Arlene Balkansky loves working with the full range of people visiting Newspaper and Current Periodical reading room, whether on-site or remotely: the teenager working on a National History Day project, the family interested in comic books, the university student, the teacher participating in the Library’s Summer Teacher Institute, the genealogist, the professor, the filmmaker, the author, and more.
Teacher in Residence Carolyn Bennett's recent blog post explored the sounds and functions of bugle calls as a form of communication for troops from a musical perspective. This post describes ways in which coding allows students to explore different aspects of these calls.
Imagine a noisy battlefield, encampment, or port city. A commander has hundreds of men. Wireless communications have not yet been invented. How do the troops receive orders and coordinate movements? During the Civil War, this was the role of the bugle.
This blog post from Folklife Today caught our eyes for the discussion of biases, assumptions, and cultural perspectives. How might your students respond to the twists and turns raised by this post?
In 1866, William O. Bourne organized a unique left-handed penmanship contest for Union veterans who had lost the use of their right hand. Veterans were encouraged to submit a letter they had written using their left hand and a total prize money of $1000.00 was offered. The Library of Congress holds the many of the entrants’ letters and other information on Bourne and the contest.
While searching through our collections for maps to use for display in the exhibition Echoes of the Great War: American Experiences of World War I, I found one among our uncatalogued holdings that caught my attention. As the title states, it is a map presenting the role of North American Indians in the World War.
Sending and cracking secret messages dates back to the foundation and exploration of the country. But did you know that much of the cryptographic work that helped the United States win World War II was accomplished by female codebreakers?