. You will then locate the best source for addressing each question, enter each citation into Zotero, and create a preliminary annotated bibliography formatted in Chicago style. This assignment will be evaluated according to the following rubric and is due in class on Wednesday, Feb. 17.

Group # __________________ Grade ____________

Excellent Good Fair Poor

1. Includes at least three appropriate secondary sources addressing project background.

2. Includes at least three appropriate secondary sources addressing historical context.

3. Includes at least three appropriate secondary sources addressing historiographical context.

4. Annotations for each source are complete and contain proper spelling and grammar.

5. Properly formatted in Chicago bibliography style.

By now you have found many primary sources in your archival collections that you can use to answer the research question posed to you in the first archival research workshop. However, we cannot take our sources at face value. As a historian, you must carefully analyze each source to determine how you can use the information presented as historical evidence. Thinking critically about your sources will require you to question the author's authority, biases, or prejudices; the source's intended audience; the purpose of the source and its significance.

For this assignment, select five different types of primary sources you have identified in your archival collections. Write a bibliography listing the sources. In a paragraph below each source, use the following analytical tools discussed in chapter 4 of Galgano to critically analyze each primary source: Author or producer, Point of view or perspective, Intended audience, Purpose, and Significance. This assignment will be evaluated according to the following rubric and is due in class on Wednesday, Feb. 24.

Group # __________________ Grade ____________

Excellent Good Fair Poor

1. Includes a wide range of primary sources.

2. Clearly analyzes author/producer and point of view/perspective for each source.

3. Clearly analyzes intended audience for each source.

4. Clearly analyzes purpose and significance for each source.

5. Properly formatted in Chicago bibliography style.

The purpose of this assignment is to revise your prospectus and preliminary annotated bibliography based on my previous feedback. Your prospectus narrative should consist of a 1-page topic description (approx. 2 paragraphs) that draws from the project overview and then explains the basic process you would use to answer your research question with the secondary and primary sources you have identified. Your bibliography will need to include at least ten secondary sources (books and articles) and ten primary sources representing the range of materials necessary to successfully complete the sample research project. Your sources should be in alphabetical order by author's last name (or title if no author) and divided into categories (i.e. primary and secondary) and formatted in Chicago bibliography style. Each source should include a two-sentence annotation explaining what the source is and how you intend to use it.

Each group will submit one prospectus, which will be evaluated according to the following rubric. The prospectus is due in class on Wednesday, March 2.

Group # __________________ Grade ____________

Excellent Good Fair Poor

1. Overview paragraphs explain the project clearly and contain proper spelling and grammar.

2. Bibliography includes at least ten appropriate secondary sources.

3. Bibliography includes at least ten primary sources that demonstrate a range of materials.

4. Notes are properly formatted in Chicago bibliography style.

5. Annotations for each source are complete and contain proper spelling and grammar.