25 Aug 2010

Things We Take For Granted:

Things We Take For Granted: The Library of Congress

Full disclosure: When people come to visit my hometown, we have to decide if we’re going to take them to the Big Texan Steak Ranch where they might attempt to eat a 72 ounce steak in one hour or if we’d rather show off the Cadillac Ranch — a collection of spray-painted Cadillac cars buried headlights first in the ground.  As a result of this unique cultural upbringing, I find DC’s collection of museums a beautiful embarrassment of riches.  There are so many things to see and do.  And yet, I often take for granted one of the most amazing buildings in our city:  the Library of Congress.

Did you know that the LOC is the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution as well as the world’s largest library?  Did you know that you are welcome to wander through the amazing building six days a week (it’s closed on Sundays) at no charge? The LOC, like many other amazing libraries around the world (the ancient Library at Alexandria and the Bodlian in Oxford come to mind) is both an amazing physical presence and an idea.  For us, the idea was one of knowledge available to all.

The Library of Congress began when President John Adams set aside $5,000 for creating a library for members of Congress to reference.  That library was burned in 1814.  That’s when Thomas Jefferson came in and convinced the Congress they should pay him $23,950 for the 6,487 books in his personal library.  Jefferson’s books on subjects from legislative practices to foreign languages and agriculture established the precedent that all subjects should be of interest to the members of Congress.  Following the Civil War, Ainsworth Rand Spofford became Librarian of Congress and he took Jefferson’s ideas even further.  Spofford established the copyright law of 1870 requiring all copyright applicants send the Library of Congress two copies of their work.  The Library was inundated.

Spofford campaigned for a new building to house the Library’s constantly growing collection and, in 1886, the Italian Renaissance style design was approved.  General Thomas Lincoln Casey, Chief of the Army Corps of Engineers, was placed in charge of construction in 1888.  In 1892, General Casey’s son, Edward Pearce Casey, began supervising the interior design.   If you’ve never wandered the halls of the Jefferson building, prepare to be amazed.  The Caseys convinced more than 50 American artists and artisans to contribute to the interior design.  There are murals and mosaics.  Sculpted cherubs line the stairwells.  And every bit of it tells a story.  It’s the story of knowledge and books, but also the story of America.  Check out those cherubs — one is a scientist.  Check out the ceiling.  It’s nice and shiny because it’s coated with what was an amazing new element that was predicted to be more precious than gold — aluminum.

So check it out.  There are tours every day and the docents are great.  It’s seldom overrun by eighth graders and there are little rooms with all kinds of smaller exhibits — the Gershwins’ piano and Bob Hope’s joke vault are two of my favorites.  And, no tour is complete without a moment looking around the Reading Room.  You’ll be amazed.

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5 responses to “Things We Take For Granted: The Library of Congress”

  1. Sarah says:

    The LOC is a great place to study, whether you need to use any of the books or just want a quiet spot to work. A reader card is free, and the Jefferson Building’s Main Reading Room is pretty amazing. And they’ve now got free wi-fi.

  2. ET says:

    Full disclosure: I work there….

    Don’t forget the research possibilities!! With a reader registration, ID you can access all the reading room (some like rare book have some restrictions) and the print collections. We also have many subscription databases to help with investing (like Mergent and Morningstar), full-text databases (ABI-Inform and Factiva), and some great resources for historical research (Proquest Historical Newspapers, Sanborn Maps) and many more. We do have free wi-fi so you can do your research on any of these databases on your own computer.

    While this may not be a first stop for high schoolers, undergraduates and graduate students are big users. The Main Reading Room in the Jefferson Bldg, the Science & Business Reading Room on the 5th floor of the Adams Bldg, and the Newspaper & Current Periodical Reading Room on the 1st floor of the Madison Bldg. are all open 6 days a week opening at 8:30 and close at 9:30 on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

  3. Full disclosure: I work there, too.

    LC is also a leader in digitization of public domain works – all freely available online. See: http://www.loc.gov/library/libarch-digital.html for the web-portals of online collections.

    In addition, LC has also linked over 70,000 (and growing) digitized items, through a mass-digitization initiative with Internet Archive. The items are linked directly from the bibliographic records of the individual item in the online catalog: http://catalog.loc.gov – the links currently take one to Internet Archive’s homepage for the item. LC will begin hosting the items sometime in Spring ’11. Users can freely read online or download the full-text-searchable digitized content ranging from U.S. History, Local History, Genealogy and more! It’s a fantastic resource for researchers, K-12 and the merely curious.

    Lastly, LC is also making these digitized items available through print-on-demand with Amazon.com. So, if one wants an item – that’s already been digitized – from LC’s collections in his own collection, one can order a copy through Amazon.com. There are currently about 26,000 items available, with more being added regularly.

  4. The docents are amazing, as are all of the Library’s volunteers! The Library will begin its next docent training on Sept 7. For information, go to http://www.loc.gov/visit/volunteers

    We would love to have you!

  5. S says:

    This is my 3-year old’s favorite building to visit in DC! Something about the spacious, marble floors, murals, etc!

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