OLA University and College Division presentation.

1. Sarah Coates, Special Collections and University Archives,
Oklahoma State University
sarah.coates@okstate.edu

2.  Dr. Andrew Wadoski, Assistant Prof. of English at
OSU, approached Dr. David Oberhelman, English
Reference Librarian, in Fall 2011 to see what “old
books” we had access to so that he could use them for a
class.
 David contacted the archives to see what material we
had physical copies of.
 We learned and re-discovered quite a few books from
the 15th and 16th centuries

3.  We then did a library instruction session wherein
David talked about EEBO and ECO and I gave a talk on
the history of printing and showed the students our
rare books as examples of early printing and binding
techniques

4.  This one session then led to a second session this fall
with Dr. Wadoski, and some more exhibits using our
rare books when we had our Manifold Greatness
traveling exhibit
 We also used these rare books to teach an OLLI class

5.  Engage students!
 Promote archival collections
 Foster a relationship between reference librarians and
the archives
 Foster a relationship between faculty and the archives

6.  Reference librarians—talk to your archivists!
 Archivists—talk to your reference librarians!
 Both—talk to your faculty!
 Share knowledge and resources to design sessions for
classes
 Co-teach courses that tie in with archival collections
and coursework
 Go to the community—OLLI, library programming,
etc.
 Genealogy

7.  Excellent for reaching out to distance learners
 Easy access
 Compare original to the scans—some details can get
“lost” in a scan.
 One example is EEBO—while an excellent resource,
students can learn a great deal about binding, misprints,
marginalia, and the difficulty of reading a text with
small print and no zoom.