The Mervyn H. Sterne Library at UAB hosts UAB Digital Collections (www.mhsl.uab.edu/dc/), including oral histories, student-created ethnographic films, images, letters, and other documents related to medical history; StoryCorps interviews, and archives of a number of UAB publications.  Although we don’t have a special collections department, we also have stand-alone physical items that could be incorporated into different courses.

I’m interested in working with arts and humanities faculty on specific student assignments and/or digital humanities projects using the digital and physical material in our collections.  Students can of course use the material as primary sources in traditional papers, but I’m really interested in students combining archives and digital collections to and technology to present their own interpretations of the subject matter.

For this THATCamp session, I’d like to talk about how others are using library archives and digital collections at their institutions and brainstorm ideas about assignments/projects that can incorporate this material.

Starter questions:
How might different disciplines in the humanities use library archives and digital collections?  What are project ideas?

What are the best platforms to host student projects that incorporate material from archives and digital collections?