For Faculty

MARBL seeks to partner with faculty to transform teaching and research at Emory. One of MARBL’s most important goals is to incorporate Emory’s rich research collections into the undergraduate and graduate experience.

There are many ways to incorporate primary sources into a class. Below you can find examples ranging from reserves to digital projects. Please contact the Coordinator for Research Services to discuss scheduling class visits to MARBL and to explore options for particular classes. (Naomi Nelson or call 404.727.6871)

We strongly encourage faculty planning to send students to MARBL to contact the Coordinator of Research Services to discuss the assignment. We want to make sure that the materials are available and that our staff has the information they need to provide the appropriate level of assistance.

We have found that students have better and more productive research experience in MARBL if they receive an introduction to our collections and services before they first come to MARBL to use materials. These introductions can be tailored to the specifics of the assignment and need not take up an entire class period.

View a list of the classes that have visited MARBL in recent years

An introduction to primary sources

Many instructors want their students to have an introduction to primary sources related to their class. Students come to MARBL to see rare books, manuscripts, ledgers, photographs, broadsides, recordings, and archives and to discuss how these materials are used by scholars. We try to leave time at the end for the students to explore the materials themselves.

For example:

  • Lucas Carpenter’s class Introduction to Creative Writing came to MARBL to see examples the different creative processes employed by poets using manuscript drafts and books drawn from MARBL’s collections.
  • Diane Stewart’s class Encounters, Translations, and Meanings in Black Religious Thought and Expression spent a class period with MARBL curator Randall Burkett exploring the kinds of records that document African American religious experience and considering how they might use those records in their own research.
  • Dorothy Fletcher and Elizabeth Pastan have each of the 12 sections of Art/Architecture: Prehistory to Renaissance come to MARBL to see a manuscript Bible (ca. 1299) and several remarkable facsimiles of works dating from the 7th to the 14th centuries. The volumes selected allow students to see different examples of techniques used in illumination. The TAs for the sections lead the discussions.

Assignments incorporating primary sources

MARBL staff seek opportunities work with faculty to develop class assignments that incorporate primary sources.

In some cases, instructors are interested in introducing students to primary sources through short research assignments. MARBL staff work closely with the instructor to select documents of various types that meet the requirements of the assignment. These materials are then placed on hold for the class. Students are asked to select a document and then develop either a presentation or paper based on that document and their other reading assignments.

For example:

  • For Kim Loudermilk’s class on Social Movements and the Media, students can choose from a wide range of pamphlets, letters, broadsides, and recordings related to the Civil Rights movement, Anti-Vietnam War movement, Women’s Rights movement, and Gay Rights movement.
  • For Christine Carter’s class on American Women and the Civil War, students will select from among a selection of letters, diaries, and court records documenting a range of life experiences.
  • For Jennifer Terni’s class on Objects, Technology & Vision in 19th Century Europe, students chose a volume of the Illustrated London News and wrote a paper based on their examination of the articles, advertisements, and illustrations.

Faculty teaching upper level classes may want their students to have a more independent research experience. These students come to MARBL like any other researcher and must locate the materials they will use using the library catalog, research guides and finding aids. It is helpful for MARBL’s Research Services staff to know the details of the assignment so that they can recommend appropriate resources.

For example:

  • Students in Jim Roark’s class Experiencing the Civil War used the research guides and finding aids to select papers left by a particular individual. Their final project included a research paper on that individual and a presentation to the class.
  • Kevin Young’s class on the Long Poem met in MARBL throughout the semester and based their discussions each week on volumes from the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library. At the end of the semester, the students curated an exhibition highlighting particular poets and their works.

Strategies for primary source research

Instructors teaching honors seminars and introductory graduate classes want their students to learn to do more sophisticated research. Our Research Services staff can assist students with identifying all kinds of primary source materials; whether at MARBL, in Atlanta area repositories, or elsewhere.

For example, the History Honors seminar and Women’s Studies proseminar each come to the library for an instruction session on how to locate primary sources. We cover

  • how to develop a search strategy
  • where to search for manuscript collections and archives
  • what a finding aid is and what information in it is helpful for grant applications
  • what to find out from a repository before planning a visit
  • common procedures for using materials
  • the variety of materials that might be in a repository

Creating digital scholarship

We are excited about a recent collaboration between the libraries and the English faculty at Oxford to incorporate digital scholarship into English composition classes. Archivists chose documents from MARBL and the Emory University Archives that related directly to the history of Oxford College. Professors Christine Loflin and Adriane Ivey assigned their students to choose a document, encode it for the web, and write a paper that placed it in historical context. The encoded documents and the best student papers will form the nucleus of a new web resource called “The Oxford Experience.”

The goal was to introduce freshmen to primary sources, to encourage them to think critically about the process of editing materials for publication, to teach them the decisions that go into how information is presented on the web, and to give them an overview of the publishing process. We hope that future classes will add to the site through similar assignments.

Reserves

MARBL can put materials on reserve for a class at the MARBL reference desk. In addition, copies microfilm and audiovisual materials can be placed on reserve at either the main library circulation desk.

If you would prefer to add the materials to your e-reserves or Blackboard site, our staff will work with Reserves or UTS to add the MARBL images to the other digital resources for the class.

For example:

  • Jim Morey regularly places a facsimile of the Ellesmere manuscript of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales on reserve for his graduate and undergraduate classes on Old English.
  • Marcus Collins placed Aristotle's Works Completed (1750) on hold for his class on Sex and the Victorians.

Digital Reproductions

MARBL can create digital copies of materials from its collections for use in the classroom. Please allow at least two weeks when ordering reproductions.

For example:

  • Tonio Andrade requested images of manuscripts, photographs, and newspaper clippings from the Young John Allen papers for a PowerPoint he used with his class The Middle Kingdom: China & the World.