WhenCongress moved to Washington in November 1800, a small congressional library was housed in the Capitol. Much of the original collection was lost in the August 1814Burning of Washington by the British during theWar of 1812. Congress accepted former presidentThomas Jefferson's offer to sell his entire personal collection of 6,487 books to restore the library. The collection grew slowly and suffered another major fire in 1851, which destroyed two-thirds of Jefferson's original books.
The Library of Congress faced space shortages, understaffing, and lack of funding, until the American Civil War increased the importance of legislative research to meet the demands of a growing federal government.[7][clarification needed] In 1870, the library gained the right to receive two copies of everycopyrightable work printed in the United States; it also built its collections through acquisitions and donations. Between 1890 and 1897, a new library building, now theThomas Jefferson Building, was constructed. Two additional buildings, theJohn Adams Building (opened in 1939) and theJames Madison Memorial Building (opened in 1980), were later added.
The LOC's Congressional Research Service provides objective non-partisan research to Congress to assist it in passing legislation. The library is open to the public for research, although only members of Congress, their staff, and library employees may borrow materials for use outside the library.[8]
In 1783,James Madison, aFounding Father and the nation's fourth president, proposed creating a congressional library, but failed to gain necessary support for the idea. After theAmerican Revolutionary War, however, the Philadelphia Library Company andNew York Society Library served as surrogate congressional libraries when Congress convened in those cities.[9]
On April 24, 1800, the Library of Congress was established whenJohn Adams, the nation's second president, signed anact of Congress, which appropriated $5,000 "for the purchase of such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress...and for fitting up a suitable apartment for containing them."[10] Books were ordered from London, forming a collection of 740 books and three maps housed in the newUnited States Capitol.[11]
Adams' successor as U.S. President,Thomas Jefferson, also played a crucial role in shaping development of the Library of Congress. On January 26, 1802, Jefferson signed a bill allowing the president to appoint thelibrarian of Congress and establishing aJoint Committee on the Library to oversee it. The law also extended borrowing privileges to the president and vice president.[12][13]
In August 1814, British forces occupied Washington, D.C. and, in retaliation for American acts in Canada,burned severalgovernment buildings, including the Library of Congress, resulting in the destructing of over 3,000 of its volumes.[11] These volumes were held in the Senate wing of the Capitol; one surviving volume was a government account book from 1810.[13][14][15] This volume was taken by British commanderGeorge Cockburn as a souvenir, which was later returned to the U.S. over a century later, in 1940, by his family.[16]
Within a month, Jefferson offered to sell his large personal library[17][18][19] as a replacement. He had reconstituted his own collection after losing part of it to a fire. Congress accepted the offer in January 1815, appropriating $23,950 to purchase his 6,487 books.[11] Some House members, including New Hampshire representativeDaniel Webster, opposed the purchase, wanting to exclude "books of an atheistical, irreligious, and immoral tendency".[20]
Jefferson's collection, gathered over 50 years, covered various subjects and languages, including topics not typically found in a legislative library.[9] He believed all subjects had a place in the Library of Congress, stating:
I do not know that it contains any branch of science which Congress would wish to exclude from their collection; there is, in fact, no subject to which a Member of Congress may not have occasion to refer.[20]
Jefferson's library was a working collection for a scholar, not for display. It doubled the size of the original library, transforming it from a specialist's library to a more general one.[21] He organized his books based onFrancis Bacon'sorganization of knowledge, grouping them into Memory, Reason, and Imagination with 44 subdivisions.[22] The library used this scheme until the late 19th century when librarianHerbert Putnam introduced theLibrary of Congress Classification, now applying to over 138 million items.
A February 24, 1824, report from theCommittee of Ways and Means recommended a $5,000 appropriation for the Library of Congress, noting the need to improve its collections in "Law, Politics, Commerce, History, and Geography," which were crucial for Congress.[23]
The Library of Congress, then located in theCapitol Building in 1853
On December 24, 1851, the largest fire in the library's history destroyed 35,000 books, two-thirds of the library's collection, and two-thirds ofThomas Jefferson's original transfer. Congress appropriated $168,700 to replace the lost books in 1852 but not to acquire new materials.[24] (By 2008, the librarians of Congress had found replacements for all but 300 of the works that had been documented as being in Jefferson's original collection.[25]) This marked the start of a conservative period in the library's administration by librarianJohn Silva Meehan and joint committee chairmanJames A. Pearce, who restricted the library's activities.[24] Meehan and Pearce's views about a restricted scope for the Library of Congress reflected those shared by members of Congress.
