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 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."
[2]
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.
[3] 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 begun to speckle 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.
This development culminated in the construction between 1888 and 1894 of a separate, expansive library building across the street from the Capitol, in the
Beaux Arts style with fine decorations, murals, paintings, marble halls, columns and steps, carved hardwoods and a
stained glass dome. It included several stories built underground of steel and
cast iron stacks.
The Library's primary mission of researching inquiries made by members of Congress is carried out through the
Congressional Research Service, traces its origin to 1914, and was first permanently authorized (as the Legislative Reference Service) with the
Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946.
Although the Library is open to the public, only high-ranking government officials may check out books and materials. The Library promotes literacy and
American literature through projects such as the
American Folklife Center,
American Memory,
Center for the Book and
Poet Laureate.
History
Origins and Jefferson's contribution (1800–1851)
James Madison is credited with the idea for creating a congressional library, first making such a proposition in 1783.
[4] The Library of Congress was established April 24, 1800, when
President John Adams signed an
act of Congress providing for the transfer of the seat of government from
Philadelphia to the new capital city of Washington. Part of the legislation appropriated $5,000 "for the purchase of such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress ..., and for fitting up a suitable apartment for containing them...." Books were ordered from London and the collection, consisting of 740 books and 3 maps, was housed in the new
Capitol.
[5]
As president,
Thomas Jefferson played an important role in establishing the structure of the Library of Congress. On January 26, 1802, he signed a bill that allowed the president to appoint an overseer of the Library of Congress and for the establishment of a
Joint Committee on the Library to regulate and oversee the Library. The new law also extended to the president and vice president the ability to borrow books. In the midst of the
War of 1812, invading British Regulars led a
Burning of Washington in August 1814, including the
Capitol, and destroyed the Library of Congress and its collection of 3,000 volumes.
[5]
Within a month, former president Jefferson offered his personal library
[6][7] as a replacement. Jefferson had spent 50 years accumulating a wide variety of books, in several languages, in many subjects (philosophy, science, literature, architecture) and other topics not normally viewed as part of a legislative library, such as cookbooks, writing that: "I do not know that it contains any branch of science which Congress would wish to exclude from their collection; there is, in fact, no subject to which a Member of Congress may not have occasion to refer". In January 1815, Congress accepted Jefferson's offer, appropriating $23,950 to purchase his 6,487 books.
[5] Jefferson's collection was unique in that it was a working collection of a scholar, not a gentleman's collection for display. Jefferson's original collection was organized into a scheme based on
Francis Bacon's
organization of knowledge. Specifically, he grouped his books into Memory, Reason, and Imagination, which broke down into 44 more subdivisions. The Library followed Jefferson's organization scheme until the late 19th century, when librarian
Herbert Putnam began work on a more flexible Library of Congress Classification structure that now applies to more than 138 million items. In 1851, a fire destroyed two thirds of the Jefferson collection, with only 2,000 books remaining. In 2008, after working for ten years, the librarians at the Library of Congress had found replacements for all but 300 of the works that were in Jefferson's original collection.
[8]
Weakening (1851–1865)
The
antebellum period was difficult for the Library. During the 1850s the
Smithsonian Institution's librarian
Charles Coffin Jewett aggressively tried to move that organization towards becoming the United States' national library. His efforts were blocked by the Smithsonian secretary
Joseph Henry, who advocated a focus on scientific research and publication and favored the Library of Congress' development into the national library. Henry's dismissal of Jewett in July 1854 ended the Smithsonian's attempts to become the national library, and in 1866 Henry transferred the Smithsonian Institution's library of forty thousand volumes to the Library of Congress.
[5]
December 24, 1851, the largest fire in the Library's history destroyed 35,000 books, about two–thirds of the Library's 55,000 book collection, including two-thirds of Jefferson's original transfer. Congress in 1852 quickly appropriated $168,700 to replace the lost books, but not for the acquisition of new materials. This marked the start of a conservative period in the Library's administration by librarian
John Silva Meehan and joint committee chairman
James A. Pearce, who worked to restrict the Library's activities. In 1857, Congress transferred the Library's public document distribution activities to the
Department of the Interior and its international book exchange program to the
Department of State.
