hello everyone thank you so much for joining us my name is jet jacobs i am the head of public services outreach and community engagement for ucla library special collections and i am thrilled to be here with you today to discuss the new instruction um construction project for library special collections in the charles young research library i'll be joined by some of my colleagues um we're really excited to talk to you and to answer any questions that you might have so i want to take a moment just at the beginning to recognize that as a land-grant institution the library workers at ucla acknowledge our presence on the traditional ancestral and unseated territory of the gabrielina tongva peoples i also want to let everyone know that this event is being live captioned so you can turn those on using the closed caption button at the bottom of your zoom screen and we'll also be having a q a session at the end so if you have any questions for our panelists you are more than welcome to add them throughout the presentation by clicking on the q a button that's also at the bottom of your zoom screen so i'm going to go ahead and get us started so i talked a little bit about i told you my my title which is a lot of words but essentially i like to say that my job is to encourage and facilitate the use of library special collections and our services and one of the most important ways that we do this is actually through instruction so since its foundation in 1950 library special collections has supported the university mission of facilitating research and teaching and in recent years we've really focused on expanding our capacity to support our community of scholars by embedding primary source literacy and research using special collections directly into curriculum and i want to talk about how this focus has really paid off so i'm going to throw some stats at everyone so between 2018 and 2020 library special collections hosted over 180 classes and this was this participated or included the participation of over 4 000 students and these students interacted with nearly 10 000 items from library special collections which i think is really interesting in and of itself but more importantly over 80 percent of these students that we interacted with were undergraduates and this is a really impressive number because historically primary source engagement has largely been considered work that's reserved for students in a graduate or a postgraduate program and we've been really working hard to reconfigure this assumption and i also want to say that we're not doing this alone as part of the broader distinctive collections portfolio our colleagues in international studies and in the east asian library also engage in instruction and outreach and often this includes materials that are stewarded by library special collections we also we benefit a lot because we're ucla we have amazing rich and varied collections we work a lot with dedicated teaching faculty they're very knowledgeable and they're very excited about our collections and getting them into the classroom but probably the most satisfying part of my job is working with the engaged students who facilitate a culture of inquiry and discovery i know i'm not alone when i say that one of the most satisfying parts of being a librarian is that i'm surrounded uh by students who are constantly learning um and i am learning from them and so our instruction program success uh depends largely on the quality and the caliber of students in the ucla community so why does this matter we're getting more students in and we're teaching with special collections and we're expanding our instruction program but the impact of that is that engaging undergraduates and graduate students with primary sources in the classroom leads directly to an increased use of primary source materials in both their current and their future scholarship so for example following just one year of our increased instruction program the reading room use was increased for undergrads by over 35 percent and it's important to note that students who use original sources in their research are participating in active knowledge creation which increases their critical thinking skills and then helps them to relate more personally to the cultural record so become more invested in their own scholarship and their own journey in academia so we are doing amazing things but our consistent challenge has been space we've always been creative with space in library special collections and i would say in libraries broadly i'm not sure if anyone attending today visited library special collections in the 70s when this was actually our reading room the room that you're looking at right now is now staff working area and this was the reading room prior to the almonds and mercury reading room being constructed we also benefit from a number of other rooms so the wilber j smith room is in the library special collections footprint as well as some of you might have seen or had the privilege to visit the bradford booth room which hosts the sadler collection of 19th century british fiction and this is one of the jewels of the charles young research library we get a lot of visitors and researchers to this room it is a delightful experience to be in the booth room and we're very grateful to have this space however you can see that it is somewhat smaller and it accommodates a lovely intimate gathering of say 12 students or less this is good for a graduate course or sometimes we have smaller engagements or outreach events in in these rooms but we really have a clear need for a dedicated teaching in space sorry a dedicated teaching space for instruction where you can use fragile unique rare materials in a class of 12 or more and really give the students space to interact with these materials in a safe environment so i want to show everyone a blueprint i'll also i'll have some some 3d renderings as well but if anyone's familiar with the space on the a level um this is the proposed construction area and the footprint that we're going to be uh where the classroom itself is going to take place and so this is the entrance to special collection so you'll see that the instruction room is going to essentially be out front of library special collections uh it is going to take the space of what is some low density shelving right now and the current materials are going to be moved to a higher traffic area the most exciting part about this construction is that the larger space is going to accommodate at least 60 students and it is going to be partitionable into two separate classrooms that will each accommodate at least 30 students meaning we can concurrently host two undergraduate classes in the same space which is thrilling for for all of us to engage in instruction and so here is a 3d rendering of the proposed space this is a rendering with the partition that is up so you can see that it's divided into two spaces again if you're familiar with the a level in the