August 27, 1996

Contact: Guy Lamolinara (202) 707-9217

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Back to School Special Available from the Learning Page of National Digital Library Program

The National Digital Library Program of the Library of Congress welcomes students to a new school year with a "Back to School Special" on the Learning Page, a site for teachers and students available on the Library of Congress World Wide Web homepage at http://www.loc.gov/.

The "Back to School Special," available September 16, includes a new area called "Learn More About It!" Here teachers and students will find pages full of helpful hints for using on-line documents, photographs, motion pictures and sound recordings available from the American Memory historical collections on the Library's website. For example, users canaccess illustrated guides to the content covered by each on-line collection. Teachers will find ideas on classroom uses for electronic materials.

Working in partnership with the Center for the Book of the Library of Congress, the Learning Page also features book lists under the familiar banner "Read More About It," a hallmark of the center's literacy program. For each historical collection, "Read More About It" will offer general-interest and younger-reader lists.

The Learning Page's subject search guides, called Pathfinders, have also been upgraded for the "Back to School Special." Pathfinders for Events, People, Places, Time and Topics have been expanded to include new search assistance specific to education. A new Pathfinder based on historical eras has been added to the Time Pathfinder. Three new primary source collections that went on-line in July have been mapped into the Pathfinders: the Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850-1920; the Gottscho-Schleisner Photographs, 1932-1960; and the Theodor Horydczak Photographs, 1920-1950.

The Learning Page is featured in the latest issue of School Library Journal (September 1996) in "History Repeats Itself: Primary Documents Go Online at the Library of Congress," by Martha Dexter, of the educational services area of the Library's National Digital Library Program.

The National Digital Library Program aims to make freely available millions of unique items from the Library's American history collections on the Internet. Begun in 1994, the program is funded by congressional appropriations and support from the private sector. More than 15 collections are currently available, including Mathew Brady photographs, African American pamphlets relating to the Civil War and the civil rights movement, sound recordings of American leaders and short films of Thomas Edison.

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PR 96-118
8/27/96
ISSN 0731-3527