Setting up for Professor Alicia Walker’s seminar, “Building Bryn Mawr.” (Photograph by the author.)

Although I’m not teaching a course this semester, I’m still getting to spend time in the classroom, sharing the Greenfield Digital Center’s resources with students and faculty across disciplines. Together we look not only at the growing array of resources Greenfield supports on the web – collegewomen.org, Black at Bryn Mawr, and Greenfield’s own collections exhibits – but also at materials housed in the College Archives: scrapbooks, photograph albums, papers, and more. Some classes are an obvious choice for a Special Collections visit, such as Professor Alicia Walker’s seminar, “Building Bryn Mawr,” where students are studying the early stages of development of Bryn Mawr’s campus, exploring the ways in which the founders of Bryn Mawr understood architecture as a key aspect of the institution’s image and aspirations. But I’ve also worked with faculty to integrate archives materials with class sessions on race and photography, or storytelling and digital narratives. If you ask me, the possibilities are endless!

Hampton and its Students (1878), just one of the many volumes on education in Bryn Mawr’s rare book collections, pulled for Grace Pusey ’15 and the Black at Bryn Mawr Fall Workshop. (Photograph by the author.)

I also continue to research Bryn Mawr College Special Collections’ own resources on the history of education. From rare books to manuscript holdings, there’s so much to explore.

Later this year, I’ll be writing up my experiences supporting archives use in the classroom and with the Praxis independent study program for my AHA 2016 talk, “Archives Praxis: Supporting Independent Study and Experiential Learning in Special Collections” as part of the panel Teaching History Through Archives, organized by Thai Jones, the Lehman Curator for American History at Columbia University Libraries. For more on that panel, visit the AHA 2016 digital program, now online here. And if you are a BiCo faculty member or student group interested in making a special visit to the College Archives, email greenfieldhwe@brynmawr.edu – I’d love to plan with you!