About the Program

The Library of Congress collaborates with school districts, universities, libraries, and foundations to help teachers use the Library's vast collection of digitized primary sources to enrich their classroom instruction. These partnerships build on the success of the Library's previous outreach initiatives, particularly the American Memory Fellows and An Adventure of the American Mind programs, which reached more than 10,000 teachers.

The Library of Congress has two types of institutional partners: TPS Educational Consortium members and regional grantees.

Members of the TPS Educational Consortium assist in the design of the TPS program and offer TPS professional development on an ongoing basis, year round. There are currently 28 Consortium members in 17 states: California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Montana, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington, and Wyoming. The professional development that these organizations offer includes workshops, online courses, graduate courses, and mentoring that meet the same goals as the professional development offered in Washington, DC at the Library of Congress.

The Library conducts periodic grant competitions to identify additional Consortium members. The timing, number and size of these grants are contingent upon programmatic needs and funding availability.

Regional grantees receive grants of up to $20,000 to incorporate TPS methods and materials into existing programs for teachers. Grantees have used these funds to undertake projects such as including a TPS focus in curriculum, creating TPS-based teaching materials, or conducting a TPS workshop or course, etc. For example, a Board of Cooperative Education Services (BOCES) in New York State used a regional grant to offer TPS workshops as part of their professional development program for school media specialists and librarians. Some schools of education have used regional grants to pay faculty to update their teaching methods courses to include use of digitized collections from the Library of Congress and effective pedagogy for teaching with primary sources. Museums have combined Library of Congress digitized primary sources with those held in their collections to offer teachers greater context, depth and access as they create lesson plans.

To date, 146 school districts, libraries, educational associations and cultural institutions in 42 states and the District of Columbia have strengthened their organizations' professional development goals with TPS materials. Three Regional Coordinators in the East, Midwest and West manage the grant program on behalf of the Library.