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News MEAP in the Classroom: Syllabus Inspiration for Winter and Spring Courses

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Activating classroom discussions with hands-on exploration of primary sources

Incorporating primary sources into undergraduate teaching is a great way to spark student curiosity and to expand critical thinking and analysis skills. From short in-class discussions, to detailed at-home analyses, to semester-long explorations, working with primary sources gives students an opportunity to hone their skills in analysis and interpretation and to gain hands-on experience working with archival collections.

While visiting an archive or special collections in person during the term can be challenging, digital collections provide unique opportunities to bring primary sources into any classroom setting. They also allow students to work with rare primary source materials when the physical collections are located far from campus. What is more, new online tools (like Storiiies) make it even easier to bring primary sources into large in-person and remote, online courses!

Over 30 Digital Collections to Explore

MEAP’s collections, which are part of the UCLA Library Digital Collections, are available to students and faculty around the world—not just at UCLA! At present, the digital library hosts over thirty MEAP-funded collections, and students can search for sources within a specific collection by navigating to the “Collection” facet in the left-hand menu. Students can also search for different types of sources—audio, visual, textual—using the “Genre” facet. To narrow results, keyword searching is also available using the search bar at the top of the page.

Navigate across Collections and Genres

Additional Context to Aid Interpretation

Collection descriptions accompany MEAP collections to explain their context and the curatorial or organizational principles that frame them. These descriptions provide insights into each collection’s origins and intentions, often outlining why these collections are important not only to the curators who compiled them but also to the communities represented in them. (We've linked to these description pages for the collections listed below.)

In addition to collection descriptions, MEAP also maintains project pages that provide further context and information about the collections as well as the creators, individuals, and organizations that contributed to them. Project pages are available on the MEAP website.

Finding and Using Sources

If you’ve already found the sources that fit with your upcoming Winter and Spring courses, now might be the time to explore our collection of “MEAP in the Classroom” posts with lesson-plan recommendations and how-to guides for using digital collections in the classroom:

If you haven’t found the right sources yet, we invite you to explore MEAP’s collections by region or by discipline and theme.

By region:

By discipline and theme:

Explore other essays from our "MEAP in the Classroom" Series

ٰWant to learn more about adding MEAP collections to your syllabus?

If you'd like to use MEAP collections for your current or future courses but aren't sure what to do next, please write to us. We're always happy to discuss possibilities and to share information with prospective users. The MEAP team is available at meap@library.ucla.edu.