Library of Congress

Library of Congress
Main reading room of the Library's Thomas Jefferson Building
38°53′19″N 77°0′17″W / 38.88861°N 77.00472°W / 38.88861; -77.00472
Location	Washington, D.C.
Established	April 24, 1800; 224 years ago (April 24, 1800)
Collection
Size	173 million items[a]
Access and use
Circulation	Onsite use only
Population served	Congress, citizens, and international visitors
Other information
Budget	$802.128 million[2]
Director	Carla Hayden
Employees	3,105[2]
Website	loc.gov

The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in the federal national capital city of Washington, D.C. (District of Columbia), that serves as the library and research service for the two chambers of the United States Congress and the de facto national library of the United States of America.^[3] It also administers copyright law through the United States Copyright Office.

Founded in 1800, the Library of Congress is the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States.^[4] It is housed in three elaborate buildings on Capitol Hill, adjacent to the United States Capitol, with the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, located further south in Culpeper, Virginia and offsite additional storage facilities ("stacks") at Fort George G. Meade, 25 miles to the northeast in central Maryland, and Cabin Branch, also in Maryland.^[5] The library's functions are overseen by the Librarian of Congress, and its buildings are maintained by the office of the Architect of the Capitol. The LOC is one of the largest libraries in the world,^[3][6] containing approximately 173 million items and employing over 3,000 staff, both professional and supportive. Its collections are "universal, not limited by subject, format, or national boundary, and include research materials from all parts of the world and in more than 470 languages".^[4]

The Congress of the United States moved to the new federal city (later named Washington city) on the north bank of the Potomac RiverWashington, D.C., in November 1800 after holding sessions for eleven years in the temporary previous series of national capitals at New York City and Philadelphia since 1789, where members of Congress had access to the sizable literary collections of the well-known New York Society Library and the Library Company of Philadelphia.^[7] Pursuant to the act of Congress that established Washington as the new national capital, a small congressional library was housed in the United States Capitol, then under construction, with only the old north / Senate wing completed first during the 1790s. Much of the library's original collection was the tragic disaster of the Burning of Washington in August 1814, by invading / attacking British Army and Royal Navy forces during the War of 1812 (1812-1815). Congress then accepted former third President Thomas Jefferson's offer to sell his entire personal collection of 6,487 books at his estate of Monticello near Charlottesville, Virginia, to restore the Congress's library. Over the next few years, the second collection slowly grew; but unfortunately in 1851, another fire broke out in the interior of the rebuilt Capitol and its post-1814 Library chambers, which destroyed a large amount of the collection, including two-thirds of Jefferson's original books.

The Library of Congress was constantly plagued by space shortages and limitations, understaffing, and lack of proper funding, even after additional north / south larger massive new wings for the Senate and House of Representatives were added to the sides of the original rebuilt Capitol of 1817, four decades later in the 1850s. But until after the American Civil War (1861-1865), when the importance of legislative research increased to meet the demands of a growing federal government.^[8] In 1870, the library was granted the legal right to receive two copies of every book, map, illustration, and other copyrightable work printed anywhere in the United States; it also built its collections through acquisitions and donations. Between 1890 and 1897, Congress authorized and had constructed and moved the collection across the street from the Capitol to the east to a huge massive but monumental and adjacent new library building, now known (since 1980) as the Thomas Jefferson Building. Two more adjacent library buildings over the subsequent decades of the 20th century—named the John Adams Building, built in the late 1930s and opened 1939, and the James Madison Memorial Building, built in the late 1970s and opened in 1980, (Congressional Library structures now renamed as literary memorials for three of our most literary, intellectual and book-loving presidents), - which hold expanded parts of the national collection and provide space for additional library and research services.

The LOC maintains its primary mission of informing legislation through researching inquiries made by members of Congress, which is carried out through the Congressional Research Service. The library is open to the American and international public, for research, although only members of Congress, their Congressional staff, and library employees may borrow books and materials for use outside of the library.^[9]

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