Center for Engagement with Primary Sources

The Claremont Center for Engagement with Primary Sources (CCEPS) provides opportunities for librarians and faculty to collaborate in developing in-depth learning experiences for undergraduate and graduate students while also promoting our special collections, archival collections, and services as integral to the research, teaching, and learning mission of the library and The Claremont Colleges. Working with both analog and digital methodologies, CCEPS Fellows engage with primary sources by arranging and describing a collection, researching and curating an exhibition in the library or online, or designing and implementing a scholarly digital project. Personal experience enables Fellows to articulate and demonstrate the importance of primary source materials to their research. Read Out of the Box, the CCEPS Fellows’ blog, to keep up with what CCEPS Fellows are doing.

CCEPS would like to thank Scripps College, Claremont Graduate University, and The Claremont Colleges Library for providing funding that allowed us to launch this signature program of the library in 2014.

Program Benefits

• Opportunity to add discrete project to resume and build contacts
• Opportunity to expand research skills
• Applied learning opportunity
• Minimum of 15 hours per week; flexible hours
• Opportunity to work with experts in the fields of archives and special collections

Currently, there are no CCEPS projects.  If you are interested in funding a student to work on a CCEPS project, please reach out to SpecialCollections@claremont.edu.

The Claremont Colleges Library’s Claremont Center for Engagement with Primary Sources (CCEPS) provided the formal infrastructure for the Claremont digitization and metadata team’s work experience for the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) grant-funded project, “Digitizing Southern California Water Resources.” From 2017-2020, Claremont CCEPS fellows scanned archival materials and created descriptive metadata, and they also incorporated aspects of the CCEPS program in their daily project work such as writing weekly blog posts and pass downs, and making culminating presentations during which each student talked about their experience and demonstrated importance of primary source materials to their own course work and research projects. The ultimate goal of the CLIR CCEPS fellowships was to provide students with an applied learning opportunity that would expand research skills and provide opportunities to add discrete project experience to their resumes, and build contacts. See the CLIR CCEPS page of the Western Water Archives for more information about this project.