Teens Collect Memories at the Library of Congress

This post features presentations made by Library of Congress High School Summer Internship participants under the mentorship of Jennifer Ezell, Dianne Choie, and Sarah Peet. This summer, these hybrid participants, who completed part of their internship remotely and part of it in-person, developed gallery talks to add a teen perspective to Collecting Memories: Treasures from the Library of Congress, as presented in the David M. Rubenstein Treasures Gallery.

During their summer internship, the local teens of the high school internship cohort dove into the Library of Congress’ collections and exhibits while onsite in the Jefferson Building. They found inspiration in items on display in the Collecting Memories exhibition, then made connections with other items in the Library of Congress’s collections. The six interns presented their research at the Library of Congress and conducted gallery talks in the exhibit highlighting the work that they accomplished over the summer. Watch the three presentations below to learn more about the collections and connections these teens made during their summer research.

Collected Stories, Collective Experience

Abigail Gosaye and Lena Katir selected the section of the exhibit called Collected Stories, Collective Experience. They explored the themes of personal stories adding to a larger understanding of the world. Watch their presentation below to learn more about the research they conducted at the Library of Congress.

Abigail and Lena highlighted several collections materials in their research, including the Blackwell Family Tree, a Hmong hand-stitched story cloth map, a Kashmiri shawl-bound manuscript of the Durrat al-tāj, and Max Roach’s “We Insist!” sheet music.

Personal Narrative

Interns Kat Pascual and Yishak Yebio researched another theme of the exhibition, Personal Narrative. Watch the video below to see the connections they made between personal stories and the experiences of individuals across the world.

In their research, Kat and Yishak highlighted Library of Congress collections including Spider-Man’s origin story, the autobiography of Omar Ibn Said,  the records for Charlotte Ione Temerario, an American Folklife Center interview with Freeman A. Hrabowski, and a chronicle by a Jewish resident of Tarnow, Poland.

Recording and Retelling

Our final on-site interns this summer, Joaquin Feldman and Zoe Cymrot, addressed the themes of Recording and Retelling, finding connections between how information is preserved and shared. See their presentation in the video below and learn more about the Library of Congress collections they researched.

Joaquin and Zoe highlighted collections in their research including “The Sounds of Earth,” “Sounds of an Era,” the Waldseemüller map, Earth as seen by Astronauts, and George Takei’s recent presentation at the Library of Congress to discuss his book My Lost Freedom.

This year’s on-site High School Summer Interns researched the vast collections of the Library of Congress and made connections between what they saw in the Collecting Memories exhibition and other materials in the Library’s collections. Think about what research you would do in the Library of Congress’ collections. What connections can you find?