The Library Of Congress

The Library of congress was established by an act of congress on April 24, 1800. After much of the original collection had been destroyed during the War of 1812, Thomas Jefferson sold 6,487 books, his entire personal collection, to the library in 1815. After a period of decline during the mid-19th century the Library of Congress began to grow rapidly in both size and importance after the American Civil War, culminating in the construction of a separate library building and the transference of all copyright deposit holdings to the Library. The collection, which stared out small at 740 volumes, slowly increased to over 3,000 volumes by 1814. The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, with more than 151.8 million items on approximately 838 miles of bookshelves. The collections include more than 34.5 million books and other print materials, 3.3 million recordings, 13.4 million photographs, 5.4 million maps, 6.5 million pieces of sheet music and 66.6 million manuscripts. The Library receives some 22,000 items each working day and adds approximately 10,000 items to the collections daily. Approximately half of the Librarys book and serial collections are in languages other than English. The collections contain materials in some 470 languages. The library is open to the general public for academic research and tourists. Only those who are issued a Reader Identification Card may enter the reading rooms and access the collection.