SCARC faculty and staff act as guides and educators, introducing researchers to the various portals, resources, and technologies used in archival research, as well as the wide range of skills and concepts involved in researching with special collections and archives.

• We welcome one-time and ongoing partnerships with Oregon State University instructors in all disciplines to integrate unique materials into your courses, through instructional activities, course assignments, or other projects.
• We acknowledge that materials in SCARC collections and the language that describes them may be harmful. We approach our instruction with an anti-racist lens; for more information please see our SCARC Anti-Racist Actions Statement.
• We build and develop relationships with faculty across the university in both the humanities and sciences, and believe in the importance of primary source literacy skills for all students.

If your course interests fall outside of SCARC’s collections, our faculty can assist you in navigating primary sources held elsewhere in the OSU library, other repositories, or and within related databases.

Photo of the SCARC Reading Room

In our instruction and instructional support actions, SCARC faculty and staff convey that archives and special collections are not neutral repositories, but are complex sites shaped by power, privilege, and systemic biases.

We disrupt these traditional paradigms by emphasizing lessons exploring archival and library processes such as appraisal, description, arrangement, and access through an anti-racist lens. In every class experience, we seek to emphasize that historical records reflect the perspectives and priorities of dominant groups, and show how they marginalize, misrepresent, omit, or occlude other experiences.

In our teaching practices with primary sources (which include creating learning objectives, selecting materials, and preparing content and activities), we seek to center underrepresented voices, to promote critical thinking across life experiences, and to create classroom and reference environments where students feel supported and challenged to respectfully engage in difficult conversations about the past and legacies of harm.