 Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. My name is Jet Jacobs. I am the head of public services outreach and community engagement for UCLA library special collections. And I am thrilled to be here with you today to discuss the new instruction construction project for library special collections in the Charles Young Research Library I'll be joined by some of my colleagues. We're really excited to talk to you and to answer any questions that you might have. So I want to take a moment just at the beginning to recognize that as a land grant institution, the library workers at UCLA acknowledge our presence on the traditional ancestral and unceded territory of the Gabriele and a tongue of peoples. I also want to let everyone know that this event is being live captioned. So you can turn those on using the closed caption button at the bottom of your zoom screen. And we'll also be having a Q&A session at the end. So if you have any questions for our panelists you are more than welcome to add them throughout the presentation by clicking on the Q&A button that's also at the bottom of your zoom screen. So I'm going to go ahead and get us started. So I talked a little bit about, I told you my title, which is a lot of words, but essentially, I like to say that my job is to encourage and facilitate the use of library special collections and our services. And one of the most important ways that we do this is actually through instruction. So since it's foundation in 1950 library special collections has supported the university mission of facilitating research and teaching and in recent years we've really focused on expanding our capacity to support our community of scholars by embedding primary source literacy and research using special collections directly into curriculum. And I want to talk about how this focus has really paid off. So I'm going to throw some stats at everyone. So between 2018 and 2020 library special collections hosted over 180 classes. And this was this participated or included the participation of over 4000 students. And these students interacted with nearly 10,000 items from library special collections. Which I think is really interesting in and of itself but more importantly over 80% of these students that we interacted with for undergraduates. And this is a really impressive number because historically primary source engagement has largely been considered work that's reserved for students in a graduate or a postgraduate program. And we've been really working hard to reconfigure this assumption. And I also want to say that we're not doing this alone as part of the broader distinctive collections portfolio, our colleagues in international studies and in the East Asian library also engage in instruction and outreach. And often this includes materials that are stewarded by library special collections. We also we benefit a lot because we're UCLA we have amazing rich and varied collections. We work a lot with dedicated teaching faculty. They're very knowledgeable and they're very excited about our collections and getting them into the classroom. But probably the most satisfying part of my job is working with the engaged students who facilitate a culture of inquiry and discovery. I know I'm not alone when I say that one of the most satisfying parts of being a librarian is that I'm surrounded by students who are constantly learning. And I am learning from them. And so our instruction program and its success depends largely on the quality of the caliber of students in the UCLA community. So, why does this matter we're getting more students in and we're teaching with special collections and we're expanding our instruction program. The impact of that is that engaging undergraduates and graduate students with primary sources in the classroom leads directly to an increased use of primary source materials in both their current and their future scholarship. So for example, following just one year of our increased instruction program, the reading room use was increased for undergrads by over 35%. And it's important to note that students who use original sources in their research are participating in active knowledge creation, which increases their critical thinking skills and then helps them to relate more personally to the cultural record to become more invested in their own scholarship and their own journey in academia. So, we are doing amazing things, but our consistent challenge has been space. We've always been creative with space in library special collections and I would say in libraries broadly. I'm not sure if anyone attending today, visited library special collections in the 70s when this was actually our reading room. The room that you're looking at right now is now staff working area. And this was the reading room prior to the almonds and mercury reading room being constructed. We also benefit from a number of other rooms. So the Wilbur J. Smith room is in the library special collections footprint, as well as some of you might have seen or had the privilege to visit the Bradford a booth room, which hosts the Sadler collection of 19th century British fiction and this is one of the jewels of the Charles Young Research Library we get a lot of visitors and researchers to this room is a delightful experience to be in the booth room and we're very grateful to have this space however you can see that it is somewhat smaller. And it accommodates a lovely intimate gathering of say 12 students or less. This is good for a graduate course, or sometimes we have smaller engagements or outreach events in in these rooms. But we really have a clear need for a dedicated teaching in space, sorry, a dedicated teaching space for instruction where you can use fragile unique rare materials in a class of 12 or more and really give the students space to interact with these materials in a safe environment. So I want to show everyone a blueprint. I'll also have some some 3D renderings as well. But if anyone's familiar with the space on the a level. This is the proposed construction area and the footprint that we're going to be where the classroom itself is going to take place and so this is the entrance to special collections and you'll see that the instruction room is going to essentially be out front of library special collections. It is going to take the space of what is some low density shelving right now. And the current materials are going to be moved to a higher traffic area. The most exciting part about this construction is that the larger space is going to accommodate at least 60 students. It is going to be partitionable into two separate classrooms that will each accommodate at least 30 students, meaning we can concurrently host to undergraduate classes in the same space, which is thrilling for for all of us are engaged in instruction and so here's the 3D rendering of the proposed space. This is a rendering with the partition that is up so you can