Wiscasset High School Social Studies teacher Mary Ellen Bell will travel to Washington, D.C., this summer to learn how to mine the Library of Congress digital archives for instructional material.

Early last month, Bell learned she was chosen among numerous applicants to attend the Teaching with Primary Sources program offered through the Library of Congress 2013 Summer Teaching Institute, which runs from July 22-26. One out of every four applicants were accepted into this year's program.

The program offers instructors the chance to integrate digitized collections into their curricula and incorporate the methods learned at the summer institute to guide classroom activities, according to information on the Library of Congress website.

According to the website, the library has the world's largest collection of films, maps, legal manuscripts, sheet music and recordings. There are more than 155 million items stored there, including 35 million books and printed materials available in 460 languages, along with the largest collection of rare books in North America.

The website has a lot of digitized material available on its website, but instructors will find out where to look and ways to use this material.

“I'm kind of a lover of libraries,” Bell said, standing before a map of the world.

She integrates world cultures and geography in her coursework. A “Global Issues” project she instructs has students choose a particular issue on which to focus some research. Examples include human trafficking, clean water, global warming or the “nuclear threat.”

“I keep finding ways for students to deepen their research,” Bell said. Students, she said, come to the understanding through this coursework that they are not just Wiscasset citizens or Maine citizens, but they are global citizens.

Bell is very excited to have this opportunity. “I've never been to the Library of Congress,” she said. Bell said she is looking forward to learning what resources available will help her to instruct students.

Bell said she also hopes to present her findings from the summer program at the Maine Council for Social Studies Conference in the coming fall.