Talk:Library of Congress

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Peer review This Langlit article has been selected for Version 0.5 and subsequent release versions of Wikipedia. It has been rated B-Class on the assessment scale (comments).
News This article has been cited as a source by a media organization. See the 2006 press source article for details.

The citation is in: John L. Hart (associate editor) (March, 11 2006). "Digitizing hastens at microfilm vault".  LDS Church News (published by the Deseret Morning News). |}

Contents

[edit] Contradiction

This article mentions 2005 plans to digitize books, and then later says there are no plans to digitize books.128.252.20.65 16:45, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Second largest library in the world?

In every encyclopedia i have seen (britannica etc), the LOC is listed as the largest library in the world, much larger than the British Library which is according to this article the largest. Can anyone clarify this? --Jb849

re: largest library... 6th Feb, 2006: I think it very much varies depending on what you're counting. I think on total items, the British Library wins outright by a fair margin, owing to the vast amounts of newspapers and historical items that are held. I have heard both referred to as 'the largest' in various sources. The LOC states on its website it holds 130 million items, 'making it the largest in the world'... but the British Library states it holds 150 million items. So, as you say in the States, go figure! Having been to both, I prefer the BL!

Well to take the term in it's literal sense, the "largest library" would be the Library of Congress, while the British Library would be perhaps the most extensive or one that houses the most books. Zchris87v 07:56, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Unpublished books in Library of Congress

The Library of Congress, which you cited previously, contains a great number of otherwise unpublished books. --Kat

Is this really true (I'm not saying it isn't, I'm just somewhat surprised -- is it common for actual books, not just unpublished manuscripts, to have their only copies in the Library of Congress? They are going to be deposited here if copyrighted, but would there really be only one or two copies of a book printed and bound?)? --Daniel C. Boyer 18:28, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Yes. There were once printing houses that specialized in publishing three copies of a book, most often a Ph.D. thesis: one for the author, one for the library of the sponsoring institution, and one for the LOC. They would print the sheets, have them bound up in batches of three each of hundreds of different books at a time with blank covers, and then heat-stamp the title and author on each cover by hand. The practice may have changed with the advent of desktop publishing. Having a book bound in short runs isn't the enormous expense one might think, it's just expensive on a per-copy basis. It's been five or ten years since I last checked prices, but one of the outfits I used to write for would usually order books 25 at a time because we were constantly revising the content. They had a stock cover in color, that they ordered 10,000 at a time and never changed. It was overprinted with the title and so forth for each run, then laminated. Then the cover and sheets were bound with a wire-o, the twin-wire sort of spiral binding. I think a run of 25 ended up costing around $300 or so, and most of that was setup charges. --Kat 19:18, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Thank you for this very interesting information about a practice and possibility I was completely unaware of (though I'd heard of the more recent development of these outfits where you can print books on demand, a copy at a time). --Daniel C. Boyer 13:35, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)


[edit] City of the Library of Congress

Where does the article mention the actual city where the library is located??

Good point - it's in Washington DC, but that's not mentioned. --→Raul654 12:55, Apr 29, 2004 (UTC)
The location has since been updated in the article Beamer 18:58, 27 March 2006 (UTC)Beam-er

[edit] Size in bytes of Library of Congress

Could one clarify what is meant by the 20 terabytes figure being "misleading" as to the total information content of the LoC? Is this because the non-print portions of the LoC would require far more data size to store? If so, is there an estimate available for what the total amount of storage needed for the entire LoC would be? Perhaps this is not a meaningful question, but nevertheless the current paragraph is a bit confusing. Terry 18:39, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

IMHO the misleading element is the presumed equivalence between a book and its contents in pure ASCII text, which is absurd on its face. Also, the Library's content includes a tremendous amount of non-book stuff, including easily 20 TB of digital data. For that matter, the Library has Stradivarius violins -- how much information content would you need for one of those? My point is that the 20 TB number is glib and ultimately without meaning, despite its being oft repeated. I'm keen to find a better way to express that thought, but what I'm trying to achieve is stopping the misleading meme that LC == 20TB. --AndyBoyko 15:49, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The sentence after the 20GB information seems to be part of the argument as to why it is false, but is actually totally unrelated (as I read it?). Perhaps some more could be added to why the 20GB is a false assumption, and turned into a separate paragraph?. --Wombat 05:30, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)
Pedantic nit, but ASCII has little to do with the above discussion. --Ambarish 07:01, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Library of Congress website texts in public domain?

