Establishing special collections literacy for undergraduate students: an investigation into benefits and barriers of access

ABSTRACT Literature relating to education sessions in special collections has been prevalent in the field since the early 2000s. Following on from the publication of the ACRL-RBMS-SAA Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy published in the USA in 2018, this paper applies the guidelines to survey and interview responses to explore the key skills gained by undergraduates using special collections and the barriers to skills’ acquisition throughout their degree programmes. Contextualizing the results through US and UK literature, this paper argues that special collections literacy can be embedded into interdisciplinary undergraduate curricula which in turn may help special collections advocate for increased resources to broaden their education programmes. It establishes a picture of current special collections education for UK universities including range, methods of delivery and assessment styles.