While Meehan was a librarian, he supported and perpetuated the notion that "the congressional library should play a limited role on the national scene and that its collections, by and large, should emphasize American materials of obvious use to the U.S. Congress."[26] In 1859, Congress transferred the library's public document distribution activities to theDepartment of the Interior and its international book exchange program to theDepartment of State.[27]
During the 1850s,Smithsonian Institution librarianCharles Coffin Jewett aggressively tried to develop the Smithsonian as the United States national library. His efforts were rejected by Smithsonian secretaryJoseph Henry, who advocated a focus on scientific research and publication.[28] To reinforce his intentions for the Smithsonian, Henry established laboratories, developed a robust physical sciences library, and started theSmithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, the first of many publications intended to disseminate research results.[29] For Henry, the Library of Congress was the obvious choice as the national library. Unable to resolve the conflict, Henry dismissed Jewett in July 1854.
In 1865, the Smithsonian building, also called the Castle due to its Norman architectural style, was severely damaged by fire. This incident presented Henry with an opportunity related to the Smithsonian's non-scientific library. Around this time, the Library of Congress was planning to build and relocate to the newThomas Jefferson Building, designed to be fireproof.[30] Authorized by an act of Congress, Henry transferred the Smithsonian's non-scientific library of 40,000 volumes to the Library of Congress in 1866.[31]
In 1861, PresidentAbraham Lincoln appointedJohn G. Stephenson asLibrarian of Congress; the appointment is regarded as the most political to date.[32] Stephenson was a physician and spent equal time serving as librarian and as a physician in theUnion Army. He could manage this division of interest because he hiredAinsworth Rand Spofford as his assistant.[32] Despite his new job, Stephenson focused on the war. Three weeks into his term as Librarian of Congress, he left Washington, D.C., to serve as a volunteeraide-de-camp at the battles ofChancellorsville andGettysburg during theAmerican Civil War.[32] Stephenson's hiring of Spofford, who directed the library in his absence, may have been his most significant achievement.[32]
Library of Congress in the Capitol Building in the 1890s
LibrarianAinsworth Rand Spofford, who directed the Library of Congress from 1865 to 1897, built broad bipartisan support to develop it as a national library and a legislative resource.[33][34] He was aided by expansion of the federal government after the war and a favorable political climate. He began comprehensively collectingAmericana andAmerican literature, led the construction of a new building to house the library, and transformed the librarian of Congress position into one of strength and independence. Between 1865 and 1870, Congress appropriated funds for the construction of theThomas Jefferson Building, placed allcopyright registration anddeposit activities under the library's control, and restored the international book exchange. The library also acquired the vast libraries of the Smithsonian and of historianPeter Force, strengthening its scientific and Americana collections significantly. By 1876, the Library of Congress had 300,000 volumes; it was tied with theBoston Public Library as the nation's largest library. It moved from the Capitol building to its new headquarters in 1897 with more than 840,000 volumes, 40 percent of which had been acquired through copyright deposit.[11]
A year before the library's relocation, the Joint Library Committee held hearings to assess the condition of the library and plan for its future growth and possible reorganization. Spofford and six experts sent by theAmerican Library Association[35] testified that the library should continue its expansion to become a true national library. Based on the hearings, Congress authorized a budget that allowed the library to more than double its staff, from 42 to 108 persons. SenatorsJustin Morrill of Vermont andDaniel W. Voorhees of Indiana were particularly helpful in gaining this support. The library also established new administrative units for all aspects of the collection. In its bill, Congress strengthened the role of librarian of Congress: it became responsible for governing the library and making staff appointments. As with presidential Cabinet appointments, the Senate was required to approve presidential appointees to the position.[11]
In 1893,Elizabeth Dwyer became the first woman to be appointed to the staff of the library.[36]
A 1902 aerial view from theUnited States Capitol of the five-year old Library of Congress in its new building, which was renamed theThomas Jefferson Building in 1980 in honor ofThomas JeffersonThomas Jefferson Building, built 1890–1897, the Library of Congress's main building, onCapitol Hill, Washington, D.C., showing West side colonnade of Jefferson Building, viewed from across First Street and the grounds of the East Front of theU.S. Capitol
With this support and the 1897 reorganization upon moving into its new home, the Library of Congress began to grow and develop more rapidly. Librarian Spofford's successorJohn Russell Young overhauled the library's bureaucracy, used his connections as a former diplomat to acquire more materials from around the world, and established the library's first assistance programs for the blind and physically disabled, with the establishment of theNational Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled.
