Re-Imagining the campus archive as a site for student engagement: A design project
Scott L. Rogers
Pacific Lutheran University
Thursday, February 6 2014
Some Details:
Producing Public Memory: Museums, Memorials, and Archives as Sites for Teaching Writing
Authors:
Patrick Fisher (senior)
Chelsey Moore (graduated '12)
Scott L. Rogers
Alli Walbolt (junior)
Layered Format; Three Overlapping "Voices"
"Every time a student sits down to write for us, he has to invent the university for the occasion - invent the university, that is, or a branch of it, like history or anthropology or economics or English. The student has to learn to speak our language, to speak as we do, to try on the peculiar ways of knowing, selecting, evaluating, reporting, concluding, and arguing that define the discourse of our community"
David Bartholomae,
"Inventing the University"
"Whatever else the archive may be—say, an historical space, a political space, or a sacred space; a site of presentation, interpretation, or commemoration—it always already is the provisionally settled scene of our collective invention, of our collective invention of us and of it."
Barbara Biesecker
"Of Historicity, Rhetoric: The Archive as a Scene of Invention"
In one of our meetings with Tom, he showed us the very small archive and the interesting things in it. This got us thinking, since none of us even knew it was there, that the fourth floor would be a great way to expand this and allow students to know about and have access to the history and artifacts from ONU. This idea then transformed into wanting the students to feel like a part of the university by telling and showing the story behind the archive.
- Alli
The attitude we adopted early on was that the fourth floor would contain elements that the university lacks, with particular attention paid to the preservation of archived materials. The expansion of archival space was always something that would serve as a hub where the remaining rooms would almost revolve around as satellite spaces.
- Patrick
When we first presented our proposal to Tom, it was met with less enthusiasm than we’d expected, but in all honesty, our effort at that point was quite minimal. That’s not to say that we didn’t take the project as seriously as we should’ve, but we were treating it merely as a project, when in fact, our idea involved something quite near and dear to Tom’s heart. Once we began to fully understand his passion for archival material and preservation, we matched our efforts to his demands.
- Patrick
One
of the most important aspects of the fourth floor installation was to expand
the current archival space, if for no other reason than it represents the
heritage of the university. So, from there, we began asking ourselves why. What
would really make future generations of ONU students come and look at old
yearbooks and mascot uniforms? And the answer we settled on was that these
things tell stories.
I
think that the inclusion of our storytelling theme solidified and grounded our
individual efforts, so that we were no longer writing about why the university
needs a bigger space for speakers or why we need expensive leather couches for
students to read on. We were working
toward a concept.
- Patrick
[Libraries] are hubs designed for social and educational interactivity, adaptable to the times and the surrounding culture. One such example of this revision process with libraries is the renovation of Ohio State University’s Thompson Library, where key elements (“coherence, legibility, complexity, and mystery”) were emphasized in order to create a space that was relevant and stimulating.
This does not mean that desired changes must be limited to just technological expansion. As the renovation of the Thompson Library shows, the scope can be more intimate. For instance, libraries now represent synergistic centers for students and members of the community, places for both groups to share stories and to reveal unique similarities that otherwise would remain undiscovered.
Such a place would prove to be extraordinarily vital for a university’s preservation of historical documentation as well as its communal, interactive pulse.
We used the 3D walkthrough to get a better understanding of the layout and what it would look like as well as be able to show the floor to others more easily. It improved the project considerably because we could see how many chairs would fit or if we had too much open space (or not enough).
- Alli
I know we were all excited at the final fourth floor and Tom seemed to be as well. It was great being able to actually “see” the rooms and designs that we were referring to throughout the report/presentation.
- Chelsey
I remember we went on a tour of the library my freshman year and the last stop we made was the campus archive, and in total, I believe we spent about three minutes there. It’s off the beaten path, hidden away from the student body, and access is—at its best—limited. I do understand the importance of this from a security standpoint, but these things deserve to be seen, not locked away in an oversized closet…Ideally our proposed idea would help bridge the campus with the community.
- Patrick
In completing this project, I realized how little of a role we [students] feel we have but how much we actually have. I learned that an archive has a lot more to it than old records and how much it can bring students together to feel like they are a part of something bigger than their four years on campus
-Alli
Thanks.
Questions?
Re-Imagining the campus archive as a site for student engagement: A design project
By Scott Rogers