Abraham Lincoln's political appointment of
John G. Stephenson as librarian of Congress in 1861 further weakened the Library; Stephenson's focus was on non-library affairs, including service as a volunteer
aide-de-camp at the battles of
Chancellorsville and
Gettysburg during the
American Civil War. By the conclusion of the war, the Library of Congress had a staff of seven for a collection of 80,000 volumes.
[5] The centralization of copyright offices into the
United States Patent Office in 1859 ended the Library's thirteen-year role as a depository of all copyrighted books and pamphlets.
Spofford's expansion (1865–1897)[
The Library of Congress reasserted itself during the latter half of the 19th century under Librarian
Ainsworth Rand Spofford, who directed the Library from 1865 to 1897. Aided by an overall expansion of the federal government and a favorable political climate, Spofford built broad bipartisan support for the Library as a national library and a legislative resource, began comprehensively collecting
Americana and
American literature, and led the construction of a new building to house the Library, and transformed the Librarian of Congress position into one of strength and independence. Between 1865 and 1870, Congress appropriated funds for the construction of the Thomas Jefferson Building, placed all
copyright registration and deposit activities under the Library's control, and restored the Library's international book exchange. The Library also acquired the vast libraries of both the Smithsonian and historian
Peter Force, strengthening its scientific and Americana collections significantly. By 1876, the Library of Congress had 300,000 volumes and was tied with
Boston Public Library as the nation's largest library. When the Library moved from the Capitol building to its new headquarters in 1897, it had over 840,000 volumes, 40% of which had been acquired through copyright deposit.
[5]
A year before the Library's move to its new location, the Joint Library Committee held a session of hearings to assess the condition of the Library and plan for its future growth and possible reorganization. Spofford and six experts sent by the
American Library Association, including future Librarian of Congress
Herbert Putnam and
Melvil Dewey of the
New York State Library, testified before the committee that the Library should continue its expansion towards becoming a true national library. Based on the hearings and with the assistance of Senators
Justin Morrill of Vermont and
Daniel Voorhees of Indiana, Congress more than doubled the Library's staff from 42 to 108 and established new administrative units for all aspects of the Library's collection. Congress also strengthened the office of Librarian of Congress to govern the Library and make staff appointments, as well as requiring Senate approval for presidential appointees to the position.
[5]
Post-reorganization (1897–1939)
The Library of Congress in 1898
The Library of Congress, spurred by the 1897 reorganization, began to grow and develop more rapidly. Spofford's successor
John Russell Young, though only in office for two years, overhauled the Library's bureaucracy, used his connections as a former diplomat to acquire more materials from around the world, and established the Library's first assistance programs for the
blind and physically disabled. Young's successor
Herbert Putnam held the office for forty years from 1899 to 1939, entering into the position two years before the Library became the first in the United States to hold one million volumes.
[5] Putnam focused his efforts on making the Library more accessible and useful for the public and for other libraries. He instituted the interlibrary loan service, transforming the Library of Congress into what he referred to as a "library of last resort".
[9] Putnam also expanded Library access to "scientific investigators and duly qualified individuals" and began publishing
primary sources for the benefit of scholars.
[5]
Putnam's tenure also saw increasing diversity in the Library's acquisitions. In 1903, he persuaded President
Theodore Roosevelt to transfer by executive order the papers of the
Founding Fathers from the State Department to the Library of Congress. Putnam expanded foreign acquisitions as well, including the 1904 purchase of a four-thousand volume library of
Indica, the 1906 purchase of G. V. Yudin's eighty-thousand volume Russian library, the 1908 Schatz collection of early opera
librettos, and the early 1930s purchase of the Russian Imperial Collection, consisting of 2,600 volumes from the library of the
Romanov family on a variety of topics. Collections of
Hebraica and Chinese and Japanese works were also acquired. Congress even took the initiative to acquire materials for the Library in one occasion, when in 1929 Congressman
Ross Collins of Mississippi successfully proposed the $1.5 million purchase of Otto Vollbehr's collection of
incunabula, including one of three remaining perfect vellum copies of the
Gutenberg Bible.