charles yang research library along the back is the south wall and this is our east wall and then we would have two doors that enter into the space so that there would be individual entrances for both of the spaces if it's partitioned and i think the coolest thing about this is that we are going to make the room primarily um see through it's going to be transparent and so everyone is going to be able to see how exciting it is to use library special collections materials in a classroom setting essentially we want to make our collections and our services more trans more transparent and then thus more engaging and then this classroom will help distinctive collections continue this great work we're also thrilled to have added a new team member in 2020 so jimmy zavala is our inaugural teaching and learning librarian for library special collections and jimmy has already made a huge impact on our instruction program he's helped to pivot our instruction into an online and asynchronous spaces during what we all have experienced the supremely weird year um so i'm going to pass the mic on to jimmy now so he can tell us about the kinds of instruction that we're going to be doing in the spaces and why it's important yeah thank you chad um so as jet mentioned um i'll be focusing really on talking about kind of the approach that we've been taking so far and that we hope to continue to take um and do an instruction primary source analysis um that we're doing remotely here currently and once we're safely go back uh in person to uh to teach in person and um you can advance to the next slide jet and so one of the approach really the main approach in the the mission that we're trying to really uh meet with primary source instruction is really centering and focusing on active learning and you know what i mean by active learning is really empowering students right during the these instruction sessions these primary source analysis workshops where we're meeting the needs and the in the goals of the students where we're providing them with a the session that really allows them to feel welcome when working with special collections material you know oftentimes i think you know primarily with undergraduate students there's you know they can feel intimidated or they are not familiar at all special collections are what archives are so really you know our goal is to make sure that they feel welcome that they feel seen and you know through these instruction sessions that they're able to really have an understanding what special questions are and that they're always welcome to do research beyond instruction these instruction sessions on their own time and so the main components that we really focus on in regards to active learning is really providing them with an engaging you know participatory in a collaborative space through these instruction sessions that again really hones in on their needs and interests and so i'll talk a little bit about each of these you know kind of three components the first one engaging really having students you know touch right interact with the material that we have i think historically speaking you know special collections instruction a lot of times you'll see that it's show and tell where um you might have materials are pulled down from special collections and then students are maybe just walking around looking at you know at books looking at you know past archive collections but they're not necessarily um you know touching them or working with them directly engaging with it directly and so we do want to encourage and do encourage you know this you know active and direct you know engagement with this material obviously very carefully still you know very uh supervising that students are making sure that they are not damaging the material in any way but i think in my experience students you know being able to touch materials being able to let's say they're looking at a book flipping through pages um it's really allows them to you know gain more enjoyment out of these construction sessions and they seem to really you know have a better understanding of what the material is and it makes it more fun for them right so i think you know really challenging these barriers in the past i think with you know primary source instruction and allowing students to really get a better perhaps fuller experience of working with this material and so that's really the engaging part uh the participatory part is really encouraging them to you know be active in discussions and also looking up information or really they're the ones who are making sense of the materials right so i think oftentimes instead of you know if i'm prying instruction session me telling the students um what an item is or the significance of that they're the ones who are looking up you know these you know the information um that makes sense to them so they're the ones who are really kind of like the detectives i guess or making sense of it in their own sense in their own way and this is like where the participation comes from right they're the ones doing this activity um obviously you know as an instructor i'm there to support them but really encouraging them to do it on their own as much as possible and then the last you know kind of component making this you know working in a collaborative you know effort right where typically what we do is you know have students work in groups or in paris at least where they're bouncing off you know ideas off on another they're sharing knowledge with each other and um just encouraging them to work together and i think um and having the space will really allow us to uh provide you know more efficient um and better uh instruction sessions right where students will be able to walk around more given that the space will be large uh so there's no issues with you know space um where students might feel cramped in or very tight it also allows us to lay out the material that we will be working with more evenly laid out throughout the space again so you know students are have more mobility and i think that also allows us to have more of a safe safer i guess conditions when working with this material and um i think beyond that it really again envisioning of the technology that might be uh possible to us in in this space as well where it also provide more efficient primary source instruction uh next slide please so then i'm just briefly gonna go down through what we do with the primary source analysis activity how this connects to active learning and how this is carried out really so um there's kind of three there's three basic steps that um currently we have students do when we're trying these primary sources in s activity you know the first one being observed the second conceptualize and the third one infer and observe is really the first step where you know we encourage students to really just you know when we're they're looking they're working with a primary choice you know uh material whether that's a book perhaps