From networking to new ideas

Blog series Americas and Oceania Collections series

Author Kaitlin Holt, Fulbright-British Library Eccles Institute Scholar 2025–26

As the 2025-26 Fulbright-British Library Eccles Institute Scholar in Library and Information Studies I pursued a professional project exploring the role bias plays in the interpretation and dissemination of curricular content featured in both US and UK secondary education, and how UK knowledge institutions support educational efforts to address this bias through research with their own collections. Unlike a traditional Fulbright research fellowship, a professional project focuses on exchange – making connections, observing and sharing best practices, and exploring different perspectives and new ideas. Rather than showing up with a thesis to prove or manuscript to author, I arrived at the British Library with a list of wonderings, eagerness to cultivate relationships, and the rare freedom to participate in generative learning.

My fellowship with the Eccles Institute unfolded across four interlocking strands that leveraged the British Library’s reach, expertise, and collections for support. Through the Library's connections, I was introduced to classroom teachers in both state and independent schools, heads of learning at UK cultural institutions, industry experts and advocates, and academics working in adjacent fields. Each of these relationships provided a richer picture of what teaching with archives and building information literacy skills, including those needed to understand bias, looks like across UK educational contexts.

The second strand was UK context-building: learning how the national curriculum shapes what’s taught in classrooms, how school library services are structured, and how informal learning fits into the broader educational landscape. Conversations with colleagues across the Library’s Learning team worked to demystify cultural differences and make findings legible.

Third, I observed programmes in action — student and teacher workshops, learning space operations, and Eccles Institute events — which grounded these conversations into something concrete.

Finally, I conducted research through literature review, conversations with content experts, and a careful study of lesson plans and programme models to add to my understanding of how bias manifests in curriculum, archival sources, and media and what strategies exist to teach these lessons.

The professional validation I received through this fellowship was immediate: seeing how school programmes that centre teaching with archives are valued, resourced, and designed in the UK – from student study days that centre and respect young people as researchers to learning spaces that help them feel welcome and at home – these affirmed the practices I have worked hard to build in my US context. But the fellowship also expanded and produced new ways of thinking, including around AI literacy and how the skills we use to interrogate archival documents can be adapted to similarly interrogate AI-generated output. Ideas about community-informed decision making, ongoing evaluation as a design principle rather than an afterthought, and the value of slowing down to invest in time for contemplation and reflection all resonated with me and contributed to a renewed passion for my work.

The legacy of this fellowship will be sustained by the relationships and collaborations it made possible. I leave with a greatly expanded network of thought partners and a deep well of resources from which to draw that will be maintained and enhanced in the US. This transatlantic dimension feels especially significant right now: there are real opportunities for cross-institutional collaboration between the British Library and my home institution, New York Public Library, especially in this 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Plans are underway to build on and disseminate what I learned during my time as Fulbright-British Library Eccles Institute Scholar.

This summer I will present takeaways from the fellowship and my time in the UK at a number of internal and external forums, including the annual Archival Educators Roundtable. A forthcoming article for The School Librarian will share observations and extend conversations about UK archival education practices related to AI literacy in school library settings.

Through this work, I’m grateful to the Eccles Institute for providing this unparalleled and highly impactful opportunity to further develop my professional expertise and contribute to best practices in the field.