Montgomery College Fellows at the Library of Congress pilot program

Institutional Partners

The Montgomery College Fellows at the Library of Congress pilot program is the product of a partnership between the Library of Congress (the Library) and Montgomery College (MC).

MC is an open-admissions community college with campuses in Germantown, Rockville and Takoma Park/Silver Spring, Maryland serving more than 60,000 students a year, through both credit and noncredit programs, in more than 150 areas of study.

The Library of Congress, the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and the largest library in the world, holds more than 160 million items in various languages, disciplines and formats.  The Library serves the U.S. Congress and the nation both on-site in its reading rooms on Capitol Hill and through its digital collections and award-winning website at www.loc.gov.

Fellowship Program Concept

The concept for this pilot program was developed by Tanner Wray, Director of College Libraries and Information Services at Montgomery College and Sara Bachman Ducey, Paul Peck Humanities Institute Director and Collegewide Chair for Integrative Studies at Montgomery College. The design of the innovative pilot is modeled, in part, after the successful Montgomery College-Smithsonian Faculty Fellowship Program that MC has had since 1998 with Smithsonian’s Center for Learning and Digital Access.

From the Library of Congress, Blane Dessy, Director, National Enterprises, National and International Outreach (NIO) and his colleague, Dawn Stitzel, Program Planning Specialist, NIO, collaborated with Ducey and Wray on the creative and logistical work that resulted in the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Library and Montgomery College in May 2015.  The pilot was then transferred to NIO’s George Coulbourne, Chief, Internship and Fellowship Programs for implementation.  Under George’s direction, Barrie Howard, Pilot Liaison and IT Project Manager, NIO, has been the Library’s face for the pilot, making all arrangements for orientation sessions, providing keen insight into Library culture and assuring successful support of the pilot.

The pilot paired the Library of Congress with Montgomery College to explore how community college students can utilize the rich collections and resources of the Library of Congress.

The Program’s goals were to:

• increase awareness and use of the unique collections of the Library by Montgomery College faculty, librarians, and students;
• increase participant knowledge in specific research areas;
• transfer this new-found knowledge through a variety of means to MC faculty, staff and students; and
• to spur development of interdisciplinary reference and research orientation sessions by the Library.