like a record or a document a photograph whatever the case that might be that they really gather just basic information about what it is right so if they're looking at a book for example who created the book who's the author what year was the book published um what is being documented in the book um and so it's just as basic information that allows them to make sense right of what it is that they're working with once they gather that information the next step we have them do is contextualize that information and that's basically looking up the observations the previous information that they gathered from our background right so if they know who the author of a book is we want them to look up more information about the author you know if they know the year that it was published you want them to look up okay what was happening around that time period that makes you gain more information about potentially something that was going around that might have influenced the creation of this book right during that time period um just basic you know background information and then you know that step is really having them infer right make arguments once they have you know observe the material they contextualize it they can come to certain conclusions really about the significance and the importance of the book or you know any other item that they're working with and really um thinking of okay critically thinking about you know what bias is being expressed in the material that they're working with anything that uh really allows them to make sense overall of the item and so we've been doing this you know remotely currently obviously given the current situations and you know to my surprise i think students are still very engaged and still seem to you know enjoy uh this activity even if they're not physically looking at their material it's all digital obviously um but they seem to be very uh engaged with it nonetheless and i think a lot of it has to do with the fact that again there a lot of students are maybe their first time being exposed to archival material you know they're being exposed to what these resources are and so you know i think you know it's very um i think for me personally just very exciting to think of the possibilities of having you know these construction sessions in person once we're able to safely go back uh to work and take advantage of you know the space but also the technology you know the technology that you know will be part of the space as well that again will make these instruction sessions more efficiently i think more fun for students and really again providing the space where they feel welcome where they understand that you know these material and this resource are for them to analyze and utilize and really just kind of be demystifying and providing them an overall larger picture special collections are and archives are as well so thank you thanks so much jimmy so up next we're going to hear from devon fitzgerald dr fitzgerald is our curator for rare books and print culture he has been here for i want to say almost two years now but i think that um if you speak to any of my colleagues the things that they will tell you about devin is that he is a very exciting and engaging and enthusiastic instructor he has brought a number of faculty and a number of classes uh into library special collections um so that uh those statistics about all of the classes that we've taught in the past two years devon is responsible for a very large chunk of them so i'm going to go ahead uh and pass it off to devon now hi everyone uh it's a real pleasure to have the opportunity to speak with you today about teaching and learning in library special collections jimmy has already done an excellent job defining the term active learning which guides us as we think about course construction in live in the special collections and for my presentation today i'm going to give you a few examples of different types of teaching that i did during 2019-2020 academic year so generally speaking in library special collections most curators and many of the librarians teach classes our very own russell johnson curator of his uh curator uh sorry the history of science uh special collections for the sciences won the librarian of the year award in i believe it was 2019 for his excellent teaching and work with students uh and the work that people like russell are doing and what i'm doing and what jimmy and jack do is all designed to bring more students faculty and graduate students into the library now generally speaking we teach classes and host events on sort of three different scales in library special collections where we're asked to help with large lecture courses generally of over a hundred students uh we also assist in small research seminars uh and then finally i'll talk about some of our public events so in this image here you can get a sense of some of what we do in lecture courses uh lecture courses have always been some of the most difficult for us to accommodate in special collections because as you've already learned we simply don't have space for 100 or more students in the in the library but that doesn't mean we don't make it work for example during 2019 there were two lectures i design two lecture courses i designed content for the first uh introduction to the history of western civilization in the pre-modern period uh jet jacobs and i delivered a lecture to the class on the material history of books in pre-modern europe and this was a class we talked with dr muriel mclendon now showing the class the books in the lecture was nice but we also wanted to give them a chance to figure out where special collections existed within the library and to see some of these materials close up and so jet jacobs and i both designed a small exhibition which then dr mclendon used as a basis for a sort of question and answer session the second lecture i worked with was a much more experimental in format after discussions with dr andrea goldman in history i created three pop-up museums for her 170 student introduction to chinese history and so what happened is these students had to visit two of three museums offered over the quarter and write response papers and this was even more hands-on uh usually each museum had about 70 to 80 students show up and they'd filter through and work with materials and myself and a couple of other members of the staff and library special collections would explain the materiality of chinese books and artifacts to the students so it was really interactive but again space was a problem one sort of disastrous moment in this class is when we accidentally double booked a classroom and so about five minutes before the museum officially opened we had to take everything out of one room about 50 objects or so and then rush them down into the booth room which was much more luxurious for the students and they loved being in the booth room but it was much more stressful than we wanted this museum with generally