The Booth Family Center for Special Collections is an integral part of the teaching mission of Georgetown University. We welcome classes from a variety of disciplines to our Barbara Ellis Jones (C’1974) Inquiry Classroom each year. We believe that students who handle primary sources in an active-learning environment will relate to history on a personal level; grapple with the complexity, uncertainty, and contradictions of documents; find inspiration for creative projects; become familiar with archives and primary source research; improve their critical thinking by researching, writing about, and presenting on historical objects; and acquire investigative skills essential to future study and the digital workplace.
Class visits can be tailored to your needs. Some instructors simply use library materials as the basis of lectures, while others create interactive exercises such as document analysis worksheets. Student presentations, exhibitions, blog posts and performances are among the many other options available. Library staff have subject expertise in such areas as Georgetown University history; primary source literacy; Slavery, Memory and Reconciliation resources and research projects; the history of books and printing; rare books as material culture; the history of photography; and research methods. Whatever your field of study, we are happy to work with you to identify materials that fit into your curriculum and design meaningful experiences for your students.
Bring your class in for an hour or schedule several visits for in-depth investigations of archives, manuscripts, rare books, visual art and more. We are also happy to support students through assignments which require follow-up engagement with our collections.
Our main teaching classroom seats 30 students and is fully equipped with a document camera, computer and projector; its tables can be configured to suit larger or smaller groups.
Request a consultation with Booth staff, or call us at 202-687-7444.