see that it's divided into two spaces again if you're familiar with a level in the Charles Young Research Library. Along the back is the south wall and this is our east wall and then we would have two doors that enter into the space so that there would be individual entrances for both of the spaces if it's partitions. The coolest thing about this is that we are going to make the room primarily see through it's going to be transparent and so everyone is going to be able to see how exciting it is to use library special collections materials in a classroom setting. Essentially we want to make our collections and our services more trans more transparent and then thus more engaging. So this classroom will help distinctive collections continue this great work. We're also thrilled to have added a new team member in 2020. So Jimmy Zabala is our inaugural teaching and learning librarian for library special collections, and Jimmy has already made a huge impact on our instruction program. He's helped to pivot our instruction into an online and asynchronous spaces during what we all have experienced the supremely weird year. We're going to pass the mic on to Jimmy now so he can tell us about the kinds of instruction that we're going to be doing in the spaces and why it's important. Yeah, thank you jet. So, as jet mentioned, I'll be focusing really on talking about kind of the approach that we've been taking so far, and that we hope to continue to take into an instruction primary source analysis that we're doing remotely here currently and once we're safely go back in person to teach in person, and you can advance to the next slide. Jet. And so one of the approach really the main approach and the mission that we're trying to really meet with primary source instruction is really centering and focusing on active learning. And, you know, I mean by active learning is really empowering students right during the, these instruction sessions these primary source analysis workshops where we're meeting the needs and the goals of the students where we're providing them with a the session that really allows them to feel welcome when working with special collections material, you know, oftentimes I think, you know, primarily with undergraduate students. You know, they can feel intimidated or they are not familiar at all with special collections are what archives are. So really, you know, our goal is to make sure that they feel welcome that they feel seen. And, you know, through these instruction sessions that they're able to really have an understanding with special classes are and that they're always welcome to do research beyond instruction these instruction sessions on their own time. And so the main components that we focus on in regards to active learning is really providing them with an engaging, you know, participatory in a collaborative space. Through these instruction sessions that again really holds in on their needs and interests and so I'll talk a little bit about each of these, you know, kind of three components, the first one engaging really having students, you know, touch right interact with the material that we have. I think it's sort of speaking, you know, special collections instruction. A lot of times you'll see that it's showing tell where you might have materials are pulled out from special collections and then students are maybe just walking around looking at, you know, at books looking at, you know, past archive collections but they're not necessarily touching them or working with them directly engaging with directly. And so we do want to encourage and do encourage, you know, this, you know, active and direct, you know, engagement with this material obviously very carefully still, you know, very supervising that students are making sure that they are not damaging the material in any way. But I think in my experience, students, you know, being able to touch materials being able to let's say they're looking at a book flipping through pages. It's really allows them to, you know, gain more enjoyment out of these instruction sessions and they seem to really, you know, have a better understanding of what the material is. And it makes it more fun for them, right. So I think, you know, really challenging these barriers in the past, I think, with, you know, primary source instruction and allowing students to really get a better press fuller experience of working with this material. And so that's really the engaging part. The participatory part is really encouraging them to be active in discussions and also looking up information or really they're the ones who are making sense of the materials, right. So I think oftentimes instead of, you know, if I'm providing instruction session, me telling the students what an item is or the significance of that, they're the ones who are looking up, you know, these, you know, the information that makes sense to them. So they're the ones who are really kind of like the detectives, I guess, or making sense of it in their own sense in their own way. And this is like where the participation comes from, right. They're the ones doing this activity. Obviously, you know, as an instructor on there to support them but really encouraging them to do it on their own as much as possible. And then the last, you know, kind of component making this, you know, working in a collaborative, you know, effort, right, where typically what we do is, you know, have students work in groups or in pairs at least where they're bouncing off ideas off on another they're sharing knowledge with each other. And just encouraging them to work together. And I think having the space will really allow us to provide, you know, more efficient and better instruction sessions right where. Students will be able to walk around more, given that the space will be large. So there's no issues with, you know, space. Your students might feel cramped in or very tight. It also allows us to lay out the material that we will be working with more evenly laid out throughout the space again so the students are have more mobility and I think that also allows us to have more of a safe, safe, I guess, conditions when working with this material. And I think beyond that it really again, envisioning of the technology that might be possible to us in this space as well, where it allows us to provide more efficient primary source instruction. Next slide, please. So then, I'm just going to go through what we do with the primary source and asset activity how this connects to the active learning and how this is carried out really. So there's kind of three, there's three basic steps that currently we have students do when we're finding these primary source and asset activity. You know, the first one being observed the second conceptualize and that they're one of her and observe is really the first step where you know we encourage students to really just, you know, when we're looking they're