[5]
In 1914, Putnam established the
Legislative Reference Service as a separative administrative unit of the Library. Based in the
Progressive era's philosophy of science as a problem-solver, and modeled after successful research branches of state legislatures, the LRS would provide informed answers to Congressional research inquiries on almost any topic. In 1965, Congress passed an act allowing the Library of Congress to establish a trust fund board to accept donations and endowments, giving the Library a role as a patron of the arts. The Library received the donations and endowments of prominent individuals such as
John D. Rockefeller, James B. Wilbur and
Archer M. Huntington. Gertrude Clarke Whittall donated five
Stradivarius violins to the Library and
Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge's donations paid for a
concert hall within the Library of Congress building and the establishment of an
honorarium for the Music Division. A number of chairs and consultantships were established from the donations, the most well-known of which is the
Poet Laureate Consultant.
[5]
The Library's expansion eventually filled the Library's Main Building, despite shelving expansions in 1910 and 1927, forcing the Library to expand into a new structure. Congress acquired nearby land in 1928 and approved construction of the Annex Building (later the John Adams Building) in 1930. Although delayed during the
Depression years, it was completed in 1938 and opened to the public in 1939.
[5]
Modern history (1939–present)[edit]
When Putnam retired in 1939, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed
Archibald MacLeish as his successor. Occupying the post from 1939 to 1944 during the height of World War II, MacLeish became the most visible Librarian of Congress in the Library's history. MacLeish encouraged librarians to oppose
totalitarianism on behalf of democracy; dedicated the South Reading Room of the Adams Building to Thomas Jefferson, commissioning artist
Ezra Winter to paint four themed murals for the room; and established a "democracy alcove" in the Main Reading Room of the Jefferson Building for important documents such as the Declaration, Constitution and
The Federalist Papers. Even the Library of Congress assisted during the war effort, ranging from the storage of the
Declaration of Independence and the
United States Constitution in
Fort Knox for safekeeping to researching weather data on the
Himalayas for
Air Force pilots. MacLeish resigned in 1944 to become Assistant Secretary of State, and President
Harry Truman appointed
Luther H. Evans as Librarian of Congress. Evans, who served until 1953, expanded the Library's acquisitions, cataloging and bibliographic services as much as the fiscal-minded Congress would allow, but his primary achievement was the creation of Library of Congress Missions around the world. Missions played a variety of roles in the postwar world: the mission in San Francisco assisted participants in the meeting that established the United Nations, the mission in Europe acquired European publications for the Library of Congress and other American libraries, and the mission in Japan aided in the creation of the
National Diet Library.
[5]
Evans' successor
L. Quincy Mumford took over in 1953. Mumford's tenure, lasting until 1974, saw the initiation of the construction of the James Madison Memorial Building, the third Library of Congress building. Mumford directed the Library during a period of increased educational spending, the windfall of which allowed the Library to devote energies towards establishing new acquisition centers abroad, including in
Cairo and New Delhi. In 1967, the Library began experimenting with book preservation techniques through a Preservation Office, which grew to become the largest library research and conservation effort in the United States. Mumford's administration also saw the last major public debate about the Library of Congress' role as both a legislative library and a national library. A 1962 memorandum by Douglas Bryant of the
Harvard University Library, compiled at the request of Joint Library Committee chairman
Claiborne Pell, proposed a number of institutional reforms, including expansion of national activities and services and various organizational changes, all of which would shift the Library more towards its national role over its legislative role. Bryant even suggested possibly changing the name of the Library of Congress, which was rebuked by Mumford as "unspeakable violence to tradition". Debate continued within the library community until the
Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970 shifted the Library back towards its legislative roles, placing greater focus on research for Congress and congressional committees and renaming the Legislative Reference Service to the
Congressional Research Service.
[5]
After Mumford retired in 1974, Gerald Ford appointed
Daniel J. Boorstin as Librarian. Boorstin's first challenge was the move to the new Madison Building, which took place between 1980 and 1982. The move released pressures on staff and shelf space, allowing Boorstin to focus on other areas of Library administration such as acquisitions and collections. Taking advantage of steady budgetary growth, from $116 million in 1975 to over $250 million by 1987, Boorstin actively participated in enhancing ties with scholars, authors, publishers, cultural leaders, and the business community. His active and prolific role changed the post of Librarian of Congress so that by the time he retired in 1987,
The New York Times called it "perhaps the leading intellectual public position in the nation".