priced priceless 8th century chinese scrolls to be uh so next slide uh now while we do work with a lot these large uh lecture courses the vast majority of teaching and special collections happens through close collaboration with faculty in small seminar settings last year for example i had the opportunity to co-design a course with dr bin wong and this course was entitled ucla library special collections in research and the purpose of this course which meant every other week in special collections was to explore how information in textual technologies for example like the index and a medieval manuscript should inform how we approach our research as scholars of history and literature this course had a couple of undergraduate students but it was really geared for students in their first or second years of graduate school to help them understand how they can use library special collections resources and materials to design research projects and in fact through working with these students in that course i not only was able to develop a relationship with 15 ucla graduate students in the sort of advisory capacity but three or four of them are now writing dissertations on materials in special collections and the seminar experience is fun not only because we serve faculty but we also help advanced graduate students design courses and so in this image on the right you can see these students with time manuscripts open in front of them and this is one of my greatest examples of sort of synergy is that i was rooting around in the basement of the stacks and i pulled out a box labeled tie manuscripts completely uncataloged and undescribed and well that same day a graduate student in buddhist art history contacted me and said i'd love to teach a special collections class my specialty is thai art and i thought well i have some unidentified manuscripts uh why don't you come in and we'll see what they are and so that graduate student came in helped me to identify the manuscripts and it turned out that there were beautifully illuminated manuscripts of a very famous thai story of framalai a sort of magical buddhist monk who goes to hell and redeems people and so three weeks later we had a class in her summer session where students were comparing these uh manuscripts to other manuscripts and doing a visual analysis of basically undiscovered ucla special collections materials and that's the sort of magic of seminar settings but again space is always a problem you can see in the seminar room we were in the table was only big enough to accommodate three of the 15 of these manuscripts that we have finally i'm going to talk a little bit in this next slide about community engagement in addition to being a teaching and research university ucla plays a vital role in community outreach and community building and so it's important as library special collections that we have opportunities to interact with people who have research interests other than standard academic research interests and so during 2019 2020 i contacted several different organizations in the area including the chinese historical society of southern california the ming history society uh and we had events at the library uh one of the most memorable events however was with a club uh dedicated to something called hima historical european martial arts and these people what they do is they read medieval manuscripts or early printed books that are essentially fencing manuals but not like a foil or epe fencing this is more like game of thrones style fencing and so these people are very active researchers and they had no idea that ucla because of our fine collection of early italian imprints has most of the important pre-1550s italian fencing and fighting manuals so after discussing with this group and gauging their interest we had a very sex successful day-long event in library special collections where i was able to present some of these materials and manuscripts to them and then it ended with a fun fencing demonstration in the sculpture garden and through that sort of outreach uh you discover that lots of these different communities are also home to ucla alumni they're also people who are interested in coming to use research materials and after this event uh four or five of them have been in the reading room several times to look at our materials so i think these three examples of large lectures smaller seminars as well as community events give you a sense that library special collections is an in a dynamic and impactful place in essence and i describe us this way to people quite frequently we're a humanities laboratory where if you're interested in the humanities and you'd like to experiment and dabble library special collections is a great place to go and start exploring and thinking about both the materiality of techs the history of los angeles and what a library has to offer beyond just normal research functions and so with that i'll conclude my comments and i look forward to your questions thanks so much devin um so last but definitely not least uh our colleague uh jennifer osorio who is the head of international and area studies and with whom library special collections collaborates with very regularly is going to talk about collaborative curriculum development wow that didn't really roll off the tongue very easily inside collaborative curriculum development take it away jen thanks chad hi everybody thank you for being here today i know it's kind of a slow news day with a lot of going on out there so we really appreciate your attendance and your attention and i'm really excited to talk about the kinds of collaborations that i and my team engage in with special collections and with our students and faculty um so i head up a department that is one of the three departments that makes up ucla's distinctive collections along with the east asian library and library special collections librarians and staff in my department in in the east asian library work to support ucla's goal of global engagement and to build collections and communities around our non-english language materials which comprise about 40 of our overall collections which is always a surprising number to people ucla has been a long time leader in the area studies and we support dozens of centers and departments and programs that research every corner of the world library special collections is a really important part of that process because they're the stewards of a variety of materials that originate and represent those communities and cultures from around the globe as my day job i'm also a librarian for latin american studies spanish and portuguese and the four ethnic studies programs and departments at ucla so that's chicano in chicana and central american studies african american studies american indian studies and asian american studies in addition to building and managing collections i also teach students in collaboration with their instructors about library resources and the research life