Certificate directors: Lucy Mulroney; Ayesha Ramachandran

This certificate exposes students to multiple forms of expertise within Yale’s special collections libraries, equips them with new analytical skills, and teaches them the methodologies that scholars, librarians, archivists, conservators, and curators employ as they preserve, interrogate, and steward the human record.

Collections: Objects, Research, Society signals an expansive interest in a wide variety of materials and media—including manuscripts, written documents, and paper-based records, as well as film, audio, and other digital formats. The certificate encourages students to consider both digital and physical objects in dialogue with each other, bridging the fields of museum studies, library/archival theory and practice, book history, and cultural studies to prompt students to think critically about both objects and the repositories in which they are held. Students engage with Yale Library’s special collections repositories, including: Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale Film Archive, Whitney Medical Historical Library, Divinity Library, Gilmore Music Library, Haas Family Arts Library, the Lewis Walpole Library. Additionally, students will have opportunities to work with the Yale Peabody Museum, Yale Center for British Art, Yale University Art Gallery, the Yale Law Library, and the Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage.

requirements

See Links to the attributes indicating courses approved for the Collections certificate requirements.  

Students must complete five courses (5 credits), including an introductory seminar (pending), and a one-credit capstone (pending). The remaining three courses expose students to the three areas of study listed below. Students must take two courses in one of the three areas of study and a third course in one of the other two areas of study.

1. Research with Collections (YC Collections: Research) Students gain proficiency in using collections to perform original research.

2. Collections in Society (YC Collections: Society) Students learn the social, communal, and institutional aspects of collections. 

3. Creative Critical Engagement with Collections (YC Collections: Engagement) Students learn to engage creatively with collections and think broadly about how repositories and objects are organized.

The mandatory capstone culminates in a project focused on material histories. This may take the form of an internship in the collections, a research project, working on an exhibit, a collections-intensive course that yields a robust final project, or other hands-on experience.

No more than two course credits fulfilling the requirements of the certificate may overlap with a major, a simultaneous degree, or another certificate. Additionally, no course credit may be applied toward the requirements of more than two curricular programs. For example, the same course credit may not be used to fulfill the requirements of two certificates and a major.  Approved graduate and professional school courses may count toward the certificate. The minimum grade for all courses is a C. 

Credit/D/Fail No course taken Credit/D/Fail may be applied toward the requirements of the certificate.

Outside credit Courses taken at another institution or during an approved summer or term-time study abroad program may count toward the certificate requirements with the approval of the certificate director. An on-topic summer internship can replace one elective.

Declaration of Candidacy

Students must declare their intention to earn a Certificate on the Declare Major, Concentration within the Major, Certificate page on Yale Hub, as early as possible, but at the very latest, by the 15th of January or September in their last semester at Yale. Once declared, Degree Audit tracks students' progress toward completion of the certificate. 

Students must also complete an enrollment form available on the Collections (Materials Histories of the Human Record) website.

Summary of requirements

Number of courses 5 course credits

Distribution of courses introductory course (pending), capstone (pending), and 3 electives