Communicator: [Archives] April 2005

Communicator Update: April 2005

Welcome to The Dirksen Congressional Center's Communicator - a web-based e-newsletter providing educators with news and ideas to improve the understanding of Congress -- http://www.webcommunicator.org

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

1. Monthly Feature -- Teaching About Congress
2. Monthly Theme -- Best Sites for Teaching About Congress
3. Featured Grant-funded Project
4. News and Views from The Center
5. Trivia - Congress Commission Checkup
6. Postscript Information

1. TEACHING ABOUT CONGRESS

If you teach about Congress, there must be times when the amount of information just seems overwhelming. We certainly find that to be true here at The Center. A Google search on "Congress" will yield about 99,000,000 hits! Where to begin?

Our AboutGovernment site attempts to select the best sites about Congress (and many other subjects related to understanding the federal government.) We list 40 sites about the legislative branch at http://www.aboutgovernment.org/print_usgov_legis.htm, for example. But that's still a lot to wade through.

2. BEST SITES FOR TEACHERS

This month we will select five of the very best sites for those of you who teach about the history of Congress. In coming months, we will post selections for government teachers and for social studies teachers more generally.

Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress -- http://bioguide.congress.gov

This site gives online access to the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress, with entries for all who have served in the House or the Senate, as well as updated versions of the House and Senate guides to research collections and bibliographies of Senators. The House Legislative Resource Center maintains the site and is preparing bibliographies of House members.

Center for Legislative Archives, National Archives and Records Administration -- http://www.archives.gov/records_of_congress/index.html

The National Archives is the official repository of the records of House and Senate committees. If you are interested in learning how to access the records of Congress, this site is the place to begin. Particularly valuable are the online guides to the committee records of the House and Senate, which provide excellent summaries of the history and purpose of each congressional committee. This site also has links to other sites of interest to students, historians, archivists, and political scientists.

Congressional Research Service Reports -- http://www.llsdc.org/sourcebook/CRS-Congress.htm

The Law Librarians' Society of Washington, D.C., Inc. (LLSDC) makes available on its Legislative Source Book Web site a new Web page entitled Selected Congressional Research Service Reports on Congress and Its Procedures which includes some 36 alphabetically arranged CRS reports, most of which have never before been made available on the Web. The site also links to most all other CRS Reports on the Internet as well as proposed current and past federal legislation that requires CRS reports to be made available on the Internet. The bulk of the reports on the new site were optically scanned into PDF documents from paper copies.

First Federal Congress Project -- http://www.gwu.edu/~ffcp

One of the most interesting features of this site is an online exhibit that covers fourteen topics related to the work and accomplishments of the first Congress. The site will eventually have an online teacher's guide but even in its present form it provides a wide array of original sources, engravings, portraits, etc., all of which are placed in historical context. This exhibit will help users understand the critical role played by the First Federal Congress in providing stability for the new government and completing the work of the Constitutional Convention.

The Library of Congress -- http://www.loc.gov/homepage/index.html

All students and teachers should be familiar with this site. While the Library of Congress location does not focus on Congress the way THOMAS (see below) does, it offers students of history and government interesting places. The American Memory Project -- http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/ -- is bringing online important congressional records and publications. A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation -- http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lawhome.html -- is a web site designed to make these records more accessible to students, scholars, and interested citizens, and it will bring together the records and acts of Congress from the Journals of the Continental Congress through The Congressional Globe, which ceased publication in 1873. Documents dated 1774-1805 are currently available. Additional materials will be added to the site every few months. Educators also will find useful resources on The Learning Page -- http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/ -- including a teaching unit, In Congress Assembled -- http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/lessons/constitu/conintro.html -- and information on presidents and presidential inaugurations. The Library of Congress Home Page also provides research tools, including the incomparable catalog of the Library of Congress, and links to other Library of Congress Internet resources. Special collections include material on the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention; Votes for Women, 1848-1921; and African American Perspectives, 1818-1907. Photographic collections include Civil War Photographs, Portraits of Presidents and First Ladies, and Washington as It Was, 1923-1959.

You will want to visit the Senate -- http://www.senate.gov -- and House -- http://www.house.gov/ -- sites, too, of course.

If you have a favorite site for congressional history, please send the link to Cindy Koeppel at ckoeppel@dirksencenter.org.