cycle so today i'm going to be talking about how we in the library work with faculty to introduce students to primary source techs with a focus on undergraduate and first generation students next slide please jet so many of the students that i work with are the first generation in their families to go to college i myself am a first generation student and one of the joys of my work is introducing these students to the archive in a way that allows them to see themselves as part of it the library can be an intimidating place i think jimmy talked a little bit about that and special collections even more so so a lot of the time students are suffering from a little bit of an impostor syndrome when they come to a class in the library they are wondering about their place at ucla and feeling a little overwhelmed by the amount of information being thrown at them and by the high expectations that they're expected to meet so when we bring them into the library we often see them looking very nervous and unsure very few of them have used special collections in the past and they don't have a lot of experience with the kinds of materials that we call rare and unique so i see part of my job is demystifying both that process and our materials i emphasize that yes what we're looking at are rare and unique materials and that we have a custodial responsibility for those materials and we have a duty to be conscientious caretakers but that they're there for them to study and that ucla is a public institution that is open to anybody who's interested and that we care for these materials so that they can be used by them now and for future scholars this is really easy to demonstrate when we're able to connect our collections to student interests and even to their own history so one of my favorite classes that demonstrates this was one on asian american activism where students were able to interact with a variety of collections that brought to life the history they were studying in their classroom readings so they would go be in their classroom and they'd read about the creation of asian american studies and the scholars and activists that participated and then they came into the library and we were able to sit down and look through and read the manuscript notes in the papers of yuji jioka who was a long-time ucla lecturer i think some 27 years he taught at ucla and is credited as one of the people who coined the term asian american in 1968 and the excitement on their faces when they saw that name and recognized it and looked at the papers that he wrote and where he conceptualized and created the entire field of study was really something um special to see they read about the demonstrations and protests that activists and scholars participated in during the 1960s and 70s and then they touched and they interacted with pins and posters and even a giant banner from the collection of activist steve louis who was an active participant in those demonstrations and in that same class we had officers from the samahang pilipino student group which is one of the oldest student groups on campus they've been around since the early 1970s and they are act have been were active then and they continue to be active they have a really strong interest interest in their own history and maintain an archivist and historian as part of the group and they were able to look through the papers of their predecessors in the samahang filipino group and see how they worked with the community to build the filipino student community at ucla and to work on the education and the retention of filipino-american students going all the way back to that to that era and into the present representation matters because it gives students the confidence to know that they belong at ucla and they need that confidence because what we're working on is turning them into scholars next slide please jet so let me make sure yes um the programs that i work with are very highly interdisciplinary and they draw faculty from all over campus to teach increasingly these faculty want to introduce their students to primary sources the professor in this picture is dr bonnie taub she's the head of the latin american studies program and she's on the faculty in both anthropology and public health her particular interest is in shama shaman studies so she studies the use of traditional medicine in indigenous communities throughout latin america i've been working with her for over a decade going to many of her classes helping her students find the resources they need to write better papers mostly doing the sort of traditional core database instruction that we do now to teach students how to access journal articles and publish materials but about maybe six years ago she came to me and she asked me about primary sources and what we could do to introduce her students to those kinds of sources increasingly faculty want their students using primary text but they're not sure how to do it especially for undergraduates they've used small seminars with graduate students who already have a certain level of experience and knowledge and they want to expand that kind of training to undergraduates because more and more undergraduates are working on thesis and capstone projects and the deeper longer term kind of research that they're being required to do is really strengthen by using primary sources and they need to do it to graduate so when we started thinking about how to bring in those graduate students and how to expand it into the kinds of classes that she was teaching for that um the way i approach it is to talk to the undergraduate students about the way that they use both primary and secondary sources in their research and in their work i talk to new students about the research life cycle as a kind of conversation so new scholars come in the professors introduce them to the conversation around a particular topic and for a while their main job is to sort of eavesdrop on what is being said right so they're reading other scholars works their journal articles their books and then they're translating that back into their papers and their projects in a way that makes it clear to their professors that they understand that conversation and what's being said about their topic working with primary sources allows them to become participants in the conversation they get to work with materials that haven't been analyzed and they do the work themselves to create new knowledge around it so that's what jimmy was talking about when in his slides about the the different process the interpretation the analysis the inferring that happens when we work with primary sources so we do that in these classes with undergraduates like this one and we've seen the results in the number of students who continue to engage with library special collections including several that have gone on to masters and phd programs to directly work with materials they were introduced to during sessions that they attended as undergraduates