Celebrating 50 Years of UMBC Special Collections: Digital Promotion and Outreach

A screenshot of UMBC Special Collections Instagram page

 

    For the Spring 2023 semester, my internship is stationed in UMBC’s Special Collections

department of the Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery. Very often, I’m asked by my peers,

“What’s so special about Special Collections?” That is, what is it about the materials

housed in this department that set them apart from things you could find elsewhere?

According to our website, Special Collections “serves to collect, house, preserve, and

make accessible scholarly collections of materials that are original, rare, unique, fragile,

historical, and archival.” During the Fall 2021 semester as an undergraduate student

assistant, I got the chance to familiarize myself with the vast assortment of materials

that can be found in Special Collections, particularly the endless amounts of

photographs we have while conducting biographical research about the photographers

who took them.

    As intriguing as these materials are, unfortunately, not many know of their existence. I

had no idea about Special Collections until I started working there! Moreover, you don’t

have to be a specific type of person (say, a historian, for example) to make use of what

Special Collections has to offer. Students, faculty, and external entities from an array of

disciplinary backgrounds visit Special Collections for professional, educational, and

recreational purposes. To celebrate its 50th anniversary, UMBC Special Collections

aims to increase public outreach by showcasing the diverse ways in which our archives

have been utilized with the intent of encouraging more people to engage with them —

this is where my job comes in.

    As a graduate intern, my role is to coordinate all of the promotional content that has

been prepared for this project, as well as contribute some content of my own. Most

notable is the establishment of our very own blog, dedicated to showcasing the

research efforts of Special collections staff, UMBC community members, and more. In

addition to this is regular updates on our Instagram page, where we promote our blog

postings, any exhibitions that are up for display in the gallery, and day-to-day reading

room content of interest like our #PhotobookFriday series. In order to prepare myself for

the role, I first had to learn the best practices for producing and disseminating digital

content, and then how to implement them for Special Collections’ social media.

My internship advisor, Lindsay Loeper (Reference and Instruction Archivist), helped me

by providing articles to read about the process of developing a system for social media

publication, as well as examples of established library and special collections blogs that

could serve as a model for what we hope to achieve with our own blog. I gained a lot of

insight from these materials: they conveyed the importance of deconstructing the barrier

between archives and the communities in which they exist by changing the intimidating

perception many have of these institutions. This is done through methods such as

creating an inviting environment for prospective visitors, connecting with diverse

communities, and emphasizing a commitment to service to the public. Accessibility is

particularly essential to ensure that there are no hindrances to engaging with the

content. Adding closed captions to videos and alt-text to images — processes that are

often overlooked — can be the determining factor of whether or not someone can/will

take interest in whatever you’ve posted. Speaking from personal experience, these

processes can be tedious, but I think achieving a sense of inclusion ultimately makes

the effort worthwhile.

    Going forward, I am excited to see the different projects Special Collections will share

with the public to show off how special our archives really are! 

What I’ve Learned from Updating the Colonial Maryland Lesson Plan at the MCHC

 

            
            Since starting my internship at the Maryland Center for History and Culture, I have primarily been working on updating the colonial Maryland lesson plans, as well as giving tours about colonial Maryland to elementary age students. During the process of researching colonial Maryland and the state’s learning standards for history at the elementary level, I have learned that, while the state of Maryland has done a lot to make their standards for history better, institutions need to take diverse audiences into consideration when they are telling these histories.

            The first major change I had to make to the lesson plan was to the language, as much of the lesson plan still used the word “slave” instead of “enslaved,” or referred to all self-liberated African Americans as “runaways.” I also chose to add vocabulary words, such as “colonization,” “indigenous,” and “Piscataway.” It surprised me at first that the lesson plan did not include these words, but my supervisor then informed me that it had not been fully updated since the 1990s and had not been edited at all since the mid-2000s. While these vocabulary changes may seem small to some, it is incredibly important for children to be introduced to these words that represent marginalized people, along with larger historical concepts.

            The next major change, and the most difficult, was going through each section of the lesson plan, aligning it with more current state standards for history, making sure the activities made sense, and were inclusive. For example, there was very little mention of indigenous people and how their society functioned before and after the arrival of Europeans, and there was virtually no mention of the daily lives of enslaved people. So, I decided to start with cutting the material that was redundant and adding material about enslaved and indigenous peoples. There was also some information that was simply wrong, such as the argument that enslavement and indentured servitude were comparable practices, which could not be further from the truth. I had to go through each section and make sure to differentiate between the enslavement and indentured servitude.

            The last task, which still needs to be completed, is updating the travelling trunk that corresponds with the lesson plan. As the trunk stands right now, it includes clothes and toys that colonial children would use, along with books and activities for the children. The most significant changed I plan on making is the addition of wampum and cowrie shells in each trunk in order to represent the experiences of enslaved and indigenous peoples. I also found children’s books that discuss indigenous people of the mid-Atlantic pre and post contact, along with a book that discusses the experiences of enslaved children.

This project has shown me that it takes immense effort to create lesson plans that are both understandable and inclusive for children, especially when much of history teaching is neither of those things. I have high hopes for the travelling trunks, and I look forward to seeing the end result.

Teaching About Colonial Maryland: How the Present Complicates the Past

 

    
            My internship this semester is with the Maryland Center for History and Culture (MCHC) as the Colonial Maryland Education Intern. I came across this internship at the end of last semester as I was casually browsing what internship opportunities might fit my interests. I was planning on trying to complete my internship in the summer, but this internship at the MCHC seemed very compelling, so I applied for it on a whim and eventually was hired. My role as an education intern revolves around the colonial Maryland tour for children at the MCHC, along with the colonial Maryland Traveling Trunk. The Traveling Trunk is a trunk full of objects and lesson plans that are sent to schools to help teachers teach lessons about colonial Maryland. My job is to rewrite the lessons plans in the trunk and update the objects because they have not been overhauled since, I believe, the 1980s, although there have been small edits here and there.

            My internship lasts about 100 hours, and within those hours, I am supposed to completely update the travelling trunk and help give tours about colonial Maryland to school groups that visit the MCHC. So far, most of what I have been working on is editing the colonial Maryland lesson plan in the travelling trunk, which is a massive task on its own. Much of the language in the lesson plan is completely outdated, along with the state’s learning standards that the lessons are supposed to correspond with. Some of the language issues are the use of the word “slave” instead of “enslaved,” or the unserious tone when discussing why enslaved people ran away from their enslavers. There is also an activity that requires the students to squeeze together in a small space to pretend like they are on a ship coming to the colonies, which I feel is unnecessary for health/sanitation reasons and it feels insensitive to do that when activities and situation of that nature are heavily associated with the Middle Passage. One of the biggest changes I want to make is the addition of the vocabulary word “colonization,” which shockingly was not already in the lesson plan. I also want to add “Indigenous People,” and “Piscataway,” along more information about Native American people in general. Adding these vocabulary words with better fit the state’s standards for elementary social studies because there is now a whole section the recommends teaching students about power disparities between different nations and peoples and encourages students to acknowledge the ways that certain people have overpowered and done inexcusable things to other people.

            So far, the internship has been a great learning opportunity to look into the field of museum education. I have also had the opportunity to talk to people who work with collections and exhibit design, which has been very interesting. I am also trying to talk to the person in charge of publishing the museum’s magazine because I think that would be interesting to learn more about. Overall, I am glad I chose this internship, and I am having a great time so far.