UFOs in the Cold War: A Fun Assignment for Teaching Digital Archival Research

• In Event: Teaching Qualitative Methods in Undergraduate Political Science

Abstract

The growing number of projects to digitize archival material has brought renewed attention to Archival Research as a useful method to search for and uncover hitherto inaccessible original historical evidence towards proposing or testing theories in Political Science (Lee; Mahoney and Thelen). A recent example is the 2022 National Archives Catalog, which has made accessible artifacts, papers records and exhibits from the Watergate affair case (United States v. G. Gordon Liddy trial) and thereby provided unprecedented access to students of American politics. With the trend of digitalization set to continue, a significant portion of archival research will soon be digital. This prospect provides both opportunities like increased accessibility, range and detail, and challenges like survival, transfer, digitization, reinforcement and source biases (Kim) that the teacher of qualitative research methodology must account for. This paper illustrates a collaborative effort between the Department of Political Science and the Library at the University of Toronto Mississauga to provide undergraduate students in an introductory Methods class with an entertaining assignment designed to introduce them to digital archival research that seeks to account for the above. The assignment aims to help students with comprehension of archival creation, awareness of potential biases, and strategies for optimizing a focused research agenda, while having fun. The exercise asks class members to investigate a ‘cold case’ of potential Unidentified Flying Object and related encounter that was documented in the summer of 1969, amidst the height of the space race between the two superpowers and the first human landing on the moon. It consists of a number of steps: first, a number of digitized documents and photos that have become readily available and accessible by Library and Archives Canada are selected and grouped together in a ‘curated’ digital archive consisting of 30 items (in three sets of ten) and their index which is uploaded to the course’s Canvas webpage. Then, a questionnaire is distributed to the students. To answer the questions successfully, students must both explore this digital archive, and participate in a group visit to the library, where a librarian makes a brief presentation on archives and introduces additional evidence on the case. Further, as students have access to different parts of the archive (students are randomly assigned to three groups that each has access to one of the three sets), they must interact with each other in a special tutorial session to put together the complete picture-thereby adding a collaborative element to the exercise. To complement the teaching, this tutorial includes a mini presentation by the expert librarian on the contours of archival research, which complements the class lecture and readings on the topic. Literature suggests that activities, exercises, and games that can attract students’ attention (Bradbury), stimulate their interest and elicit their active commitment (Laal and Ghodsi) to the study of methods in Political Science. This assignment aspires to contribute to students’ comprehension of digital archival research in a way that is efficient, appealing and enjoyable.

Authors

• Spyridon Kotsovilis, University of Toronto Mississauga

• Meaghan Valant, University of Toronto Mississauga