working with a primary you know, material, whether that's a book press like a record of document or whatever the case that might be that they really gathered just basic information about what it is right so they're looking at a book for example who created the book who's the author what year was the book published. What is being documented in the book. And so it's just as basic information that allows them to make sense, right, of what it is that they're working with. Once they gather that information. The next step we have them do is contextualize that information. And that's basically looking up the observations, the previous information that they gathered for more background right so they know who the author of a book as we want them to look up information about the author, you know, if they know the year that it was published you want them to look up okay what's happening around that time period that makes you gain more information about potentially something that was going around that might have influence the creation of this book right me that time period. So just basic, you know background information, and then you know last step is really having them infer right make arguments once they have, you know, observe the material, they contextualize it, they can come to certain conclusions, really about the significance and the importance of the book, or you know any other item that they're working with, and really thinking of okay critically thinking about, you know what biases being expressed and the mature that they're working with anything that really allows them to make sense overall. Of the item. And so we've been doing this, you know remotely currently obviously given the current situations, and you know to my surprise I think students are still very engaged and still seem to enjoy this activity, even if they're not physically looking at the material it's all digital But they seem to be very engaged with it nonetheless and I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that again they're a lot of students are maybe their first time being exposed to archival material, you know they're being exposed to what these resources are. And so, you know I think, you know, it's very, I think for me personally just very exciting to think of the possibilities of having you know these instruction sessions in person once we're able to safely go back to work and take advantage of you know the space, but also the technology, you know the technology you know will be part of the space as well that again will make these instruction sessions more efficiently. I think more fun for students and really again providing the space where they feel welcome. Where they understand that you know these material and this resource are for them to analyze and utilize and really just kind of the, you know demystifying and providing them an overall larger picture with special collections are in archives are as well. So, thank you. Thank you so much Jimmy. So up next we're going to hear from Devon Fitzgerald. Dr Fitzgerald is our curator for rare books and print culture. He has been here for, I want to say almost two years now. But I think that if you speak to any of my colleagues the things that they will tell you about Devon is that he is a very exciting and engaging and enthusiastic instructor he has brought a number of faculty. And a number of classes into library special collections, so that those statistics about all of the classes that we've taught in the past two years of Devon is responsible for a very large chunk of them. So, I'm going to go ahead and pass it off to Devon now. Hi everyone. It's a real pleasure to have the opportunity to speak with you today about teaching and learning and library special collections. Jimmy has already done an excellent job defining the term active learning, which guides us as we think about course construction in live in the special collections. And for my presentation today I'm going to give you a few examples of different types of teaching that I did during 2019 2020 academic year. So, generally speaking, in library special collections, most curators and many of the librarians teach classes are very own Russell Johnson curator of his curator of the history of science, special collections for the sciences, won the Librarian of the Year Award in, I believe it was 2019 for his excellent teaching and work with students. And the work that people like Russell are doing and what I'm doing and what Jimmy and Jet do is all designed to bring more students, faculty and graduate students into the library. So, generally speaking, we teach classes and host events on sort of three different scales in library special collections. We're asked to help with large lecture courses, generally of over 100 students. We also assistant small research seminars. And then finally I'll talk about some of our public events. This is here you can get a sense of some of what we do in lecture courses, lecture courses have always been some of the most difficult for us to accommodate in special collections. Because as you've already learned, we simply don't have space for 100 or more students in the in the library, but that doesn't mean we don't make it work. For example, during 2019, there were two lectures, I design to lecture courses I designed content for the first introduction to the history of Western civilization in the pre modern period. Jet Jacobs and I delivered a lecture to the class on the material history of books in pre modern Europe. And this was a class we taught with Dr. Muriel McClendon. Showing the class the books in the lecture was nice, but we also wanted to give them a chance to figure out where special collections existed within the library, and to see some of these materials close up. And so Jet Jacobs and I both designed a small exhibition, which then Dr. McClendon used as a basis for sort of question and answer session. The second lecture I worked with was a much more experimental in format. After discussions with Dr. Andrea Goldman in history, I created three pop up museums for her 170 student introduction to Chinese history. And so what happened is the students had to visit two of three museums offered over the quarter and write response papers. And this was even more hands on. Usually each museum had about 70 to 80 students show up and they'd filter through and work with materials, and myself and a couple of other members of the staff and library special questions would explain the materiality of Chinese books and artifacts to the students. So it was really interactive. But again, space was a problem. One of sort of disastrous moment in this class is when we accidentally double booked a classroom and so about five minutes before the museum officially opened. We had to take everything out of one room, about 50 objects or so, and then rush them down into the booth room, which was much more luxurious for the students and they loved being in