early in the quarter i worked with students sorry i lost my chair for a second um to find the key secondary sources that they needed to learn about their topic once those skills are in place we bring them into special collections and introduce them to primary texts that they then learn how to analyze and interpret and then they can add to that conversation through their original work the students walk out of these sessions with a new confidence in their abilities as scholars because now they've learned the language of research and they can contribute their own voices i should also say that while being away from our physical materials during this pandemic has been really challenging we've managed to continue doing this kind of remote learning via zoom so last quarter jimmy and i collaborated on a session for one of dr tobb's classes where we use digitized works both hours and other institutions and breakout rooms to do an activity similar to the ones he talked about earlier and similar to what we do when we're in person physically it worked really well actually i was kind of surprised i was really nervous going into it but it worked much better than i expected we're going to be very excited to be back in proximity to our physical collections but i think that um we've learned a lot about how to use technology and how to combine technology with those physical materials and um with the digitized text that we'll be able to bring back to the kind of hybrid space that we're developing in the classrooms that jet showed you such as annotation tools to market digital versions and things that look like that that we can't really do with physical materials uh next slide another thing that i'm excited about with the new classrooms is simply the amount of space that we're going to have our current spaces are fantastic for small seminars and will continue to serve that function but most upper division undergraduate classes of the kind that come want to come into special collections are larger often 20 to 30 35 students maybe even bigger and in the past we've sometimes managed to do those sessions as uh devon pointed out in other spaces or by splitting the classes up and um having them come at different times but um none of those other spaces are really intended for instruction so they have to be adapted and they don't meet all of the needs these classrooms will be especially built for primary source instruction with the space and the technology and the flexibility to really maximize that kind of instruction so when we need to roll out a chinese scroll like the one in this picture or more specifically for the areas that i work in something like a facsimile or a fancy copy of the oldest surviving book written in the americas the dresden codex we can look at the entirety of the work the dresden codex is um the original in the saxon state library but we have a very nice facsimile there is an exact replica and it's 12 feet long and laid out like an accordion with images on both sides it's a pictorial work so it's meant to be seen in a folded out way sort of like paintings on a wall and that's something that i can't really do in our current classrooms at least not if i want to have anything else to show the students if it was the only thing we could do it like these pictures show and just lay it all out but we're usually showing a variety of materials and having them interact with a variety of materials so we can't do that with the codex as it is now in the news classroom we'll be able to lay it out we'll be able to stand it up so that students can see both sides of the codex so that they can walk around it and interact together with it and really um explore the material in the way the original creators meant for it to be seen and read the history of the maya people see the astronomical tables that are contained in the codex and really maximize our time with it so i'm really excited to be a part of the work that we're doing for primary source instruction in library special collections uh and i am really happy that you all came today to hear us talk about it and i want to thank you again for that and now i will turn it back to my colleagues and for any questions that you may have thank you thanks so much john yeah i want to um just also echo what you said which is that you know we benefit from a lot of resources here at ucla and i also just want to make sure that we thank our donors not just for being here with us today but many of those resources come from the enthusiastic support of our donor base so thank you for being here today and thank you for your continued support so now we're going to open it up to a q a i'll be go ahead i'll be moderating the q a and it looks like we have two questions that i'm going to answer really quick um so two questions from nina who asked does this take the place of the current llc lobby that answers no this is actually an expansion to the llc footprint so the space that we are going to be constructing is actually going to be just outside of the entrance to library special collections and it's going to increase our square footage uh dramatically um and then the other question from nina is will the tables and chairs be movable for flexible space use yes active spaces or active learning needs active spaces um and so all these tables will not only be flexible and be able to move around the entirety of the space but they'll also be adjustable height because we found that some interactions with students they really just want to be mobile and moving around and you can do a lot more you can be a lot more engaged with materials if you're not uh you know getting up and then sitting down and then getting up and then sitting down and so we want to we want to really encourage the sort of circulation um and browsing um that a lot of students really benefit from with these materials and ideally um and we we haven't purchased the furniture yet but um we do have an idea of what we want to purchase ideally the chairs that we have for the space will be able to be pushed under the tables uh when we lift the tables up so that if we have a sort of event um that's not really like a sitting event uh it can be uh we we'll just say that we won't run into an issue that we have sometimes in the library which is where i spend half an hour moving chairs before an event um okay so the next question is from jessica pixar this question is for devin jessica would like to learn more about how the pop-up museums that you mentioned were experienced by the students as well as what your own role was at these museum sessions great thanks for the question jessica um so these museums were sort of well it was sort of crazy because uh i selected at the beginning of the quarter about 100 or so different objects and the reason this was able to happen is because my phd's in chinese history and so i had the foundation and knowledge where i could select these sorts of materials and so i wrote museum labels for everything uh and