The roundtable continues and opens conversations generated during the 2023 AHA roundtable “What’s Special about Maps?” This roundtable, itself inspired by the 2021 CLAH Teaching and Teaching Materials Section Meeting “Taking Off the White Gloves,” examined the intersection of teaching with special collections, digital resources, and creative assignments. It considered how engagement with physical objects like maps can enrich student learning and how digital collections offer opportunities for translation, contextualization, and connection with scholarship.

As noted in the generous and appreciated write-up of this panel in the January 2023 edition of Perspectives, a fundamental question remained for the panelists and audience members at the end of this session: “Are maps truly a unique pedagogical source and approach, or are they simply an underutilized choice among a variety of options?” In this expanded panel, we will continue to grapple with this foundational question and explore how engaging with and advocating for maps in the classroom, research, and collections both requires distinct methods and fosters new approaches.

The proposed panel also extends the most fruitful areas of discussion, which focused on student engagement with simple and complex digital platforms, the relationship between faculty and libraries, and how class assignments can meaningfully engage with archives and special collections. We are particularly interested in the way that the topic generates conversations between faculty, librarians, high school teachers, and students.

The chair and four panelists have experience navigating, advocating for, and teaching with archival collections that include cartographic materials. Together, their work will generate discussions around teaching with map-centric pedagogies, encouraging students to think about space historically, and facilitating the use of physical maps collections, including with digital tools. They invite participation and contribution from the audience in ways that extend beyond the temporal and geographical specialties of the chair and panelists.