the booth room. But it was much more stressful than we wanted this museum with generally price price less eighth century Chinese scrolls to be. So next slide. Now, while we do work with a lot, these large lecture courses, the vast majority of teaching and special collections happens through close collaboration with faculty in small seminar settings. Last year, for example, I had the opportunity to co design a course with Dr been long. And this course was entitled. UCLA library special collections in research. And the purpose of this course, which met every other week in special collections was to explore how information and textual technologies, for example like the index and a medieval manuscript should inform how we approach our research as scholars and history and literature. This course had a couple of undergraduate students, but it was really geared for students in their first or second years of graduate school to help them understand how they can use library special collections resources and materials to design research projects. And in fact, through working with these students in that course, I not only was able to develop a relationship with 15 UCLA graduate students in the sort of advisory capacity, but three or four of them are now writing dissertations on materials in special collections. And seminar experience is fun, not only because we serve faculty, but we also help advance graduate students design courses. And so in this image on the right, you can see these students with Thai manuscripts open in front of them. And this is one of my greatest examples of sort of synergy is that I was rooting around in the basement of the stacks, and I pulled out a box labeled Thai manuscripts, completely uncatalogued and undescribed. And that same day, a graduate student in Buddhist art history contacted me and said I'd love to teach a special collections class my specialty is Thai art, and I thought well I have some unidentified manuscripts. Why don't you come in and we'll see what they are. And so that graduate student came in helped me to identify the manuscripts. And it turned out that they were beautifully illuminated manuscripts of a very famous Thai story of from a lie, a sort of magical Buddhist monk who goes to hell and redeems people. And so, three weeks later, we had a class in her summer session where students were comparing these manuscripts to other manuscripts, and doing a visual analysis of basically undiscovered UCLA special collections materials. So it was sort of magic of seminar settings. But again, space is always a problem. You can see in the seminar when we were in the table was only big enough to accommodate three of the 15 of these manuscripts that we have. Finally, I'm going to talk a little bit in this next slide. About community engagement. In addition to being a teaching and research university. UCLA plays a vital role in community outreach and community building. And so it's important as library special collections that we have opportunities to interact with people who have research interests other than standard academic research interests. And so during 2019 2020, I contacted several different organizations in the area, including the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California, the main history society. And we had events at the library. One of the most memorable events, however, was with a club dedicated to something called HEMA historical European martial arts. And these people, what they do is they read medieval manuscripts or early printed books that are essentially fencing manuals, but not like a foil or epic fencing this is more like Game of Thrones style fencing. And so these people are very active researchers, and they had no idea that UCLA, because of our fine collection of early Italian imprints has. And so this is one of the important pre 1550s Italian fencing and fighting manuals. So after discussing with this group and gauging their interest. We had a very successful day long event in library special collections, where I was able to present some of these materials and manuscripts to them, and then it ended with a fun fencing demonstration and sculpture garden. And through that sort of outreach, you discover that lots of these different communities are also home to UCLA alumni. They're also people who are interested and coming to use research materials and after this event for five of them have been in the reading room several times to look at materials. So I think these three examples of large lectures, smaller seminars, as well as community events, give you a sense that library special collections is an in a dynamic and impactful place. In essence, and I describe us this way to people quite frequently. This is a humanities laboratory where if you're interested in the humanities, and you'd like to experiment and dabble library special collections is a great place to go and start exploring and thinking about both the materiality of texts, the history of Los Angeles, and what a library has to offer beyond just normal research functions. So with that, I'll conclude my comments and I look forward to your questions. Thanks so much, Devin. So last but definitely not least, our colleague, Jennifer Osorio, who is the head of international and area studies and with whom library special questions collaborates with very regularly is going to talk about collaborative curriculum development. Well, that didn't really work off the tongue very easily as I collaborative curriculum development. Take it away, Jen. Thanks, Jen. Everybody thank you for being here today I know it's kind of a slow news day with a lot of going on out there so we really appreciate your attendance and your attention. And I'm really excited to talk about the kinds of collaborations that I and my team engage in with special collections and with our students and faculty. So I had a department that is one of the three departments makes up UCLA is distinctive collections, along with the East Asian library and library special collections. Librarians and staff in my department and in the East Asian library work to support UCLA school global engagement, and to build collections and communities around our non English language materials, which comprise about 40% of our overall collections, which is always a surprising number to people. UCLA has been a long time leader in the area studies and will support dozens of centers and departments and programs that research every corner of the world. Library special collections is a really important part of that process, because they're the stewards of a variety of materials that originate and represent those communities and cultures from around the globe. As my day job I'm also a librarian for Latin American studies Spanish and Portuguese and the four ethnic studies programs and departments at UCLA. So that's Chicano and Chicana and Central American studies, African American studies, American Indian