UK Libraries Supports National History Day

Special Collections recently hosted 27 sixth and eighth grade National History Day participants from Lexington's Winburn Middle School.  National History Day engages students in the discovery of the historic, cultural and social experiences of the past. With the help of hands-on experiences and special presentations, students are better able to inform the present and shape the future.

Each National History Day project must use at least one primary research source, and Special Collections was pleased to assist with our resources as well as those of other repositories.  Accompanied by Cheryl Caskey, Student Programs Coordinator at the Kentucky Historical Society and about a dozen parents, the students rotated through eight active learning stations of Special Collections material organized around eight "turning points" in history:  Civil War, Segregation, Women's Suffrage, World War II, the Great Depression, Civil Rights, Second Wave Feminism, and Vietnam and Desert Storm/9/11.  Each station also included a laptop computer or an iPad that the students used to search for digitized primary source material on the Web. 

The event came about as part of a project of the University of Kentucky Student Chapter of the Society of American Archivists and was planned primarily through the efforts of graduate students (and society officers) Sheli Walker and Ida Sell.  Other graduate students who participated were Andrew Adler, Oliver Keel, Kasey Kelm, Meghan Moran, Daniel Naas, and Jeremy Puckett.  Special Collections faculty Jeffrey Suchanek and Gail Kennedy supervised and assisted with the event.  Many of the students and parents expressed a desire to come back next year!