The Charles Wilcox Papers belong to the Keene, New Hampshire resident who was a Union soldier during the Civil War and was captured and imprisoned in Confederate internment camps as well as prisons from 1864-1865. These papers include Wilcox’s diary, correspondence, and official documents. The papers are part of the archival holdings of the Historical Society of Cheshire County in Keene, New Hampshire, and were included as part of the NH Citizens Archivists' Initiative.
As someone who has been teaching for almost fifteen years, my strongest feelings of accomplishment come from seeing students become empowered to take ownership of their own learning. As academic librarians become more empowered, we are moving away from the one-shot model, and embracing a "train-the-trainer" model and teaching full-semester classes to facilitate metaliteracy in students. At Keene State College, where the library faculty teach in the Information Studies minor, my colleague, Jennifer Ditkoff, and I designed a course called Digital Identity & Participatory Culture, and ran it in the fall 2014 semester. Our goal was to turn over some of the course to the students, so that they would be making decisions about content, teaching their peers, and designing assignments. In this chapter, I provide background on scholarship in student-centered and collaborative learning, participatory culture, and metaliteracy in higher education, all of which guided us in developing the course. I discuss the challenges and implications of Digital Identity and Participatory Culture, and suggest ways that academic librarians and disciplinary faculty might experiment with student-led content and student-created assignments in their attempt to empower and instill a sense of agency in metaliterate learners.