Librarian Young's successorHerbert Putnam held the office for forty years of the 20th century from 1899 to 1939. Two years after he took office, the library became the first in the United States to hold one million volumes.[11] Putnam focused his efforts to make the library more accessible and useful for the public and for other libraries. He instituted theinterlibrary loan service, transforming the Library of Congress into what he referred to as a "library of last resort".[37] Putnam also expanded library access to "scientific investigators and duly qualified individuals", and began publishingprimary sources for the benefit of scholars.[11]
During Putnam's tenure, the library broadened the diversity of its acquisitions. In 1903, Putnam persuaded PresidentTheodore Roosevelt to use an executive order to transfer the papers of theFounding Fathers from the State Department to the Library of Congress.
Putnam also expanded foreign acquisitions, including the 1904 purchase of a 4,000-volume library of Indica, the 1906 purchase of G. V. Yudin's 80,000-volume Russian library, the 1908 Schatz collection of early operalibrettos, and the early 1930s purchase of the Russian Imperial Collection, consisting of 2,600 volumes from the library of theRomanov family on a variety of topics. Collections ofHebraica, Chinese, and Japanese works were also acquired. On one occasion, Congress initiated an acquisition: in 1929 CongressmanRoss Collins (D-Mississippi) gained approval for the library to purchaseOtto Vollbehr's collection ofincunabula for $1.5 million. This collection included one of three remaining perfectvellum copies of theGutenberg Bible.[11][38]
Putnam established theLegislative Reference Service (LRS) in 1914 as a separative administrative unit of the library. Based on theProgressive Era's philosophy of science to be used to solve problems, and modeled after successful research branches of state legislatures, the LRS would provide informed answers to Congressional research inquiries on almost any topic. Congress passed in 1925 an act allowing the Library of Congress to establish a trust fund board to accept donations and endowments, giving the library a role as apatron of the arts. The library received donations and endowments by such prominent wealthy individuals asJohn D. Rockefeller, James B. Wilbur, andArcher M. Huntington. Gertrude Clarke Whittall donated fiveStradivarius violins to the library.Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge's donations paid for aconcert hall to be constructed within the Library of Congress building and anhonorarium established for the Music Division to pay live performers for concerts. A number of chairs and consultantships were established from the donations, the most well-known of which is thePoet Laureate Consultant.[11]
The library's expansion eventually filled the library's Main Building, although it used shelving expansions in 1910 and 1927. The library needed to expand into a new structure. Congress acquired nearby land in 1928 and approved construction of the Annex Building (later known as theJohn Adams Building) in 1930. Although delayed during theDepression years, it was completed in 1938 and opened to the public in 1939.[11]
In 1939, following Putnam's retirement, PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt appointed poet and writerArchibald MacLeish as his successor. Occupying the post from 1939 to 1944 during the height ofWorld War II, MacLeish became the most widely known librarian of Congress in the library's history. MacLeish encouraged librarians to opposetotalitarianism on behalf of democracy; dedicated the South Reading Room of the Adams Building to Thomas Jefferson, and commissioned artistEzra Winter to paint four themed murals for the room. He established a "democracy alcove" in the Main Reading Room of the Jefferson Building for essential documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, andThe Federalist Papers. The Library of Congress assisted during the war effort, ranging from storage of theDeclaration of Independence and theUnited States Constitution inFort Knox for safekeeping to researching weather data on theHimalayas forAir Force pilots. MacLeish resigned in 1944 when appointed as Assistant Secretary of State.
