LIBRARY OF CONGRESS-Short Notes- Important Facts (Establishment : April 24, 1800 )

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

About :

Library of Congress is the largest library in the World and Oldest library in USA. The Library of Congress is the research library that officially serves the United States congress and is the National library of United State.

Establishment : April 24, 1800

Located :Washington, DC ,USA

Librarian of Congress: Carla Hayden (First Woman Librarian )

The Library is Housed in Three Buildings The Thomas Jefferson Building (1897) is the original separate Library of Congress building. The John Adams Building was built in 1938 and the James Madison Memorial Building was completed in 1981.on Capitol Hill On Washington DC. it also maintains the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Virginia. ts buildings are maintained by the architect of the Capitol. Its "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.

The library's primary mission is to research inquiries made by members of Congress, carried out through the Congressional Research Service. The library is open to the public, although only high-ranking government officials and library employees may check out books and materials.

John Adams Building

James Madison building

Thomas Jafferson Building

History:

The Library of Congress was subsequently 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. 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 the librarian of Congress and establishing a Joint Committee on the Library to regulate and oversees it .In 24 Aug.1814 during the War of 1812 The Library Collection of 3000 Volume was destroyed. To rebuild the Library’s Collection on 30 jan1815 approved the Purchase of former President Thomas Jafferson’s Personal Library.

On 1851 another fire destroyed the second Third Part of Collection After the American Civil War, the Library of Congress grew rapidly in both size and importance, which sparked a campaign to purchase replacement copies for volumes that had been burned. The library received the right of transference of all copyrighted works to deposit two copies of books, maps, illustrations, and diagrams printed in the United States. It also began to build its collections, and its development culminated between 1888 and 1894 with the construction of a separate, extensive library building across the street from the Capitol.

The Reading Room : The Library Of Congress

Librarian of Congress Ainsworth Spofford was the First to purpose that the library be moved to a dedicating building. He was also Instrumental in accepting the Copyright law og 1870 which placed the copyright office in the Library of Congress and required any one seeking a copyright to provides two copies of the work- books pamphlets, maps, Photographs Music, and Prints to Library.

Librarian Of Congress :

John James Beckley (1802-1807)
Patrick Magruder (1807-1815)
Georg Watterston (1815-1829)
John Silva Meehan (1829-1861)
John G. Stephenson (1861-1864)
Ainsworth Rand Spofford (1864-1897)
John Russell Young (1897-1899)
Herbert Putnam (1899-1939)
Archibald MacLeish (1939-1944)
Luther Evans (1945-1953)
Lawrence Quincy Mumford (1954-1974)
Daniel J. Boorstin (1975-1987)
James H. Billington (1987-2015)
Carla Hyden (2016- Present )

Collection :

The Library of Congress today is an Incomparable sources of resources. Of an average workday the Library receives approximately 15000 items and adds approximately 11000 of these to its collection.

Material are also acquired through gift purchases and donations from Private and Other Government Agencies.

Catalogued Books and other Printed materials – 35 Million
Large Type Incunabula- 15 M Approx.
Maps – 5.5 Million
Sheet Music – 6.6 Million
Visual Material – 15.7 Million (Photos, Poster, Drawing)
Manusripts – 68 Million
Moving Image – 18 Million
Total No. of Collection – 168 Million Approx.

It Distributed more than 21 M Copies in Braille, Audiobooks and large Print Articles to More Than 972,526 Visually Impaired and hard of reading Subscriber.

Digitization :

The Library’s first digitization was called “ American Memory” Launched in 1990.

The Project was made official in the Nationa lDigital library Programme created in October 1994.

The Library has kept the “American Memory” name for its Public Domain Website Which Today Contains 15 Million Digital Objects Comprising over 7 Playbeats.

Awards

Poet Loureate
John W. Kluge Prize
Gershiwn Prize
Library of Congress fiction Prize
Library of Congress Literacy Award
National Ambassador for Young People's Literature
Living Legends ( Programme retired by the Carla Hyden in 2018 )

Services :

Acquisitions
Ask a Librarian
Duplication service
Inter library Loan
Cataloguing and Classification
Cooperative Cataloging Programs
Law Library
Library Standards
Library Card (Reader Registration)
Preservation
Linked data service
Publishing
Resource Description & Access

Programme:

American Folklife Center
Center for the Book
Concerts
National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled
World Digital Library
Digital Preservation

Publication :

The Library Of Congress Magazine
Cataloging Newsline.
CONSERline.
Copyright NewsNet.
FLICC Newsletter.
Folklife Center News.
NLS Newsletters.

Access

The library is open for academic research to anyone with a Reader Identification Card. Most of the library's general collection of books and journals are in the closed stacks of the Jefferson and Adams Buildings; specialized collections of books and other materials are in closed stacks in all three main library buildings,

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, Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS), Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS), Z39.50 and Search/Retrieve Web Service (SRW), and Search/Retrieve via URL (SRU).

Conclusion :

Important facts :

The Library of Congress Contains Material in 470 Language other than English.
The largest book in the Library of Congress is a 5-by-7 foot book featuring color images of Bhutan.
The smallest book in the Library of Congress is “Old King Cole.” It is 1/25” x 1/25”, or about the size of the period at the end of this sentence.
One of the oldest examples of printing in the world – passages from a Buddhist sutra, or discourse, printed in 770 A.D. – is housed in the Library’s Asian Division.
The Gutenberg Bible, one of the treasures of the Library of Congress, was purchased in 1930
LCCN – Library Of Congress Control number
Snapshots of The Past – Archieve and Blog founded in 2001 by Jim Lanots.
DPLA – Digital Public Library of America launched on 18 April 2013.
Thomas – First online database , A project of Library of Congress launched in 1995.
“American Memory” became national Digital library in 1994.
The National Book Festival, founded in 2000 with Laura Bush,
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.
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) - first appeared in 1897. The latest 42th edition was published in april 2020.
Library of Congress Classification Scheme (LCC) - The classification was invented by Herbert Putnam in 1897.