Featuring Historical Textbooks to Build Knowledge of University History

Abstract

Undergraduate students at a teacher education institution, the University of Northern Colorado, are the target audience for an exhibit of a reading series from the Libraries’ Archival Services collections. The display highlights an important era in the university’s history involving four faculty members: Paul McKee, M. Lucile Harrison, Annie McCowen, and Elizabeth Lehr. These professors developed an innovative approach to early reading instruction that was incorporated into their reading textbook series during a time of uniformity in reading textbooks. The rationale for the display was based on research about the Reading for Meaning series discussed in this article.