Past Courses & Workshops

Did you miss a past workshop? Want to rewatch a lecture hosted by the Library of Congress? Recordings of past events, including lectures, book talks, topical presentations, and research orientations are available for you to browse. Ranging from introductions to researching general topics and themes to deep dives into specific collections these programs cater to users of all levels of research experience and interest.

Tutorials that provide information on common researcher tasks or explore select Library research centers are available at Video Tutorials for Researchers.

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    Film, Video
    Congress.gov Public Forum This is the public forum we hold to provide Congress.gov updates from the Library and our data partners, and also learn more from our users about how we can better serve their legislative information needs.
    • Contributor: Frazier, Emily - Reiter, Andrew - Donfried, Karen - McCumber, Kevin - Shapiro, Arin - Bulut, Aslihan - Gullickson, Kirsten - Pollock, John - Dennis, Jeanne - Tennenbaum, Michael ... Frazier, Emily - Reiter, Andrew - Donfried, Karen - McCumber, Kevin - Shapiro, Arin - Bulut, Aslihan - Gullickson, Kirsten - Pollock, John - Dennis, Jeanne - Tennenbaum, Michael - Laplant, Lisa - Brammer, Robert - Karamanis, Jim - Weber, Andrew - Sweany, James - Swantner, Amy - Barber, Jackie - Conklin, Judith
    • Date: 2025-09-30
  • Film, Video
    Made at the Library: Mary Cassatt Between Paris and New York Join author Ruth E. Iskin as she discusses her recent book “Mary Cassatt Between Paris and New York: The Making of a Transatlantic Legacy” with Manuscript Division staff members Elizabeth Novara and Edith Sandler. Iskin, an art historian and professor emerita at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, contextualizes Cassatt’s feminist outlook and her connections to the American women’s suffrage movement. The discussion demonstrates how…
    • Contributor: Sandler, Edith - Iskin, Ruth E. - Novara, Elizabeth
    • Date: 2025-09-18
  • Film, Video
    Animating Central Park: A Multispecies History Illuminating the multispecies story of New York’s Central Park from the 1850s to the 1970s, Dawn Day Biehler examines the vibrant and intimately connected lives of humans and nonhuman animals in the park. She reveals stories of grazing sheep, teeming fish, nesting swans, migrating warblers, and escaped bison as well as human New Yorkers’ attempts to reconfigure their relationships to the land and claim…
    • Contributor: Levy, Josh - Day Biehler, Dawn - Bair, Barbara
    • Date: 2025-08-12
  • Film, Video
    Geography and Map Division Virtual Orientation Reference librarians presented an introduction to the Geography and Map collections at the Library of Congress. This general orientation session highlights a wide range of cartographic formats and subject matter. The focus of the session is on search and discovery of maps and electronic resources in the Library???s new online catalog. Topics covered include search tips and tricks, research and collection guides, ways to…
    • Contributor: Pastuch, Carissa - Raines, Amelia
    • Date: 2025-08-12
  • Film, Video
    Lunch and Learn: Federal Appropriations Research This webinar focuses on researching the legislative history and appropriations in the annual federal budget appropriations. It provides a review of the general appropriations procedure in Congress. It also focuses on resources for conducting legislative history research into appropriations, including annual CRS appropriation status tables, omnibus legislation, and members’ earmarks.
    • Contributor: Zarin, Jason
    • Date: 2025-08-12
  • Film, Video
    Italian National Regulation in the Context of European Law This webinar analyzed the implementation of the European “AI Act” in Italy and assesses the main challenges in the context of Italian legal system as well as ponder the current and future implications of both EU and tentative domestic legislation on AI for Italy.
    • Contributor: Figueroa, Dante - D'orazio, Roberto
    • Date: 2025-07-17
  • Film, Video
    School Days (and Nights) A reference librarian from our Prints & Photographs Division highlighted images and collections to prepare you for another school year and feed your reminisces of school days past — favorite teachers, school supplies, new clothes, night school, open-air school and more, from kindergarten to university.
    • Contributor: Brubacher, Ryan
    • Date: 2025-07-16
  • Film, Video
    The Evolution of Surrogacy Law in France and Colombia Surrogacy and the adoption of children born through this practice have been the focus of significant legislative and jurisprudential developments around the world. The evolution of surrogacy in France and Colombia has different legal implications in each country.
