│By Megan Sullivan, Senior Product Manager, Gale Primary Sources│
The COVID-19 pandemic and pivot to remote instruction shed light on a longstanding challenge in the humanities and related disciplines – how can instructors effectively incorporate digital primary sources into their pedagogy?
According to a 2021 study by ITHAKA S&R, two of the key obstacles to teaching with primary sources are: (1) discovery tools are not optimised to help instructors locate resources for classroom use and (2) students do not always have the required skills to find and evaluate relevant primary sources. These two problems were top of mind when designing the Gale Primary Sources Learning Centers which are now approaching the three-year anniversary of their initial release.
Aiding Research with the Learning Centers
The Gale Primary Sources publishing program has long demonstrated its value to the academic community as an essential resource for primary source research, but despite a user-friendly interface and powerful search engine, we still observed these same barriers to classroom integration. The introduction of the Learning Centers aimed to break down those barriers by providing support to instructors who want to teach with primary sources and to students who want to find relevant material to support their papers and projects.
The Learning Centers support the goals of instructors and students by providing detailed and engaging content that is customised by subject experts for each of our unique collections. Content includes topic overviews, sample search queries, essays by subject experts, step-by-step search strategies, case studies, and discussion questions to encourage further exploration.
This content is organised by the learning objectives outlined by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) and Society of American Archivists (SAA) Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy: Conceptualize, Find, Read, and Use.
The Launch and Schedule
The initial launch included twelve key databases, and over the past three years we have focused on building Learning Centers for all sixty-three* (as of August 2024) databases in the Gale Primary Sources program. This has been a long road, as the content is tailored to each collection and developed in-house, but I am pleased to share that today, there are Learning Centers in forty-eight Gale Primary Sources databases, with plans to add eleven more by February of 2025.
We have also developed a release cadence for all newly published collections, and Learning Centers are typically available for new collections about three months after the collection’s initial launch.
Positive Feedback
Since the introduction of Learning Centers, we have observed a 20% increase in document retrievals across all our primary source collections, which indicates that researchers are finding more relevant material than before. Because we don’t collect user PII, it’s difficult to definitively conclude this increased usage is attributed to classroom use, and so we have also connected with students and instructors to gather more information on how they’re using the Learning Centers, their feedback on what we’re doing well, and their recommendations for where we might improve.
Our priority for the last three years was developing Learning Centers for the databases that were not part of the initial launch, but now that the finish line is in sight, we are shifting focus to how we can continue to develop the Learning Centers as a resource. So far, the feedback has mostly been positive.
A PhD student studying Latin American History at Oxford, using Sabin Americana: History of the Americas, 1500-1926, remarked, “I was particularly astonished by the Learning Centers. It’s a perfect guide to use the archives, very pedagogical, a tool which will be very useful at schools and universities.”
Feedback indicates ‘Sample Topics and Searches’ as one of the most valuable, high impact sections. An undergraduate English Literature student at Liverpool John Moore’s University shared that “suggested search keywords are really helpful… they encourage you to change your keyword choices to improve your results.”
A second-year Law student at Leeds University also said that the discussion questions that accompany the sample topics helped her think “outside the box” and encouraged her to “think analytically” about a topic she was writing a paper about.
Discoverability
But despite the demonstrated value of the Learning Centers, users bemoaned it was difficult to find. The Learning Centers can currently be accessed via a lightbulb icon in the main toolbar, and we heard feedback from several users that this icon is too small and difficult to notice. An undergraduate studying Politics and International Relations at Lancaster University commented, “this content solves the main problems I have encountered [with digital primary sources], but it is not clearly signposted… it should be available front and center on the homepage.”
This sentiment was echoed by a third-year History and international relations student at King’s College London, who remarked on the usefulness of the content but thought the information – particularly the sample topics – “should be on the homepage of the archive itself.”
This was further validated by an archaeology professor at Loyola University Chicago who shared, “There is really a lot of interesting information in [the Learning Centers] when you dig in. I think maybe there is a perceived mismatch – when I think “Learning Center” I don’t expect to be provided this level of information. My expectation is that it is more like technical troubleshooting. But these sites are really about pedagogy and research.”
Redesigning and Responding to Feedback
So where do we go from here? Our top priority is to redesign the Gale Primary Sources homepages to better indicate the availability of the Learning Centers and clarify what they provide as a pedagogical tool. It’s clear the Learning Centers are valuable to users, but we could do more to promote them within the database.
While our initial focus will be on the homepage, this is not the only place where they could be better emphasised. We also plan to explore how we can incorporate pedagogy at all stages of the user’s research journey, which may look like improved integration of Learning Center content, as well as time-saving AI tools, support for semantic search, and improved translation capabilities for language learners.
Supporting Teaching and Learning
The pandemic brought the challenges associated with teaching with digital primary sources to the forefront, but interest in this topic continues to grow. We observe this trend not only in recent literature, but in regular interactions with students, instructors, and librarians.
The Gale team is focused on exploring innovative and creative ways we can connect our rich primary source collections with classrooms around the globe, and we look forward to continuing to develop our digital archives to support the teaching and learning needs of our users.
If you enjoyed reading about the Learning Centers, check out these blog posts:
- Gale Primary Sources Learning Centers – Built by Experts
- The Gale Primary Sources Learning Centers – A Student’s Perspective
- More Gale Primary Sources Learning Centers Added
Blog post cover image citation: A collage of sections from Gale Primary Sources Learning Centers.
