By YVONNE FRENCH and GUY LAMOLINARA
For the second year in a row, 50 schoolteachers, librarians and media specialists met for a week not of surfing but of immersion in the Library's American Memory collections.
The 25 two-person teams were chosen competitively based on project plans they had submitted that would use the nearly 500,000 source items the Library makes available online. Thus they came to the July 26-31 American Memory Fellows Institute armed with subjects they wanted to plumb.
Laura Campbell, National Digital Library Program director, greeted them, on the morning of July 27 in the Digital Library Visitors' Center. She told the fellows that the American Memory Program began with an idea of Dr. Billington, whose "goal was to make treasures of the Library of Congress available to citizens everywhere. His focus and vision allow us to be here today."
The Librarian said, "We are indebted to all of you for being here because, while the Library collects materials, it is people who make these collections come alive." He assured the participants that "you will learn what it takes to make a digital library," but he also noted that "we are learning as we go."
"We see this as our gift to the nation."
The Librarian was followed by Susan Veccia, project manager of educational services in the National Digital Library Program, which held the institute at the Marriott Metro Center Hotel and the Library. She described the Learning Page -- "designed just for you -- as an introduction to our online collections from an educational point of view."
She later noted that the fellows "have to be familiar with the collections and have a sophisticated understanding of technology," before they come to the institute.
Between sessions of browsing the collections, the educators met in teams to brainstorm about lesson plans. To stay "pumped" during the daylong sessions, the group lined up for contra dancing to a lively Civil War fiddle tune from one of the American Memory collections.
The rousing rendition of "Soldier's Joy" was a fitting one for Elizabeth Ridgway, an American Studies teacher at Williamsburg Middle School, in Arlington County, Va., who plans to have her students create a Civil War newspaper based on the online Mathew Brady photographs in "Selected Civil War Photographs, 1861-1865." Working with Amy Donnelly, Arlington County Public Schools instructional technology coordinator, Ms. Ridgway had identified Devil's Den and Little Round Top as images they will present to the students.
"They will have the photograph and title and do research to construct an article to go with it using American Memory and other sources, electronic or not," said Ms. Ridgway. They will use desktop publishing technology to produce a newspaper with news articles, editorials, an advice column and graphics in addition to the photographs from the battle scenes, which were some of the most horrific in the Civil War.
Photos are a good way to get students hooked into text-based research, many of the teachers said.
"Students often have a 30-second sound bite mentality," said Charlotte Bruce, head librarian at McLean (Va.) High School. Ms. Bruce and Helen Stephan, chairwoman of the history department there, are using American Memory to help English and social studies students study leisure time from the turn of the century through the beginning of television in the 1940s. For example, they're looking at tennis at the turn of the century in "Taking the Long View: Panoramic Photographs, 1851-1991," and dance in "An American Ballroom Companion: Dance Instruction Manuals ca. 1490-1920."
"There seems to be a revival among young people of interest in ragtime," Ms. Bruce said.
They'll also look at baseball in "Jackie Robinson and Other Baseball Highlights, 1860s-1960s." The students will study what people did with their leisure time and how it affected their home, work and personal lives.
"It's a neat hodgepodge of learning and discovery," Ms. Bruce said of American Memory.
As they work, the students will learn how to find and access information online, such as how to narrow a keyword search of leisure time-activities to the decades covered in their studies. The project fulfills a curriculum requirement of the state of Virginia.
Alison Cole Westfall, an eighth grade English teacher at St. Peter's School in Washington, D.C., will use "American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940" to reveal language cadence, or "found poetry," of life at that time. When asked to describe found poetry, she dashed off a poem about Elsie Wall, one of the Americans interviewed by the government writers program. The students will also research historical events mentioned in the manuscripts and write plays using the language of the first-person accounts.
"The dialects and the metaphors that the writers used are just wonderful as a way to get to know these people," said Ms. Westfall.
In another project, her students will use the new "America from the Great Depression to World War II: Photographs from the FSA-OWI, 1935-1945" photographs to complement their study of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. Ms. Westfall's teammate for the project is Laura Mitchell, a historian at the National Museum of American History.
Debbie Abilock, a librarian at the Nueva School in Hillsborough, Calif., and Cynthia Kosut, a humanities teacher there, will look at child labor through the 20th century. Sixth graders at their independent school will examine photographs of children working at home, in fields, mines and factories, and in New York City sweatshops to construct a life of a specific child to determine how society viewed child labor through the decades.
For example, said Ms. Abilock, they'll see a picture of coal "breaker boys" exiting a mine with sooty, weary faces in "Touring Turn-of-the-Century America: Photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company, 1880-1920" and learn that many parents needed their children to work to contribute to the family income.
They'll also look at images of childhood by searching for 10 online objects in a treasure hunt through the American Memory collections. Later, the students will bring in artifacts from their grandparents and parents and discuss their play, work, food and dress.
"In the end," said Ronald Baily, a faculty member at Northeastern University who participated, "you want them to come out with content they can think critically about." Mr. Baily is also a consultant to Education Development Corp., the parent organization of the Center for Children and Technology, which is advising the National Digital Library Program on the project.
The 1998 institute was made possible by a grant from an anonymous donor, who is helping the Library reach out to the education community.
Participants can choose to pursue either college credit from the University of Virginia or continuing education units from George Mason University for the fellowships. The institute was preceded by six weeks of online discussions. After the institute, the educators returned to their diverse communities in 17 states to train other teachers how to use the Library's American Memory collections. The institute is followed by eight months of continuing discussion as the participants revise, test and complete their lesson plans using American Memory materials. In addition to being publicized at teacher's conferences nationwide, selected lesson plans will be available from the Library's World Wide Web site.
Ms. French is a public affairs specialist in the Public Affairs Office.