By Miriam Intrator, Special Collections Librarian
One of the most exciting aspects of working at the Mahn Center is the opportunity to interact with students and instructors from a broad range of departments and programs and in a variety of different ways. This post highlights an ongoing collaboration with undergraduate and graduate students taking Assistant Professor Adonis Durado’s spring semester course, VICO 4112/5112 Illustration Capstone: Advanced Informational Graphics.
The assignment is to create a print, digital, or multi-platform infographic. Students can include any combination of video, photography, sound, interactivity, or any other element that inspires them. The key is for the final product to not only be informational, but to tell a story. The students work in small groups and Libraries’ staff play the role of their client or customer. We teach them about the materials, offer additional research consultations, review draft content, and provide feedback over the course of the project.
The task is not easy! As you will see in the projects below, each item is dense, complex in its history and content. Materials for these projects are selected based on a number of considerations:
- fully and unquestionably in the public domain -> meaning there are no copyright restrictions or concerns
- fully digitized and available online in our Digital Archives -> meaning students have full access to both the original physical items as well as to high resolution downloadable image files
- have existing metadata -> meaning students have access to descriptive and identifying information that informs how they approach their project and that help guide further research
- visual appeal -> contain illustrations or other elements that draw the eye and help illustrate the meaning and significance of the materials
- high interest and high use items in the collection -> meaning the infographics offer new ways for us to talk about, describe, explain, and teach with them
We at the Mahn Center are always impressed and excited by what the students come up with! Explore below their outstanding projects for yourself. During select times of the year we also invite you to come into the Mahn Center on the 5th floor of Alden to view the printed posters. Please get in touch to find out when the most recent project posters are on display.
Jump to projects
Spring 2023
During the spring 2023 semester students worked in small groups to research and create infographics for three items from the rare book collection: a 13th century illuminated manuscript Latin Bible, a boxed set of individual medieval manuscript leaves (or pages) entitled Fifty Original Leaves from Medieval Manuscripts, and select books highlighted for their Publishers’ Bindings, as well as select materials from Civil War Correspondence in the Manuscript Collections.
The team that worked on Fifty Original Leaves also created a video.
Spring 2022
During the spring 2022 semester students worked in small groups to research and create infographics for two items from the rare book collection: a 13th century illuminated manuscript Latin Bible and a boxed set of individual medieval manuscript leaves (or pages) entitled Fifty Original Leaves from Medieval Manuscripts.
Three groups worked on the Bible:
Three groups worked on Fifty Original Leaves:
We learn so much about our collections based on how students and other researchers interpret and use them. To see students’ varied and creative perspectives on what makes our collections interesting and important is incredibly informative and positively impacts how we teach with and talk about these items into the future.