President Ronald Reagan nominated
James H. Billington as the 13th Librarian of Congress in 1987, and the U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed the appointment.
[10] Under Billington's leadership, the Library doubled the size of its analog collections from 85.5 million items in 1987 to more than 160 million items in 2014. At the same time, it established new programs and employed new technologies to, "get the champagne out of the bottle." These included:
- American Memory created in 1990, which became The National Digital Library in 1994, providing free access online to digitized American history and culture resources with curatorial explanations for K-12 education.[11]
- THOMAS.gov website launched in 1994 to provide free public access to U.S. federal legislative information with ongoing updates; and CONGRESS.gov website to provide a state-of-the-art framework for both Congress and the public in 2012;[12]
- The National Book Festival, founded in 2000 with Laura Bush, has brought over 1000 authors and a million guests to the National Mall and the Washington Convention Center to celebrate reading. With a major gift from David Rubenstein in 2013, the Library also established the Library of Congress Literacy Awards to recognize and support achievements in improving literacy in the U.S. and abroad;[13]
- The Kluge Center, started with a grant of $60 million from John W. Kluge in 2000 to bring scholars and researchers from around the world to use Library resources and to interact with policymakers and the public. It hosts public lectures and scholarly events, provides endowed Kluge fellowships, and awards The Kluge Prize for the Study of Humanity (now worth $1.5 million), the first Nobel-level international prize for lifetime achievement in the humanities and social sciences (subjects not included in the Nobel awards);[14]
- Open World Leadership Center, established in 2000, administered 23,000 professional exchanges for emerging post-Soviet leaders in Russia, Ukraine and the other successor states of the former USSR by 2015. Open World began as a Library of Congress project, and later became an independent agency in the legislative branch.[15]
- The Veterans History Project, congressionally mandated in 2000 to collect, preserve, and make accessible the personal accounts of American war veterans from WWI to the present day;[16]
- The National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, which opened in 2007 at a 45-acre site in Culpeper, Virginia with the largest private gift ever made to the Library (more than $150 million by the Packard Humanities Institute) and $82.1 million additional support from Congress. In 1988, The Library also established the National Film Preservation Board, a congressionally mandated National Film Preservation Board to select American films annually for preservation and inclusion in the new National Registry. The Librarian named 650 films to the Registry by 2015;[17]
- The Gershwin Prize for Popular Song,[18] launched in 2007 to honor the work of an artist whose career reflects lifetime achievement in song composition. Winners have included Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Carole King, Billy Joel, and just-named Willie Nelson for November 2015. The Library also launched the Living Legend Awards[19] in 2000 to honor artists, activists, filmmakers, and others who have contributed to America's diverse cultural, scientific, and social heritage;
- The Fiction Prize (now the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction) started in 2008 to recognize distinguished lifetime achievement in the writing of fiction.[20][21]
- The World Digital Library, established in association with UNESCO and 181 partners in 81 countries in 2009, to make online copies of professionally curated primary materials of the world's varied cultures freely available in multiple languages.[22][22]
- National Jukebox launched in 2011 to provide streaming free online access to more than 10,000 out-of-print music and spoken word recordings.[23]
- BARD in 2013, digital talking books mobile app for Braille and Audio Reading Downloads in partnership with the Library's National Library Service for the blind and physically handicapped, that enables free downloads of audio and Braille books to mobile devices via the Apple App Store.[24]
During Billington's tenure as the 13th Librarian of Congress, the Library acquired Lafayette's previously inaccessible papers in 1996 from a castle at La Grange, France; and the only copy of the 1507
Waldseemüller world map ("America's birth certificate") in 2003 for permanent display in the Library's Thomas Jefferson Building. Using privately raised funds, the Library of Congress reconstructed Thomas Jefferson's original library, which was placed on permanent display in the Jefferson building in 2008.
[25] Billington also enlarged and technologically enhanced public spaces of the Jefferson Building into a national exhibition venue, and hosted over 100 exhibitions.
