COEUR d'ALENE - The resources were all but endless.

Historic photographs, reproduced in sharp digital clarity. Old journals written by heroes of the past. Shaky video clips recorded many years ago.

All archived on the Library of Congress website, www.loc.gov, and available at the click of a mouse.

"It's pretty amazing," said Barb McFarland, librarian at Dalton Elementary. "It's huge, truly."

Nearly 30 educators from the Panhandle, eastern Washington and elsewhere explored the Library of Congress digital archives on Monday. Tapping on laptops at the Coeur d'Alene Library, they learned about the features and functions of the high-tech government website.

The free workshop - provided by the Library of Congress through a professional development grant - was presented by the Northwest Council for Computer Education (NCCE), a Coeur d'Alene nonprofit. The event ran from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Monday, and continues today.

"I'm just excited we could bring this to Coeur d'Alene," said NCCE Executive Director Heidi Rogers.

Instructors Kathy Dorr and Becky Firth led the discussion. Using a projector screen, they displayed digital, primary sources from the Library of Congress, and chatted with teachers about classroom applications.

"There is so much there now for the general public," said Firth, program director at NCCE. "(The Library) just refined their search engine, so it's much easier to search now."

At one point, Dorr filled the screen with an old image of American Indians, pulled from the library's digital shelves. Later, she played a video from the great San Francisco earthquake.

Classroom educators can teach history, science or geography with a hands-on approach, the instructors said. Students can see primary sources for themselves, be they maps, journals, photographs, books or letters.

For example, a teacher could search for Lewis and Clark, pull up the captains' digital journals and show them to the class.

"If you're a classroom teacher doing western explorers, you could have access to all the Library of Congress has," McFarland said.

She looked up the 1910 Fire during the workshop, she said, and discovered old photographs of burned-out Wallace. The information was right at her fingertips.

"It'll tell you right on the website whether there's copyright restrictions or not," McFarland added.

NCEE is offering workshops for K-12 educators in Idaho, Oregon, Montana and Washington this summer. The organization supports the effective uses of technology in education, according to a press release.

The University of Idaho's College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences is sponsoring the Library of Congress Workshop. Richard Reardon, associate dean of the college, was at the Coeur d'Alene Library on Monday.

"I'm a fan of this particular project. I just love this kind of stuff," he said.

"If you're dealing with culture and history, any of the fields, having these kind of original documents opens a world for you."