studies and Asian American studies. In addition to building and managing collections I also teach students in collaboration with their instructors about library resources and the research life cycle. So today I'm going to be talking about how we in the library work with faculty to introduce students to primary source text with a focus on undergraduate and first generation students. Next slide please Jet. So many of the students that I work with are the first generation and their families to go to college I myself I'm a first generation student. And one of the joys of my work is introducing these students to the archive in a way that allows them to see themselves as part of it. The library can be an intimidating place I think Jimmy talked a little bit about that and special collections, even more so. So a lot of the time students are suffering from a little bit of an imposter syndrome when they come to a class in the library they are wondering about their place at UCLA and feeling a little overwhelmed by the amount of information being thrown at them, and by the high expectations that they're expected to meet. When we bring them into the library we often see them looking very nervous and unsure. Very few of them have used special collections in the past, and they don't have a lot of experience with the kinds of materials that we call rare and unique. So I see part of my job is demystifying both that process and our materials. I emphasize that, yes, what we're looking at are rare and unique materials and that we have custodial responsibility for those materials and we have a duty to be conscientious caretakers, but that they're there for them to study and that UCLA as a public institution that is open to anybody who's interested, and that we care for these materials so that they can be used by them now and for future scholars. This is really easy to demonstrate when we're able to connect our collections to student interests and even to their own history. So one of my favorite classes that demonstrates this was one on Asian American activism, where students were able to interact with a variety of collections that brought to life the history they were studying in their classroom readings. So they would go be in their classroom and they'd read about the creation of Asian American studies, and the scholars and activists that participated, and then they came into the library and we were able to sit down and look through and read the manuscript notes in the papers of Yuji Jioca, who was a longtime UCLA lecturer, I think some 27 years he taught at UCLA, and is credited as one of the people who coined the term Asian American in 1968. And the excitement on their faces when they saw that name and recognized it and looked at the papers that he wrote, and where he conceptualized and created the entire field of study was really something special to see. He taught the demonstrations and protests that activists and scholars participated in during the 1960s and 70s, and then they touched and they interacted with pins and posters, and even a giant banner from the collection of activist Steve Louis who was an active participant in those demonstrations. And in that same class, we had officers from the Samahang Pilipino student group, which is one of the oldest student groups on campus. They've been around since the early 1970s, and they were active then and they continue to be active. They have a really strong interest in their own history and maintain an archivist and historian as part of the group. And they were able to look through the papers of their predecessors in the Samahang Pilipino group and see how they worked with the community to build the Filipino student community at UCLA, and to work on the education and the retention of Filipino students going all the way back to that to that era and into the present. Representation matters because it gives students the confidence to know that they belong at UCLA, and they need that confidence because what we're working on is turning them into scholars. Next slide please, Jeff. So let me make sure. The things that I work with are very highly interdisciplinary, and they draw faculty from all over campus to teach. Increasingly these faculty want to introduce their students to primary sources. The professor in this picture is Dr. Bonnie Tal. She's the head of the Latin American Studies program and she's on the faculty in both anthropology and public health. Another major interest is in Shaman Studies. So she studies the use of traditional medicine in indigenous communities throughout Latin America. I've been working with her for over a decade, going to many of her classes, helping her students find the resources they need to write better papers, mostly doing the sort of traditional core database instruction that we do now to teach how to access journal articles and publish materials. But about maybe six years ago, she came to me and she asked me about primary sources and what we could do to introduce her students to those kinds of sources. Increasingly, faculty want their students using primary text, but they're not sure how to do it, especially for undergraduates. They use small seminars with graduate students who already have a certain level of experience and knowledge, and they want to expand that kind of training to undergraduates, because more and more undergraduates are working on thesis and capstone projects, and the deeper longer term kind of research that they're being required to do is really strengthened by using primary sources and they need to do it to graduate. So when we started thinking about how to bring in those graduate students and how to expand it into the kinds of classes that she was teaching for that. The way I approach it is to talk to the undergraduate students about the way that they use both primary and secondary sources in their research and in their work. I talked to new students about the research life cycle as a kind of conversation. So new scholars come in their professors introduced them to the conversation around a particular topic. And for a while, their main job is to sort of eavesdrop on what is being said, right so they're reading other scholars works their journal articles their books, and then they're translating that back into their papers and their texts in a way that makes it clear to their professors that they understand that conversation and what's being said about their topic. Working with primary sources allows them to become participants in the conversation. They get to work with materials that haven't been analyzed, and they do the work themselves to create new knowledge around it so that's what Jimmy was talking about when in his slides about the different process the interpretation the analysis the thing that happens when we work with primary sources. So we do that in these classes with undergraduates like this one, and we've seen the results in the number of students who