[26] These included exhibits on the
Vatican Library and the
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, several on the Civil War and Lincoln, on African-American culture, on Religion and the founding of the American Republic, the Early Americas (the Kislak Collection became a permanent display), on the global celebration commemorating the 800th anniversary of
Magna Carta, and on early American printing featuring the Rubenstein Bay Psalm Book. Onsite access to the Library of Congress was also increased when Billington advocated successfully for an underground connection between the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center and the Library in 2008 to increase congressional usage and public tours of the Library's Thomas Jefferson Building.
[10]
Under Billington, the Library launched a
mass deacidification program in 2001, which has extended the lifespan of almost 4 million volumes and 12 million manuscript sheets; and new collection storage modules at Fort Meade, the first opening in 2002, to preserve and make accessible more than 4 million items from the Library's analog collections. Billington established the Library Collections Security Oversight Committee in 1992 to improve protection of collections, and also the Library of Congress Congressional Caucus in 2008 to draw attention to the Library's curators and collections. He created the Library's first Young Readers Center in the Jefferson Building in 2009, and the first large-scale summer intern (Junior Fellows) program for university students in 1991.
[27] Under Billington, the Library also sponsored the Gateway to Knowledge in 2010-2011, a mobile exhibition to 90 sites covering all states east of the Mississippi in a specially designed 18-wheel truck, increasing public access to Library collections off-site, particularly for rural populations.
[28]
Billington raised more than half a billion dollars of private support to supplement Congressional appropriations for Library collections, programs, and digital outreach. These private funds helped the Library to continue its growth and outreach in the face of a 30% decrease in staffing caused mainly by legislative appropriations cutbacks. He created the Library's first development office for private fundraising in 1987, and, in 1990, established the James Madison Council, the Library's first national private sector donor-support group. In 1987, Billington also asked the GAO to conduct the first Library-wide audit, and he created the first Office of the Inspector General at the Library to provide regular independent review of library operations. This precedent led to regular annual financial audits, leading to unmodified ("clean") opinions from 1995 onwards.
[10]
In April 2010, it announced plans to archive all public communication on Twitter, including all communication since Twitter's launch in March 2006.
[29] As of 2015, the Twitter archive remains unfinished.
[30]
When Billington announced his plans to retire in 2015, commentator George Weigel described the Library of Congress as "one of the last refuges in Washington of serious bipartisanship and calm, considered conversation," and "one of the world's greatest cultural centers."
[31]
Holdings
The collections of the Library of Congress include more than 32 million cataloged books and other print materials in 470 languages; more than 61 million
manuscripts; the largest rare book collection
[32] in North America, including the rough draft of the
Declaration of Independence, a
Gutenberg Bible (originating from the
St. Blaise Abbey, Black Forest) (one of only three perfect
vellum copies known to exist);
[33][34][35] over 1 million
U.S. government publications; 1 million issues of world newspapers spanning the past three centuries; 33,000 bound newspaper volumes; 500,000
microfilm reels; over 6,000 titles in all, totaling more than 120,000 issues comic book
[36] titles; films; 5.3 million
maps; 6 million works of
sheet music; 3 million
sound recordings; more than 14.7 million prints and photographic images including fine and popular art pieces and architectural drawings;
[37] the
Betts Stradivarius; and the
Cassavetti Stradivarius.
The Library developed a system of book classification called
Library of Congress Classification (LCC), which is used by most US research and
university libraries.
The Library serves as a legal repository for
copyright protection and
copyright registration, and as the base for the
United States Copyright Office. Regardless of whether they register their copyright, all publishers are required to submit two complete copies of their published works to the Library—this requirement is known as
mandatory deposit.
[38] Nearly 22,000 new items published in the U.S. arrive every business day at the Library. Contrary to popular belief, however, the Library does not retain all of these works in its permanent collection, although it does add an average of 10,000 items per day. Rejected items are used in trades with other libraries around the world, distributed to federal agencies, or donated to schools, communities, and other organizations within the United States.
[39] As is true of many
similar libraries, the Library of Congress retains copies of every publication in the English language that is deemed significant.
The Library of Congress states that its collection fills about 838 miles (1,349 km) of bookshelves, while the
British Library reports about 388 miles (624 km) of shelves.