    • Contributor: Gilbert, Louis - Alvarez, Stephania
    • Date: 2025-06-26
  • Film, Video
    Finding Pictures: Shawn Walker – Reflections Join Curator Adam Silvia and renowned photographer Shawn Walker for a Finding Pictures webinar where they will debut their documentary interview on Walker’s life in photography, featuring images from the Shawn Walker Photograph Collection held in the Prints & Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. A founding member of the Kamoinge Workshop, a highly esteemed collective of Black photographers in the Harlem neighborhood…
    • Contributor: Walker, Shawn - Silvia, Adam
    • Date: 2025-06-18
  • Film, Video
    Maps of World War II Reference librarians gave a brief overview of maps and other cartographic items from World War II that can be found in the Geography and Map collections at the Library of Congress. The session highlighted items made by American forces, as well as captured maps made by the Axis powers. The breadth and content of these items and how they came to the Geography and…
    • Contributor: Mattson, Lena - Raines, Amelia
    • Date: 2025-06-10
  • Film, Video
    Law Day: Interview with ABA President William Bay Law Librarian of Congress Aslihan Bulut interviews the American Bar Association President William Bay to promote Law Day. The annual Law Day event is cosponsored between the American Bar Association and the Law Library of Congress to commemorate Law Day. President Dwight D. Eisenhower established Law Day in 1958, setting aside a national day on May 1 to celebrate the rule of law and…
    • Contributor: Bulut, Aslihan - Bay, William
    • Date: 2025-04-22
  • Film, Video
    Shopping All the Way to the Woods with Rachel Gross Rachel Gross discussed her book “Shopping All the Way to the Woods: How the Outdoor Industry Sold Nature to America” on the surprising military origins of your favorite outdoor gear. Gross is an environmental, business and cultural historian of the modern U.S. and an assistant professor of history at the University of Colorado Denver. Her book argues that in making Americans into consumers of…
    • Contributor: Sheu, Sherri - Benoit Kim, Colleen - Gross, Rachel
    • Date: 2025-04-22
  • Film, Video
    Postcards: Wish You Were Here! Are you a deltiologist? Are you an archivist wishing your postcards were better organized? Sara W. Duke, the Library’s curator of popular and applied graphic art, provides an overview of the postcard collections at the Library of Congress, where a large-scale digitization and processing project is underway. Selections will include the United States from the 1890s onwards, humorous giant rabbits, hammocks, the Statue of…
    • Contributor: Duke, Sarah
    • Date: 2025-04-16
  • Film, Video
    Geography and Map Orientation This orientation provides a general introduction to the world’s largest map library, focusing on collections and resources accessible online from anywhere. Explore a treasure trove of maps, atlases and cartographic resources followed by a Q&A session with a map librarian.
    • Contributor: Raines, Amelia - Stoner, Julie
    • Date: 2025-04-08
  • Film, Video
    Finding Pictures: Mid-Century Color Photography After nearly a century of monochromatic images, Kodak’s Kodachrome transparency film burst onto the photography market in 1936, allowing photographers to capture scenes in vibrant full color. Competing products soon followed, allowing color image-making to become available to all. In this virtual talk, Leigh Gleason explores color photographs in the Prints and Photograph collections from the 1930s to the 1970s, and shows how you…
    • Contributor: Gleason, Leigh
    • Date: 2025-03-19
  • Film, Video
    Finding Pictures: World War I Reference Librarian Jonathan Eaker highlights interesting selections from the Prints & Photographs Division’s wide and diverse World War I collections. Learn about a submarine displayed in Central Park, an “orphan” who was not quite what he seemed, a special portrait drawn for General John J. Pershing and more. This virtual presentation includes newly digitized images that are freely available to all.
    • Contributor: Eaker, Jonathan
    • Date: 2025-02-19
  • Film, Video
    Southeast Asian Rare Collections at the Library of Congress Join two Southeast Asian reference specialists in this 75-minute webinar on Southeast Asian rare collections at the Library of Congress. Learn about collection highlights, research guides, and how to access rare Southeast Asian material, such as illustrated Thai folding books, Burma World War II records, Balinese palm-leaf manuscripts, Southeast Asian rare items in European languages and more.
