Research Like an Historian: Using the Library of Congress Website

Learn how to search, filter, and locate reliable primary sources for study and teaching

Nancy Florio
20 steps
4 minutes

Loc

The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, and its website gives you access to millions of digital items—from photographs, maps, and manuscripts to sound recordings, films, and newspapers. Exploring this vast collection can lead to incredible discoveries that bring history, science, art, and culture to life. This tutorial will show you how to search the Library of Congress website efficiently and confidently. You’ll learn how to: - Navigate the main search page and collections - Use filters to refine your results - Locate reliable primary sources for research or classroom use - Save and cite items for projects and teaching materials Whether you’re a **teacher** helping students explore primary sources or a **student** conducting your own research, this guide will help you uncover the hidden stories and resources waiting inside the Library of Congress digital collections.

Start your search by navigating to the Library of Congress website: <https://www.loc.gov/>

Tip! While the inclination might be to just use the search bar on the first page… it tends to send us to physical items. Follow along to find out how to narrow your search for items you can access online that are related to the Civil Rights Movement.

Click the "Search" field.

Let's start our search for primary sources relating to the civil rights movement. To find these items, type "Civil Rights Movement" making sure to place quotation marks around your search term when it is a phrase, otherwise you will see results that include each individual word in your phrase.

Once you've entered your search term or phrase, click for your search results.

There are almost 5,000 total results for this search. Make sure you click "Available Online" to limit your results to only those items you can access online. Now let's search through the 2,452 items available to us.

Since I'm not sure of my specific topic yet, the links in the left column give many options to limit my search. If I'm interested in looking at photographs from that movement, I'll choose the "Photo, Print, Drawing" option to limit my search to those items.

To look for a specific range of years, click "1900 to 1999"

From these, let's look at the items from "1960 to 1969"

To explore individual items, click the hyperlinked title of the item: "\[Bomb-damaged trailers at the Gaston Motel, Birmingham, Alabama\]"

The item page will include options to enlarge the photo, view metadata and the ability to download various filetypes as well as view information on Rights and Citation.

Click "View Enlarged Image"

Detailed information (called metadata) is listed below each item.

Click "Rights & Access" for information on how you might use the image, and links if there are options to purchase copies.

As always, make sure to cite your sources. The "Cite This Item" makes it easy to view citation information for the three most common style types.

The LOC also provides additional items in the sections "More items like this"

And the "You might also like" section.

If you would like to download the image, choose the best option from this dropdown.

We hope you have found this step-by-step Scribe tutorial helpful. Look for additional Scribes on the Right Questions Institute website.