PresidentHarry Truman appointedLuther H. Evans as Librarian of Congress. Evans, who served until 1953, expanded the library's acquisitions, cataloging, and bibliographic services. But he is best known for creating Library of Congress Missions worldwide. Missions played a variety of roles in the postwar world: the mission in San Francisco assisted participants in themeeting that established the United Nations, the mission in Europe acquired European publications for the Library of Congress and other American libraries, and the mission in Japan aided in the creation of theNational Diet Library.[11]
The Adams Building – South Reading Room, with murals byEzra Winter
Evans' successorLawrence Quincy Mumford took over in 1953. During his tenure, lasting until 1974, Mumford directed the initiation of construction of theJames Madison Memorial Building, the third Library of Congress building on Capitol Hill. Mumford led the library during the government's increased educational spending. The library was able to establish new acquisition centers abroad, including inCairo and New Delhi. In 1967, the library began experimenting withbook preservation techniques through a Preservation Office. This has developed as the most extensive library research and conservation effort in the United States.
During Mumford's administration, the last significant public debate occurred about the Library of Congress's role as both a legislative and national library. Asked by Joint Library Committee chairman SenatorClaiborne Pell (D-RI) to assess operations and make recommendations, Douglas Bryant ofHarvard University Library proposed several institutional reforms. These included expanding national activities and services and various organizational changes, all of which would emphasize the library's federal role rather than its legislative role. Bryant suggested changing the name of the Library of Congress, a recommendation rebuked by Mumford as "unspeakable violence to tradition." The debate continued within the library community for some time. TheLegislative Reorganization Act of 1970 renewed emphasis for the library on its legislative roles, requiring a greater focus on research for Congress and congressional committees, and renaming the Legislative Reference Service as theCongressional Research Service.[11]
After Mumford retired in 1974, PresidentGerald Ford appointed historianDaniel J. Boorstin as a librarian. Boorstin's first challenge was to manage the relocation of some sections to the new Madison Building, which took place between 1980 and 1982. With this accomplished, Boorstin focused on other areas of library administration, such as acquisitions and collections. Taking advantage of steady budgetary growth, from $116 million in 1975 to over $250 million by 1987, Boorstin enhanced institutional and staff ties with scholars, authors, publishers, cultural leaders, and the business community. His activities changed the post of librarian of Congress so that by the time he retired in 1987,The New York Times called this office "perhaps the leading intellectual public position in the nation."
Under Billington's leadership, the library doubled the size of its analog collections from 85.5 million items in 1987 to more than 160 million items in 2014. At the same time, it established new programs and employed new technologies to "get the champagne out of the bottle". These included:
THOMAS.gov website launched in 1994 to provide free public access to U.S. federal legislative information with ongoing updates; andCongress.gov website to provide a state-of-the-art framework for both Congress and the public in 2012;[42]
Kluge Center, started with a grant of $60 million fromJohn W. Kluge in 2000, brings international scholars and researchers to use library resources and to interact with policymakers and the public. It hosts public lectures and scholarly events, provides endowed Kluge fellowships, and awards theKluge Prize for the Study of Humanity (now worth $1.5 million), the first Nobel-level international prize for lifetime achievement in the humanities and social sciences (subjects not included in theNobel awards);[45]
Open World Leadership Center, established in 2000; by 2015 this program administered 23,000 professional exchanges for emerging post-Soviet leaders in Russia, Ukraine, and other successor states of the formerUSSR. Open World began as a Library of Congress project, and later was established as an independent agency in the legislative branch.[46]
Veterans History Project, congressionally mandated in 2000 to collect, preserve, and make accessible the personal accounts of American war veterans fromWorld War I to the present day;[47]
Since 1988, the library has administered theNational Film Preservation Board. Established by congressional mandate, it selects twenty-five American films annually for preservation and inclusion in theNational Film Registry, a collection of American films, for which the Library of Congress accepts nominations each year.[48] There also exists aNational Recording Registry administered by theNational Recording Preservation Board that serves a similar purpose for music and sound recordings.
