Last updated May 3, 2024

Education and the Archives

The WLA welcomes opportunities to work with students individually or as part of a larger classroom instruction. Faculty may schedule a visit to the archives, utilizing the WLA reading room, or staff will bring the archives to the classroom. The WLA offers archival lab experiences for students to work with collections directly, customizing archives-related assignments for most academic disciplines.

Recent activities have included:

• completing a worksheet on primary sources
• "show and tell" of an archival item
• conducting archival research for a research paper, poster, or presentation
• writing a post for the WLA blog
• creating a script for a WLA YouTube video
• designing a mockup of an exhibit or proposing a grant project
• creating a processing plan for an unprocessed collection

In addition to working with classes as a group, the WLA also provides individual student assistance regarding planning and conducting original research with primary source documents. Students learn to "read" original resources, understand basic preservation and conservation, and access digital primary sources.

WLA staff also conduct tours of historic Piper Hall, with special emphasis on interpreting class, gender, and race in historic spaces. Prior class visits include undergraduate and graduate students from Art, Digital Humanities, Education, History, Polish Studies, Sociology, Theology, and Women's Studies & Gender Studies.

Each instructional visit or tour is specifically designed for the needs of the class or individual student. To set up a visit, please contact us at 773.508.8837 or WLArchives@LUC.edu.