Are texts from Library of Congress websites in public domain, so are they free to copy them to Wikipedia? example: Myrtle Hill Cemetery. --Darwin 14:52, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Yes (generally speaking). All works authored by the U.S. Government are in the public domain, and the LoC is part of the U.S. Government. I suppose it's possible, but unlikely, that the Library of Congress would post something on its website that is copyrighted by another author (presumably with that author's permission), so it would be wise to check for any such indication before copying. -RussBlau 17:02, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)


[edit] National Library (or not)

I deleted the sentence that read "The Library of Congress is one of four official national libraries of the United States (along with the National Library of Medicine, National Agricultural Library, and National Archives and Records Administration)." No source was provided for this statement. To the contrary, the LOC's own history (which is linked from this page) describes it as the "de facto national library" but stresses that it does not have that official designation. Please don't revert this unless you can provide a source for the information. --RussBlau 19:01, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Longest Library Building?

Can anyone please tell me the actual length of the building itself?

65.205.28.100 (talk) 15:15, 28 March 2008 (UTC) Hi. Actually, the Library of Congress has three builings in the neighborhood of the U.S. Capitol. I volunteer at the Jefferson Building, which houses the beautiful Main Reading Room and is open to public tours. The other two buldings are the Adams and the Madison. Additionally, there is a facility in the Fort Meade, Maryland, area that houses several million items from the collection. So, the library is not one single building.

[edit] John Adams Building

(Note: Between April 13, 1976 and June 13, 1980, the John Adams Building was known as the Thomas Jefferson Building.)

Since there was a question raised about the above note in the text, I 'll give a fuller explanation here here, tho I think it's too much detail for the article itself. Before 1976, the John Adams Building was simply known as the Library of Congress Annex. In conjuction with the bicentiential, Congress named the annex building the Thomas Jefferson Building, but four years later, as the Madison building was nearing completion, they decided to name all three of the buildings after ex-Presidents and they decided to give Jefferson's name to the original building which until then had just been the Library of Congress building, and the Annex received its current name of the John Adams Building. Since which building of the Libray of Congress is the Thomas Jefferson Building depends upon when the source describing it was written, I thought including the note important, but not so important as to rate a full paragraph in the article. (If we had an article about the John Adams Building, the full exposition would be warranted, but I can't see any reason we would want to do so.) --Caerwine 23:31, 1 November 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Permanent collection

"Contrary to popular belief, however, the Library does not retain all of these works in its permanent collection, although it does add an average of 10,000 items per day."

The LOC FAQ says 7,000 per day. Where did the 10,000 figure come from? And what happens to the items that are not added to the permanent collection? — mjb 09:30, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Ah, I see on their Fascinating Facts page they say 10,000 per day, and it also explains what happens to rejected items. I will add info to the article. — mjb 09:34, 13 November 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Copyright

The section referenced above also mentions that an author has to "submit two copies of their works to the Library." But I had understood that this held true only when copyright was opt-in, but when the Sonny Bono copyright act passed in the '70s or whenever, copyright was made automatic and opt-in, obviously implying that works need not be submitted to the LoC. What's up with this? --maru (talk) Contribs 20:49, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

You are correct, the sentence only applies if you want a registered copyright. For that, the United States Copyright Office still requires two copies, but doesn't mention whether they go to the LoC. Algae 10:34, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Retention of works

I once heard that the only items the LoC is legally bound to retain are original manuscripts in the author's hands ("holographs", I think they are called); i this true or just an urban legend? --maru (talk) Contribs 20:56, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Amount of data at the LoC website ?