The library has made some of these available on the Internet for free streaming and additionally has provided brief essays on the films that have been added to the registry.[49][50] By 2015, the librarian had named 650 films to the registry.[51] The films in the collection date from the earliest period to ones produced more than ten years ago; they are selected from nominations submitted to the board. Further programs included:
World Digital Library, established in association withUNESCO and 181 partners in 81 countries in 2009, makes copies of professionally curated primary materials of the world's varied cultures freely available online in multiple languages.[54]
National Jukebox, launched in 2011, provides streaming free online access to more than 10,000 out-of-print music and spoken-word recordings.[55]
During Billington's tenure, the library acquiredGeneral Lafayette's papers in 1996 from a castle at La Grange, France; they had previously been inaccessible.
It also acquired the only copy of the 1507Waldseemüller world map ("America's birth certificate") in 2003; it is on permanent display in the library's Thomas Jefferson Building.
Using privately raised funds, the Library of Congress has created a reconstruction of Thomas Jefferson's original library. This has been on permanent display in the Jefferson building since 2008.[57]
Under Billington, public spaces of the Jefferson Building were enlarged and technologically enhanced to serve as a national exhibition venue. It has hosted more than 100 exhibitions.[58] These included exhibits on theVatican Library and theBibliothèque Nationale de France, several on the Civil War and Lincoln, on African-American culture, on Religion and the founding of the American Republic, the Early Americas (the Kislak Collection became a permanent display), on the global celebration commemorating the 800th anniversary ofMagna Carta, and on early American printing, featuring the RubensteinBay Psalm Book.
Onsite access to the Library of Congress has been increased. Billington gained an underground connection between the new U.S. Capitol Visitors Center and the library in 2008 to increase both congressional usage and public tours of the library's Thomas Jefferson Building.[40]
In 2001, the library began amass deacidification program, to extend the lifespan of almost 4 million volumes and 12 million manuscript sheets. In 2002, a new storage facility was completed atFort Meade, Maryland,[5] where a collection of storage modules have preserved and made accessible more than 4 million items from the library's analog collections.[citation needed]
Billington established the Library Collections Security Oversight Committee in 1992 to improve protection of the collections, and also the Library of Congress Congressional Caucus in 2008 to draw attention to the library's curators and collections. He created the library's first Young Readers Center in the Jefferson Building in 2009, and the first large-scale summer intern (Junior Fellows) program for university students in 1991.[59]
Under Billington, the library sponsored the Gateway to Knowledge in 2010 to 2011, a mobile exhibition to ninety sites, covering all states east of the Mississippi, in a specially designed eighteen-wheel truck. This increased public access to library collections off-site, particularly for rural populations, and helped raise awareness of what was also available online.[60]
Billington raised more than half a billion dollars of private support to supplement Congressional appropriations for library collections, programs, and digital outreach. These private funds helped the library to continue its growth and outreach in the face of a 30% decrease in staffing, caused mainly by legislative appropriations cutbacks. He created the library's first development office for private fundraising in 1987. In 1990, he established the James Madison Council, the library's first national private sector donor-support group. In 1987, Billington also asked theGovernment Accountability Office (GAO) to conduct the first library-wide audit. He created the firstOffice of the Inspector General at the library to provide regular, independent reviews of library operations. This precedent has resulted in regular annual financial audits at the library; it has received unmodified ("clean") opinions from 1995 onward.[40] In April 2010, the library announced plans to archive all public communication on Twitter, including all communication since Twitter's launch in March 2006.[61] As of 2015[update], the Twitter archive remains unfinished.[62]
Before retiring in 2015, after 28 years of service, Billington had come "under pressure" as librarian of Congress.[63] This followed a GAO report that described a "work environment lacking central oversight" and faulted Billington for "ignoring repeated calls to hire a chief information officer, as required by law."[64]
When Billington announced his plans to retire in 2015, commentatorGeorge Weigel described the Library of Congress as "one of the last refuges in Washington of serious bipartisanship and calm, considered conversation", and "one of the world's greatest cultural centers".[65]Carla Hayden was sworn in as the 14th librarian of Congress on September 14, 2016, the first woman and the first African American to hold the position.[66][67]
