This post was written by Allison Reising, a doctoral candidate in English at Baylor University.
On March 14, graduate students from various disciplines gathered in the ABL’s Lewis-Birkhead Lecture Hall for an Archive Workshop led by Dr. Kristen Pond, the ABL’s Margarett Root Brown Chair in Robert Browning and Victorian Studies, and her graduate assistant, Allison Reising. The workshop aimed to train archival skills that prepare graduate students to incorporate special collections into their research and teaching.
The workshop’s centerpiece was a tutorial video that showed what a visit to the ABL might look like for a graduate student, from the initial scoping out of the library’s hours and offerings to the visit itself and a resulting scholarly publication.
After the video, Dr. Pond moderated a Q&A session with ABL Director Jennifer Borderud and ABL curators Laura French and Joanna Lamb. The ABL staff shared advice on best practices for using archives, as well as humorous stories of faux pas they committed while visiting unfamiliar archives.
Finally, the workshop highlighted resources for graduate students interested in archival work. For graduate students interested in travel funding for dissertation research at an archive, the Baylor Graduate School offers Doctoral Research Support, and many graduate departments offer their own funding as well. For graduate teachers of record and Baylor faculty interested in enhancing their teaching through leading class visits to a Baylor archive, the ABL (along with other Baylor Libraries) offers stipended Special Collections Teaching Fellowships (applications due Friday, April 12, 2024).