The Library Of Congress - Both Old And NewThe Library of Congress in Washington DC is one of the most famous libraries in the world. But what actually is it? When was it formed? And how does it work? The US Library of Congress is one of the most influential libraries in the world. It has more than 30,000,000 cataloged books in 470 languages. It also has the largest rare book collection in North America including a famous Gutenberg Bible. It holds a large repository of US Government publications - over 1 million in fact. It has 1 million issues of various international and national newspapers spanning the last 300 years. It has got 4.8 million maps and 2.7 million sound recordings. As well as being an important library, it is also the official research arm of the United States Congress. The library was formed in April 1800 during the tenure of President John Adams. At the time, the government provided $5,000.00, which was allocated for the buying of books, which would be used by Congress. It was quite a small library at this time and was located in the New Capitol. In 1814, invading British troops set fire to the Capitol building and burnt the library to the ground. A short time after the destruction of the library, the former President Thomas Jefferson offered his books for sale to restarts the library. Jefferson had a very large collection at the time including books on philosophy, literature and a wide variety of topics that would not normally be part of a Congress library. When Congress accepted Jefferson’s offer, this began the modern library of Congress in its current form holding a variety of books on all subjects under the sun. One of the most famous things this library is known for is the Library of Congress Classification, which is used all over the world. Although this classification has been replaced by other methods, it is still in use after more than 150 years. If you ever read a book, which I’m sure you have, you would have seen a legal copyright notice, which refers to the US Library of Congress. The reason for this is that the library serves as a legal repository for copyright protection. And any author who published a book is required to submit one copy of his new book to the Library of Congress. Nowadays many new publications are not submitted to the library so the importance of the library in this area is a little bit questionable. So the question is can you actually use this library, can you actually go there and look at the books? The answer is a part yes and part no. The library is open to the general public but only for academic research. They also run regular tours for visitors. And since the Library of Congress serves as a library of last resort, if you cannot find a book in any library in the United States that library will be able to request a copy from the Library of Congress which will provide it willingly. Of course the library has now moved onto the web. It provides public domain content like images and audio and video, which can be accessed directly through its web site. At the time of writing, the library’s digital collection is the size of 20 terabytes, which is an absolutely enormous amount. |