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Teaching and learning at King’s
College London using Archives
and Special Collections
Katie Sambrook
Geoff Browell

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Special collections at King’s
• Around 180,000 items, mainly books but also
MSS and photographs
• Housed in the Foyle Special Collections
Library, a self-contained dedicated wing of
the main library building
• Items range in date from 1483 to the present
day
• Span humanities, social sciences and sciences,
with notable strengths in world history,
languages / literatures and medicine
• Historical library of the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office (FCO) our largest

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Why use special collection in teaching?
• Raises institutional awareness of
collections and reinforces their value as
scholarly resources
• Introduces undergraduates and taught PGs to
primary sources
• Often an inspiring experience for students
• Builds links with academic colleagues
through partnership working
• Fosters innovative teaching methods /
academic content
• Develops teaching, research and
communication skills of Special Collections

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Some things to consider
• Risk of damage to items, through
inappropriate handling
• Space – do you have a suitable seminar room
or will you need to close the Reading Room?
• Significant time commitment to deliver
effective teaching in a subject area in which
you may not be a specialist

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What has worked for us?
• Building the use of special collections into
academic curriculum / assessed coursework
• Introductory sessions for taught PGs in some
disciplines to sow ideas / whet appetites
for dissertation topics
• Set upper limit on class size, ensure
adequate supervision and provide supports
for large or fragile items
• Present jointly with academic colleagues
• Include house rules, catalogue searching
tips, useful resources online
• Include a practical exercise

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What have we found?
• The potency of the physical object
• Common student questions: How are books made?
What is the paper made of? How is a binding made?
How many copies would have been printed in an
edition? How is a woodcut made? What is an engraving?
• Increased emphasis on the history of the book /
descriptive bibliography / book as object
• Rapid increase in take-up of our teaching offer,
fuelled by:
– Growth of taught PG courses
– Growth of interdisciplinary humanities degrees
– Growth of 3rd year dissertations
• Special collections seminars now feeding directly
into teaching content in some disciplines

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Archives at King’s
• 5 million items
• Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives &
institutional, research and personal paper collections
• Military, medical, psychiatric focus
• Integrated records management and digital provision
• Growing collections
• Strand & Drury Lane locations
• Outreach focus

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Outreach & teaching
• Online catalogues since 1996
• Full outreach programme requiring the development of new IT:
for example DAM and new cataloguing software with
presentation at the forefront – Celum and Archios

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Focus on graduate & ECR training
• Archival skills – link with Moodle VLE
• London Cultural Connections - AHRC
• Language & Access - AHRC

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Key findings
• Focus on the value and experience of working with original
documents
• Broad approach to learning – e.g. U3A, Nightingale & nurses,
WW1 – mixing research with archives – leveraging expertise
• Link with modules – for example Summer School
• Need for advocacy within an organisation
• Focus on fundraising
• Commitment to collaboration & building communities (AIM25)

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Thank you
• Geoff Browell: geoffrey.browell@kcl.ac.uk
• Catalogues: www.kingscollections.org/catalogues
• Exhibitions: www.kingscollections.org/exhibitions
• AIM25: www.aim25.ac.uk