Resources for Rural and Small Libraries

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Staff from the Library of Congress will be in Montgomery, Alabama, exhibiting and presenting at the Association for Rural and Small Libraries, September 17-18, 2026. We’ll have representatives from the education team, genealogy, and the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled to answer your questions about the Library’s programs and resources. If you plan to attend, please visit us in the exhibit hall or attend the presentation.

On Thursday, September 17, at 11:30 a.m., we’ll present a one hour session on opportunities for local history research using Library of Congress digital collections, including:

• Chronicling America historic newspapers,
• Sanborn and panoramic map collections,
• the Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey, and
• various photograph collections.

The session will demonstrate practical research strategies, tips, and shortcuts to help participants efficiently navigate the Library of Congress website.

And here are some additional resources that librarians have told us are helpful:

• Teacher’s Site – resources and strategies for educators, including themed primary source sets and the Teaching with the Library blog.
• Free to Use and Reuse Sets – curated collections of digital images on a variety of topics.
• Blogs.loc.gov – additional blogs, written by experts at various Library divisions, such as rare books, manuscripts, maps and more.
• Veterans History Project – Library initiative that collects, preserves, and displays the firsthand recollections of U.S. military veterans.
• National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled – a free national library program that provides braille and recorded materials to people who cannot read handle print materials.

We hope to see some of you at the conference, but whether or not you attend the conference, we hope that you’ll explore some of the free resources available online from the Library of Congress.