Back to School in the Rare Book Classroom

Before joining the Library of Congress’s staff, I spent two decades as a classroom teacher discussing works of literature and the history of ideas with high school students. Aside from perhaps mentioning a publication date, I don’t recall teaching my students much about the artistic practices or skilled labor that initially brought the texts we were studying into the world. Now that I’ve worked at the Library for a year, and since my colleagues in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division have taught me so much about the art of book-making, I no longer think of books independent of the processes by which they were made. Indeed, in an era where we have become accustomed to the ease of publishing our thoughts to a global audience with a few taps of our thumbs, the study of book history instills an appreciation for the time, resources, and artistry that was once required to share ideas widely with other people.

Along these lines, the Library of Congress’s Rare Book and Special Collections Division is excited to share a few of our ongoing education outreach initiatives. Through the Rare Book Classroom, our new educational space, we offer enrichment opportunities to teachers and students both on-site and via online access.

The Rare Book Classroom is prepared to host student groups of all ages – from kindergarten through graduate school – for hands-on experiences related to papermaking, the operation of a printing press, woodcut and copperplate engravings, and the composition of text out of individual pieces of movable type. Our division’s blog, Bibliomania, has published a series of posts over the past few months that introduce these elements of the material history of the book, and the Rare Book Classroom allows visitors to the Library to experience firsthand some of those book-making processes.

In addition to hosting demonstrations related to the materiality of books, we also frequently curate displays of items from our collections related to the course content of a visiting class. For example, we might present selections from the Daniel Murray Pamphlet Collection to college students studying African American archival history, or we might show early editions of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass to a local high school class studying 19^th century American poetry. Think of these visits like a fancy show-and-tell of rare materials. The experience of students seeing and learning the history behind the first edition of a book they are studying is often electrifying; the physical artifact inspires a sense of continuity and kinship with the people who centuries ago composed its words as well as the skilled workers who brought the book into the world. It is our privilege to share the Library’s treasures whenever possible.

For teachers and students unable to visit the Library in person, we are very glad to host remote displays of the Library’s collections using a high definition document camera integrated into video meeting interfaces. This technology allows classes from around the United States to see materials related to their curriculum. For example, a 9^th grade English class might enjoy seeing the typographical layout of a favorite passage from Macbeth as printed in Shakespeare’s 1623 First Folio. Or an 11^th grade American History class might like to see and learn about Paul Revere’s engraved illustration of the 1770 Boston Massacre.

As part of the Library’s celebration of the upcoming 250^th anniversary of the United States’ founding, the Rare Book Division has partnered with the Library’s Multimedia Group to produce a series of short films that present collections items related to American history and culture with particular focus on the Founding Era. These films are freely available online, and we hope that teachers and students of American history and literature might find them interesting. We have plans to accompany many of these films with supplemental classroom packets – watch this space!

If you are interested in learning more about these offerings or would like to plan either an in-person or remote visit, reach out by submitting a note via our Ask a Librarian interface. Please direct your note to Patrick Hastings, the Education Outreach Specialist for the Library’s Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

Of course, the Library also has a range of online resources freely available to support educators and students, including:

• Searchable Online Collections: Access the millions of digitized books, pamphlets, images, broadsides, manuscripts, and maps that the Library has within its online catalogue.
• Primary Source Sets: Explore curated sets of digitized primary sources related to particular topics (including one for each of the fifty states).
• Research Guides: Dig into resources related to a broad range of research topics.

If you or a teacher you know might find these resources helpful, please share the word!