One of the most popular resources on the Library of Congress website is Chronicling America. A collaboration with the National Endowment for the Humanities, Chronicling America provides digital access to newspapers published in the United States of America between 1836-1922. Meet one of the people responsible for making this collection available online, Tonijala Penn.
One of the most powerful effects of primary sources is their ability to complicate common understandings of history. As the raw materials of history, original documents are able to bring to light little-known details or neglected episodes that add complexity to oversimplified accounts.
This year's NCTE conference: Story as the Landscape of Knowing will take place November 20-23 in our hometown, Washington, DC. You will find us at Booth numbers 236 and 238 in the exhibit hall Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The Teachers Page from the Library of Congress offers ideas and resources for English educators. We have rounded up a few of our favorites.
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe was widely influential when it was published in 1852. The Library's “Sources and Strategies” article in the May 2014 issue of Social Education, the journal of NCSS, discusses the influence of the novel. Perhaps just as important as its effect, however, was Stowe’s original impetus for writing it.
One way to engage students with what they're reading, without turning an extra-curricular club into a class, is to introduce Library of Congress primary and secondary sources related to a particular book, a particular author, or to reading in general.
On March 25, 1911, a fire swept through the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City, killing 146 men and women, many of them recent immigrants. It was later discovered that the workers faced many obstacles as they tried to flee the fire: Doors were locked by the factory's management and the fire escapes were inadequate. This catastrophe, which led to a public outcry, prompted updates to labor laws and reforms to fire and safety regulations.
“The context for each imaginary contraption becomes fodder for understanding ideas about space and flight.” We’ve added some ideas at the end for ways to use these primary sources to deepen student understanding of the ways in which people have imagined space and flight.
Tesla, Guglielmo Marconi, and Thomas Edison were among the respected scientists who believed one of our neighbors was trying to contact us. A news article "Hello, Earth! Hello!" published on March 18, 1920, details the history of signals, possibly electromagnetic, picked up by Marconi and verified by scientists around the world, including Edison and Tesla. All three agreed the signals were deliberately sent from another planet. Based on the information they had, this was a realistic inference.
Children and youth have often been active participants in protests and movements. During the 1912 Bread and Roses Strike, children were a critical component of the strikes which led to better working conditions in the textile mills.
![Girls Wanted [1916] drawing](https://blogs.loc.gov/teachers/files/2014/03/Triangle-GirlsWanted1.jpg)