PLEASE NOTE: This listing is simply an overview of the very impressive Library of Congress Resources and Collections: it is most certainly not meant to be comprehensive:

 

 

THE OVERALL WEBSITE FOR THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (with the LoC's internal Search Engine)  https://www.loc.gov/ 

As an example of the power of the LoC's internal Search Engine, try searching for the American Memory Project in the LoC's Search Engine to view their unique digitized resources in this particular collection.

 

 

Researcher's Toolbox

 

Resource Lists & Bibliographies

 

Tours and Orientations Activities

 

 

 

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS MAGAZINE -- AMAZING PHOTOGRAPHS HERE!

 

 

 

 

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS ONLINE CATALOG

https://catalog.loc.gov/

(Offers an LC Catalog quick search, plus additional Catalogs and Research Tools)

 

 

 

 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS COLLECTIONS: AN OVERVIEW

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS's INTERNATIONAL COLLECTIONS ARE HIGHLIGHTED HERE)

https://www.loc.gov/rr/coll-international.html

 

 

 

 

READING AND RESEARCHING PHOTOGRAPHS -- from the Library of Congress

 

 

Also see the related: VISUAL LITERACY: READING A DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPH 

(by Debbi Abilock)

 

 

 

Every Photo is a Story:  Researching Photographs--Video Series and Exercises (from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

 

 

 

PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS READING ROOM at the LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

 

 

 

NEWSPAPERS: TEACHING WITH HISTORICAL NEWSPAPERS: A LIBRARY OF CONGRESS WEBINAR

The Youtube Video explaining how to teach with Historical Newspapers may be found here

(for Joshua Youngblood and the other professionals in the UAF's Special Collection Division)

I hope History teachers everywhere use this new LoC Resource.

 

 

 

 

CLASSIC CHILDREN's BOOKS: A NEW LoC DIGITIZED COLLECTION

 

 

 

The Library of Congress Poetry & Literature site: 

loc.gov/programs/poetry-and-literature/about-this-program/

 

 

The Library of Congress Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature: 

loc.gov/collections/archive-of-recorded-poetry-and-literature/about-this-collection/

 

 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS DANCE RESEARCH:

Dance Research at the Library of Congress guide: 

guides.loc.gov/dance/

 

 

 

The Law Library of Congress

http://www.loc.gov/law/index.php

The Law Library of Congress contains the world's largest collection of law books and legal resources, with strong foreign law and comprehensive United States law --totaling approximately 2.65 million volumes.

 

 

 

THE INDIGENOUS LAW PORTAL AT THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS:

http://www.llmc.com/Indigenous/Home.aspx#55

 

RELATED ARTICLE:

"Using the Library of Congress Indigenous Law Portal to Promote Territorial Autonomy"

By Rosa Maldonado, Library of Congress Researcher    (Download the full article as a pdf)

 

 

 

 

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS DIGITAL COLLECTIONS: CONTAINS DIGITIZED PAPERS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, THEODORE ROOSEVELT, CIVIL WAR MAPS, SLAVE NARRATIVES, BASEBALL CARD COLLECTIONS, and so many more: over 335 collections are now digitized:  https://www.loc.gov/collections

 

 

 

MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS COLLECTIONS AND RESOURCES MAY BE FOUND HERE:  https://www.loc.gov/rr/

 

 

 

 

Library of Congress: By the People	LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
crowd.loc.gov
"The Library of Congress (LOC) is home to a vast repository of documents, many of which have been digitized but need to be transcribed to become fully searchable.   Launched by the LOC in November 2018, By the People is the web platform for the LOC's crowdsourced document transcription campaigns. Here, anyone interested in participating can "transcribe, review, and tag digitized images of manuscripts and typed materials from the Library's collections." In addition to making the documents searchable, these transcriptions also make them accessible to readers with vision challenges, or who are unable to decipher the handwriting from decades past.   The materials available for transcription run the gamut of the LOC's diverse holdings. Current transcription campaigns include the papers of multiple leading suffragists like Mary Church Terrell, the manuscripts of poet Walt Whitman, and letters written to Abraham Lincoln. For educators interested in using By the People in their classrooms, the site provides a collection of teaching ideas and LOC lesson plans relevant to some of the campaigns. No account registration is required to participate in By the People, but those who choose to register can access additional features, such as reviewing other volunteers' transcriptions." (FROM THE INTERNET SCOUT REPORT, AUGUST 9, 2019)

