Library of Congress - Washington, D.C. - American Guide Series on Waymarking.com

The American Guide Series has a large section for the Library of Congress - pages 263 to 281.It provides a history of the Library's establishment, a discussion of the various buildings and the floor plans for the main building.

Wikipedia (visit link) adds:

"The Library of Congress is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress, but which is the de facto national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. The Library is housed in three buildings on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., and also maintains the Packard Campus in Culpeper, Virginia, which houses the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center.

The library is the second-largest library in the world by collection size, with the largest being the British Library. The Library's "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 450 languages. Two-thirds of the books it acquires each year are in languages other than English."

The Library of Congress moved to Washington in 1800, after sitting for eleven years in the temporary national capitals of New York and Philadelphia. John J. Beckley, who became the first Librarian of Congress, was paid two dollars per day and was also required to serve as the Clerk of the House of Representatives. The small Congressional Library was housed in the United States Capitol for most of the 19th century until the early 1890s. Most of the original collection had been destroyed by the British in 1814 during the War of 1812. To restore its collection in 1815, the library bought from former president Thomas Jefferson his entire personal collection of 6,487 books.

After a period of slow growth, another fire struck the Library in its Capitol chambers in 1851, again destroying a large amount of the collection, including many of Jefferson's books. The Library of Congress then began to grow rapidly in both size and importance after the American Civil War and a campaign to purchase replacement copies for volumes that had been burned from other sources, collections and libraries (which had started to appear throughout the burgeoning United States). The Library received the right of transference of all copyrighted works to have two copies deposited of books, maps, illustrations and diagrams printed in the United States. It also began to build its collections of British and other European works and then of works published throughout the English-speaking world."

Book: Washington, DC Page Number(s) of Excerpt: 263-281 Year Originally Published: 1937

Visit Instructions:
To log a Visit, please supply an original image of the Waymark.

Recent Visits/Logs:

Date Logged Log User Rating   11/04/2022 Babushka_Qc visited it 08/30/2022 Blanko36 visited it 07/19/2022 stinger503 visited it 09/12/2021 bluesnote visited it 02/21/2020 The Snowdog visited it 11/29/2018 wildernessmama visited it 10/18/2018 Sneakin Deacon visited it 03/31/2018 Duodenfer_ visited it 08/27/2016 Searcher28 visited it 08/24/2016 The A-Team visited it 03/08/2015 racer2814 visited it 08/30/2014 Metro2 visited it 08/21/2014 chrissyml visited it 06/29/2014 m&m O visited it 08/12/2011 Clown Shoes visited it

View all visits/logs