Natalie SapkarovLIS 590 NF

Assignment #3: American Memory Project

Before I started this assignment, I decided to go exploring on the

American Memory Project to see what would be most useful to me in the

future as a high school librarian, and I fell in love with the Learning Page. I

spent almost an hour looking at the lesson plans for The Great Gatsby, To Kill

a Mockingbird, and epic poetry and was pleased with each of them.

Complete with objectives, materials, grade level, time length, a set of

procedures, evaluation tools, and even extension activities, these lessons are

ready to go—wow!

As for the assignment, I initially searched the home page for “movie

posters,” thinking that it would be fun to have pictures of old movies up in

the library to coincide with the summer reading theme. As I viewed the

gallery display of 161 results, I hardly saw any actual movie posters and

instead found pictures of posters on theatres—not what I was looking for. I

thought that my scope may have been too narrow, so I went back and listed

all collections to search for “movies” as a subject. This I did not find, but I

clicked on “F” for “film” and found a listing for animated films from 1900-

1921. Once I clicked this link, I felt lost, but owing to my previous experience

with the Learning Page, I clicked on the Collection Connections link and

found explanations of what I could actually do with this material. I think this

was more valuable than merely a listing of the resources because I wouldn’t

know what to do with them. I would not recommend any students searching

this site alone unless they have had some instruction in it before—and even

so, I would limit it to middle and high school students because the materials

are most appropriate for them. Luckily, the Learning Page has lesson plans in

introducing students to the American Memory Project and evaluating primary

resources!