July 9, 1996

Contact: Martha Dexter, National Digital Library Program, (202) 707-1904
Guy Lamolinara, Public Affairs, Library of Congress, (202) 707-9217
Adele Seeff, Center for Renaissance and Baroque Studies, University of Maryland-College Park (301) 405-6830

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Library of Congress Co-Sponsors World Wide Web Summer Institute for Teachers

The National Digital Library (NDL) Program and the University of Maryland's Center for Renaissance and Baroque Studies and Computer Science Center will co-sponsor a summer teacher training institute, "Teaching the Humanities Through Technology," for Maryland secondary school teachers, July 15-19, 1996.

Forty-one social studies, language arts and media specialists from Baltimore, Montgomery County and Prince George's County were selected from more than 100 applicants to participate in the five-day program designed to promote the use of new technologies in the humanities.

Adele Seeff, Director of the Center for Renaissance and Baroque Studies, said, "It is exciting to participate in a partnership between the Library of Congress and the University of Maryland. Through the partnership, our institutions can pool their vast resources for the benefit of teachers thirsty for technical training that will transform their teaching."

The institute will feature the National Digital Library Program's American Memory collections, which offer unique American history primary sources such as draft copies of the Declaration of Independence and Gettysburg Address, Civil War photographs, and turn-of-the- century films over the Internet.

Judy Graves of the NDL Program's educational services area said, "It is wonderful to be able to share the rich source materials of the Library of Congress, previously not accessible in classrooms, with secondary-school humanities teachers."

Teams of teachers from the three areas will attend workshops on how to access education resources on-line, how to use on-line communication including e-mail and electronic bulletin boards, and how to search the World Wide Web for teaching resources, such as primary source materials. "By helping humanities teachers use the Internet, we can help deliver a treasure trove of on-line social studies materials to the students who pass through their classrooms," said Ms. Seeff.

The program will be held in the state-of-the-art AT&T Teaching Theater at the University of Maryland's College Park campus. The Teaching Theater is equipped with multimedia computer workstations linked by high-speed connections to the Internet. Teachers attending the conference will have an opportunity to review humanities education CD-ROMs, design their own projects using on-line resources and create homepages for their school or classroom.

Conference presenters include Dr. Gary Marchionini, Professor, College of Library and Information Sciences; Ellen Borkowski, Coordinator, Instructional Technology and Support, Computer Science Center; Catherine Hays, Coordinator, Electronic Media Center; and Robert Kolker, Department of English, all of the University of Maryland.

From the Library of Congress, presenters are Martha Dexter, Project Director; Jurretta Heckscher, Digital Conversion Specialist; and Judy Graves, Instructional Technology Designer, all of the National Digital Library Program; and Verna Curtis, Curator, Prints and Photographs Division.

Funding for the National Digital Library Program's educational outreach efforts is provided by a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

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PR 96-103
7/12/96
ISSN 0731-3527