 

 

 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS: FREE TO USE AND REUSE SETS	LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
www.loc.gov/free-to-use
"The Library of Congress is well known and loved for its vast online collections. Readers who find the library's digital enormity overwhelming, as well as those seeking royalty-free images, may appreciate these sets of copyright-free images and other content curated from the library's holdings.   Here, visitors will find more than two dozen sets organized by theme, many of which are historical images and ephemera. The themes cover a diverse range of subjects, ranging from cats and dogs to Abraham Lincoln to roadside America, with several themes highlighting various types of historical posters.   While most of the collections consist of photographs, documents, and other images, visitors will also find a collection of public domain films from the National Film Registry, as well as a vintage set of classic children's books that can be read online, including The Secret Garden and The Jungle Book.   Because the "Library believes that this content is either in the public domain, has no known copyright, or has been cleared by the copyright owner for public use," the items featured in these sets have been deemed "free to use and reuse."  (from the Scout Report 05/24/2019

 

 

 

THE EDWARD S. CURTIS COLLECTION OF PHOTOS OF NATIVE AMERICANS:

"The Curtis collection consists of more than 2,400 silver-gelatin, first generation photographic prints--some of which are sepia-toned--made from Curtis's original glass negatives. Most of the photographic prints are 5" x 7" although nearly one hundred are 11" x 14" and larger; many include the Curtis file or negative number within the image at the lower left-hand corner.

Images from each of the geo-cultural regions documented in The North American Indian are represented in the collection: the Pacific Northwest, New Southwest, Great Basin, Great Plains, Plateau Region, California, and Alaska. Included are both studio and field photographs. A large number are individual or group portraits, and many subjects are identified by name. Other subjects include traditional and ceremonial dress, dwellings and other structures, agriculture, arts and crafts, rites and ceremonies, dances, games, food preparation, transportation, and scenery."

 

 

 

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS MOVING IMAGE RESEARCH CENTER:

MOTION PICTURE BROADCASTING AND MOVING SOUND DIVISION

http://www.loc.gov/rr/mopic/

INCLUDES:

• Motion Pictures in the Library of Congress
• Researching LC Moving Image Holdings
• Collection Guides and Finding Aids
• Guidelines for Viewing Films, Videos, and Digital Files at the Library of Congress
• Subject Research, Archival Footage, and Public Domain Films

 

 

 

 

 

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS's WEB GUIDES ON A VARIETY OF SUBJECTS:

https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/index.html

 

 

 

 

 

TEACHER RESOURCES AT THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS: AN ONGOING BLOG

http://www.loc.gov/teachers/ 

 

 

 

CLASSROOM MATERIALS FOR TEACHERS AND STUDENTS AT THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS:

http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/ 

(Especially useful for access to Primary Source Materials at the LoC -- the vast majority of these are digitized for free online access)

 

 

 

 

TWO ARTICLES ON THE USE OF LIBRARY OF CONGRESS DOCUMENTS AND RESOURCES:

"FORMATIVE ASSESSMENTS USING LIBRARY OF CONGRESS DOCUMENTS"

by  Joel Breakstone, Sam Wineburg, Mark Smith (Stanford University)

https://stanford.io/2BTXLbI

 

 

"New Directions in Assessment: Using Library of Congress Sources to Assess Historical Understanding."

Article Authors: Sam Wineburg, Mark Smith,  and Joel Breakstone

IN: Social Education November/December 2012, pp. 290-293

http://bit.ly/2E3pEj9

 

 

NEW!

GENERAL NEWS ON THE INTERNET:

A new digital collection, The General News on the Internet, is a free archive of online-only

news sites collected from the web.  The Library of Congress began preserving these sites in June 2014 and the site is on-going.

How are these news-based sites captured? The Library uses a hybrid approach of weekly captures of the websites,

augmented with twice-daily capture of known RSS feeds (Real Simple Syndication).

