A Stereoscope Project

Dulce Ivet Gonzalez, a BFA student majoring in Photography, visited SCUA with her class for an instructional session and was inspired to create a stereoscope. Gonzalez wrote: “I was fascinated by everything, especially photography related information and cameras. For my alternative process class with Professor Leah Sobsey, I created a stereoscope inspired by those in your department.  My stereoscope is made with wood and paper, using cyanotype photography. This printing process decorated my stereoscope with images carefully selected from your archives. I also took some images from our school now to see thru the lens taken from reading glasses. I finished my aesthetics with a self-adhesive felt sheet in blue.” We are excited to add this to our collections!  

A Special Book Exhibit

SCUA Graduate Assistant Grace Zayobi created a book exhibit for Arab American Heritage Month. Grace explains, “This observance is very new in terms of national recognition. Since the 1990s, several states observed months dedicated to Arab Americans and in 2017 the organization, Arab America, pushed to have one month that all states could celebrate. In 2021, Arab American Heritage Month was officiated by the federal government. This exhibit features Palestinian artist, Kamal Boullata, and Saudi artist, Ahmed Mater. Both of these artists use their understanding of Islamic culture and Arabic calligraphy to create unique works of art.”

Tori Hinshaw Wins Arts & Humanities Award

Graduate Assistant (and now UNCG Museum Studies alumna!) Tori Hinshaw won in the Arts & Humanities category in the UNCG 2024 Graduate Research & Creativity Showcase of Scholarship. Her poster Conducting Coltrane: Uncovering Small-Town Roots of a Music Mastermind documented her work organizing a fundraising event to preserve the childhood home of jazz legend John Coltrane in High Point.

Capstone Student Creates a Canvas Course

Kate Newman, who graduated from UNC Greensboro with a Master of Library and Information Science degree in May 2024, completed her Capstone project in SCUA in spring 2024. Here, she recounts her experience:

This past semester, I completed my Capstone in SCUA. I went into this Capstone hoping to take what I was learning in my instructional design class and apply it to archives and special collections. Instructional design helps people identify instructional needs and then create materials to address those needs.
My Capstone consisted of creating a Canvas course for students in the upcoming Martha Blakeney Hodges Fellowship Program to help them learn about basic archival theories and practices. This work involved searching for readings and video resources that discussed arrangement and description, preservation, digitization, and more. Then, on the course page, I grouped the materials into modules based on their topic. Additionally, there are modules about the policies applicable to working in SCUA, and a section about the SCUA faculty and staff to help the Fellows get to know the staff better and learn about what they do in their jobs.

To enhance the learning of the Fellows, I created quiz banks to allow the Fellowship Coordinator to build quizzes to match the needs of the students and to ensure that the students understand what they are reading and watching. I also created infographics using Canva to enhance the information on the Canvas site and to reinforce the information from the readings, videos, and quizzes. These infographics varied in style and color to keep them aesthetically appealing and contained basic pieces of information to help students remember and understand basic practices and theories of archives.

From this experience, I learned that creating instructional materials is not difficult with the help of web-based learning management systems, like Canvas, and online template editors, like Canva. Although instructional design is much more complex and thorough than what I did this past semester, I was still able to look at the needs of the instructor and students, find materials, and organize them in a way that is conducive to learning. These skills will be useful to me in the future as I could be working in an archive and need to conduct a class where I must gather materials and think critically about how best to teach that group of students.

Additionally, the fall 2023 semester, I worked with SCUA to create a digital exhibit (https://uncglibraries.com/25objects/) to correspond with the physical exhibit “UNCG in 25 Objects.” Through making this exhibit digital, I was able to add materials to help emphasize the main objects. Also, people can continue to view it despite the physical exhibit being only available for a semester. Thus, this experience also consisted of locating materials to help people to better understand a topic and organizing those materials in a software system.

Lastly, I have been fortunate to work with my site supervisor, Erin Lawrimore, and to work in SCUA these past two semesters. I am glad that I could put into action what I have been learning in my classes. I look forward to my future in working in libraries and archives.