The Library Of Congress

The Library Of Congress

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HISTORY

The Library of congress was established by an act of congress on April 24, 1800. It was originally housed in the United States capitol. The collection, which stared out small at 740 volumes, slowly increased to over 3,000 volumes by 1814. That year, though, the British along with the capitol burned those books during the assault on Washington.

To rapidly replace the collection, Thomas Jefferson offered his personal library to congress at no cost, describing the nature of his books like so: "I do not know that it contains any branch of science which Congress would wish to exclude from the collections; there is, in fact, no subject to which a Member of Congress may not have occasion to refer." This changed the library from a tiny legislative workplace to the largest national institute that it was about to become.

Jefferson’s more or less 6,500 volumes formed the heart of the library, and grew speedily in the nineteenth century. The new copyright law of 1870 demanded that two copies of every single book copyrighted had to be given to the library in order to receive protection. The flood of material that resulted forced the construction of a new building that opened in 1897.

A new age for the library was guided by the opening of the Jefferson building and The Main Reading room. Special format collections were separated from the book collections and the readers could access them in different locations of the library. Some of these forma...

The Library Of Congress

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