Goldens on the Road: The Library that beats them all!

I really love libraries and book stores - like many of you I love to read! So when we visited the Library of Congress .... well, WOW! It isn't 'wow' just because it has the most novels, history books (well, OK, it has lots of those!!) romance, mysteries, children's books and many other books normally found in our libraries and book stores, although it does.

No, it is 'wow' because of the beauty of the building as well as the history of our government and country's growth and the fact that The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, with more than 162 million items on approximately 838 miles of bookshelves. The collections include more than 38 million books and other print materials, 3.6 million recordings, 14 million photographs, 5.5 million maps, 7.1 million pieces of sheet music and 70 million manuscripts!!

Pictured here is the round desk that is located in the center of the Library on the main floor. Although there is a huge amount of the Libraries Collections on the shelves of the main floor, much more is on lower floors and in special exhibit rooms located around the Library.

The Library possesses approximately 100 extremely rare children's books, including “The Children's New Play-Thing” (Philadelphia, 1763) and “The Children's Bible” (Philadelphia, 1763).

The smallest book in the Library of Congress is “Old King Cole.” It is 1/25” x 1/25”, or about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. Not sure how anyone, even those with 20/20 vision, can read it though!

The Collections include the receipt of some 15,000 items each working day, of which they add approximately 12,000 items to the collections daily. Included are International Collections, Foreign Languages, African and Middle Eastern Materials, Asian Materials,

European, Iberian, Latin American and Caribbean Materials.

It contains a Law Library, Rare Books and Manuscripts, Children's Books, the Smallest and the Largest Book, the Oldest Example of Printing, Presidential Papers, The Gutenberg Bible, Prints and Photographs, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound,

Music, American Folk Life Center and Veterans History Project. The Library contains Digital Talking Books, Cartography, Telephone Directories, Comic Books and Newspapers, Scientific and Technical Information.