By Ellis Willard
Imagine a middle schooler carefully unfolding a Civil War field map or a 10th grader examining a surgeon’s kit once used in battlefield hospitals. When young learners encounter primary sources and artifacts firsthand through partnerships with libraries and museums, history is no longer something to memorize and repeat, but something to feel and experience.
"When I work with current and future teachers, I see how energizing it is for them to explore primary sources and artifacts as part of their lessons,” said West Virginia University Service Assistant Professor of Social Studies Secondary Education Betsy Osborne. “It changes the way they think about teaching. Suddenly, history and science are not just topics to be covered. Instead, they are living stories that students can investigate and interpret for themselves."
Educators who are looking for ways to make lessons interactive, fun, and multifaceted can be easily overwhelmed about knowing where to start. WVU Libraries helps teachers build and advance curriculum in a variety of subjects, from local and national history to civic engagement and even health sciences.
"Watching my students design lessons that use objects, documents, and multimedia from WVU Libraries reminds me how much potential there is when educators and librarians collaborate," Osborne said. "WVU Libraries has become a powerful partner in this work, helping West Virginia educators find creative and accessible ways to connect the past to the present, to make learning more meaningful, and to empower students to take ownership of their own curiosity."
Connecting historic concepts to the communities students call home
Last year, 5th graders (about 60!) from Suncrest Elementary visited the Downtown Library to see stations full of Civil War artifacts from the West Virginia and Regional History Center (WVRHC) and the William A. Neal Museum of the Health Sciences up close and personal.
Fifth graders from Suncrest Elementary listen to WVU Libraries Research and Exhibition Specialist Catherine Rakowski during a Civil War field trip at the WVRHC.
"Our national history is comprised of our local histories," said WVU Libraries’ Director of the WVRHC Lori Hostuttler. "It is easier for students to understand historic concepts and events when they can see them happening in their home communities. Teachers use the WVRHC’s collections to make those connections and bring history to life."
"Exposing students to primary sources makes history real," said the WVRHC’s Instruction and Public Services Archivist Bridget Jamison. "I remember one 5th-grade student on the Civil War field trip who was struggling to engage with history when reading for class. At the end of the visit, a teacher shared with us how pleased she was with the observations the student was able to make from interacting with the objects we had on display."
Over the summer, WVU Libraries also participated in the WVU Student Recreation Center’s camp for K-8 children. Bringing the Neal Museum directly to campers, children learned the ABCs of health careers, matched health system superheroes to their specialties, played at running teddy bear clinics, and heard stories from older “kids” who were studying to go into these professions.
"It was a very different style of programming compared to anything we’ve done before," said WVU Libraries’ Curator of the Neal Museum Katie Thompson.
You could see the children learning what it meant that their parent is a cardiologist or getting excited when their camp counselor talked about what they were studying to be. The kids were connecting someone they knew to a health career they just learned about, and it made that learning have more impact. Katie Thompson, Curator, Neal Museum
Where local history inspires future paths
Older students are no different in their desire to experience the real thing firsthand. The Neal Museum also played a critical role in the WVU Health Careers Academy, engaging rising seniors interested in health professions through a scavenger hunt that highlighted how their future careers might take shape using the museum’s exhibits.
"They know they want to work in health, and they could see what they want to do and what’s out there visually represented," Thompson said. "Plus, they’re now understanding at a basic level that healthcare has not always been the way it is now, and it does evolve over time."
As a part of the 2025 Governor’s Honors Academy, the WVRHC’s Instruction and Public Services Archivist Bridget Jamison taught a group of rising high school seniors and young scholars the course "The Earth in the Archive" — a hands-on curriculum practicing original research with primary and secondary sources.
"This course empowered students to consider the work that goes into the creation of history by reviewing the differences between primary and secondary sources and allowing them to analyze primary sources from their own perspectives,” Jamison said. “These students shared the ways they found words from the past surprising and confusing, or relevant and familiar to their lives. I always hope to inspire some future historians, but these skills will serve students in any discipline."
Other examples of WVU Libraries’ work with K-12 students include various visits from elementary and high schools, as well as the West Virginia National Cemeteries Project in which Grafton High School and University High School students learn about research and ultimately memorialize the lives of the Mountain State’s military heroes with their new skills.
Governor’s Honors Academy students dig in to their assignment.
Empowering West Virginia’s K-12 teachers
As WVU Libraries makes more special collections available online, teachers, students, and the public — near and far — can discover materials that are housed here. However, this also means there is a massive amount of information available to parse, whether it is being used to build curriculum or source research and papers.
The American Congress Digital Archives Portal is a collaborative, non-partisan endeavor by WVU Libraries and 6 other academic institutions across the United States to make Congressional archives available online. After receiving an additional $1.5 million in Congressionally directed spending in 2025, WVU Libraries is now expanding utility, usability, and capacity of the portal for K-12 educators by equipping West Virginia’s teachers with resources and tools for refortified civics and history education.
"We’re trying to help advance social studies and civics education by providing what archivists do well, access to rich historical resources," said WVU Libraries’ Associate Dean of Collections Danielle Emerling. "Teachers need resources that more efficiently pull together and distill the massive number of sources available to them so that they can do what they’re best at — teaching."
By coupling primary sources, tools, and other resources with educator trainings and workshops, WVU Libraries is bridging primary sources with curriculum that teachers can implement, ultimately advancing the WVU land-grant mission to improve the lives and livelihoods of all West Virginians.