About
Contributing
America's School Trust Library is a public record of a long American experiment: the school trust lands the federal government set aside, as each new state was admitted, to fund public education. The record sits behind three books and is published openly on this site so that any reader — a parent, a teacher, a state agency staff member, a historian, a school-board member, a journalist, a student — can use it. The record improves with every correction. The constituency of careful readers who keep an eye on it is part of the institution.
If you have read something here and found it useful, that is enough. The Library does not need you to do anything else. But if you would like to contribute, this page is the short version of how to start. The longer version is at How the Library works.
How to start
Read a chapter. Pick a book in the Reading Room and read one chapter all the way through. Or pick a state in the Atlas and read its page. The point is to read something carefully enough that you notice things — a date that surprises you, a number you want to check, an argument you agree or disagree with.
Find one thing that strikes you. Most people who go on to contribute do so because they read one page closely and one thing on it stuck. Maybe it was a missing source on a claim you happen to know. Maybe it was an argument you wanted to push back on. Maybe it was a memory the chapter brought up — a family record, a photograph, a story from a parent or grandparent that bears on the school trust lands.
Sign up for a Library Card. The Card is free, forever, with no payment of any kind. It takes about a minute. Sign up at /library-card/. The Card is what lets you submit feedback, propose a correction, write a review, take part in a discussion, or upload a piece of primary-source material — all the things that leave a record under your name.
Then take one action. If you spotted a specific error, click the Submit a correction to this page link at the bottom of the page in question. If you have a thought that does not fit a single error, click Submit feedback on this page on any page. If you finished a book and want to react to it, the reviews page for that book — for example, the reviews page for Schools of the Republic — is where to write a one-to-five-star review. If you would rather talk with other readers first, the threads in the Discussions room are open to anyone with a Card. You do not need to do all four. One is enough.
What happens next
Every contribution gets a ticket number you can see on your My Library page. A librarian reads it. If you submitted feedback, you may get a response, or the ticket may be closed as noted. If you submitted a correction, the librarian either accepts it (and your fix lands in the next update), declines it (with a reason), or asks for more sources. If you wrote a review, a librarian either publishes it or sends it back with a note. The whole loop is open: you can see the status of every ticket you have ever filed.
If something is unclear, or if a ticket sits for longer than seems right, write to us — there is a Submit feedback link at the bottom of every page, including this one.
The longer treatment, with one page per role, is at /how-the-library-works/.