This produces a more complete news archive.  Given the dynamic nature of the 24-hour news cycle of today,

these archives are meant to capture as much of the news distribution as possible given current limitations in technology and resources.    From the website:

"Collection Period: June 2014 to ongoing. The General News on the Internet Web Archive

contains general news sites with a focus on stories of national interest for all audience levels.

The collection contains born-digital publications and publications that were once only available in print and are now only available online."

 

 

American Music Creators Web Archive	MUSIC
www.loc.gov/collections/american-music-creators-web-archive/about-this-collection
"Launched in 2018, the American Music Creators Web Archive is an ongoing collection from the Library of Congress. The archive features web content published by "musicians, performers, and composers contributing to the American music scene." Both mainstream and independent musicians are included in the collection, as well as musicians from a variety of genres (such as jazz, hip hop, and EDM). While the collection is still a work in progress, readers can view dozens of current archived materials under the Collection Items tab. The panel on the left hand side allows visitors to narrow by contributor and subject, among other filters. Each record for an archived website has a detailed item annotation with a brief summary and information on the featured artist or group's genre and form. Users can explore an archived website by clicking on the image at the top of the record then selecting a date on the subsequently displayed calendar. Material acquisition is ongoing, so readers may want to check back routinely to browse new additions. If you enjoy this archive, you may want to check out the Library of Congress's similar collections, including American Choral Music and Early American Sheet Music." (from the INTERNET SCOUT REPORT, MAY 15, 2020)

 

 

 

Library of Congress: Themed materials for Students and Educators:

 http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/themes/

Includes these themed resources, as well as hundreds more, all free online access:

Abraham Lincoln
Explore the life of the sixteenth president of the U.S. through photographs, his correspondence, speeches and expert commentary from the Library of Congress.

 

 

Advertising
The rise of consumer culture traced through branding and product information.

 

 

 

Asian Pacific Americans
Official documents, newspapers, photos, poems, maps, images, and Webcasts chronicle the experiences and accomplishments of Asian Americans in the United States.

 

 

Baseball
Culture, change and history, including Jackie Robinson's groundbreaking role, through baseball cards, songs, and historical documents.

 

 

Civics and Government
The evolution and functioning of the U.S. Government from the Constitution and other founding documents through current legislative information.

 

 

Civil Rights
The African-American struggle for full citizenship from abolition, Reconstruction and the Jim Crow laws, continuing to Brown v. Board of Education, and the civil rights movement.

 

 

The Civil War
America's Civil War made real through photographs and sketches; maps, letters and diaries; oral histories and music.

 

 

Colonial and Early America
European colonization of America from early settlers through George Washington's presidency in images, maps and other primary documents.

 

 

Elections
Elections and the electoral process, the voting franchise, and campaign materials as well as first ladies and presidential inaugurations.

 

 

Exploration and Explorers
Exploration of the Americas from Amerigo Vespucci and Columbus through the westward expansion.

 

 

 

Flight and Early Aviators
Scientific evolution of flight from early inventors and aviators including Bell, the Wright brothers, Lindbergh and Earhart.

 

 

NOTE: Many more themed resources from the Library of Congress collectons are additionally available through this amazing website: http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/themes/

 

 

 

LESSON PLANS FOR TEACHERS VIA THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS COLLECTIONS:

http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/lessons/

 

 

 

MORE TEACHING RESOURCES AT THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS:

https://www.loc.gov/search/?in=&q=Teaching&new=true&st=

 

 

 

FREE eBOOKS AND STUDENT DISCOVERY SETS FROM THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

https://www.loc.gov/teachers/student-discovery-sets/

(includes a free book on the HARLEM RENAISSANCE, among many others -- this is a fantastic -and very rich -collection to explore --

highly useful for students and teachers) 

http://loc.gov/teachers/student-discovery-sets/

 

 

 

CHRONICLING AMERICA --a LIBRARY OF CONGRESS MASSIVE DIGITAL INITIATIVE:

offers 2,600+ digitized copies of newspapers printed in the United States between 1789 and 1963

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/

 

 

 

 

DIGITIZED MAPS ONLINE: FROM THE GEOGRAPHY AND MAP READING ROOM at the Library of Congress

 

 

 

CrowdSourcing: "The Library of Congress today (10/24/2018) launched crowd.loc.gov, a crowdsourcing program that will connect the Library with virtual volunteers to transcribe text in digitized images from the Library’s historic collections. "

"This project enables anyone with access to a computer to experience first-hand accounts in history, while contributing to the Library’s ability to make these treasures more searchable and readable."

