What are some of the top facts about the Library of Congress?
• The Library was founded in 1800, making it the oldest federal cultural institution in the nation. • The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, with more than 134 million items on approximately 530 miles of bookshelves. The collections include more than 32 million books and other printed materials, 2.8 million recordings, 12.5 million photographs, 5.3 million maps, 5.5 million music items and 59.5 million manuscripts. • Approximately half of the Library’s book and serial collections are in languages other than English. Some 460 languages are represented in the collections. • The Law Library of Congress is the world’s largest law library, with some 2.5 million items, including one of the world’s best rare law book collections and the most complete collection of foreign legal gazettes in the United States. The Law Library contains United States congressional publications dating back to the nation’s founding. • The Library of Congress has one of the largest and most div
