Dear members of the ACRL History Librarians Interest Group,
My name is Jesús Alonso-Regalado. I am a history librarian at UAlbany. Recently, I received the following message from one of our history faculty. This professor is trying to figure out how or in what ways she can apply the Federal accessibility requirements to primary sources in the instructional setting.
I am hoping to tap into this group's collective knowledge for ideas on how this professor might approach the accessibility of primary sources, ensuring she complies with accessibility requirements while still making sure students develop essential primary historical research skills.
Here are some of examples of the kinds of documents she would like to assign that she is unclear whether she can continue to use, or need to remediate, and if so, how to remediate them:
"Source 1: Common Council minutes
In AHST 305 - a course on the history of trash and waste - I'd like to have students read and interpret the laws of the City of Albany, as provided in the common council minutes to understand how and why different technical methods of dealing with waste were debated and applied in Albany. City directories, which provide access to the names of junk dealers, also fall in this category.
These materials are available at the Albany Public Library (in the case of common council minutes) or Grenander (in case of city directories), but also have been digitized on Hathitrust.
Which, of any of these formats, would these documents be considered accessible?
-If I had students look at them in print at the archives/library?
-If I provide a link to the resource on Hathitrust?
-If I download the relevant pages from the document? (I expect not, as they are scanned PDFs, which are specifically singled out as not accessible in the materials from Catloe).
-If I provide a tagged PDF of the pages of the document?
-If I transcribe every page of the scanned PDF, and then edit the text with headlines?
If only last variant is possible, who or how is providing support to do this work, or is it expected of all instructors? How will students learn to read documents that are not within this format, which is at this point a precondition of conducting research in the field?
Source 2: Digitized photographs of Jacob Riis, available via the Museum of the City of New York
https://collections.mcny.org/asset-management/2F3XC5KTTWW?&WS=SearchResults&Flat=FP
Is a link to the museum collection search tool, which provides captions for these images adequate for accessibility purposes? Can I provide a link to a database of images like this one, or to the Library of Congress' photograph collections? Or, because every image within the collection does not yet have alt-text, do I restrict students from using these collections?
Source 3: Archival materials on the Bottle Bill in the Environmental Advocates papers, housed at the Grenander Department of Special Collections
Not every document within the collection will meet the accessibility guidelines for headings and subheadings. Some will have long paragraphs. Does this mean I can't ask students to look at materials in archives?
If I offer students an assignment in which they have the opportunity to select from a menu of primary sources - and one of the choices is accessible, but not all, is that sufficient?
My concern is that when it comes to primary sources, the accessibility guidelines stand in the way of students doing authentic historical research. It is my job to teach students how to adapt and apply the skills of the discipline which include interpreting difficult texts and non-standard formats. To fail to include these sources would be to restrict the depth of the education students encounter. I appreciate our mission is to provide education for a broad sector of the population and to accommodate all students' needs, but I'm having a hard time squaring that with the necessities of doing historical research."
Thank you all!
Jesús Alonso-Regalado
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Jesús Alonso-Regalado, Subject Librarian
History
Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies
Romance Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
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University Library, LI-204
University at Albany, SUNY
1400 Washington Avenue
Albany, NY 12222
Email: jalonso-regalado@albany.edu
Phone: (518) 442-3554
Fax: (518) 442-3567
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Jesús Alonso-Regalado
Associate Librarian/Subject Librarian
State University of New York-Albany
University Library
He/Him/His
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