May 20, 2015 Library Announces Fellowship Program with Maryland College

The Library of Congress and Montgomery College, an institution of higher education in Montgomery County, Maryland, today announced a new fellowship program in which faculty and students from the school will use the Library’s extensive assets to deepen the participants’ research and scholarship skills.

The Montgomery College Fellows Program at the Library of Congress will in the near term bring five fellows—three members of the school’s faculty and two librarians— to the Library beginning in summer 2015. Chosen for the program by a competitive process, they are Faculty Services Librarian Vickie Drake; Women’s and Gender Studies Instructor Lucinda Grinnell; Professor of Dance Gail Minor-Smith; Instruction Librarian Niyati Pandya and Associate Professor of English John Wang.

The teaching fellows’ activities will include a research orientation to the Library followed by participation in the week-long “Teaching With Primary Sources” summer institute for teachers held by the Library’s Educational Outreach Office; direction in use of the Library’s numerous reading rooms and in navigating analog and digitized collections. Fellows will also conduct research for individual projects.

Fellows will teach courses beginning in spring 2016 that send participants to the Library of Congress to conduct course-oriented research using the Library’s unique collections.

“This is a pilot program, and if it is successful the Library may reach out to other two- and four-year colleges and universities in this area and beyond,” said Blane Dessy, the Library’s deputy associate librarian for planning and project management in Library Services.

The program is governed by an agreement between Montgomery College’s Libraries and its Paul Peck Humanities Institute (PPHI) and the Library Services Division. It was conceived by Tanner Wray, director of Montgomery College Libraries and Information Services, and Sara Bachman Ducey of the Paul Peck Humanities Institute.

Montgomery College is a public, open-admissions community college in Maryland with campuses in Germantown, Rockville and Takoma Park/Silver Spring, plus workforce development/continuing education centers and off-site programs throughout Montgomery County, Maryland. It serves more than 60,000 students a year, through both credit and noncredit programs, in more than 150 areas of study.

The Library of Congress, the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and the largest library in the world, holds more than 160 million items in various languages, disciplines and formats. The Library serves the U.S. Congress and the nation both on-site in its reading rooms on Capitol Hill and through its award-winning website at www.loc.gov.