December 3, 2007 Library of Congress Makes Grant To Southeastern Louisiana University To Foster Instructional Use of Digital Materials

Press Contact: Guy Lamolinara (202) 707-9217
Contact: Southeastern Louisiana University Contact: Rene Abadie (985) 549-2341

The Library of Congress today made a grant to Southeastern Louisiana University to join a program designed to encourage the educational use of the Library’s vast collections of online primary source materials. Librarian of Congress James H. Billington and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) presented the $300,000 three-year grant to Southeastern President Randy Moffett during a news conference held on the Southeastern Louisiana University campus. “The Library of Congress is an educational resource for the nation, and we are glad to have Southeastern Louisiana University join our network of Teaching with Primary Sources partners,” said Billington. “The Library’s Educational Outreach experts look forward to working with Southeastern on this exciting program.” Teaching with Primary Sources ( www.loc.gov/teachers/tps/ ) fosters collaborations between the Library of Congress and the educational community. The program works through an educational consortium of schools, universities, libraries and other institutions to help teachers make use of the Library of Congress’s collection of digitized primary sources. “I am very pleased and proud to see this grant come to Southeastern Louisiana University,” Landrieu said. “As we know, Southeastern has one of the finest teaching preparation programs in the nation, so it’s quite fitting that it be the first university in the South selected for this prestigious program.” “This program, Teaching with Primary Sources, meshes quite well with Southeastern’s ongoing educational outreach programs in area school systems,” Moffett said. “The grant will allow us to work closely with these systems and their teachers in professional development programs designed to enhance the quality of educational content in schools. The Library of Congress’s vast collections, especially its digital primary sources, are a valuable and relatively untapped resource that our area’s teachers can and will use in their classrooms.” Diane Allen, dean of Southeastern’s College of Education and Human Development, said the grant will allow Southeastern to provide professional development opportunities for teachers in a wide array of disciplines. Over the next several years, she said, Southeastern will provide workshops, seminars, graduate courses, distance learning opportunities and mentoring to teachers. Other institutions that are part of the Teaching with Primary Sources consortium are: Metropolitan State College of Denver, the University of Northern Colorado, Barat Educational Foundation, DePaul University, Eastern Illinois University, the Federation of Independent Illinois Colleges and Universities, Governors State University, Illinois State University, Loyola University of Chicago; Southern Illinois University in Carbondale and Edwardsville, Quincy University, the Center on Congress at Indiana University, California University of Pennsylvania, Waynesburg College and the Northern Virginia Partnership.

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PR 07-245
2007-12-03
ISSN 0731-3527