It would be interesting to edit something about the data (type, amount) available on line. I'll try later, if you have time, please take the job. --DLL 12:34, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I must be a glutten for punishment, but have found the LOC Web site a most unique challenge. I would love to try and kill a couple of birds with one stone, in trying to master the compexity of the website and present my findings at the dictionary, but I am most curious as to where one would place such a huge amount of information, which would mainly consist of links, with detailed expalnation, I believe. Any suggestions?

I am thinking a new catagory would need to be made about the website. Beamer 19:09, 27 March 2006 (UTC)(Talk)Beam_er

The problem with making a web-only category is that part of the point of the LoC website is to be a portal to the physical collections of the library itself. I think the first step would be to see which major products of the website do and don't have wikipedia articles. We could then write new articles and flech out existing ones as needed. American Memory, for example, is a pretty enormous undertaking with a fairly stubby page. At that point, it might be easier to see if a page needed to be dedicated to mapping explicitly the resources available on their website, and to annotating the resources that don't deserve pages of their own.
I don't think it's wikipedia's job to advertise or site map the LoC online collections for the library, but to present the site's notable aspects in a clear fashion. If we provide all the information a user needs to navigate the website I think we've probably done far too much -- but a collection like American Memory is notable and should be discussed as such, as is a resource such as the online mapping of Library of Congress Subject Headings. Deborah-jl Talk 20:04, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
Well, Good. Because a site map with explanation was what I was looking at, primarily. Is it just me or is the LOC a rather difficult place to manuver around in? Just trying to figure out the photography section with it's very odd search tool is quite a challenge, at least for me. So we are looking for something along the lines of the American Memory cllection to present here?
Any Idea of how many collections like this there might be? Beamer 15:21, 28 March 2006 (UTC)Beam_er
OK, I just checked on the list of collections just in the American Memory collection. Might it be easier to just link each collection within the American Memory collection to each matching article in the Wikipedia rather than to create another catagory for this monster? This nation is blessed with a huge amount of stored information, but it is a bit of a double edged sword in this regard. Beamer 15:48, 28 March 2006 (UTC) Beam_er
I think Linking from within the American memory article to the appropriate articles is exactly the right thing to do. Then the Library of Congress page can have a section which links to some of the top level articles, like Library of Congress subject headings and American memory, as an example of resources available electronically. Deborah-jl Talk 16:56, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
Ok, the task is underhand. It shall be a slow go, for the real world calls. But I shall soon have links tied into the American Memory Collection of the Library of Congress all through out the wikipedia. It shall reign supreme and other collections from, uhm, other places will bow down and flee in terror. Muah HA HA HA mUah hA Beamer 15:39, 30 March 2006 (UTC) Beamer

[edit] Citing sources?

I may have missed it, and if so, my apologies, but it looks like this article is basically lifting huge chunk of text from the www.loc.gov site without citing the source. Bad practice. --Jxh2154 16:56, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Could you be more specific? --maru (talk) contribs 17:43, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Units

~530 miles (850 km) vs. the British Library's ~625 km (388 miles)

