"Old Stuff" for New Teaching Methods: Outreach to History Faculty Teaching with Primary Sources

New approaches to undergraduate history education rely on primary sources. This study, based on a 2008-2009 online survey of 627 academic historians and 25 follow-up interviews, captures a snapshot of the current use of online, published, and archival primary sources used in new teaching methods. It identifies three distinct ways faculty utilize primary sources—analyzing documents in freshman courses, building research skills in historical methods classes, and doing research in upper division courses. Librarians can respond to these teaching innovations and provide leadership in their institutions by building their capacity to provide outreach and reference for primary sources.