More information is available at the Library of Congress Blog Site:

https://blogs.loc.gov/thesignal/2018/10/lets-go-explore-transcribe-and-tag-at-crowd-loc-gov/?loclr=twloc

This would be a fantastic class project for a History class -- a ready-made Lesson Plan!

 

 

 

Although **not** from the Library of Congress, this free resource from the New York Public Library's Digital Collections are truly noteworthy and a perennial favorite among Librarians and Researchers:

almost 800,000 items are digitized, with free digitized collections on Science, Women of Distinction, Digitized Photographs revealing the History of the U.S., and even a collection on Halloween (and so much more!)   https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/

 

 

 

Students and researchers might be interested in a similar digital initiative from California: CALISPHERE: A GATEWAY TO THE FREE DIGITAL COLLECTIONS FROM CALIFORNIA's LIBRARIES AND ARCHIVES, with over a million items (documents, texts, photographs, primary sources, etc.) now digitized, online and freely available.

 

 

U.S. Library of Congress:

Library Releases Growing Coronavirus Web Archive Collection

Collection Includes 450 Web Archives Documenting COVID-19 Pandemic

Website: https://www.loc.gov/collections/coronavirus-web-archive/about-this-collection

 

"After collecting a wide variety of web content documenting the COVID-19 pandemic over the past two years, the Library of Congress is now making its growing Coronavirus Web Archive available to the public.

The collection, which now includes 450 web archives, aims to balance government, science, business and policy content with human stories that will give future historians a sense of how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the daily lives of individuals, families and communities.

The Library has been capturing coronavirus web content in many of its existing web collections since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, well before establishing a formal collection plan in June 2020. Since the Library is a member of the International Internet Preservation Consortium, Library staff also nominated sites for that effort.  

For the Coronavirus Web Archive, a core team of 10 recommending officers representing a variety of skills, perspectives and subject matter expertise from across the Library have worked together to build a well-rounded collection. Additionally, international collections librarians and overseas offices made contributions to ensure that the COVID-19 pandemic is represented in a truly global collection.

“We didn’t know anything about COVID-19 when the pandemic began, but at the Library of Congress, we did know how historical pandemics are researched,” said Jennifer Harbster, head of the Library’s Science Reference Section. “We may not know exactly what future historians will be looking for when they tell the story of these remarkable years, but by looking at our materials from the Influenza of 1918 and broadening our scope to include areas beyond science like, policy, the arts, and social content, we hope to present a collection that will serve future researchers.”

The Library began building web archive collections in 2000 to gather web-based information that focused on specific themes or events as they unfolded. Over the past two decades, the Library’s web archive collections have grown to hold over 2.8 petabytes of data in over 21 billion files. With so much content published on the web, curators still cannot capture everything, so the Library has refined its collections process with a multidisciplinary, team-driven approach.

The Coronavirus Web Archive team continues to seek good examples of items that represent how Americans and people from across the globe are responding to the pandemic. The collection includes topics such as containment efforts, legal responses, human resource approaches, virtual education methods, unemployment trends, and artistic responses to the global challenge.

Library subject specialists are currently collecting content on vaccine rollouts, testing, virus variants, face mask guidance and developing subjects, such as guidance for students and teachers returning to the classroom. New content will continue to be released monthly, following a one-year embargo, as a part of this ongoing collection.

The Library of Congress is the world’s largest library, offering access to the creative record of the United States — and extensive materials from around the world — both on-site and online. It is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office. Explore collections, reference services and other programs and plan a visit at loc.gov; access the official site for U.S. federal legislative information at congress.gov; and register creative works of authorship at copyright.gov.

 

 

 

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