In 2017, the library announced the Librarian-in-Residence program, which aims to support the future generation of librarians by giving them the opportunity to gain work experience in five different areas of librarianship, including: Acquisitions/Collection Development, Cataloging/Metadata, and Collection Preservation.[68]
On January 6, 2021, at 1:11 pm EST, the Library'sMadison Building and theCannon House Office Building were the first buildings in the Capitol Complex to be ordered to evacuate as rioters breached security perimeters beforestorming the Capitol building.[69][70][71] Hayden clarified two days later that rioters did not breach any of the Library's buildings or collections and all staff members were safely evacuated.[72]
On February 14, 2023, the Library announced that theLilly Endowment gifted $2.5 million, five-year grant to "launch programs that foster greater understanding of religious cultures in Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East".[73] The Library plans to leverage the donation in these areas:
Provide public access to "programs that enhance knowledge about faiths practiced in the regions, including Indigenous African religious traditions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and their influence on daily life."[73]
The extravagant design of the Great Hall is an example ofBeaux-Arts architecture.The Great Hall interior, looking towards the ceilingCeiling of the Great Hall
The collections of the Library of Congress include more than 32 million catalogued books and other print materials in 470 languages; more than 61 million manuscripts; the largest rare book collection[75] in North America, including the rough draft of theDeclaration of Independence, aGutenberg Bible (originating from theSaint Blaise Abbey, Black Forest—one of only three perfectvellum copies known to exist);[76][77][78] over 1 millionU.S. government publications; 1 million issues of world newspapers spanning the past three centuries; 33,000 bound newspaper volumes; 500,000microfilm reels; U.S. and foreign comic books—over 12,000 titles in all, totaling more than 140,000 issues;[79] 1.9 million moving images (as of 2020); 5.3 million maps; 6 million works ofsheet music; 3 millionsound recordings; more than 14.7 million prints and photographic images including fine and popular art pieces and architectural drawings;[80] theBetts Stradivarius; and theCassavetti Stradivarius.
The library serves as a legal repository forcopyright protection andcopyright registration, and as the base for theUnited States Copyright Office. Regardless of whether they register their copyright, all publishers are required to submit two complete copies of their published works to the library—this requirement is known asmandatory deposit.[81] Nearly 15,000 new items published in the U.S. arrive every business day at the library. Contrary to popular belief, however, the library does not retain all of these works in its permanent collection, although it does add an average of 12,000 items per day.[4] Rejected items are used in trades with other libraries around the world, distributed to federal agencies, or donated to schools, communities, and other organizations within the United States.[4]
As is true of manysimilar libraries, the Library of Congress retains copies of every publication in the English language that is deemed significant.The Library of Congress states that its collection fills about 838 mi (1,349 km) of bookshelves and holds more than 167 million items with over 39 million books and other print materials.[6] A 2000 study by information scientistsPeter Lyman andHal Varian suggested that the amount of uncompressedtextual data represented by the 26 million books then in the collection was 10terabytes.[82]
The library's first digitization project,American Memory, was launched in 1990, and was initially planned to choose 160 million objects from its collection to make digitally available onLaserDiscs andCDs, which were distributed to schools and libraries.
After realizing that this plan would be too expensive and inefficient, and with the rise of the Internet, the library decided to instead make digitized material available over the Internet. This project was made official in the National Digital Library Program (NDLP), created in October 1994. By 1999, the NDLP had succeeded in digitizing over 5 million objects and had a budget of $12 million. The library has kept the "American Memory" name for its public domain website, which today contains 15 million digital objects, comprising over 7petabytes of data.[83]
American Memory is a source forpublic domain image resources, as well as audio, video, and archived Web content.
Nearly all of the lists of holdings, thecatalogs of the library, can be consulted directly on its website. Librarians all over the world consult these catalogs, through the Web or through other media better suited to their needs, when they need to catalog for their collection a book published in the United States. They use theLibrary of Congress Control Number to make sure of the exact identity of the book.
