Established in 1800 the Library of Congress is in Washington, D.C. occupies three buildings on Capitol Hill. Those are the Thomas Jefferson Building (1897), the John Adams Building (1938), and the James Madison Building (1981). It took a act of congress when President John Adams signed a bill that provided for the transfer of the seat of government from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C.. A fire in 1814 destroyed the then small library when British troops burned the Capitol building. Then retired President Jefferson offered his own personal library as a replacement.
It is now open to the public and includes rare books, different nationalities, a law library, collections of periodicals, serials, manuscripts and monographs. It also houses maps and sheet music as well as visual materials, computer files and materials in more that 450 languages.
In the library there are about 21 million books, 61 million manuscripts; more than 138 million items in all. It also maintains a catalog of the holdings of 700 large libraries in the United States. It also runs The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped and a copyright office. It also holds the Historic American Engineering Record collection made possible by Shell Oil Company Foundation, and, Historic American Buildings records.
In 2007 The National Audio-Visual Conservation Center opened in Culpeper, Virginia.
The library is mainly funded by congressional appropriations. It also receives gifts by individuals and foundations alike. These funds are administered by the Library of Congress Trust Fund Board.
The Library of Congress is open to the public and is available every day except Sundays and holidays. Anyone the age of 16 or older can utilize the facility. They will need to register for a reader’s card and you will need to supply a photo id. Depending on your field of interest you will be directed to a reading room and there are computers where you can access the public catalog and request the books you are interested in. Then those books will be brought to you.
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Every country should have a library like this and have it open to its citizens. Libraries are one thing I really love about America. I took them for granted until a friend from another country indicated that what we had in our libraries is not they what they had in their libraries in their country. Wikipedia has an excellent article on the "History of libraries".
Many do I am sure. I saw a picture on Pinterest of many in different countries.
Our university uses both Dewey Decimal System and Congress System.
Very good systems.