Teaching Support

Students are looking at documents in the archives and special collections area within the Barker Research Library.

What can be more rewarding for students than to experience original documents or rare books for the first time? If you've had the experience yourself, do you remember the thrill of handling a centuries-old charter or seeing that first edition of your favourite author right in front of you? We are keen for our students to have the opportunity to experience object-based learning for themselves.

The advantages to using archives and special collections in your teaching can be to increase students'

• Confidence in handling original materials and using archives and special collections in their future research
• Awareness that not everything is available online or in digital format
• Understanding of the materiality of original documents, manuscripts and books, and how social, economic and technological processes have shaped their production
• Knowledge about the pros and cons of using original materials or their digital surrogates

Our services

Our academic teaching support takes different forms and can either take place on-site or virtually.

We can:

• Facilitate or lead display classes
• Provide skills training
• Support student assignments using archives and special collections
• Help you locate online resources either from our own collections or elsewhere if that is a better option for our course
• Support summer study schools

Please get in touch with us at an early stage to arrange a meeting to discuss the options and to check our availability.

You can find out more about our archives and special collections in this guide to the collections.

We also offer teaching support through our Museums, Galleries and Exhibition services.