Discovering serendipity at LOC.gov

Embracing serendipity- and giving yourself and your students time to explore the vast resources available at LOC.gov. can spark engagement and the famous "going down a rabbit hole" to discovery. It is not time wasted, as there is history, science, art, CTE, math, geography, and just about any topic one might wish to explore. Here are some places to start.

Connie Williams
18 steps
13 minutes

Google

Loc

Tpsteachersnetwork

Congress

Navigate to [https://www.google.com/](https://www.google.com/)

Type "<https://www.loc.gov/free-to-use/> [[Enter]]"

Tip! This is an excellent place to start when looking for images of all kinds. These can become Q-Focus prompts for a wide variety of QFT activities.

Click "Free to Use and Reuse Sets"

Click "Free to Use and Reuse: Advertising Food". Click on the image that you'd like to use. Notice that you can home in on one that interests you. For this example, click on the "Free to Use and reuse: Advertising Food" image and it will open up another page targeting advertising.

You can review the different images relating to advertising. Here's one that could be used in a variety of activities from studying the WWI to culinary classes learning about food culture throughout time. Click this image: "Food... don't waste it".

Click "About this Item" brings you a useable size for use in the classroom.

Next up: local newspapers from all over the country. Chronicling America: <https://www.loc.gov/collections/chronicling-america/about-this-collection/> covers newspapers from the 1700s - 1963. Click "All Digitized Titles | Chronicling America - Library of Congress". Choose your time period and location.

Here's a search for cross-country truck trip in 1912. It was the first cross-country delivery of paid goods by truck. Using advanced search with these term "Alco, truck, Philadelphia, to, Petaluma, 1912" brought back 19 results from several states.

Click: [https://www.loc.gov/maps/collections/ ](https://www.loc.gov/maps/collections/) to find some truly interesting maps. Teaching map skills in the era of GPS helps students get a sense of where things happened. Events happen in places, and maps are excellent resources for engagement, data, and look-backs. Math classes, design, engineering, art and more are all courses that can utilize these maps.

Type "San Francisco, California [[Enter]]" There are maps from the tiniest towns to large metropolitan areas. Search for your town. Sanborn fire maps are included in these collections and give an historical sense to growing towns and cities.

Click "Library of Congress Search Everything Audio Recordings Books/Printed Material Films, Videos Legislation Manuscripts/Mixed Material Maps Notated ..."

Click "Available Online"

Where to start? The Library of Congress has a robust and informative set of teaching tools, resources, and guidance on how to teach with primary sources. Start here: Click "Teaching with the Library Primary Sources & Ideas for Educators":<https://blogs.loc.gov/teachers/>

Use this tool: <https://www.loc.gov/programs/teachers/getting-started-with-primary-sources/guides/> in a variety of settings. Do you have an image to ponder? A data chart to understand? Use the analysis tool to jumpstart thinking. Add in the QFT to build questions, and you have the beginning of some great learning activities. Right-click "Getting Started with Primary Sources" to learn more about teaching with primary sources.

Open a new tab

The Teaching with Primary Sources Teacher Network: <https://tpsteachersnetwork.org>is an excellent online community- and its free to join. Gather ideas, ask questions, choose teacher created resource and lesson plans from across the country and all grades and content areas. Click "All Groups"to find your interest areas.

The Right Question Institute has a group you can join!

One last reminder: the Library of Congress is the national library of the United States, providing information to Congress and about Congress. click: [congress.gov](https://congress.gov) to view the current and past legislation.

Tip! **When searching: keeping it simple, using the words you want to see on the search results page (and ultimately in the site you’re looking at), will bring you more happy pages than unhappy pages. Research is a journey. ...and should you get stuck in your journey: check your question. It will always bring you back to what you're truly interested in.**