3. FEATURED GRANT-FUNDED PROJECT

The Center selected ten research projects in February 2005 to receive a total of over $30,000 in Congressional Research Awards funding. Congratulations to the following recipients:

1) Jessica Gerrity, PhD Candidate, Indiana University, $2,637 -- Congressional Behavior and Interest Group Influence: The Case of the Abortion Issue

2) Christian Robert Grose, Lawrence University, $3,200 --
Congressional Leadership as a Valence Issue: Do Legislative Leaders Use Distributive Policy to Deviate from Constituents?

3) Andrea C. Hatcher, PhD Candidate, Vanderbilt University, $3,100 -- The Senate Majority Leader as Senator: Representational Effects of Leadership

4) Eric Scott Heberlig, University of North Carolina, $2,250 -- Paying to Play: Campaign Money, Institutional Ambition, and Political Parties in the U.S. House of Representatives

5) Laura S. Jensen, University of Massachusetts, $3,500 -- Congress, the Petitions of the People, and Representation in the Early American Nation

6) Kristin Kanthak, University of Arizona, $3,400 -- The Effect of Ideology-Based Leadership Races on Legislator's Behavior

7) Gary Lee Malecha, University of Portland, and Daniel J. Reagan, Ball State University, $3,330 --
Congress in a New Media Age

8) John E. Owens, University of Westminster, $3,500 -- The Impact of Leaders' Personal Characteristics on Leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives

9) Stacey Lynn Pelika, PhD Candidate, University of Wisconsin, $3,474 -- Managing Public Opinion: Attentive Publics, Political Elites, and the Policymaking Process

10) Michael W. Wagner, PhD Candidate, Indiana University, $3,500 -- The Influence of Competitive Congressional Issue-Framing on Public Opinion and Mass Partisanship

Since its inception in 1978, the Congressional Research Awards have supplied over $650,000 to 337 individual research projects.

Learn more about the Congressional Research Awards and the individual projects listed above at: http://www.dirksencenter.org/print_grants_CRAs.htm#Grntrecipient00

4. NEWS AND VIEWS FROM THE CENTER

** Historical Collection Digitization **

The Center is currently in the process of digitizing the guides to our historical collections and posting them on our Web site.

The finding aids to the Robert H. Michel Collection are already posted at: http://www.dirksencenter.org/findingaids/index.htm. We are at work on the Dirksen Collection guides, recently completing his Notebooks, 1932-69 which include more than 12,500 pages of outlines and texts, reference materials, and other documents collected by Dirksen and kept in a set of personal notebooks. This guide can be found at: http://www.dirksencenter.org/guides_emd/Notebooks1932-69/intro.htm.

We have converted selected original historical documents to a Web-based format, too. For example, more than 50 transcripts of interviews conducted with Everett Dirksen are posted at: http://www.dirksencenter.org/emd_interviews/index.htm.

Putting more of our historical materials online is one of our programmatic objectives for the next three years. We will keep you posted with future developments!

** Site of the Day **

Thanks to Becky Moeggenberg, The Center's Web suite -- http://www.dirksencongressionalcenter.org -- was selected as techLearning's Site of the Day on March 24, 2005 -- http://www.techlearning.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=60402953. techLEARNING is the resource for education technology leaders with contributions from hundreds of K-12 teachers, administrators, and other experts in the field.

** Professional Development Workshop Updates **

Congress in the Classroom® Online -- http://www.congressclass.org -- helps participants understand today's Congress and suggest ways to teach about it.

Below are recent updates to the self-paced workshop which is organized around the twin responsibilities of Congress members: representation and lawmaking.

1) New work product for Assignment 6 -- http://www.congressclass.org/print_workproduct6.htm

2) New work product for Assignment 7 -- http://www.congressclass.org/print_workproduct7.htm

3) New work products for Assignment 13 -- http://www.congressclass.org/print_workproduct13.htm

4) New work product for Assignment 14 -- http://www.congressclass.org/print_workproduct14.htm

5) New work products for Assignment 15 -- http://www.congressclass.org/print_workproduct15.htm

6) New work product for Assignment 16 -- http://www.congressclass.org/print_workproduct16.htm

We invite you to register -- http://www.congressclass.org/print_registration.htm --to participate in Congress in the Classroom® Online to help you understand today's Congress and discover ways to teach about it -- with all the convenience and speed of the Internet.

For more information, visit -- http://www.congressclass.org/courseinformation_contents.htm -- for a complete online professional development workshop overview.

5. CONGRESS COMMISSION CHECKUP

1) How much do members of Congress earn?

Answers to March's issue of Fun, Facts, and Trivia: http://www.webcommunicator.org/funfactstrivia0305ans.htm.

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