UCC Library: Special Collections' & Archives' Subject Support: Academic Staff: Why Use Special Collections & Archives?

Teaching & Learning

Our diverse collections of rare and unique printed books and manuscripts can be used to support teaching within the University.

Teaching sessions can be conducted independent of Special Collections & Archives' staff within Special Collections & Archives' spaces or, if requested Special Collections & Archives' staff can provide introductory information for using rare books and manuscript archives or specific "show and tell" explorations which draw on individual items of interest to enhance the learning experience. We also help to deliver hands-on group sessions with material from our unique collections of archives, manuscripts, rare books and objects.

In each case it is difficult for us to provide in-depth training and support on a one-to one basis without prior notice. Please contact the relevant person to set up a session tailored to your needs:

Elaine Harrington (Special Collections)
Emer Twomey & Emma Horgan (Archives)

For Your Consideration

Using Primary Sources: Hands-on Instructional Exercises by Anne Bahde (Editor); Heather Smedberg (Editor); Mattie Taormina (Editor)
Call Number: TR 025.5 BAHD
ISBN: 9781610694346
Publication Date: 2014
If teaching with primary sources this book provides fresh, adaptable, and easy-to-implement primary source literacy exercises to assist with teaching and engage students.
Past or Portal? Enhancing Undergraduate Learning Through Special Collections and Archives by Eleanor Mitchell; Peggy Seiden; Suzy Taraba
Call Number: TR 025.5 MITC
ISBN: 9780838986103
Publication Date: 2012
Special Collections and Archival materials offer opportunities for student learning through direct engagement with rare or unique items. An increasing number of undergraduate courses are taking advantage of these materials for assignments, experiences and activities that draw upon or incorporate local or unusual items, primary sources or material culture.
Educational Programs: Innovative Practices for Archives and Special Collections by Kate Theimer
Call Number: TR 021 THEI
ISBN: 9781442249523
Publication Date: 2015
This book explores how archivists and special collections librarians in organisations of different sizes and types have approached the challenges in creating effective educational programs to prepare the next generation of researchers and advocates for archives.

Special Collections Engaging With UCC's Community

2023: Read the summer edition of the Office of the Vice President for Learning & Teaching in UCC to discover how we connect with groups of Transition Year students, 3rd year undergraduates studying English and MA students studying Medieval History. "Bringing Special Collections and Archives into the Classroom" (pp.19-20).

Left: The Salvage Press printing of Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of Poor People from being a Burthen to their Parents, Or the Country, and for Making them Beneficial to the Publick. Accompanied by a suite of nine new poems by Jessica Traynor; lithographs scratched into the stone by David O'Kane; introduced by Andrew Carpenter. (2017)

Top right: CACSSS' Corvinus Transition Year students examining original and facisimile maps of Cork from Civitates orbis Terrarum (1618). The activity builds on an earlier 2020 online exhibition by students completing the MA in Medieval History.

Lower right: ‘Abbey of Dromahaire, Co Leitrim’ from Francis Grose's The Antiquities of Ireland (1791). This print was used in creating an online student exhibition by MA students of History: Franciscans in Medieval Ireland: Sources.

2017: Listen to Elaine Harrington, UCC Library's Special Collections Librarian discussing how Special Collections works with academic departments on Shush! Sounds from UCC Library. Read the complementary blog post to the interview on The River-side.

Presentations on Using Special Collections & Archives

We consider what guides us in teaching & learning and how that can impact any person coming to Special Collections. For this we refer to Bass (1999):

Which learning outcome is the one thing that students would retain from this [module] after leaving?
Could I honestly say that I spent the most amount of time in the [module] teaching to the goal I valued most?

Part of our teaching philosophy is that we are committed to sharing our current knowledge and desire to continue to learn. To this end we present at conferences and seminars.

A Guide Not A Sage: Respect Not Fear For Undergraduates Using Special Collections
Paper at conference: CONUL 2015: Innovation & Evolution.
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Lecturers are now deliberately engaging with Special Collections’ material with specific methodologies or for specific purposes. Prof. Pádraig Ó Macháin (Modern Irish) created three research-focused hands-on approach modules dealing with manuscript material and the mechanisms for manuscript research for 2nd and 3rd year undergraduates. These students are familiar with the printed book but less so with handwritten manuscript items. Dr Edel Semple (English) co-ordinates a problem-based enquiry module for 1st year undergraduates which focuses on the short story. These students use UCC Library’s short story collections to create magazines with entries on ‘the future of the short story’ and ‘a day in the life of a writer.’ CIT’s Crawford College of Art & Design 1st year Fine Art and Contemporary Applied Art students visit Special Collections through CorkPAL to view UDCs as physical objects. As the physical objects have a presence that no reproduction or digitised object can approach viewing and interacting with the items informs their artistic endeavours. When each group visits Special Collections librarian and lecturer work together to show the students procedures particular for Special Collections, non-Dewey classification schemes and items important for that module’s focus. There are difficulties for library staff and users alike which must be managed when such groups come to Special Collections. Library staff must know what resources users seek and how best to direct the user without interfering in the research process itself as the library staff members are guides not sages. Users may find the level of care and procedures required intimidating unless they realise the reasons for which these procedures exist. This paper explores the type and level of engagement required from module creation to assignment submission.
Mapping Sound 'Off the Map' at UCC: The Potential of Collaboration between the Library's Special Collections and the Musicology Department
Joint paper with Dr Jillian Rogers, Music Dept., UCC at conference: CONUL 2017: Inspiring & Supporting Research.
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From the English Market to Merchant’s Quay, Cork City has a rich sonic history that musicology postgraduate students examine in UCC’s “Sound Studies” module. Similarly, UCC Library’s Special Collections has a unique collection of sources that, in encouraging consideration of intersections between history and geography, provides clues as to what locations in Cork sounded like in the past. In the last decade, libraries’ Special Collections have moved away from ‘show and tell’ presentations to more conscious engagement with academics, as evidenced by Bahde et al and Mitchell et al. At UCC, this trend has manifested in undergraduates using Special Collections in new ways: research-led teaching on Irish manuscripts and problem-based enquiry for studying short stories (Harrington, 2015). This “Sound Studies” module continues this trend by illustrating how a symbiotic relationship between researchers in Special Collections, music, and digital humanities, permits primary sources to offer a means to study, create, and map historical sounds. As such, this module provides a model for how libraries might become more embedded in teaching and learning within their universities.

In this presentation, we address the opportunities for research and teaching that UCC’s “Sound Studies” module has facilitated, focusing on the fruitful collaboration between the University’s Library Special Collections and its Musicology Department. This collaboration has enabled students to consider how music, sound, and sound practices have shifted historically in Cork through examination of UCC Library’s collection of maps, almanacs, tourist guides, and visitor accounts. Significantly, this interdisciplinary module offers an experimental space for students, librarians, and researchers to contemplate how primary sources shape the production of historical knowledge, as well as the creation of historically-informed soundscapes. In so doing, this module – a pilot for a larger project entitled “Mapping Sound in Cork City”- holds the potential to enable new, creative ways of addressing historical questions.
Venn Diagrams: When Special Collections Meets Information Literacy
Pecha Kucha presentation at CONUL Teaching & Learning Seminar. 10 November 2015.
Resources for Art History in UCC Library’s Special Collections & Archives
Presentation at a joint seminar between the Library Association of Ireland's Rare Books Group and the Irish Association of Art Historians, 19 May 2017.