Bats Bat image set Bats in historical newspaper articles “Unsuccessful effort to draw bats from the belfry of W.A. White” sketch by Theodore Roosevelt Bat wildlife reports (California, South Dakota, Utah, United States; Alberta, Canada; New Zealand) Library blog posts Bats: Out of Our Nightmares and Into Our Hearts Inside Adams October 29, 2022 Bats:…
Background Samuel F.B. Morse Sent the First Telegraphic Message from America’s Library What Hath God Wrought? curator video about first telegram Samuel F. B. Morse Papers at the Library of Congress 1793 to 1919 (see collection highlights below) Art & Travel Artist, Politician, Photographer Childhood & Family Life Daguerreotype Impact of the Telegraph Invention of the Telegraph…
Poet Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts. Dickinson seldom left home but she read a lot, exchanged letters with many people, and spent a great deal of time with her family—her sister Lavinia also lived at home her entire life and her brother Austin and his wife lived next door. Learn more…
Look carefully at this map of the Arctic (online or .pdf document). Which countries could Rory live in if he lived above the Arctic Circle? Which of the animals in the picture would you NOT see in the Arctic Circle? Rory’s mother named him after the Aurora Borealis, also called the Northern Lights, which you…
Arctic Region maps Arctic image set Arctic Circle image set Foreign Affairs oral histories mentioning the Arctic Arctic sheet music Books related to the Arctic Books related to the Arctic Circle U.S. legislation related to the Arctic Arctic Circle historic newspaper coverage Arctic Region Library of Congress Places in the News November, 2011 Arctic National…
Zoom into this 1997 Geology of the Solar System map to read the text. List the challenges geologists face in mapping the solar system. Choose one planet (Venus, Mercury, Earth, Mars) and summarize what you learned about it from the map. Compare your findings with a peer who chose a different planet. Compare and contrast what you…
This map was published in 1789. Zoom into the map online or using this map document (.pdf) and review “A Table of the Diameters, Periods & of the several Planets in the Solar System”. Compare the information in that table to the data scientists have today. Make a new table with the same column headers and fill it in…
Zoom into a more detailed image of this newspaper page from 1912. Look at the images carefully and only read the headline and image captions. Outline the assertions—facts or beliefs—that are suggested. Now read the first paragraph of the article. Describe your reaction to this text. Then relate how the descriptions of weather events compare to what…
This is a guest post from Tom Bober (a.k.a. @CaptainLibrary), an elementary librarian at RM Captain Elementary in Clayton, Missouri and frequent contributor to the TPS Teachers Network. Earlier this school year I wrote about an activity in which third grade students analyzed primary sources from the Library of Congress, specifically the notes, diagrams, and…
Library of Congress blog posts Einstein at 100: Mapping the Universe Worlds Revealed: Geography & Maps December 2, 2015 Einstein’s Folklore December 18, 2013 Folklife Today Celebrate Einstein’s Birthday with Pi March 14, 2011 Inside Adams Albert Einstein background & primary sources Nobel Media “Albert Einstein lived here” April 19, 1955 political cartoon by Herb Block (scroll down page to read curator’s…
Dig deep into a variety of teaching with primary sources topics. The TPS Journal, formerly titled the TPS Quarterly, is an online, peer-reviewed publication focused on pedagogical approaches to teaching with Library of Congress digitized primary sources in K-12 classrooms. Each issue provides sections related to the issue’s thematic focus: a feature article, an elementary primary source activity, a…
Rachel Carson was a trained biologist and a best-selling author. In her writing, Carson presented scientific facts from an ecological perspective in a poetic writing style. She made science interesting and understandable to regular people. She was best known for her books Silent Spring and The Sea Around Us. Her writing about ecology and the…