Library Garden

As I ride into work at Rider University early this morning, I listen to a speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., and I check my RSS feeds for anything unique about MLK that I might be able to learn about. Right away, I find an Associated Press article on Yahoo! News published yesterday, entitled, Rarely seen King papers go on display. The article describes a bit about the “collection of more than 10,000 King papers and books,” now displayed at The Atlanta History Center, previously in New York at Sothebys’ auction house, described as “an unparalleled gathering of primary documents from Dr. King’s most active years.” It is impressive, and I enjoyed watching the video clip from ABC Video linked on the left of this article, “Memorial Sheds New Light on MLK,” which described the exhibition, as well as the “MLK Day Is For Volunteering” clip, also there. Reading this article and watching the clips was good way to start the day, and after watching the “Volunteering” video, I thought, why not blog about these and other quality resources and help celebrate and teach about MLK–a small way to volunteer.

Additional resource sites of interest to everyone this fine day:

– The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute housed at Stanford University “serves as the institutional home for a broad range of activities relating to King’s life, the civil rights movement in the United States and the history of struggles worldwide to achieve social justice.” It details their King Papers Project’s website, described as “the world’s largest online archive of King-related materials, receiving over 500,000 hits a month.” I really enjoyed surfing the site map available at Standford, and thought the The Liberation Curriculum section there for teachers that provides “teachers with educational materials that engage students in active learning and critical inquiry” was especially valuable.

– The King Collection: Morehouse College is also one of my favorite MLK sites, not only because it gives additional details about the large collection of “handwritten notes and unpublished sermons of Martin Luther King Jr.,” described above, but I find that the short, easy-to-print-out King Timeline and King Fact Sheet were also great handouts to display in our library.

For more on MLK, you may also want to visit the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site, with links for teachers and kids, as well as the Seattle Times: MLK site, and, of course, Librarians’ Internet Index provides two dozen more links to other quality resource sites.