Established with a $5,000 appropriation in 1800, the Library of Congress was intended exclusively as a Congressional reference library, but has evolved over the last two centuries into “an unparalleled world resource.” An agency within the legislative branch, the Library is a national monument, the de facto national library, the research arm of Congress, the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and the biggest library in the world.
The Library was established in 1800, when the seat of the U.S. government was transferred from Philadelphia to Washington. It was originally intended as an exclusive reference library for Congress. It was housed in the new capitol building until 1814, when British troops set fire to it and destroyed two-thirds of the collection. Retired President Thomas Jefferson offered to replace it with his own personal collection, and in 1815 Congress appropriated $23,950 for the purchase of his 6,497 books. According to the Library, its current collecting practices are based on the “Jeffersonian concept of universality, the belief that all subjects are important to the library of the American legislature.”
The Library collection was subsequently expanded, and in 1886, after many proposals and surrounding controversy, Congress authorized construction of a new building to house it. When it opened to the public in 1897, it was considered a national monument - and the “the largest, the costliest, and the safest” library in the world.
Fascinating Facts
As the official Congressional research division, the library is under tight security, with all collections stored in areas that are off limits to the public and staff without authorization. Only members of Congress, Supreme Court justices and their staffs and certain government officials are allowed to check out books. However, the library is open to the public for tours and academic research - and in 2007 it received more than 1.4 million on-site visitors. All researchers are required to have a Library-issued Reader Identification Card to access the institution’s public collections.
Since 1902, the Library has also served as a “last resort” resource for U.S. libraries, which may request certain books and other items through interlibrary loans if they are not available from other sources.
Organization
Collections
Today’s Library of Congress houses a collection of more than 130 million items, including:
- More than 29 million cataloged books and other print materials in 460 languages;
- More than 58 million manuscripts; the largest rare book collection in North America;
- The world's largest collection of legal materials, films, maps, sheet music and sound recordings.
Publications
Office of the Inspector General oversees Library operations and polices fraud, waste, abuse, mismanagement; performs audits and publishes strategic plans.
In April 2008 the Library introduced new interactive technology for visitors to explore its collection and history. The digital project is three years in the making, and aimed, in part, at launching the LC online, but also makes materials more accessible, both for in-person visitors and online.
Other Highlights
Programs and Initiatives
History Channel Deal
Resources
Country Studies
Venezuelan National Library
Director of the Venezuelan National Library calls the Library of Congress imperialist and “one of history’s greatest enemies of libraries.” More below:
Freud Exhibition
In the early 1990s, plans for the “Sigmund Freud: Conflict and Culture” exhibition at the Library elicited controversy among critics who charged it presented a biased rendering of Freud’s work -and psychoanalysis - in favor of his supporters. Drawn from the library’s vast Freud archives (the largest in the world), the exhibition placed significant emphasis on Freud’s impact on popular culture and included a contemporary discussion the place of Freud and psychoanalysis in psychology. In 1995, about a year after work began on the project, a petition signed by 42 writers and scholars critical of his work was reportedly part of the reason for the exhibition’s delay until October 1998.
Thurgood Marshall Papers
Donated to the Library of Congress, the Supreme Court papers of the late Justice Thurgood Marshal became public domain shortly after his retirement and death in 1991. Both the Marshall family and a majority of the Supreme Court justices harshly criticized the decision to release the documents so soon after his death, and contested the Library’s interpretation of a 1991 contract it claimed instructed them to do so, citing, among others, a clause that purportedly specified the documents would be made available to researchers and scholars - not journalists. (The papers, giving a rare glimpse behind the scenes on the most heated debates during Marshall’s tenure, were published extensively in the Washington Post and other publications upon release). Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote a critical and threatening letter to James H. Billington, the Librarian of Congress, on behalf of a majority of the Court, essentially accusing him of betraying Marshall’s trust, warning that other Justices would now be less inclined to leave their court documents to the Library (the traditional repository for Justices’ court documents) and calling his decision “an irresponsible and flagrant abuse” of his authority. Billington maintained that he had acted on the explicit instructions of Marshall, refusing to admit any mismanagement or wrongdoing on the part of the Library of Congress.
Marshall Papers Reveal Court Behind the Scenes
(by David Johnston, New York Times)
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Founded: 1800
Annual Budget: $645.8 million
Employees: 3,691
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Library of Congress
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Billington, James
Librarian
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Born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and raised in Philadelphia, James H. Billington earned a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and a doctorate from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College. He served in the U.S. Army and worked in the Office of National Estimates, and then taught history at Harvard University from 1957 to 1962. He was professor of history at Princeton University from 1964 to 1973. Thereafter, Billington directed the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, where he founded the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, and seven other new programs, including the Wilson Quarterly.
Billington has authored several books on Russia and accompanied 10 Congressional delegations to Russia and the former Soviet Union. He founded the Open World Program, a “nonpartisan initiative of the U.S. Congress that has brought over 10,000 emerging young Russian political leaders to communities throughout America, and launched smaller pilot programs in Ukraine, Lithuania and Uzbekistan.” He was sworn in as Librarian of the Library on September 14, 1987.
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