Celebrate International Literacy Day on September 8 with the Library of Congress! This year's theme is "literacy in a digital world," and the Library has a variety of programs and resources to support and celebrate literacy.
Beginning with a pilot program in 2008, the K-12 Web Archiving Program has engaged hundreds of middle and high school students from schools around the United States in selecting, describing, and preserving Web content. Through September 17, the program is accepting applications for new and returning partners from middle and high schools.
In the May/June 2017 issue of Social Education, the journal of the National Council for the Social Studies, our “Sources and Strategies” article features a letter that Walt Whitman wrote to his mother on December 29, 1862. Whitman wrote the letter to let his mother know that he had found his brother George alive and healing from an injury sustained during the Battle of Fredericksburg.
Driven by a sense of urgency in documenting aspects of American life that are disappearing, such as barns, lighthouses, motor courts, and eclectic roadside art, photographer Carol Highsmith has donated her work to the Library of Congress since 1992. The images, recording current scenes and historical remnants of rural, urban, and small town life, are worthy of study. The project might also inspire students to document and preserve that which makes their own communities unique.
The Library of Congress invites you and your students to join in a virtual program to celebrate El día de los niños/El día de los libros (Children’s Day/Book Day), an official literacy celebration of the American Library Association.
Why is it important to evaluate and corroborate sources of information? These are not new questions, as a study of historical newspapers will confirm. Sometimes reports reflect an editorial bias, and sometimes they simply reflect what the reporter knows at the time, with updates being added as new information from more sources surfaces.
The Library of Congress will be at the National Science Teachers Association National Conference in Los Angeles, California, from March 30 through April 1, 2017. Stop by booth #2158 to discover how to access these primary sources as well as pedagogical strategies to help students analyze them.