The history of teaching and learning—from the distant past and many cultures through the present day in the Kansas region—is well documented in the collections.

The University Archives provides evidence of KU’s place in the history of higher education: minutes of meetings; correspondence; student records (access to which is necessarily restricted); papers of student organizations; photographs; sound recordings, film and video; news publications; architectural documents; and some faculty papers. Records of the School of Education document research and teaching methods.

The Kansas Collection includes publications of the State Board of Education, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, and Haskell Indian Nations University; state-published textbooks; yearbooks for many Kansas high schools; architectural documents; photographs; and personal papers of teachers. The African American experience is documented in the papers of many educators, materials on the Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education legal proceeding, and records of Sumner High School, Kansas City, KS.

The Department of Special Collections holds three collections devoted to the history of education, in addition to many works in the general rare book collection: the Charles and E. Jennifer Monaghan Collection on the History of Reading in the United States, from the Colonial period to the mid-20th century; the Shull Collection of Hymnals and Music Books, from the early 18th century to the mid-20th century; and the Children’s Collection, including many editions of the “New England Primer.”