Library of Congress

Through a chain of seemingly random historic events, the Library of Congress is the world's largest library. Many countries have official national libraries, but another oddity is that the United States of America officially has national libraries only for medicine and agriculture, the National Library of Medicine (Bethesda, Maryland) and the National Agricultural Library (Beltsville, Maryland).

For all practical purposes, however, the Library of Congress is the U.S. national library. It is recognized worldwide not only for the size of its collections, but for its contributions to library science, such as Project MARC, the first large-scale MAChine-Readable cataloging project).

Created in 1800, the Library of Congress was originally to be just that: a reference library for the exclusive use of the Congress. It was located in the United States Capitol building, which was set afire by British troops in August 1814, during the War of 1812. Shortly afterwards, former President Thomas Jefferson, a renowned scholar and bibliophile, offered his personal library, collected over 50 years,

"putting by everything which related to America, and indeed whatever was rare and valuable in every science"; his library was considered to be one of the finest in the United States. In offering his collection to Congress, Jefferson anticipated controversy over the nature of his collection, which included books in foreign languages and volumes of philosophy, science, literature, and other topics not normally viewed as part of a legislative library. He wrote, "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."

Copyright and Building the Collections

For a time, the Library of Congress was just that, until Ainsworth Spofford became the Librarian of Congress in 1864, who held the post until 1897. One of his major contributions, with many side effects, was to help get copyright law established, and create the Copyright Office as a division of the Library. In general, to get a U.S. copyright, one fills out a form, pays a small amount, and submits it with two copies of the work. For many years, the Library kept one or both of those copies, building the collection with new works. While there was little direct acquisition cost, the process of properly cataloging those works is quite challenging and needed a growing professional staff.

Physical facilities

For a number of years, the Library fit in one building, today called the Thomas Jefferson Building, which opened in 1897, and is still considered one of the most beautiful buildings in Washington, D.C. As the collections and staff grew, a second, more utilitarian building, now called the John Adams Building, was started in 1922 and completed in 1935. All the buildings are connected by underground tunnels for people and books.

As knowledge grew exponentially, and the Library took on more and more challenges, various units were scattered over the Washington metropolitan area. Many of these buildings lacked the specialized construction and facilities needed for their function. In 1971, ground was broken for an enormous building intended to be an efficient library, although the James Madison Memorial Building did not fully anticipate the computer technologies that would be needed after it opened in 1980. The designers of the Madison Building, however, had anticipated the growth of information technology, and had designed with future expansion in mind.