Our Documents: Ideas for Librarians

By Mary Mueller, a librarian at Rolla Junior High in Rolla, Missouri.

Many librarians are interested in finding new ways to encourage more students and teachers to use library materials and do high level research. Their efforts are often limited by available time or unfamiliar subject matter. For that reason, librarians should be excited about the teaching possibilities available through the Our Documents initiative. This program offers school librarians ideas and materials to improve use of their collections. Here are some suggestions for using Our Documents in a school library.

• Create a bulletin board using laminated printouts from the website. Since the milestone documents are available in PDF format, they can be easily printed on standard 8½" x 11" paper.
  
  
• Create a book display relating to the documents. Choose biographies of the people who wrote or were involved with the issues in the documents, and nonfiction books that expand or describe each historical era. Historical fiction titles would help reluctant readers learn more about many of the themes represented in the documents. Change the display when new documents are highlighted on the website.
  
  
• Prepare bibliographies of books and audio-visual materials about the documents. Distribute them to teachers and students.
  
  
• Help students answer the perpetual “What should I write my research paper about?” question by creating a list of research topics related to the documents. While some of the topics would be best suited to history classes, many of the featured documents could be used to explore currents events topics such as equal rights, civil rights, and limitations on governmental powers.
  
  
• Put links to the National History Day (www.nationalhistoryday.org), Our Documents (www.ourdocuments.gov) and National Archives and Records Administration (www.archives.gov) websites on your district or library website.
  
  
• Encourage teachers in subjects such as art, drama, computer science, and video production to use the documents as the basis for cross-curricular assignments with English and history classes.
  
  
• Display an Our Documents poster and ask students and teachers to vote on what they believe are the 10 most important documents in American History. This is a great way to get students to discuss the documents and understand the importance of voting.