continue to engage with library special collections, including several that have gone on to masters and PhD programs to directly work with materials they were introduced to during sessions that they attended as undergraduates. Early in the quarter I work with students. Sorry, I lost my notes here for a second. To find the key secondary sources that they needed to learn about their topic. Once the skills are in place we bring them into special collections and introduce them to primary texts that they then learn how to analyze and interpret, and then they can add to that conversation through their original work. The students walk out of these sessions with a new confidence in their abilities of scholars, because now they've learned the language of research and they can contribute their own voices. I should also say that while being away from our physical materials during this pandemic has been really challenging. We've managed to continue doing this kind of remote learning via zoom. So last quarter Jimmy and I collaborated on a session for one of Dr. Tops classes, where we use digitized works both ours and other institutions and breakout rooms to do an activity similar to the ones he talked about earlier and similar to what we do and we're in person physically. It worked really well actually I was kind of surprised I was really nervous going into it, but it worked much better than I expected. We're going to be very excited to be back in proximity to our physical collections, but I think that we've learned a lot about how to use technology, and how to combine technology to use physical materials and with the digitized text that will be able to bring back to the kind of hybrid space that we're developing in the classrooms that Jet showed you, such as annotation tools to market digital versions and things that look like that that we can't really do with physical materials. Next slide. One thing that I'm excited about with the new classrooms is simply the amount of space that we're going to have our current spaces are fantastic for small seminars and will continue to serve that function. But most upper division undergraduate classes of the kind that come want to come into special collections are larger, often 20 to 3035 students maybe even bigger. Last we've sometimes managed to do those sessions as Devin pointed out in other spaces or by splitting the classes up and come having them come at different times. But none of those other spaces are really intended for instruction so they have to be adapted and they don't meet all of the needs. These classrooms will be especially built for primary source instruction with the space and the technology and the flexibility to really maximize that kind of instruction. So when we need to roll out a Chinese scroll like the one in this picture, or more specifically for the areas that I work in something like facsimile or a fancy copy of the oldest surviving book written in the Americas the Dresden Codex. We can look at the entirety of the work. The Dresden Codex is the original in the Saxon State Library but we have very nice facsimile there is an exact replica. It's 12 feet long and laid out like an accordion with images on both sides. It's a pictorial work so it's meant to be seen in a folded out way sort of like paintings on a wall. And that's something that I can't really do in our current classrooms at least not if I want to have anything else to show the students if it was the only thing we could do it like these pictures show and just lay it all out. But we're usually showing a variety of materials and having them interact with a variety of materials. So we can't do that with the codex as it is now in the news classroom will be able to lay it out will be able to stand it up so that students can see both sides of the codex so that they can walk around it and interact together with it and really explore the material in the way the original creators met for it to be seen and read the history of the Maya people see the astronomical tables that are contained in the codex and really maximize our time with it. So I'm really excited to be a part of the work that we're doing for primary source instruction in library special collections. And I am really happy that you all came today to hear us talk about it and I want to thank you again for that. And now I will turn it back to my colleagues and for any questions that you may have. Thank you. Thanks so much, Jen. Yeah, I want to just also echo what you said which is that, you know, we benefit from a lot of resources here at UCLA. So just want to make sure that we thank our donors not just for being here with us today but many of those resources come from the enthusiastic support of our donor base so thank you for being here today and thank you for your continued support. So now we're going to open it up to a Q&A I'll be go ahead. I'll be moderating the Q&A. So it looks like we have two questions that I'm going to answer really quick. So two questions from Nina, who asked does this take the place of the current LLC lobby that interest no this is actually an expansion to the LLC footprint. So the space that we are going to be constructing is actually going to be just outside of the entrance to library special collections, and it's going to increase our score footage dramatically. Another question from Nina is, will the tables and chairs be movable for flexible space use. Yes, active spaces are active learning needs active spaces. And so all these tables will not only be flexible and be able to move around the entirety of the space, but they'll also be adjustable height because we found that some interactions with students. So if you want to be mobile and moving around, and you can do a lot more you can be a lot more engaged with materials if you're not, you know, getting up and then sitting down and then getting up and then sitting down and so we want to we want to really encourage the sort of circulation and browsing that a lot of students really benefit from with these materials and ideally, and we we haven't purchased the furniture yet but we do have an idea of what we want to purchase ideally the chairs that we have for the space will be able to be pushed under the tables. When we lift the table that's that if we have a sort of event. That's not really like a sitting event. It can be we will just say that we won't run into an issue that we have sometimes in the library which is where I spend half an hour moving chairs before an event. Okay, so the next question is from Jessica pigs are this question is for Devin Jessica would like to learn more about how the pop up museums that you mentioned were experienced by the students as well as what your own role was at these museum sessions. Great, thanks for the question and Jessica. So these museums were sort of. Well, it was sort of crazy because I selected at the beginning of the quarter about 100 or so different objects. And