    • Contributor: Wolfson-Ford, Ryan - Kueh, Joshua
    • Date: 2025-02-12
  • Film, Video
    Mischievous Creatures: The Forgotten Sisters Who Transformed Early American Science Join historian Catherine McNeur as she discusses her recent book, “Mischievous Creatures: The Forgotten Sisters Who Transformed Early American Science,” with Manuscript Division historians Josh Levy and Elizabeth A. Novara. McNeur uncovers the work of entomologist Margaretta Hare Morris and her sister botanist Elizabeth Carrington Morris, whose discoveries helped fuel the growth and professionalization of science in antebellum America – even as those same…
    • Contributor: McNeur, Catherine - Levy, Josh - Novara, Elizabeth
    • Date: 2025-02-12
  • Film, Video
    GIS and Geospatial Resources Join us for a virtual orientation that aims to provide an overview of the geospatial resources of the Geography and Map Division, including an introduction to geographic information systems (GIS), spatial data formats, and the geospatial activities of the Division. This session will be followed by a Q and A session with GIS specialists.
    • Contributor: St. Onge, Tim - Snow, Meagan - Parrish, Abraham
    • Date: 2025-02-11
  • Film, Video
    Yemen: The Judiciary and Governing Bodies in Houthi-Controlled Areas This webinar focuses on the Houthi rebel group (known as “Houthis”), which is a Shi’i non-state actor dominating northern Yemen. The group took its name from the Houthi tribe located in the north of Yemen. The webinar provides a closer look at how the judicial, legislative, and governing bodies work in areas controlled by the Houthi group. It offers a brief background about the…
    • Contributor: Sadek, George
    • Date: 2025-01-30
  • Film, Video
    Locating Congressionally Mandated Reports This webinar provides an overview of congressionally mandated reports, including methods for locating these materials through archival, print, and online resources. Federal agencies are required by law to submit thousands of reports to the U.S. Congress and congressional committees each year, and historically these communications have been difficult to find. Learn how to use finding aids to track reports that were submitted to Congress…
    • Contributor: Price, Anna
    • Date: 2025-01-28
  • Film, Video
    Finding Pictures: What’s New? Spotlighting five newly ready-for-research collections spanning an exciting range of formats and time-periods, Library staff will introduce items from the U.S. Patent Office Advertising Prints and Labels collection, photographs captured by famed photojournalist David Seymour CHIM, fine prints from the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop in New York, photographs documenting the historic 1983-1984 Presidential campaign of Jesse Jackson by Bruce Talamon and 21st-century aviation photographs…
    • Contributor: McCready, Maggie - Rios, Leah - Ouellette, Taren - Roth, Ginny A. - Scheppele, Tori - Ruggirello, Sam - Peich, Eric
    • Date: 2024-12-18
  • Film, Video
    Review of 2024 Law Library of Congress Research Reports This presentation highlights some of the legal reports published in 2024 by the Law Library of Congress.This included reports covering numerous topics at the forefront of legal discussions such as the regulation of robocalls and robotexts, regulation of payments to former officials from foreign governments, book and media censorship in selected countries, climate change and historic preservation, regulation of assisted dying, legal treatment of…
    • Contributor: Gilbert, Louis - Alvarez, Stephania
    • Date: 2024-11-21
  • Film, Video
    Automobiles Reference librarian Gillian Mahoney highlights historic vehicles, depictions of car culture, advertisements and more that you can find in the Library’s collections. From the earliest electric vehicles to the mini-vans of the 1980s, come learn about cars we all know, and some we may have forgotten.
    • Contributor: Mahoney, Gillian
    • Date: 2024-11-20
  • Film, Video
    Forgotten Veterans, Invisible Memorials Author Allison S. Finkelstein discusses her recent book, “Forgotten Veterans, Invisible Memorials: How American Women Commemorated the Great War, 1917-1945” with Library specialists Elizabeth A. Novara and Sherri Sheu. Finkelstein will explore new perspectives on women’s activism and service during and after World War I. The discussion will demonstrate how researchers search for and discover relevant materials at the Library of Congress on women,…
    • Contributor: Sheu, Sherri - Novara, Elizabeth A. - Finkelstein, Allison S.
    • Date: 2024-11-12