Congress E Library

[Thomas Merino]

Childrenteens, along with their adults, are invited to visit the Young Readers Center & Programs Lab (Room G51) every Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The YRCPL offers visitors an opportunity to participate together in activities based on Library collections.

Pardon our dust! Some exhibition spaces are temporarily closed as we work to build a better Library for you. Visit our exhibitions page to learn about the collections that will be on display for your visit. Don't miss our brand new exhibition, Join In: Voluntary Associations in America, on the Great Hall, Mezzanine Level.

Interested in becoming a researcher at the Library of Congress? Learn more about resources available to researchers and registering for a Reader Identification Card. Have a research question? We encourage you to contact a Library specialist through our Ask a Librarian portal.

Groups of 21 or more people should request their free timed-entry tickets by filling out the group registration form. Group reservations may be made up to 60 days in advance. Contact Group...@loc.gov with any questions.

Enjoy happy hour drinks and snacks available for purchase in the Great Hall overlooking the U.S. Capitol. The series will regularly feature special conversations, music, performances, films, and workshops that showcase the broad range of holdings at the national library. Learn more

Select programs with limited capacities may require a separate event ticket for entry to those rooms. Please review the event page for each program to confirm the entry requirements. Visitors without advance event tickets are welcome to attend space permitting.

The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C. that serves as the library and research service of the U.S. Congress and the de facto national library of the United States.[3] Founded in 1800, it is the United States' oldest federal cultural institution.[4] The library is housed in three elaborate buildings on Capitol Hill, with a conservation center in Culpeper, Virginia.[5] The library's functions are overseen by the Librarian of Congress, and its buildings are maintained by the Architect of the Capitol. The Library of Congress is one of the largest libraries in the world.[3][6] Its collections contain approximately 173 million items, and it has more than 3,000 employees. 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]

Congress moved to Washington, D.C. in 1800 after holding sessions for eleven years in the temporary national capitals of New York City and Philadelphia. In both cities, members of Congress had access to the sizable collections of the New York Society Library and the Library Company of Philadelphia.[7] In Washington, the library was housed in the United States Capitol for most of the 19th century. Much of the library's original collection was burned by British forces during the War of 1812. Congress then purchased Thomas Jefferson's entire personal collection of 6,487 books to restore its own collection. Over the next few years, the collection slowly grew; in 1851, another fire broke out in the Capitol chambers, which destroyed a large amount of the collection, including many of Jefferson's books.

After the American Civil War, the importance of the Library of Congress for legislative research increased and there was a campaign to purchase replacement copies for volumes for its lost books. The library received the right of transference of all copyrighted works, and deposit of two copies of books, maps, illustrations, and diagrams printed in the United States. The Library also built its collections through acquisitions and donations. Between 1888 and 1894, Congress constructed and moved the collection to a large adjacent library building, now known as the Thomas Jefferson Building, across the street from the Capitol. Two more adjacent library buildings, the John Adams Building, built in the 1930s, and the James Madison Memorial Building, built in the 1970s, hold expanded parts of the collection and provide space for additional library services. The library also has significant offsite storage facilities, on the campus of Fort Meade and in the town of Cabin Branch, both in Maryland.

The library's primary mission is to research inquiries made by members of Congress, which is carried out through the Congressional Research Service. It also houses and oversees the United States Copyright Office. The library is open to the public for research, although only members of Congress, Congressional staff, and library employees may borrow books and materials for use outside of the library.[8]

James Madison of Virginia is credited with the idea of creating a congressional library, first making such a proposition in 1783. Madison's initial proposal was rejected at the time, but represented the first real introduction of the idea of a congressional library. In the years after the Revolutionary War, the Philadelphia Library Company and New York Society Library served as surrogate congressional libraries whenever Congress held session in those respective cities.[9] The Library of Congress was established on April 24, 1800, when President John Adams signed an act of Congress, which also provided for the transfer of the seat of government from Philadelphia to the new capital city of Washington. Part of the legislation 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, and the collection consisted of 740 books and three maps, which were housed in the new United States Capitol.[11]

President Thomas Jefferson played an important role in establishing the structure of the Library of Congress. On January 26, 1802, he signed a bill that allowed the president to appoint the librarian of Congress and established a Joint Committee on the Library to regulate and oversee it. The new law also extended borrowing privileges to the president and vice president.[12][13]

In August 1814, after defeating an American force at Bladensburg, British forces under the command of George Cockburn proceeded to occupy Washington. In retaliation for acts of destruction by American troops in the Canadas, Cockburn ordered his men to burn numerous government buildings throughout the city. Among the buildings targeted was the Library of Congress, which contained 3,000 congressional volumes at the time, most of which were destroyed in the burning.[11] These volumes had been held in the Senate wing of the Capitol; one of the few congressional volumes to survive was a government account book of receipts and expenditures for 1810.[13][14][15] The volume was taken as a souvenir by Cockburn, whose family returned it to the United States in 1940.[16]

Within a month, Thomas Jefferson offered to sell his large personal library[17][18][19] as a replacement. Jefferson knew library fires occurred because he had lost a part of his own library to a fire. He had reconstituted the collection and for years had hoped Congress would purchase his library.[20] Congress accepted his offer in January 1815, appropriating $23,950 to purchase his 6,487 books.[11] Some members of the House of Representatives opposed the outright purchase, including New Hampshire representative Daniel Webster. He wanted to return "all books of an atheistical, irreligious, and immoral tendency".[21]

Jefferson had spent 50 years accumulating a wide variety of books in several languages, and on subjects such as philosophy, history, law, religion, architecture, travel, natural sciences, mathematics, studies of classical Greece and Rome, modern inventions, hot air balloons, music, submarines, fossils, agriculture, and meteorology.[9] He had also collected books on topics not normally viewed as part of a legislative library, such as cookbooks. But, he believed that all subjects had a place in the Library of Congress. He remarked:

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.[21]

Jefferson's collection was unique in that it was the working collection of a scholar, not a gentleman's collection for display. With the addition of his collection, which doubled the size of the original library, the Library of Congress was transformed from a specialist's library to a more general one.[22] His original collection was organized into a scheme based on Francis Bacon's organization of knowledge. Specifically, Jefferson had grouped his books into Memory, Reason, and Imagination, and broke them into 44 more subdivisions.[23] The library followed Jefferson's organization scheme until the late 19th century, when librarian Herbert Putnam began work on a more flexible Library of Congress Classification structure. This now applies to more than 138 million items.

A February 24, 1824, report from the Committee of Ways and Means, stemming from a request by the House of Representatives "to inquire into the expediency of appropriating five thousand dollars for the use of the Library of Congress,"[24] recommended the appropriation and noted that .mw-parser-output .templatequoteoverflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 32px.mw-parser-output .templatequote .templatequoteciteline-height:1.5em;text-align:left;padding-left:1.6em;margin-top:0

...the committee have discovered the Library of Congress, in its present state, to be defective in all the principal branches of literature; and they deem it of the first necessity, that this deficiency should be speedily supplied, at least, in the important branches of Law, Politics, Commerce, History, and Geography, as most useful to the Members of Congress.[24]

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 of Jefferson's original transfer. Congress appropriated $168,700 to replace the lost books in 1852 but not to acquire new materials.[25] (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.[26]) This marked the start of a conservative period in the library's administration by librarian John Silva Meehan and joint committee chairman James A. Pearce, who restricted the library's activities.[25] 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."[27] In 1859, Congress transferred the library's public document distribution activities to the Department of the Interior and its international book exchange program to the Department of State.[28]

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