Though it is better known as "the national library" and "the world's largest library," in 1942, Lucy Salamanca, a Library employee, wrote "Fortress of Freedom: The Story of the Library of Congress." Salamanca wrote with a strong sense of the importance of the institution as a beacon of knowledge and haven for the written word during a significant time in its history, 1939-1953.

Gertrude Clarke Whittall is one of the Library's great patrons. In 1935 she presented her collection of five Stradivari instruments to the Library and also set up the Gertrude Clarke Whittall Foundation to encourage musical events at the Library. In 1950 she established the Gertrude Clarke Whittall Poetry and Literature Fund and furnished the Poetry Room in the Library's Thomas Jefferson Building.

Archibald MacLeish, journalist, lawyer, playwright and poet, served as Librarian of Congress from 1939 until 1944. During his tenure he reorganized the Library and increased its services to Congress and the nation. MacLeish also created the famous "Canons of Service," which specifies that service to Congress, the federal establishment and the American public constitutes the Library's reason for being.

Cândido Portinari is the Brazilian artist who painted the four colorful murals in the vestibule of the Hispanic Reading Room.

And, of course, there is Salamanca, who wrote in her book that, "in a world fighting desperately against the savage inroads of a philosophy of force, its power is great, its obligation sacred to protect the integrity of the written word. Husbanding and dispensing here at home the fruits of man's culture and the written record of man's past, it finds itself at the same time called upon to offer sanctuary to the driven exiled scholars of other lands. These obligations it never knew in the past. And who could foresee such incredible necessities?"