REFERENCE FUNDAMENTALS
This type of interaction, involving questions, active listening, and clarification, is the cornerstone of archival reference service.
What is the reference interview?
This SAA/ACRL joint document, published in 2018, established learning objectives for finding, analyzing, and using primary sources.
What are the Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy?
According to the lecture notes, this is the maximum time an archivist might have for a one-shot instruction session that still needs to leave a lasting impression.
What is 20 minutes?
Taylor and Jaeger identify this as the overarching concept that primary source literacy, archival intelligence, digital literacy, and artifactual literacy are all considered aspects of.
What is information literacy?
This is the term for the tool that archivists create to describe a collection's contents, arrangement, and context, which students often need help learning to navigate.
What is a finding aid?
Yakel and Torres coined this term to describe a researcher's knowledge of archival principles, practices, and institutions.
What is archival intelligence?
Quagliaroli and Casey identified this pedagogical model, defined as "learning rooted in what is local," as particularly effective for architecture students.
What is Place-Based Education (PBE)?
Quagliaroli and Casey argue that this type of class session — often dismissed in the literature — can be effective for design studio students when planned thoughtfully.
What is a show-and-tell session?
The ACRL replaced its Information Literacy Competency Standards with this document in 2015, which the Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy describe as a "useful companion."
What is the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education?
Quagliaroli and Casey noted that when collections include this type of record — created in software-dependent environments — they raise special preservation and instruction challenges.
What are born-digital records (or: CAD/BIM files, digital architectural records)?
This 1992 scholar argued archival reference was treated as a "necessary evil" and called for a more user-centered approach.
Who is Carolyn Heald?
Jarosz and Kutay found that students who received this, in addition to the GRI tool, correctly identified 87% of primary sources — compared to 65% for those who used the tool alone.
What is in-person instruction (or: a face-to-face Special Collections session)?
Matheny argues that archivists who simply say "yes" to instructor requests without engaging or redirecting them are behaving as this — a term borrowed from business culture.
What is customer service (or: an automaton that serves the needs of faculty)?
Law libraries deliberately avoided this term when developing their research competency standards, because it "would resonate most with the legal community."
What is information literacy?
Jarosz and Kutay noted that when students find materials in digital collections databases, they commonly fail to read this, making archival objects far less meaningful.
What is contextualizing metadata (or: contextual information)?
Mary Jo Pugh notes that in archives, unlike in libraries, reference encounters are typically this — involving ongoing, substantive interaction rather than quick transactions.
What is obligatory and continuing (or: substantive and prolonged)?
This 1973 assessment format, originally designed for AP History exams, asks students to derive arguments from primary documents rather than rely on memorization.
What is the Document-Based Question (DBQ)?
Rockenbach found that while instructors may find an orientation approach adequate, they "often don't realize" archivists can help them design interactions using this approach, which engages students in interpretive activity.
What is active learning (or: inquiry-based learning)?
Medical libraries frequently use this evidence-based practice concept, comparing it to information literacy, noting the two "mirror each other in many ways."
What is Evidence-Based Practice (EBP)?
Duff and Fox found that archives reference workers devote most of their time to helping people learn how to search for information, especially how to use this.
What are finding aids?
Matheny identifies four core challenges to productive instruction consultation. Name any two.
What are [any two of]: the shift to active learning; expert researchers misunderstanding novice needs; the complex nature of research requests; and the uneasy relationship between archivists/librarians and teaching faculty?
Yakel and Torres describe three forms of knowledge required to work effectively with primary sources. Name all three.
What are domain (subject) knowledge, artifactual literacy, and archival intelligence?
Quagliaroli uses this specific active learning approach in her sessions, pairing New Haven city planning files and archival drawings to help urban studies students analyze their local built environment.
What is Place-Based Education combined with inquiry-based instruction (or: a think/pair/share group activity using PBE)?
Jarosz and Kutay's GRI tool draws from this theorist's Guided Inquiry model, a comprehensive PreK–12 information literacy framework grounded in the "information search process."
Who is Kuhlthau (Carol Kuhlthau)?
The principle that a collection's arrangement reflects the context of its creation — and that archivists should preserve that context even in description — is tied to these two core archival principles.
What are provenance and original order?