A new digital project introduces students to a university library and provides them with an opportunity to familiarize themselves with how to conduct academic research at the post-secondary level.
"Humanities Research in the Digital Age" spans five interactive modules and is the work of archivist Sarah Glassford and history professor Gregg French in collaboration with learning specialist Mark Lubrick with funding through a Digital Open and Online Learning Grant from the Office of Open Learning.
"The project helps humanities students to realize that a lot of what they want to do or need to do for their courses has not changed at all in the digital age," says Dr. Glassford. "Coming back from COVID, where everything was so online heavy and remote and asynchronous, we wanted to find ways to help them re-engage with libraries as a physical place and with the fact that, at least in our home discipline of history, older sources are still some of the best sources and many only exist in print."
In short, there are benefits to going into the Leddy Library building and browsing the stacks.
"Even prior to the pandemic, librarians and faculty noticed a decline in the number of students using the library's physical resources," says Dr. French. "This trend to digital research was accelerated by the pandemic. The current generation is being immersed in this digital space or this ongoing digital age, if you will."
Students entering university may not have had contact with libraries or librarians, particularly at the secondary level, since many new high schools in Ontario are built without libraries.
"So it's a way to open that door a little bit, to say, this is what research is in the humanities," says French. "Also, we are giving them a tour of the library as both the brick-and-mortar physical space and as a digital space, with information about all the resources and support offered by librarians."
The decision to film a lot of footage in different locations around the library was very deliberate.
"It helped to demystify the library's spaces, and in my own case, get some really neat footage in the archives, which most people have never entered," says Glassford.
Students reviewed the draft scripts, video locations, and tested each module and quiz.
"We had student feedback from almost the very beginning, and we always asked, does that make sense?''' she says. "It really has been piloted every step of the way."
The team hired communications, media and film students Sean O'Neil, Gwyneth Roy, and Shreyans Vasantbhai Suhagiya to handle the video production and history students Ronni Desjardins, Eric Lutz, Kaitlyn Drake, Riley Prescott, and Anastasia Kulaga as actors in the videos. French is the host and guide in each module, which range in length from two to just over seven minutes.
Students must complete the first module before they move on to the second one.
"We were quite strategic in the way we introduce students to the library and what is offered by the library. So, the first module is: what is a university library? Module 2 is ways in which you can start your research, and then three goes into secondary sources and four goes into primary sources and then the fifth video is navigating physical and digital archives.
"So almost the way in which a humanist, particularly in history, but in other fields as well, would go about approaching a research project," says French "And along the way we talk about how the library and the library staff can provide support to the students."
At the end of each module, students complete a short true-or-false quiz of five questions and submit their responses.
"During the winter semester, I am integrating these modules into my first-year online course, in the hopes that other faculty members will begin to duplicate this process in the fall of 2025," says French.
He will also get more feedback from his students and make any refinements. The modules will be available for humanities faculty to use in their intersession and summer semester courses. In the fall, they should have a full roll out to first-year courses in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.
The modules are also available to the wider university community via the Leddy Library website.