[40][41] The Library of Congress holds more than 155.3 million items with more than 35 million books and other print materials, against approximately 150 million items with 25 million books for the British Library.
[40][41] A 2000 study by information scientists
Peter Lyman and
Hal Varian suggested that the amount of uncompressed
textual data represented by the 26 million books then in the collection was 10
terabytes.
[42]
The Library makes millions of digital objects, comprising tens of
petabytes, available at its
American Memory site. American Memory is a source for
public domain image resources, as well as audio, video, and archived Web content. Nearly all of the lists of holdings, the
catalogs of the library, can be consulted directly on its web site. Librarians all over the world consult these catalogs, through the Web or through other media better suited to their needs, when they need to catalog for their collection a book published in the United States. They use the
Library of Congress Control Number to make sure of the exact identity of the book.
The Library of Congress also provides an online archive of the proceedings of the
U.S. Congress at
THOMAS, including bill text,
Congressional Record text, bill summary and status, the Congressional Record Index, and the
United States Constitution.
The Library also administers the
National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, an audio book and
braille library program provided to more than 766,000 Americans.
The Library of Congress is physically housed in three buildings on Capitol Hill and a conservation center in rural
Virginia. The Library's Capitol Hill buildings are all connected by underground passageways, so that a library user need pass through security only once in a single visit. The library also has off-site storage facilities for less commonly requested materials.
Thomas Jefferson Building
The Thomas Jefferson Building is located between
Independence Avenue and East Capitol Street on First Street SE. It first opened in 1897 as the main building of the Library and is the oldest of the three buildings. Known originally as the Library of Congress Building or Main Building, it took its present name June 13, 1980.
John Adams Building
The John Adams Building is located between Independence Avenue and East Capitol Street on 2nd Street SE, the block adjacent to the Jefferson Building. The building was originally built simply as an annex to the Jefferson Building. It opened its doors to the public January 3, 1939.
James Madison Memorial Building
The James Madison Memorial Building is located between First and Second Streets on Independence Avenue SE. The building was constructed from 1971 to 1976, and serves as the official memorial to President James Madison.
The Madison Building is also home to the Mary Pickford Theater, the "motion picture and television reading room" of the Library of Congress. The theater hosts regular free screenings of classic and contemporary movies and television shows.
Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation
The Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation is the Library of Congress's newest building, opened in 2007 and located in
Culpeper, Virginia.
[43] It was constructed out of a former
Federal Reserve storage center and
Cold War bunker. The campus is designed to act as a single site to store all of the library's movie, television, and sound collections. It is named to honor
David Woodley Packard, whose
Packard Humanities Institute oversaw design and construction of the facility. The centerpiece of the complex is a reproduction
Art Deco movie theater that presents free movie screenings to the public on a semi-weekly basis.
[44]
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
The Library of Congress, through both the Librarian of Congress and the Register of Copyrights, is responsible for authorizing exceptions to
Section 1201 of
Title 17 of the United States Code as part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This process is done every three years, with the Register receiving proposals from the public and acting as an advisor to the Librarian, who issues a ruling on what is exempt. After three years have passed, the ruling is no longer valid and a new ruling on exemptions must be made.
[45][46]
Access
The library is open for academic research to anyone with a Reader Identification Card. One may not remove library items from the reading rooms or the library buildings.
Since 1902, American libraries have been able to request books and other items through
interlibrary loan from the Library of Congress if these items are not readily available elsewhere. Through this system, the Library of Congress has served as a "library of last resort", according to former Librarian of Congress
Herbert Putnam.
[9] The Library of Congress lends books to other libraries with the stipulation that they be used only inside the borrowing library.
[47]
Standards
In addition to its library services, the Library of Congress is also actively involved in various standard activities in areas related to bibliographical and search and retrieve standards. Areas of work include
MARC standards,
METS,
Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS),
Z39.50 and
Search/Retrieve Web Service (SRW), and
Search/Retrieve via URL (SRU).
[citation needed]
The
Law Library of Congress seeks to further legal scholarship by providing opportunities for scholars and practitioners to conduct significant legal research. Individuals are invited to apply for projects which would further the multi-faceted mission of the Law Library in serving the U.S. Congress, other governmental agencies, and the public.
[48]
