Caring for America's Library
Institutional Growing Pains
Congress established the Library in 1800 when it was moving to the new capital city of Washington from Philadelphia. An act of April 24 creating the Library appropriated five thousand dollars "for the purchase of such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress." The books were to be housed in "a suitable apartment" in the Capitol, and a joint congressional committee was to oversee the purchase of books, furnish a catalog, and "devise and establish" the Library's regulations.3 Thomas Jefferson, in particular, took a keen interest in the new institution. Originally the Library of Congress (LC) was a library that could be used only by the members of Congress and the Justices of the Supreme Court. During the first dozen years of the Library's existence, the first Librarian of Congress acquired some 3,000 volumes covering a broad range of topics for use by this small constituency.
Following the British burning of the Capitol Building during the War of 1812 and the subsequent loss of original library collections housed there, the Congressional reference library was replaced by a single transaction when Congress in 1814 authorized the purchase of Thomas Jefferson's entire multilingual library of 6,487 volumes for $23,940. It contained volumes on everything from architecture to geography and the sciences. Anticipating the argument that his collection might seem too wide-ranging for Congress, Jefferson said that there was "no subject to which a Member of Congress might not have occasion to refer."4 The collections grew slowly, as did the number of people who had access to the facility, although use of the Library was still basically reserved for legislators, the diplomatic corps, and senior members of the three branches of the U.S. government. Then, on Christmas eve 1851, a major fire devastated the holdings of the Library.
Librarian Meehan wrote to Senator Pearce of Maryland, Chairman of the Joint Committee on the Library: "It is my melancholy duty to inform you that a fire originated in the principal room of the Library of Congress this morning, about half past seven o'clock, and that nearly everything in the room was destroyed before the flames were subdued."5 The fire destroyed about 35,000 of the Library's 55,000 volumes, including nearly two-thirds of Jefferson's library. Two days later the House of Representatives approved a joint resolution authorizing an investigation into the origin of the fire.6 Three days after the incident Architect of the Capitol Thomas U. Walter reported that the fire was caused by faulty chimney flues.7 Funds were appropriated shortly to replace the lost books and to construct a new facility exclusively for the Library.
The arrival in 1864 of Ainsworth Rand Spofford as the Librarian of Congress heralded a new era in having the Library meet its mandate of being a resource center for legislators. Limited funds were not to deter him from bringing in "oceans of books and rivers of information." Spofford seized upon copyright registration as a great opportunity for expanding the Library's collections at no added cost to the Library. In 1870, his lobbying efforts paid off. The law was changed to require that anyone claiming a copyright on any book, map, chart, dramatic or musical composition, engraving, cut, print, or photograph or negative must submit two copies to the Library. In the first 25 years after this revision was passed, the Library gained 371,636 books, 257,153 magazines, 289,617 pieces of music, 73,817 photographs, 95,249 prints, and 48,048 maps. And this flow of free material has continued unabated over the years.
Spofford also inspired a law that gave the Library many free copies of the Congressional Record and the Statutes at Large of the United States. He parlayed these into an exchange program with foreign governments that had diplomatic relations with the nation at that time. As a result, the Library has the largest and most complete collection of government documentation in the world. In addition to these creative approaches to expanding the Library's holdings and access, Spofford paid heed to traditional methods of acquiring material through donations from collectors and purchases.
As might be expected, all available space was soon utilized. By the mid-1870s, the situation had reached crisis proportions. Shelving was no longer done in an orderly manner. The construction of a separate building (now known as the Jefferson Building) for the Library, begun in 1886 and finished in 1897, solved for about 35 years the physical problem of housing the collections and provided reading rooms and research and exhibition areas for the first time for the general public. "The Annex" (now the Adams Building) constructed during the 1930s afforded additional storage space and work rooms when the volume of material once again outgrew the available space.
Crowded
Library in the Capitol, 1890
A Congressional directive during the 1960s that the Library acquire "all library materials currently published throughout the world which are of value to scholarship" resulted in ever increasing augmentation of the Library of Congress' yearly receipts, to the point that now over 2.5 million items are processed each year. Again, the physical problems imposed by the increasing quantity of material and the greater number of staff members needed to process and serve the incoming receipts were dealt with by the construction of another building.
The third structure -- the Madison Building -- was occupied in 1980. It houses the Law Library and many of the Library's management and staff operations, including the Librarian's Office, the Congressional Research Service, and the Copyright Office. In addition to the Preservation Directorate, components of the Office of the Associate Librarian for Library Services that are housed here are the Acquisitions Directorate, the Cataloging Directorate, and some of the custodial divisions of the Public Service Collections Directorate, including the Manuscript Division; the Prints and Photographs Division; the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division; and the Music Division.
Concurrent with the matter of adequately housing an ever increasing volume of library materials, the problem of preserving these resources obviously came into focus. The Library's 119 million items (including 18 million books, 2 million recordings, 12 million photographs, 4 million maps, and 53 million manuscripts) "cover more than 530 miles of shelf space and include research materials in more than 450 languages and almost all media through which knowledge and creativity are preserved and communicated."8 The vast quantity of the holdings, along with the tremendous variety of formats and materials and the uniqueness of many of its items, makes tackling the Library of Congress' preservation needs a particularly stimulating and highly challenging proposition.
Notes:
3. 2 U.S. Statutes at Large, 55.
4. James H. Billington, "Statement of James H. Billington, The Librarian of Congress, before the Committee on Rules and Administration, United States Senate, March 20, 1997." Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress, 1997. Appendix B: p. 105. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1998.
5. Library of Congress Archives, Librarians' Letterbooks, John S. Meehan to James A. Pearce, December 24, 1851.
6. Congressional Globe, December 26, 1851, 32/1:153-54. Coincidentally, the same day, the House changed its wording from "the National Library" to "the Library of Congress."
7. Washington Republic, December 27, 1851.
8. James H. Billington, "Statement of James H. Billington, The Librarian of Congress, before the Committee on Rules and Administration, United States Senate, March 20, 1997,." Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress, 1997. Appendix B: p. 108. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1998; and Fascinating Facts About the Library of Congress, from The Library Today on LC's web site <http://www.loc.gov/today> (7/5/2000).