March 25, 1997 Library of Congress To Hold Demonstration of On-Line Initiatives at American Association of School Librarians

A special presentation of the Library of Congress Learning Page will be given during the conference of the American Association of School Librarians on April 5 at 1:30 p.m. in Room 113 of the Oregon Convention Center in Portland. Demonstrations will also be available at the Library's exhibition booth, No. 304.

The Learning Page (https://www.loc.gov/teachers), an initiative of the National Digital Library (NDL) Program, is a gateway to the Library's on-line collections specifically tailored to the needs of K-12 educators, librarians and students. It offers education-related help categorized by the Events, Topics, People, Time and Places of American history.

The site also offers special presentations relating to current events or holidays (http://loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/). Recent presentations have related to Presidents' Day, the presidential inauguration and Thanksgiving.

"We are looking forward to being able to demonstrate the Learning Page before an audience of librarians dedicated to K-12 education," said Martha Dexter of the educational services section of the NDL Program. Ms. Dexter and Lisa Alexander will be the Library's representatives at the conference.

They will also introduce attendees to other Library of Congress projects such as the on-line catalog; THOMAS, a congressional database; and more than a dozen exhibitions.

The National Digital Library Program currently offers nearly 400,000 items relating to American history at https://www.loc.gov/. Providing students, educators and school librarians with primary source collections -- and the keys to using them -- is one of the chief goals of the program, which aims to make millions of items available by the year 2000.

The American Association of School Librarians is a division of the American Library Association, the largest association of librarians and information providers in the world.