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Today's Library of Congress is an unparalleled world resource. The collection includes millions cataloged books and other print materials in 470 languages; millions of manuscripts; the largest rare book collection in North America; and the world's largest collection of legal materials, films, maps, sheet music and sound recordings.
- Frequently Asked Questions
The Library serves as the research arm of Congress and is...
- Frequently Asked Questions
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]
- Origins
- Statistics
- The Collections
- International Collections
- Foreign Languages
- Law Library
- Rare Books and Manuscripts
- Audio-Visual and Performing Arts Collections
- Other Fascinating Facts
The Library was founded in 1800, making it the oldest federal cultural institution in the nation. On August 24, 1814, British troops burned the Capitol building (where the Library was housed) and destroyed the Library's core collection of 3,000 volumes. On January 30, 1815, Congress approved the purchase of Thomas Jefferson’s personal library of 6,...
The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world with more than 170 million items. View detailed collection statistics.
Each working day the Library receives some 15,000 items and adds more than 10,000 items to its collections. Materials are acquired as Copyright deposits and through gift, purchase, other government agencies (state, local and federal), Cataloging in Publication (a pre-publication arrangement with publishers) and exchange with libraries in the United...
Since 1962, the Library of Congress has maintained offices abroad to acquire, catalog and preserve library and research materials from countries where such materials are essentially unavailable through conventional acquisitions methods. Overseas offices in New Delhi (India), Cairo (Egypt), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Jakarta (Indonesia), Nairobi (Keny...
Approximately half of the Library’s book and serial collections are in languages other than English. The collections contain materials in some 470 languages.
The Law Library of Congress is the world's largest law library, with more than 2.9 million volumes, including one of the world's best rare law book collections and the most complete collection of foreign legal gazettes in the United States. The Law Library contains United States congressional publications dating back to the nation's founding.
The Library holds the largest rare-book collection in North America (more than 700,000 volumes), including the largest collection of 15th-century books in the Western Hemisphere. The collection also includes the first book printed in what is now the United States, “The Bay Psalm Book” (1640).
Prints and Photographs
The Library's Prints and Photographs Division contains more than 17 million visual images, including the most comprehensive international collection of posters in the world, the most comprehensive visual record of the Civil War, and pioneering documentation of America's historic architecture. More than 1.2 million images are accessible on the Prints and Photographs online catalog at www.loc.gov/pictures/.
Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound
Opened in 2007, the Library’s Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation in Culpeper, Va., was designed for the acquisition, cataloging, storage and preservation of the nation’s collection of moving images and recorded sounds. In partnership with the Packard Humanities Institute, the U.S. Congress and the Architect of the Capitol, the Library’s state-of-the-art facility houses the largest and most comprehensive collection of American and foreign-produced films, television broadcasts and sou...
Music
The Library holds the most comprehensive collection of American music in the world, more than 22 million items including 8.1 million pieces of sheet music. The collection includes an extensive assemblage of original manuscripts by composers of the American musical theater and the largest collection of any one kind of musical instrument (flute) in the world. The Library sponsors a long-running broadcast concert series of chamber music.
Digital Talking Books
Since 1931, the Library has provided books to the blind in braille and on sound recordings. The National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled has replaced its inventory of recordings on audio cassettes with newly developed Digital Talking Books and digital playback equipment.
Cartography
The Library's Geography and Map Division holds more than 5.6 million items, the world's largest collection of cartographic materials. It has the largest collection of fire-insurance maps of cities and towns in the United States, providing unparalleled coverage of the growth of urban America from the late 19th to the mid-20th centuries. The collection also includes the 1507 world map by Martin Waldseemüller, known as "America’s Birth Certificate," the first document on which the name "America"...
Telephone Directories
The Library’s general collections contain the largest historical collection of U.S. telephone criss-cross (phone number and address) and city directories in the world. The Library acquires more than 8,000 volumes a year and holds more than 124,000 telephone books and microfilmed city directories from 650 U.S. cities and towns. This vast collection includes historical foreign telephone books and city directories (almost 1,500 per year received from more than 100 countries).
Library of Congress, the de facto national library of the United States and the largest library in the world. Its collection was growing at a rate of about two million items per year; it reached more than 170 million items in 2020.
- James H. Billington
Jul 3, 2023 · By 1802, the library consisted of 243 volumes, mainly dealing with the law, along with encyclopedias and dictionaries. Today, the Library of Congress, housed in five different facilities, boasts more than 51 million books and other printed matter.
- Andrew Amelinckx
Mar 20, 2024 · Today, the Library of Congress is physically housed in three buildings—the Thomas Jefferson Building, the John Adams Building, and the James Madison Memorial Building—next to the Capitol. Its...
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Sep 1, 2016 · With more than 86.1 million visits and 482.5 million page-views last year, the site is among the most visited of all federal web addresses. In its second century, the Library of Congress is a dynamic place for research and learning.
