Take a moment and look at these three images and answer the question provided below.
Which of these photographs are of the same person?
What did you see that helped you answer the question? What prior knowledge did you use? What questions did you ask yourself? What clues tipped you off?
These are all skills that students need to gain and use to survive in today’s classrooms and in our busy world. They need to know how to observe; how to question; how to incorporate what they already know; how to analyze and think critically.
How can students gain these skills? By using archival materials and primary sources found in your repositories. You have materials that can help a student become engaged, think critically and gain knowledge. Give of your collections; give of your knowledge and experience. These are some of the greatest gifts of all and cost little in time and money but give much back to you and your repository.
And while I’m here I do want to put in a plug for SAA annual fund raising appeal. We also have received a pledge request from Richard Cameron to match dollar for dollar donations up to $2000 for the Disaster Recovery fund. We hope that you will give what you can to help SAA continue to its members and the archival community as a whole.
And if you want to find out which images are of the same person read my colleague Cheryl Lederle’s blog post.
May you and yours have a wonderful holiday season and a wonderful start to 2014.
Off the Record 