then we set them out in sort of three flights and the students uh really seemed to enjoy them and so they were designed like didactic museums with a sort of chronology so they'd begin at one end and you know there'd be examples of paper early printing and so every museum told a little story related to the course content and the history of the chinese book and so the museum there were about two or three library special collections staff members there including myself supervising them clear materials and also making sure the students had an opportunity to get their hands on it see how things worked and then we would explain any sorts of questions they had also prior to each museum i shared with dr goldman a handful of prompts and questions that i thought would be helpful for guiding the students through the activity of looking so it was a very engaged sort of looking and questions would range from things like how many different types of paper do you think you can find in this particular museum or uh in the last section it was all dedicated to maoist communist china and so i'd ask questions about uh you know how do the people look in different posters and who do you think is a capitalist and who do you think is a communist and so the museums were sort of freewheeling in the sense that the students were only lightly supervised and they were encouraged to touch things but staff was there creating i would say a pretty intensively curated experience so it was the illusion of autonomy but we also made sure the materials were safe and the students got what we wanted them to get out of each museum thanks so much devon jessica i hope that answered your question yes excellent okay so uh danelle moon has a question uh janelle would like to know how we accommodate huge undergraduate courses of over 300 students for example um so uh in the past danelle we've done a couple of different things to accommodate these larger classes um the class that devin and i worked with muriel mcclendon to facilitate a couple years running previously when we were in person we actually went to the class um because at that time i believe the i think there was over 200 students if i'm if i'm not mistaken uh so that was just like far too much of a volume of students to get into our limited spaces oh yes thank you muriel's saying it was 240. um so devin and i brought some materials as well as a lecture to the class itself so it wasn't necessarily as hands-on as we'd like to our instruction sessions to be um but it definitely uh com like combined with the uh in uh the exhibit that we built uh that the students came to visit in person in library special collections we feel we somewhat provided a similar experience um and then we've also done uh a sort of thing where we've staggered visits so we worked with um another instructor in the history department who was teaching the global history of feminism uh and the past time that she taught that class it was i believe 120 students that we split up into two visits of 60 students and then those groups of 60 students then got split up again because we have two spaces that can accommodate about 30 students within the library however these spaces are primarily not used for instruction um they're used for presentations and um other sort of like outreach events and events like that so they're not ideal for instruction but we can use them in a pinch and i have a feeling that with this new space because we can accommodate at least 60 students um so that for those larger those larger undergraduate survey courses um we could do something very similar where we split the group into a visit over two days and then split those groups into smaller groups that work on different sorts of the the active learning activity um during their visit and it usually includes like an orientation and an intro to primary source literacy and then a hands-on portion where they work in small groups to look at materials interrogate investigate engage and then develop additional research questions um that they might want to uh you know continue along in their line of inquiry which usually involves other librarians in uh in the library which is one of the greatest things um about the work that we do in library special collections is it is inherently interdisciplinary and collaborative um so the other question we did have another question that i wanted to speak to so natasha asked how can we find out which items in special collections have been digitized for zoom classes and the answer to that is sadly we are unable to do digitization on demand for classes because we are not on site we have been working remotely since march of last year and it is uh it has affected all aspects of the work um but we are really lucky to benefit from a number of previously digitized collections and so um in the q a function natasha i hope you're able to to navigate over there i posted the links to two digital resources that we use regularly when we teach one is the ucla digital library and the other is one of my favorite resources for digital content relating to ucla and it is a site where you can access over uh 10 000 images from ucla archives that show the history of ucla the visual history of ucla over almost a century so i put those links in the q a function as well so judith cantor asked if there's any possibility of digitizing these pop-up museums that's a really that's a really good question devin do you have um thoughts on that um well i'll have to go and proofread the labels uh kind of a kind of a joke but that's how fast we we did them the first time is i found typos you know as the students were in there but that being said uh i'm in the process of editing everything and creating an item list and so when that's available i'll be sure to make put that on the special collections website so people can take a look at the sort of survey of chinese history in terms of the objects themselves uh i don't think we'll in the near term be able to digitize anything but that being said there are lots of existing digital um versions of these from places like the library of congress which has a massive chinese book collection uh harvard yanjing library and so you could essentially redesign this for online learning just with an object list excellent thanks devin let's see all right robin katz would like to hear more about the intro to primary source literacy that's part of our standard welcome so i'm going to open up that answer that is definitely jimmy's arena thank you chad yeah i think uh we try to do with the introduction to kind of archives for primary resources instruction with students that's really making them first um well providing background right and information about what archives are what special collections is um because i think a lot of you know primarily undergraduate students you know typically are not aware of you know special collection sometimes existing on campus or you know are not aware of the resources that are available to