This spring, the Library of Congress will open The Source: Where Creativity Sparks Discovery, a 4,000-square-foot experiential learning space for young people ages 8–15. Shari Rosenstein Werb, director of the LoC’s Center for Learning, Literacy, and Engagement and The Source’s lead curator, said that the LoC exhibits team is putting the finishing touches on the space, housed in the Thomas Jefferson Building.
The Source’s full website will launch on April 2, and the gallery will open to the public with a big family day event on May 9, Werb said.
“The LoC is a research library, and you have to be 16 to get a research card,” Werb told PW. “We want to encourage young people to do research, so we’ve collected maps, audio, all sorts of things from the library that invite kids to explore the collections.” Throughout the development process, she and her co-planners held a quarterly consultation with a youth advisory council of tweens and teens from across the nation. “They’d give us feedback, and we incorporated all of it into the development and design,” she said.
Displays and facsimile materials will spotlight the various media—images, film, sound, and text—in the LoC’s vast collection, and The Source promises interactive experiences, including “researcher boxes that enable kids to follow the path of someone who’s done research,” Werb said. One box will be based on documents from 1970s New York, compiled as project research by Meg Medina, the 2023–2024 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.
“We’ll have four zones that invite kids to open drawers, dig deeper into film archives or sound archives, and develop media literacy and research skills,” Werb added, noting that the exhibits team worked with design firm Skolnick Architecture on the build. “There’s a ‘meet a librarian’ section with life-size videos of six librarians representing different specialties, so you’re kind of coming face-to-face with a librarian in a fun way.”
Other LoC national ambassadors for youth, including Jason Reynolds, will have their books showcased at The Source. And the LoC will devote its May 7 happy hour, “Live! At the Library,” to launching 2025–2026 ambassador Mac Barnett’s book for general readers, Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children (Little, Brown, May), timed to The Source’s grand opening.
Youth programming has been rearranged to make room for The Source. “We had a young readers’ center, which we closed in order to open this space,” Werb told PW, noting that Washington, D.C., visitors who rely on AI-generated tourist tips may encounter information that is not up to date. Individual visitors as well as student groups will be able to visit The Source in May.
During the American Library Association’s daylong virtual conference on February 10, acting Librarian of Congress Robert R. Newlen spoke about The Source during an interview with ALA president Sam Helmick. He noted that The Source was an initiative begun under the leadership of former Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. “I was just touring it the other day, and it is absolutely gorgeous,” Newlen told Helmick, and the LoC is proud to see this children’s and teens’ area “get to the finish line.”