Digital images are also available atSnapshots of the Past, which provides archival prints.[84]The library has a budget of $6–8 million each year for digitization, meaning that not all works can be digitized. It makes determinations about what objects to prioritize based on what is especially important to Congress or potentially interesting for the public. The 15 million digitized items represent less than 10% of the library's total 160-million-item collection.
In 1995, the Library of Congress establishedTHOMAS, an online archive of the proceedings of theUnited States Congress, which included the full text of proposed legislation, bill summaries, and statuses,Congressional Record text, and an index of theCongressional Record. In 2005 and again in 2010, the THOMAS system received major updates. A migration to a more modernized Web system,Congress.gov, began in 2012, and the THOMAS system was retired in 2016.[85] Congress.gov is a joint project of the Library of Congress, the House, the Senate, and theGovernment Publishing Office.[86]
The Library of Congress is physically housed in three buildings onCapitol Hill and a conservation center in ruralVirginia. The library's Capitol Hill buildings are all connected by underground passageways, so that a library user need pass through security only once in a single visit. The library also has off-site storage facilities inMaryland for less commonly requested materials.
TheThomas Jefferson Building is located betweenIndependence Avenue and East Capitol Street on First Street SE. Construction began in 1890 with granite supplied byNew England Granite Works, owned byJames G. Batterson.[87] The building opened in 1897 as the main building of the library and is the oldest of the three buildings. Known originally as the Library of Congress Building or Main Building, it took its present name on June 13, 1980.[88]
TheJohn Adams Building is located between Independence Avenue and East Capitol Street on 2nd Street SE, the block adjacent to the Jefferson Building. The building was originally known as The Annex to the Main Building, which had run out of space. It opened its doors to the public on January 3, 1939.[89] Initially, it also housed the U.S. Copyright Office which moved to the Madison building in the 1970s.
The James Madison Memorial Building is located between First and Second Streets on Independence Avenue SE. The building was constructed from 1971 to 1976, and serves as the official memorial toJames Madison, aFounding Father and the fourth President of the United States[90]
The Madison Building is also home to theUnited States Copyright Office and to the Mary Pickford Theater, the "motion picture and television reading room" of the Library of Congress. The theater hosts regular free screenings of classic and contemporary movies and television shows.[91]
The Library of Congress, through both the librarian of Congress and the register of copyrights, is responsible for authorizing exceptions to Section 1201 ofTitle 17 of the United States Code as part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This process is done every three years, with the register receiving proposals from the public and acting as an advisor to the librarian, who issues a ruling on what is exempt. After three years have passed, the ruling is no longer valid and a new ruling on exemptions must be made.[94][95]
The library is open for academic research to anyone with a Reader Identification Card. One may not remove library items from the reading rooms or the library buildings. Most of the library's general collection of books and journals are in the closed stacks of the Jefferson and Adams Buildings; specialized collections of books and other materials are in closed stacks in all three main library buildings, or are stored off-site. Access to the closed stacks is not permitted under any circumstances, except to authorized library staff, and occasionally, to dignitaries. Only the reading room reference collections are on open shelves.[96]
Since 1902, American libraries have been able to request books and other items throughinterlibrary loan from the Library of Congress if these items are not readily available elsewhere. Through this system, the Library of Congress has served as a "library of last resort", according toHerbert Putnam, theLibrarian of Congress from 1899 to 1939.[37] The Library of Congress lends books to other libraries with the stipulation that they be used only inside the borrowing library.[97] In 2017, the Library of Congress began development on a reader's card for children under the age of sixteen.[98]
In addition to its library services, the Library of Congress is actively involved in various standard activities in areas related to bibliographical and search and retrieval standards. Areas of work includeMARC standards,Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS),Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS),Z39.50 andSearch/Retrieve Web Service (SRW), andSearch/Retrieve via URL (SRU).[99] TheLaw Library of Congress "seeks to further legal scholarship by providing opportunities for scholars and practitioners to conduct significant legal research. Individuals are invited to apply for projects which would further the multi-faceted mission of the law library in serving the U.S. Congress, other governmental agencies, and the public."[100]
Henriette Avram: Developed the MARC format (Machine Readable Cataloging), the international data standard for bibliographic and holdings information in libraries.
