Gleeson Librarians are here to collaborate with faculty! In addition to the research instruction that we deliver to your classes in our electronic classroom (or yours), there are lots of other ways we love to work with you and your classes using the library’s resources and your students’ creativity. Here are three of them:
Special Collections
The Donohue Rare Book Room and its Special Collections provide a lab for exploring books, their history, and material culture. Classes in history, sciences, literature, and the arts frequently conduct research in the Rare Book Room. For instance, in 2018, the students of Dr. Omar Miranda’s Late Romantic Period course helped create an exhibit in the Rare Book Room of “Mary Shelley and Her Contemporaries: On the Bicentennial of Frankenstein.”
Students teach students when our Special Collections are the subject of displays and exhibits. Graduate and undergraduate Museum Studies students come up with the ideas, selections, interpretations, publicity, and then execute the installations. Or, you might want to devise your own explorations of our Special Collections. Just this week, an exhibit curated from our collection by Associate Professor of Design Stuart McKee opened in the Rare Book Room: “The Revival of Printing: The Arts and Crafts Aesthetic of the Book.”
Zine Library
The Gleeson Zine Library collects and circulates zines (self-published print creations) with a focus on social justice and representation of our diverse USF community. Members of the Gleeson Zine Collective (library workers who like zines!) have collaborated with Media Studies, MFA, Sociology, Anthropology, Urban Agriculture, and Muscat Scholars faculty, to name just a few whose students have participated in zine workshops and added to the library collection. In class visits to the Zine Library, students learn about zines and create them.
For example, students may work on assignments individually and make different zines or put their creations together to make a single zine. Or they might work on group projects and collaborate on one topic. We can work with you on whatever outcomes you want for your classes. (And you can donate zines, too!)
Seed Library
Alongside a collection of books and media about seeds, urban agriculture, and sustainable food production, the USF Seed Library, housed in Gleeson Library, helps teach students about the connections between people, the food we eat, the labor that goes into it, and the land where it grows. Classes regularly visit the Seed Library, where Seed Librarians lead discussions of issues around growing food and feeding people. To make their learning tangible, students might create beautiful and informative seed packets to distribute seeds to the community; take seeds to plant at home or with their classes; and cook meals with ingredients they helped to grow. We also bring the Seed Library to the community in collaboration with students and classes for events like community dinners, seed swaps, and Earth Day celebrations. Let us know if you want to introduce your students to the Seed Library.
Let’s talk!
To schedule any class in the library, fill out a short Class Instruction Request and we will follow up with you. Of course if you have any questions just see the contact information on the web pages linked above.