the reason this was able to happen is because my PhDs in Chinese history and so I had the foundation and knowledge where I could select these sorts of materials. And so I wrote museum labels for everything. And then we set them out and sort of three flights and the students really seem to enjoy them. And so they were designed like didactic museums with a sort of chronology so they begin at one end and you know there be examples of paper early printing. And so every museum told a little story related to the course content and the history of the Chinese book. And so the museum there were about two or three library special collections staff members there, including myself, supervising the materials and also making sure the students had an opportunity to get their hands on it. See how things worked. And then we would explain any sorts of questions they had. And so here to each museum I shared with Dr Goldman, a handful of prompts and questions that I thought would be helpful for guiding the students through the activity of looking. So it was a very engaged sort of looking at questions would range from things like how many different types of paper do you think you can find in this particular museum, or in the last section it was all dedicated to Maoist communist China. And so I'd ask questions about, you know, how did the people look in different posters and who do you think is a capitalist, and who do you think is a communist. And so the museums were sort of freewheeling in the sense that the students were only lightly supervised and they were encouraged to touch things, but staff was there creating I would say, a pretty intensively curated experience. So it was the illusion of autonomy, but we also made sure the materials were safe and the students got what we wanted them to get out of each museum. Thanks so much Devin Jessica I hope that answered your question. Yes, excellent. Okay, so Danelle moon has a question. So Danelle would like to know how we accommodate huge undergraduate courses of over 300 students for example. So, in the past and now we've done a couple of different things to accommodate these larger classes, the class that Devin and I worked with Muriel McClendon to facilitate a couple years running previously we were in person we actually went to the class. I think it was over 200 students if I'm if I'm not mistaken. So, that was just like, far too much of a volume of students to get into our limited spaces. Oh yes thank you Muriel is saying it was 240. So, Devin and I have brought some materials, as well as a lecture to the class itself. So it wasn't necessarily as hands on as we like to our instruction sessions to be. But it definitely come like combined with the in the exhibit that we built that the students came to visit in person and library special collections we feel we somewhat provided a similar experience. And then we've also done a sort of thing where we staggered visits. So we worked with another instructor in the history department who is teaching the global history of feminism. And the past time that she taught that class it was, I believe 120 students that we split up into two visits of 60 students and then those groups of 60 students then got split up again, because we have two spaces that can accommodate about 30 students within the library. However, these spaces are primarily not used for instruction, they're used for presentations and other sort of like outreach events and events like that. So they're not ideal for instruction but we can use them in a pinch. And I have a feeling that with this new space because we can accommodate at least 60 students. So that for those larger, those larger undergraduate survey courses, we could do something very similar where we split the group into a visit over two days and then split those groups into smaller groups that work on different sorts of the active learning activity. During their visit and usually includes like an orientation and an intro to primary source literacy and then a hands on portion where they work in small groups to look at materials interrogate investigate engage and then develop additional research questions that they might want to you know continue along in their line of inquiry which usually involves other librarians in in the library which is one of the greatest things about the work that we do in library special collections is it is inherently interdisciplinary and collaborative. So, the other question. We did have another question that I wanted to speak to so Natasha asked, how can we find out which items and special collections have been digitized for zoom classes. And the answer to that is sadly we are unable to do digitization on demand for classes because we are not on site we have been working remotely since March of last year. Because it is affected all aspects of the work, but we are really lucky to benefit from a number of previously digitized collections and so in the q amp a function not touch I hope you're able to to navigate over there. I posted the links to two digital resources that we use regularly when we teach one is the UCLA digital library, and the other is one of my favorite resources for digital content relating to UCLA and it is a site where you can access. Over 10,000 images from UCLA archives that show the history of UCLA the visual history of UCLA over almost a century. And so I put those links in the q amp a function as well. So, Judith Cantor asked if there's any possibility of digit digitizing these pop up museums. That's a really, that's a really good question Devin do you have thoughts on that. Well, I'll have to go and proofread the labels, kind of a kind of a joke but that's how fast we did them the first time as I found typos, you know, as the students were in there. But that being said, I'm in the process of editing everything and creating an item list. And so when that's available, I'll be sure to make put that on the special collections website so people can take a look at the sort of survey of Chinese history. In terms of the objects themselves. I don't think we'll in the near term be able to digitize anything. But that being said, there are lots of existing digital versions of these from places like the Library of Congress, which has a massive Chinese book collection. And so you could essentially redesign this for online learning, just with an object list. Excellent. Thanks, Devin. Let's see. All right Robin cats would like to hear more about the intro to primary source literacy that's part of our standard welcome. So I'm going to open up that answer that is definitely Jimmy's arena. Yeah, I think which I do with the introduction to kind of archives or primary sources instruction with students that's really making them first. Well providing background right and information about what archives are with special collections is. Because I think a lot of you know primarily undergraduate students, you know to really are not