This site helps teachers and students navigate the vast online collections of primary source materials at the Library of Congress. The links, arranged by chronological period, lead to sets of selected primary sources on a variety of topics in U.S. history.

This is a first stop for using Library of Congress resources to do research in the field of American women's history. It presents some digital items; however, it serves primarily as a comprehensive guide to the entirety of the Library's holdings on women's history. It includes exhibits that feature women and how to find women within exhibits where they're not featured. Essays examine women as a symbol 1590-1800, the women's suffrage parade of 1913, and the equal rights amendment.

This outlines a staff development workshop and offers lessons designed to help students put historical events in context and see them as a part of a larger story. Use of primary resources is the focus -- where to find them, what they are, how to examine them, and how to construct the context to tell the whole story.

The New Deal programs and agencies, created under the leadership of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, had a powerful impact on the relationship of government to the people of the United States. Yet a study of New Deal programs often leaves the student with a disconnected list of 'alphabet soup' programs and no real grasp of the impact of the New Deal.

This lesson takes a student through a process of examining primary sources, both photographs and life histories, to develop a sense of the profound impact the Great Depression had on real people’s lives. Then after studying New Deal Programs, students apply what they’ve learned to improve the situations of those people, whose life history interviews they have read. They synthesize the information gathered into an essay which has both an expository and a creative component.

For 10th grade students.

This is a teaching unit that leads middle and high school students through the process of critically examining photographs (by Lewis Hine) as historical evidence.

This course is designed to introduce you to the basic structure of the British Parliament and the organization of its historical documents.

This site invites students to use documents from California As I Saw It: First Person Narratives, 1849-1900, to create hyperscripts depicting the motivations, expectations, fears, and realizations of immigrants who settled California between 1849 and 1900. Students' hyperscripts are online written dialogues that include links to illustrative written materials, images, and sound files from American Memory collections.

This is a two-month team research project for 9-10th graders that uses Library of Congress resources to focus on long-term change in U.S. history. Students gather, analyze, and evaluate primary and secondary sources; develop their own conclusions; and refine their writing.

This is a lesson in which students examine songs, interviews, and photos of migrant farm workers in California during the Great Depression and then create a scrapbook from the point of view of a migrant worker. Students use photos and recordings of migrant workers to create captions, letters, and songs. This lesson can be particularly useful when students are learning about the Great Depression or reading The Grapes of Wrath.

This guide explains how to conduct and preserve oral histories in your community.

Historical Methodology will introduce the student to historical research methods and familiarize the student with the tools and techniques that historians use to study the past. The student will learn about the process of modern historical inquiry and gain a better understanding of the diverse resources that historians use to conduct research. The first four units will focus on research methodology and examine how and why historians conduct research on the past. Later units will examine how different historical resources can be used for historical research. By the end of the course, the student will understand how to conduct research on past events and be familiar with the variety of physical and electronic resources available for historical research. Upon successful completion of this unit, the student will be able to: Demonstrate an understanding of basic historical research methods and identify necessary research skills; Develop historical research topics, identify primary and secondary sources, and conduct research using these sources; Identify fundamental writing skills and assess how historical subjects may be best presented to various audiences; Define the meaning of historiography and identify important historiographic trends of the past century; Compare and contrast basic historical research practices conducted with library, archival, and online resources; Identify and assess possible career choices that depend on knowledge and understanding of historical research practices. (History 104)

This page discusses the importance of primary documents and uses them to illustrate historical concepts such as the subjective nature of written history, the intimate view of historical people's lives that primary documents can provide, and the importance of developing analytical skills when reconstructing history.

How do we learn about the world of the ancient Romans and Greeks? This unit will provide you with an insight into the Classical world by introducing you to the various sources of information used by scholars to draw together an image of this fascinating period of history.

This lesson plan displays records from the 1880 and 1990 census schedules showing that Laura Ingalls, Almanzo Wilder, and families of the popular Little House on the Prairie series were not mere characters but were real people. Teaching activities are included to help students learn more about the census.

This worksheet is designed for students to use when analyzing photos.

Besides being simple mementos family photographs can offer insights into the past. This unit looks at some of the ways photographs can reveal, and sometimes conceal, important information about the past. It teaches the skills and provides some of the knowledge needed to interpret such pictorial sources.