them and so it's really um again making them feel comfortable and welcome and um learning about archives you know what special connections is and really the mission and goal of uh connecting it with the overall mission called the eca library right of uh providing these views for them but you know having them think critically about you know these resources biases that are expressed and um i think you know for a lot of students again they they receive these you know these construction sessions very well i think you know they're very engaged and they enjoy going through materials or looking at materials you know in this case whether that's physically or right now digitally right um that perhaps they can see themselves reflected in i think one of the things with i think primary source instruction that we're trying to do is really um have students really connect with materials or items that they identify with in terms of like the communities that they might be coming from or however they identify so it's also selecting material intentionally to really reflect perhaps your background is something that they can connect on a personal level as well so um i think it works well and let me put this on the chat because i know um one of the things that we've done also is um and this was done before i came in here in june i started my position in june 2020 i'm not calling some special collections they created this short video on what special collections and archives are so i'm just going to put in the chat quickly here probably take a look at it and it's just something that you know i send to the professors that they can share with their students prior to having our instruction sessions so that students can be aware of what to expect when we're going to you know from the searching section themselves and so especially right now is the creation of this video given the remote environment it also makes sense to you know have this type of resource available and i know we're working on another video on like what archives are or you know how to refining it and whatnot so i think we're just you know making it feasible for students to really understand kind of these concepts right that can be you know sometimes very dense and um and again especially if a lot of them are not aware of it so it's really kind of just centering the students needs and their interests right and trying to make them feel welcome as i mentioned and just making something that they know they enjoy and that hopefully enables them to continue to visit special collections in the future beyond these instruction sessions thanks jimmy i also think it's important to note that one of the um one of the issues of the teaching space limitations that we have currently in the building is that most of the teaching spaces that we utilize are nowhere near special collections geographically and i think that it's really important especially with students who have uh who've never visited special collections before a very important part of the orientation is to walk them into the space and to sort of encourage them to see the lobby itself um where we always have uh reference staff working as long as we are open um and to understand that uh well i'll put it this way i can't tell you how many times i walk up to the main entry doors of library special collections and there's a small group of people saying i don't know are we allowed to go in it's so special i don't know i don't think we're allowed in there you know and i i have to say please please come and visit us um so really just bringing students into that physical space um and letting them know that the person behind the desk is there to help them letting them know that you know we are there um to help them to answer questions and that there is the saying that i have as there are no wrong questions and there are no right answers um and so it's been really hard during this remote period to to foster that sort of encouragement of our physical spaces and and to to build that kind of understanding and access um into the instruction and so the the video does a little bit of that but i also i think that this classroom space being front and center right outside of where special collections is where we're engaging these materials and we are um you know encouraging students to to work hands-on with these materials and then collaborate with one another i think it's really going to help with that visibility jen did you have something you want to do yeah i just wanted to add that as you saw from the schematics in the classrooms that jet showed it was a very deliberate move to put glass walls in so that the instruction could be visible and so that people could see people like them students like them working with these materials and so we could really get it out there front center and we really didn't want it to be hidden behind walls and not not be visible so that's definitely a deliberate move right and then we have one last question um from liza who asks where were the periodicals and computers that were on a level when the expansion happens where would they go and will the reference librarians stay in the current space so yes um just a note on the location if you're familiar with a level um the the classroom is really only displacing stacks currently and so these are the stacks that house uh current periodicals um and i think one of the issues with current periodicals being located on the a level is that um they're not necessarily in the high use portions of the library and also there is a reading room a general reference reading room on the first floor that many students uh it's like the first thing they see when they come into the library so i believe that those current periodicals are being moved to that space where i think it makes more sense it's going to be in a more high traffic area and those materials get more use and then the the special question space is going to be in that footprint the computer terminals are on the east side of the building those aren't going anywhere and the staff who uh who staff the reference desk um are also not going anywhere so we're just we're gonna kind of displace them shelving and we're gonna build a um a very large flexible active learning space in that in that spot so if that's it for questions it doesn't look like we have any other additional questions again thank you so much for joining us um if you have any additional questions i'm happy to answer any logistical questions about the space or share any of the images i know we're really excited to have the support of library administration to build this space and i know that many of my colleagues are slightly jealous that we are getting our own dedicated teaching space for library special collections i'm happy to answer any questions um about furniture or tech and i can also forward any questions that you have to my colleagues but thank you so much for joining us and we hope to see you in person again very soon thank you
2021-01-28