I changed the above to put the same units in brackets and the same units not within brackets. This was quickly changed back. I understand that those are the measurements used by each library but i dont think that is important. What is important that the point in put across, which is that the British library is smaller. It is quite confusing when reading the sentence to understand the difference is size, because at first glance the british library looks bigger - 530 vs. 625. What do other people think? Wright123 21:20, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Wright123. I reverted your edit (as I have done in the past) since this first paragraph has been a point of contention for some time, and has erupted in reversion wars before. The argument has always been between which library is "largest", the LOC or the British Library. In an attempt to resolve this issue, I added the reference to the Guinness Book of Records a few weeks back, and added the actual sizes (shelf-space) provided on each libraries FAQ page. Each library only gives their size in customary units, so I had to provide parenthetical conversions to make the comparison easier. I chose to put the conversion for each in parenthesis, since in each case this is the interpreted number. The first listed number is the one provided by the institution. This seems to make sense to me, and others can't claim that someone is attempting to metricate an article on a US institution, nor that someone is using an antiquated measurement system arbitrarily (both of these charges have been made in earlier reversion disputes.)Pixel23 21:51, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Unless anyone has anything to add, im happy to leave it as it is with the units as they are listed by the institutions. I don't think it helps people understand the article but i understand why you think it is easier to leave it that way. Thanks Wright123 20:22, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
I think it makes sense to leave them as stated by the respective libraries. I'm going to take this sentence out of the introduction and move it farther down in the article, though, since it's getting very detailed. --Russ Blau (talk) 20:29, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
It was a good idea to move it. Wright123 22:12, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Excellent compromise, Russ. Thanks for making the change.Pixel23 00:57, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What?

Does anyone else find the following confusing?

The Library currently has no plans for systematic digitization of any significant portion of its books.

The Library makes millions of digital objects, comprising tens of terabytes, available at its American Memory site. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 74.229.48.186 (talk • contribs) 01:10, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

not really, its the word books you should be looking at, its pretty blates to be honest

[edit] Significant work or not?

Who decides whether a work of the 20,000 something works submitted to LoC daily is significant or not (which leads to LoC keeping this work or not), and what are these decisions based on? --Abdull 14:48, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Most important library in the world

This strikes me as odd: It is one of the largest and most important libraries in the world.

What makes the Library of Congress one of the most important in the world? Even if it is the largest in the world, why would it be more important than any other? --Soetermans 19:07, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

  • (Please add new topics to the end of the page.) Well, it certainly is one of the largest in the world; I don't think anyone disputes that, regardless of any quibbles over the precise measurements. And I think most serious researchers agree that it is among the most important in terms of the breadth and depth of its collections. If anyone has a reference to support this, it would be appreciated. (Note that I'm saying it is one of the most important; it would be fairly controversial to remove the highlighted words!) --Russ (talk) 21:15, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Whoops, sorry. --Soetermans 23:48, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Anyone can check out books

  • I removed However, only members of Congress, Supreme Court Justices, their staff, Library of Congress staff and certain other government officials can actually check out books. because it isn't true! 69.123.10.127 21:42, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
What do you mean it's not true? Can you be more specific? Certainly the vast majority of people cannot check out books; they have to use them right there.140.147.160.78 14:58, 22 February 2007 (UTC)Stephen Kosciesza
Hi. I volunteer at the Library of Congress, and I can clarify this issue. Anyone who is 18 and older (or "above high school age," as the official guidance states) with a photo ID can obtain a Reader card. This enables people to access the library's reading rooms and use library materials (books, maps, letters, photos, etc.). However, only members of Congress and other specially designated groups can actually remove material from the reading rooms and the building. So, if "check out" means that you can remove the book from the building, than it is true that only certain groups of people can check out books. However, if "check out" means to obtain an item for personal research, then anyone can check out an item--provided that they don't remove the items from the reading room. Does this help clarify the issue? Perhaps the term "check out" should not be used in this article. 65.205.28.100 (talk) 17:58, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Digitizing of books

The article states that there are no plans to digitize any portion of the library's holdings, but this may not be strictly true anymore considering this press release: [http://loc.gov/today/pr/2007/07-020.html].Danny 01:18, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Category indexing