aware of, you know, special collections sometimes existing on campus or, you know, are not aware of the resources that are available to them. So really, again, making them feel comfortable and welcome and learning about archives, you know what special collections is, and really the mission and goal of connecting it with a raw mission goal, you see a library right of providing these resources for them. But, you know, having them think critically about, you know, these resources biases are expressed. And I think, you know, for a lot of students, again, they receive these, you know, these instructions that is very well I think, you know, they're very engaged and they enjoy going through materials or looking at materials. You know, in this case, whether that's physically or right now digitally, right. And that perhaps they can see them so reflected in. I think one of the things with primary source instruction that we're trying to really have students really connect with materials or items that they identify with in terms of like the communities that they might be coming from, or however they identify so it's also selecting material intentionally to really reflect perhaps your background is something that they can connect on a personal level as well. So, um, I think it works well and let me put this on the chat because I know one of the things that we've done also is in this was done before I came in here in June I started my position in June 2020. And our colleagues in special collections, they created this short video on what special collections and archives are so I'm just going to print the chat quickly your private all in particular good. It's just something that, you know, I send to the professors that they can show their students prior to having our instruction sessions so that students can be aware of what to expect when we're going to, you know, from the instruction section themselves. And so, especially right now is the creation of this video, given the remote environment, it also makes sense to, you know, have this type of resource available and I know we're working on another video on like what archives are or you know how to read a finding I think we're just, you know, making it feasible for students to really understand kind of these concepts right that can be, you know, sometimes very dense and and again, especially if a lot of them are not aware of it so it's really kind of just centering the students knees and their interest right and trying to make them feel welcome as I mentioned and just making something that they know they enjoy and that hopefully enables them to continue to visit special collections in the future beyond these instruction sessions. Thanks Jimmy. I also think it's important to note that one of the, one of the issues of the teaching space limitations that we have currently in the building is that most of the teaching spaces that we utilize are nowhere near special collections geographically. And I think that it's a really important, especially with students who have, who've never visited special collections before a very important part of the orientation is to walk them into the space, and to sort of encourage them to see the lobby itself, where we always have reference staff working as long as we are open, and to understand that. Well, I'll put it this way I can't tell you how many times I walk up to the main entry doors of library special collections and there's a small group of people saying I don't know are we allowed to go in at the special I don't know I don't think we're a lot in there. You know, and I have to say please, please come and visit us. So, really just bringing students into that physical space and letting them know that the person behind the desk is there to help them letting them know that you know we are there to help them to answer questions, and that there is a saying that I have is there are no wrong questions and there are no right answers. And so it's been really hard during this remote period to foster that sort of encouragement of our physical spaces and to build that kind of understanding and access into the instruction. And so the video does a little bit of that but I also I think that this classroom space being front and center right outside of where special collections is where we're engaging these materials and we are, you know, the students to to work hands on with these materials and then collaborate with one another. I think it's really going to help with that visibility. Jen, did you have something you want to date. Yeah, I just wanted to add that, as you saw from the schematics and the classrooms that just showed, it was a very deliberate move to put glass walls in so that the instruction could be visible and so that people could see people like them and things like them working with these materials. And so we could really get it out there front and center. We really didn't want it to be hidden behind walls and not not be visible so that's definitely a deliberate move. And then we have one last question from Liza, who asks, where were the periodicals and computers that were on a level. When the expansion happens, where would they go and will the reference librarians stay in the current space. So yes, just a note on the location, if you're familiar with a level, the classroom is really only displacing stacks currently. And so these are the stacks that house current periodicals. And I think one of the issues with current periodicals being located on the level is that they're not necessarily in the high use portions of the library and also there is a reading room, a general reference room on the first floor that many students, it's like the first thing they see when they come into the library so I believe that those current periodicals are being moved to that space where I think it makes more sense. It's going to be in a more high traffic area and those materials get more use. And then the special question space is going to be in that footprint, the computer terminals are on the east side of the building those aren't going anywhere. So we're just going to kind of displace them shelving and we're going to build a very large flexible active learning space in that in that spot. So, if that's it for questions. It doesn't look like we have any other additional questions again. Thank you so much for joining us. If you have any additional questions I'm happy to answer any logistical questions about the space or share any of the images. I know we're really excited to have the support of library administration to build this space and I know that many of my colleagues are slightly jealous that we're getting our own dedicated teaching space for library special collections. I'm happy to answer any questions about furniture or tech. And I can also forward any questions that you have to my colleagues, but thank you so much for joining us and we hope to see you in person again very soon. Thank you.