Library of Congress Turns to EDC as Research Collaborator

WALTHAM, MA | The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., has selected EDC as the key research collaborator for its Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) program, which helps educators use its enormous collection of digitized primary source materials in the classroom. One of 21 organizations receiving a total of more than $3 million, EDC will receive an award of $250,000 to support TPS.

EDC helped to pioneer TPS nearly 20 years ago and has seen it become the cornerstone of the Library’s educational outreach to all 50 states.

“Original materials like manuscripts, letters, and photos bring the past alive for students, giving them a strong sense of history and sparking critical thinking,” said Bill Tally, senior project director in EDC’s Center for Children and Technology. “We’re proud of our longtime partnership with the TPS program and look forward to providing research to strengthen it by improving how teachers and students across the country learn to use primary sources.”

With the new grant funds, EDC will survey the teaching practices of current TPS organizations, work with them to study student and teacher learning, and create research briefs to guide professional development providers. EDC competed for funding with dozens of applicants, including universities, museums, school districts, and other educational organizations. While most of those funded will focus on programming and professional development, EDC was the only organization chosen to conduct research for the program.

“We very much look forward to welcoming the recipients of these grants into the Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) Educational Consortium,” said Lee Ann Potter, director of Educational Outreach for the Library, in a statement. “It’s a community dedicated to increasing awareness and effective use of primary sources—and other educational resources made available by the Library—in K-12 classrooms."

EDC’s long relationship with the Library includes helping to develop and run the American Memory Fellows Program, a forerunner of the current TPS, as well as creating Picturing Modern America, a website using images in the Library’s primary source collections, and Zoom In, an instructional platform for U.S. history teachers that places the Library’s primary source documents at the center of reading and writing experiences for students.

The Library of Congress is the world’s largest library and is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress. To learn more about its mission and to access millions of primary source documents, visit loc.gov.

EDC designs, implements, and evaluates programs to improve education, health, and economic opportunity worldwide. Visit www.edc.org.