About this Reading Room
The Science & Business Reading Room at the Library of Congress serves as the gateway for science, engineering, business, and economics research. Science and business specialists serve the Library’s mission to engage, inspire and inform researchers both in-person and online, covering topics from cooking to corporate histories, energy to transportation, and oceanography to outer space.
The Science and Business Reading Room's reference collection includes over 45,000 self-service volumes of specialized books, encyclopedias, dictionaries, handbooks, directories, histories, and biographies to help researchers get started on their science or business research. Business topics such as U.S. and international business and industry, small business, real estate, management and labor, finance and investment, insurance, money and banking, commerce, public finance and economics and science topics such engineering, mathematics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, biology, cooking, medicine, earth sciences, agriculture, military science and naval science are well represented in the reference collection.
Located in the Library of Congress John Adams Building, the Science & Business Reading Room is open to the general public with an active reader card. We are a service point to the general collections, special format materials, technical reports, standards, and specialized archival collections, in addition to a large number of subscription databases. From the Library’s website, researchers anywhere in the world can access science & business research guides, webinars, and digitized collections, and discover more through the Inside Adams blog.