Student Curators and Exhibit Labs in Libraries

Our presentation focuses on creating and using exhibit spaces in academic libraries as laboratories for students. It is based on our experiences developing a student-curated exhibit program at the College of William and Mary (W&M) using existing spaces and designing exhibit “lab” space for the new library at Salisbury University. The presenters formerly worked together at W&M’s Special Collections Research Center (SCRC), Bea Hardy as director and Jennie Davy as exhibits curator. Hardy is now dean of libraries at Salisbury University. W&M’s emphasis on undergraduate research and a desire to create authentic assessments for humanities students inspired the SCRC staff in 2010 to add a program of student-curated exhibitions to its outreach agenda. We presented exhibit curation as an alternative to the typical archives instruction experience of “show and tell” and the resulting research paper. Since then, students have curated exhibits on the material culture of tobacco, W&M student publications, nineteenth- and twentieth-century diaries, W&M during the Jim Crow era, and other topics. Student curation allowed us opportunities to showcase and integrate our materials into coursework, come up with new exhibit ideas, fill our expansive exhibit spaces, and provide students with class projects based on the real-world work of public historians, archivists, and museum professionals. Student curators analyze documents or artifacts and through them tell a story to the public in their exhibits, bringing the primary sources to a wider audience. In addition to working with their regular course instructor, the students are able to draw on the expertise of the library’s exhibits curator and archivists. They often do public presentations in conjunction with their exhibits, adding to the educational value of the student curator program. One faculty member whose students have created several exhibits had this to say: This program provides a wonderful assignment for faculty to offer students. By curating an exhibit, students develop/hone their research skills, work with primary sources, interact with each other to decide on themes, choose display items, write label copy (learning the art of saying more with less), learn the labor that goes into doing good public history, and experience the thrill of having others view their work in a public forum. Students and faculty get out of the formal classroom and take advantage of resources on the campus. This program and the doors it allows me to open to students have made me a better teacher. The W&M program used existing spaces, with some adaptations over the years to allow classes to use them more effectively. When the SCRC director moved to Salisbury University in 2012, she pushed for the creation of an exhibit lab while helping design Salisbury’s new library (opening 2016). This new lab will feature two different but quite flexible spaces and a variety of display furniture, contributing to making the library an innovative, student-centered space. Our presentation will cover creating spaces for and implementing a student-curated exhibit program, sharing lessons we have learned over the past five years