  • User:Gwern added a comment at the bottom of the page: <!-- Is there any particular rhyme or reason behind which ones are categorized as "Library of Congress" as opposed to "Congress, Library of"? -->
  • I think there is; "Congress, Library of" is used in two categories that compile articles about libraries. It seems reasonable to assume that those categories will contain many, many articles starting with the word "Library" and therefore that the articles ought to be indexed by a different word. [Although this assumption doesn't seem to be borne out in reality.] The remaining categories aren't library-specific so there doesn't seem to be any reason to alphabetize them in other than the normal way. --Russ (talk) 10:07, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Biggest

which is da biggest library? LoC, Russian State Library or an other? -- Tank you! 172.178.248.186

[edit] L.O.C.I.S - Library of Congress Information System

Should the Library of Congress Information System be mentioned or at least have a link? It is the most up-to-date database that the public can use to search for the status of a copyrighted works registered for copyright including books, films, music, maps, sound recordings, software, multimedia kits, drawings, periodicals, magazines, journals, newspapers, posters, sculpture, etc. in the United States since 1978. It runs on the good old fashioned telnet from the Library of Congress' website. (What people used before the internet and still use for remote connections.) It is located at telnet://locis.loc.gov
PS: It also has Documents relating to copyright ownership, such as name changes and transfers. To use the system type your respone (not shown) and press enter. ex. 1, enter, 6, enter, 1, enter, google, enter, display item 4, displays this result

VAu-697-192                  (COHM)        ITEM 4 OF 4 IN SET 1
TITL: Google : Logo design of Google.
NOTE: Cataloged from appl. only.
CLNA: acMarie  Shirato , 1970-
DCRE: 2005           DREG: 19Jan06
ECIF: 5/S

It can be used at any PC out of the box with a internet connection. Im not sure about a mac though. I think you have to click a couple of oks like any program that trys to connect to the internet for the first time, because of Windows built in firewall- Hamster2.0 02:35, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

It works on Macs. ALTON .ıl 08:21, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] semicolons

these semicolons are used incorrectly —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.77.20.155 (talk) 21:41, June 8, 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Clarify

“ ...it is the largest by shelf space and one of the most important libraries in the world. (line 2) ”

What does that mean? ALTON .ıl 08:20, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

The issue here is many US museums and cultural institutions lay claim to the largest, longest, highest, widest, biggest, tallest...these are unnecessary additions, without support are defunct. Previously the article laid claim to the LoC being the largest library in the world, however in terms of objects, the British Library is the largest and though the LoC has a massive collection it's claim to fame as the largest derives from the shelf space availble to house current and potential books not acutally from the number of objects housed.
ImperialCollegeGrad 08:44, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
Hmm, I don't think use of superlatives is a uniquely American thing, after all, isn't Windsor Castle "the oldest royal residence still in use"? I think the difference in size is a matter of occupied shelf space (with thousands of books on the floor, there's little "potential" space left at LC). Where the BL has more discrete volumes than LC, LC's fewer number of volumes occupy more physical space. I think this correlates with what I've heard about BL's retention policy, BL is required to keep everything it receives on copyright deposit, where LC isn't. Put another way, if x has ten two-page pamphlets and y has one 500 page monograph, who has the larger collection? It depends on what you're counting. Sumergocognito 02:34, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Calling it "one of the most important" libraries in the world seems fine...I mean, I doubt anyone would disagree that it is. The statement isn't saying that there arn't other important ones. Travis Cleveland (talk) 15:58, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Details Requested

To mention such scant details of each of the three library building seems almost pointless. It would be a tremendous improvement to mention which collections are housed in each building, and who is allowed access to each. Also, in the article there is little information provided regarding the different collections; this seems an important detail especially in the midst of claims of being the largest and/or most important library in the world. Please provide these details. Supertouch (talk) 18:31, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Conflicting Sentence

In the section "Weakening", a sentence reads "Joseph Henry...favored the Library of Congress' development into the national library." However, from the context, it is clear that Henry was AGAINST that. Perhaps the sentence should state that he favored the Smithsonian's development into the national library. Just FYI. 67.76.160.217 (talk) 04:19, 24 April 2008 (UTC)