Cecil Hobbs: American scholar of Southeast Asian history, head of the Southern Asia Section of the Orientalia (now Asian) Division of the Library of Congress, and a major contributor to scholarship on Asia and the development of South East Asian coverage in American library collections.[101]
^The collection includes: 25 million catalogued books, 15.5 million other print items, 4.2 million recordings, 74.5 million manuscripts, 5.6 million maps, and 8.2 million sheet music pieces.[1]
^abCole, J.Y. (1993).Jefferson's Legacy: a brief history of the Library of Congress. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress. p. 14.
^Fineberg, Gail (June 2007)."Thomas Jefferson's Library".The Gazette.67 (6). Library of Congress.Archived from the original on July 6, 2014. RetrievedJanuary 4, 2015.
^Interior Library (August 4, 2015)."History of the Interior Library".U.S. Department for the Interior.Archived from the original on May 21, 2017. RetrievedApril 30, 2018.
^Smithsonian Institution (1904).An Account Of The Smithsonian: Its Origin, History, Objects and Achievements. Washington, D.C. p. 12.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Mearns, D.C. (1946).The Story Up to Now: The Library of Congress, 1800–1946. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. p. 100.
^Gwinn, Nancy."History".Smithsonian Libraries.Archived from the original on May 1, 2018. RetrievedApril 30, 2018.
^abcdLibrary of Congress."John G Stephenson".John G Stephenson – Previous Librarians of Congress.Archived from the original on April 21, 2018. RetrievedApril 30, 2018.
^Snapp, Elizabeth (April 1975). "The Acquisition of the Vollbehr Collection of Incunabula for the Library of Congress".The Journal of Library History.10 (2). University of Texas Press:152–161.JSTOR25540624. (restricted access)
^Hayden, Carla (January 8, 2021)."Thoughts on this week's unrest"(PDF).The Library of Congress Gazette.32.Archived(PDF) from the original on May 13, 2021. RetrievedMay 17, 2021.
^Lyman, Peter; Varian, Hal R. (October 18, 2000)."How Much Information?"(PDF). Archived fromthe original(PDF) on August 16, 2011. RetrievedOctober 14, 2013.10 Terabytes: The printed collection of the US Library of Congress
Aikin, Jane (2010). "Histories of the Library of Congress".Libraries & the Cultural Record.45 (1):5–24.doi:10.1353/lac.0.0113.S2CID161865550.
Anderson, Gillian B. (1989), "Putting the Experience of the World at the Nation's Command: Music at the Library of Congress, 1800–1917",Journal of the American Musicological Society,42 (1):108–49,doi:10.2307/831419,JSTOR831419
Bisbort, Alan, and Linda Barrett Osborne.The Nation's Library: The Library of Congress, Washington, D. C. (Library of Congress, 2000)
Cole, John Young.Jefferson's legacy: a brief history of the Library of Congress (Library of Congress, 1993)
Cole, John Young. "The library of congress becomes a world library, 1815–2005."Libraries & culture (2005) 40#3: 385–398.in Project MUSE
Cope, R. L. "Management Review of the Library of Congress: The 1996 Booz Allen & Hamilton Report,"Australian Academic & Research Libraries (1997) 28#1online
Mearns, David Chambers.The Story Up to Now: The Library of Congress, 1800–1946 (1947), detailed narrative
Ostrowski, Carl.Books, Maps, and Politics: A Cultural History of the Library of Congress, 1783–1861 (2004)
Rosenberg, Jane Aiken.The Nation's Great Library: Herbert Putnam and the Library of Congress, 1899–1939 (University of Illinois Press, 1993)
Shevlin, Eleanor F.; Lindquist, Eric N. (2010). "The Center for the Book and the History of the Book".Libraries & the Cultural Record.45 (1):56–69.doi:10.1353/lac.0.0112.S2CID161311744.
Tabb, Winston; et al. (2003). "Library of Congress".Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science.3:1593–1612.