LEARN NC

K–12 teaching and learning · from the UNC School of Education

Collection Connections

In this installment of the American Memory Guide, learn to find teaching resources associated with the Library of Congress's primary source collections.

By Melissa Thibault

a proclamation printed in 1861

(From the Library of Congress's Printed Ephemera Collection; Portfolio 135, Folder 12. More about the photograph)

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American Memory: North Carolina educator's guide
Each month during 2007, LEARN NC will feature an in-depth look at one aspect of the Library of Congress' American Memory with a special focus on North Carolina materials.
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On the American Memory website, you’ll discover many different kinds of collections. Some include materials based on format, others are based on theme. It can be tricky, though, trying to find just the right resources in a particular collection for your classroom. That’s where Collection Connections come in. Many of the American Memory websites include these guides to help teachers incorporate activities and specific primary source materials in their classrooms.

General collections

Collections are the building blocks of the American Memory website. Some collections are focused on a particular individual’s work, like the Thomas Jefferson Papers, William P. Gottlieb Photographs from the Golden Age of Jazz, or Zora Neale Hurston Plays. Other collections are gathered together because they are all in the same format. World War II Military Situation Maps and Historic American Sheet Music 1850–1920 are examples of format-based collections. These natural compilations of materials are easy to use, the content and scope of the collection is evident from the title.

Thematic collections

Some of the most engaging American Memory project materials, however, are grouped in thematic collections designed to cover a particular historic period. Unlike most history texts, this primary source approach encourages critical thinking and facilitates deeper understanding. By providing pieces of historical content, each thematic collection is a portrait of a time — a portrait that the readers must compose themselves.

Unlike the format-specific collections, thematic collections are developed by archivists, librarians, and historians to highlight a period of history. Materials considered for inclusion are selected carefully from the vast holdings of the Library of Congress’s General Collections and many library divisions, including Manuscript, Prints and Photographs, Motion Picture Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound. Altogether the selected materials provide enough information to tell a story about a particular historic period.

Collections may be focused, like Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy, 1921–1929, which covers the nation’s shift to a mass consumer economy and the role of government in this transition, or broad enough to warrant their own research guide, like American Women. No matter the scope, these thematic collections present special challenges to the teacher-researcher. Even though every collection in American Memory includes an “About this Collection” section, it’s not quite enough to guide teachers as they plan lessons. For that, there are Collection Connections.

Collection Connections

Thematic collections span many formats and cover many aspects of history from the cultural, political, and social to the demographic, economic, and technological. To help teachers use the more complex collections, teaching resources called Collection Connections were developed. Collection Connections are divided into three sections: United States History, Critical Thinking, and Arts & Humanities. Each section contains a list that links to teaching ideas and featured collection highlights. If you prefer to view the entire teaching guide in a single page, simply click on the link labeled “Single File” at the top of any of the three sections.

Collections Connections provide inquiry-based teaching ideas that will build students historical analysis skills. In one Critical Thinking section, an historical comprehension activity based upon the collection, The First American West: The Ohio River Valley, 1750–1820, requires students to draw upon data in a 1794 map of what was then the state of Kentucky to identify land grants reserved for North Carolina Revolutionary War veterans, then to consider this strategy and its effect on the settlement of the western frontier. An United States History Collection Connection from American Life Histories suggests search strategies that will help a student to locate biographical interviews by subject including country of origin. Germany, for example, brings up the 1939 interview with the Schmidts of Polk County, North Carolina. Audio interviews with quilters from Appalachian North Carolina are featured in the Quilts and Quiltmaking in America 1978–1996 Collection Connection because they portray aspects of rural life in the state. In another United States History Collection Connection from An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera, students analyze the post-Civil War Proclamation of William W. Holden, Provisional Governor, to the People of North Carolina.

Don’t assume that the Collection Connection is the key to content of any American Memory collection. It is still important to search the individual collections to get the most out of the materials. For example, some collections include significant North Carolina content but that content is not necessarily highlighted in the Collection Connections. In Nineteenth Century in Print: Books there are three works that would be valuable in the study of North Carolina history, none of which is mentioned in the Collection Connections teaching guide. The full text of Hints on the Internal Improvement of North Carolina is an economic picture of the state and its ability to engage in the trade of goods and services in the 1850s, including the progress of railroad construction and an overview of the “extensive and dangerous” challenges to sea travel. Also in this collection is the text of a speech delivered in the Senate of the United States, January 16, 1860 by Thomas L. Clingman decrying the divisive nature of anti-slavery activities and reminding the Senate audience that the people of the South “… have not forgotten the lessons of the Revolution.” Finally, A Statistical and Descriptive Account of the Several Counties of the State of North Carolina, United States of America by the North Carolina Land Company offers a glimpse of the counties in 1869 including population statistics, inventories of crops and livestock, lists of schools, numbers of churches and even occupations of residents and types of businesses. All of these materials could be valuable in the study of late nineteenth century North Carolina but none are mentioned in the Collection Connection for Nineteenth Century in Print: Books.

Finding Collection Connections

Collection Connections are available from the home page of the individual collection under the heading Understanding the Collection. You can find collection home pages by browsing or searching. Each item in the search results is listed with the title of its collection. You may also use the collection index, part of the Learning Page that lists all of the collections alphabetically and notes which have teaching resources.