The Library of Congress

The Library of Congress is the research library of the

United States Congress, de facto national library of the
United States of America, and the oldest federal cultural
institution in the United States. It is the largest library in
the world by shelf space and number of books.

The Library of Congress is in the United States Capitol .

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. In the mid-19th century the Library of Congress
began to grow rapidly.
 The Collections
The Library receives some 22,000 items each working day and adds approximately 10,000 items to the collections daily.
Languages
Approximately half of the Library’s book and serial collections are in languages other than English. The collections contain materials in
some 470 languages.
 Audio-Visual and Performing Arts Collections
~Prints and Photographs Division
Which consist 14 million visual images, including the most
comprehensive international collection of posters in the world.
~Music
The Library holds the most comprehensive collection of American music
in the world, more than 22 million items
~American Folklife Center and Veterans History Project.
~Motion Picture.
 Other Facts
~Cartography
The Library's Geography and Map Division holds 5.4 million items,
the world's largest collection of cartographic materials.
~Telephone Directories
The Library’s general collections contain the largest historical
collection of U.S. telephone criss-cross (phone number and address)
and city directories in the world.
~Comic Books and Newspapers
The
end