April 24 – The Start of an Amazing Library

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nWhy would Congress need books? Well, it totally makes sense that the people making laws would need a really good reference and research library so that they could discover the history and science applicable to new laws…so that they could read the text of other, older laws…so that they could study maps of the places affected by laws.
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nThe first books were ordered from London – 740 books and 3 maps, all housed in the new United States Capitol building.
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nHere are some more historical highlights:
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n1802 – President Thomas Jefferson signed a bill that allowed the president to appoint a Librarian of Congress plus an oversight committee. This new bill authorized the President and Vice President, along with lawmakers, to borrow books from the library. 
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n1814 – The British army burned the Library of Congress – along with the rest of Washington! – during the War of 1812. About 3,000 books, gone! 
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n(One book that survived was taken by a British admiral as a souvenir – and was finally returned to the U.S. in 1940!!! 
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nI815 – Thomas Jefferson sold his personal library of 6,487 books as a replacement for the volumes. These treasured books were the result of 50 years of carefully collecting books on everything from philosophy and history to law and religion, from Ancient Greece and Rome to modern inventions, from hot air balloons to submarines. There were even some cookbooks in the collection!
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nWith Jefferson’s collection comprising the Library of Congress, in one fell swoop the Library was transformed from a specialized collection (think law) to a more general research library. And that is what it remains today – but with more than 38 million books, 3 million recordings, 14 million photographs, 5 million maps, 8 million pieces of sheet music, and 70 million manuscripts. Plus loads of other non-classified items – altogether more than 167 million total items!!!!
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nThe books and other research materials in the Library of Congress include materials from all over the world, and in more than 450 languages.
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nAs you can imagine, the Library of Congress is claimed to be the largest library in the world.
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nIf you go to Washington, D.C., you can see the Library of Congress – there are wonderful tours! 
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The Library of Congress is a stunning building!!

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Above and below, two of the “readers’ rooms” at the Library of Congress.

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nThe library is open for academic research to anyone with a Reader Identification Card – although very few people can check books out. Instead of taking materials home, researches go to one of the “Readers’ Rooms” to read or do research.
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nAlso, the Library of Congress does participate in interlibrary loans with U.S. libraries, so it ends up acting as a library of last resort for materials that cannot be found elsewhere.
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