“Diving into Archives!” explores how to build partnerships between regional archival collections and K-12 educators to encourage place-based learning and historical thinking. Programs that teach students how to work with primary sources have great impact on students’ information literacy and archival research skills. A recent assessment of the Library of Congress’ Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) Regional program, which works to improve LOC primary sources in a variety of educational settings, reported that:

81 percent of TPS educators said that their students are better able to do research because of their TPS-related teaching. 87 percent said that their students are better able to analyze primary sources to identify point of view and evaluate bias and 77 percent said their students are better able to explore their personal curiosity in the archives.

In today’s hybrid information environments, students might encounter primary sources on their phone, or on a website, or in a physical archival collection. Effective navigation of these environments, and the interpretation, evaluation, and use of primary sources, requires a number of competencies. In a 2024 report on teaching US history in secondary schools, The American Historical Association notes that the increase in document-based inquiry has produced “collateral damage” where “sources come disembodied from their original contexts and in heavily excerpted formats” (p.104).

As primary source educators, archival studies scholars and instructional archivists are well-prepared to teach aspects of literacy that are unique to primary sources. In fact, the importance of preserving context is threaded throughout the SAA’s Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy. Working with K-12 educators would help to build a foundation for collaborative exploration in at least two areas of practice-informed research: a) how to teach students critical, multimodal skills and literacies required for evaluating born-digital and digitized archival sources and navigating complex information environments and b) use an understanding of current practices to inform how archives can best deliver primary source content, including thematic lesson plans with integrated sources, for educators.

Project Team

Alex Chassanoff, Project Director

Elliott Kuecker, Archival Literacy Curriculum Lead

Lyric Grimes, Doctoral student and graduate researcher

Gabi Benedit, Masters student and graduate researcher