Special Library "Visit": the Library of Congress
20 October 2023
Wilson, J. (2023). Library of Congress homepage. [Screenshot]. CC BY-NC-SA.
"What in the world is a special library? Where do you find one of those?"
Perhaps my sentiment wasn’t nursed so irreverently, but when I began to select the libraries I wanted to visit, special libraries and archives still seemed vague, even after reading Rubin and Rubin's comparatively short section about them, even with a little special library located in the very basement of the library I currently work at! Unlike public libraries, which strive to have, well, a very public and accessible presence; or the educational duo, where the nature of schools and universities will almost inevitably lead you to the library; not to mention the fact that the vast majority of people will have used one of the three at least once in their lives—special libraries aren't necessarily so open. This is, due to the nature of some special libraries: "When operating in an entrepreneurial environment, often within private, profit-oriented commercial enterprises, they serve only their special clients or sponsors and market themselves as 'knowledge services' or 'content management services'" (Rubin & Rubin, 2020, pg. 161).
All this simmering in my head, I settled upon what is likely the ur-special library, if not the ur-library for the United States, given that it's the representative library for the entire country: the Library of Congress (LOC), situated in the heart of the nation's capital, Washington D.C. Of course, this close to the deadline, this is not a log of a physical visit to the trio of buildings situated near the capital. I seriously considered making the trek all the way up there at first, but even living as relatively close as I am in South Stafford, the cost and logistics of planning a day trip to DC proved prohibitive.
However! The self-professed "largest library in the world," I reasoned, would surely have a robust online presence for would-be visitors, especially when layfolk with little more than a passing interest in libraries might wonder how the LOC differs from their local library too. To channel this curiosity, I organized my virtual visit around asking some basic questions about the Library of Congress's website and seeing where my site-surfing took me.
No, seriously, what does the Library of Congress even do?
Well, the obvious way to get an idea would be to find a website’s about page. The LOC's homepage has an even larger suite of featured articles and photos and cycling topics taking up three-fourths of the homepage, similar if not a more extreme organization than my chosen academic library's website, yet navigation takes up only a comparatively tiny portion of screen space in just a search bar and a dropdown menu. A link to the Library of Congress's About page is listed in the middle of this menu; clicking it takes a user to a streamlined page with a large welcome letter right up top:
The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, with millions of books, films and video, audio recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps and manuscripts in its collections. The Library is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office.The Library preserves and provides access to a rich, diverse and enduring source of knowledge to inform, inspire and engage you in your intellectual and creative endeavors. Whether you are new to the Library of Congress or an experienced researcher, we have a world-class staff ready to assist you online and in person. (Library of Congress, n.d.-b)
From this, three major aspects of the LOC can be implied: the Library of Congress is primarily a research library with a sizable archive; and that the LOC is directly attached to both Congress, the eponymous two-house lawmaking legislature headquartered just across the street in the U.S. Capitol, and the U.S. Copyright Office. Perhaps the former might seem obvious to more than a few people given that "Congress" is literally in the name, and yet the main About page doesn't give an exact sense of how the LOC's resources contribute to the legislature.
The pages and subpages listed in the About section's leftward navigation have further information about the LOC's history and facilities, spread across three such pages: General Information, Fascinating Facts, and Frequently Asked Questions. Taken together, these pages describe the full extent of the LOC’s operations, way too many to list, but a selection of facts taken from each page begin to paint a better picture of how the LOC services its main patrons. In FY2022, the LOC "Responded to more than 481,000 reference requests from Congress, the public and other federal agencies, including the direct use of Congressional Research Service reports; [and] Issued more than 484,600 copyright registrations and recorded 14,700 documents containing more than 1.1 million works" (Library of Congress, n.d.-e). As for how it became the largest library in the world, each day the LOC is open it receives "some 15,000 items and adds more than 10,000 items to its collections," primarily through Copyright deposits, other government agencies, pre-publication arrangements with publishers, and through exchanges with other libraries around the world (Library of Congress, n.d.-c).
Okay, what can I do at the Library of Congress?
Wilson, J. (2023). Library of Congress Discover page. [Screenshot]. CC BY-NC-SA.
On the LOC's website? Quite a lot! There's an overwhelming number of things, really. If you've ever visited a large public library's page of research resources, or simply reminisce about how lost you might feel while starting academic research, the sheer number of items in the catalog and digital collections and periodicals or blogs that get updated regularly and social media accounts and subjects one can ask a specialized librarian about seems almost impossible to keep track—and that's in spite of how clinically organized and categorized the whole website is. Almost every single link under the Services and Discover pages takes users to pages of different layouts and even generations of web design. In this sense, the LOC's website is actually somewhat inaccessible to a curious onlooker—unless someone was searching for primary sources about a very specific topic they had already familiarized themselves with, or is very skilled at advanced web searches, I probably wouldn't recommend they try searching the LOC's labyrinthine website.
As for getting a sense the physical layout of the LOC’s buildings themselves, it's sort of clear. I say this because a space never stops seeming abstract to me if I can't physically connect pictures of individual rooms together. The LOC has put some effort into giving some sense of its layout for people who aren't able to visit the premises, though it's very clear that the resources there are meant to assist those who are already inside the Library itself. The landing page of the Visit section of the LOC site is rather sparse, listing only visitor hours and short blurbs about major attractions, Audio and Quick Look Guides that provide guidance about major spaces in order of how a visitor might peruse them, along with maps and floor plans, which include *very* detailed step-by-step guides on how to find one's way around.
In this context, a subpage that might seem a little disappointing is the Virtual Tours—from the name, you'd think that it entails explorable panoramas of library spaces a-la Google's Street View.1 Nothing of the sort is present, instead informative articles with selected pictures and background information about the murals and other artwork decorating specific rooms.
It is worth mentioning that the LOC does host a variety of events and programming, just like any enterprising public library. The most prominently recurring events are the Live! At the Library series, where the Thomas Jefferson Building stays open to visitors after the normal 5pm closing time for a bevy of activities. Programming highlights for this month include events for Hispanic Heritage Month, breast cancer care, discussions of African poetry, and conversations with multiple bestselling writers.
How can I browse materials?
As I mentioned above, anyone who visits the website can freely browse through the LOC's vast digital catalog. If an item is a visual format that's been digitized, such as historic periodicals or photos of note or music sheets or even a recorded personal narrative, it can be freely viewed and even downloaded to one's device.
Wilson, J. (2023). Unspecified search results. [Screenshot]. CC BY-NC-SA.
Searching for a specific item has to be done with intent, though. To test some of the more modern, obscure margins of the LOC's collection, I tried searching for the Reverse Design series of books, academic analyses of the design choices in some classic video games. Typing up the title in the search bar, it was obvious the LOC had the books in their collection when multiple books in the series appeared as suggested search items—but simply clicking on one or performing a search without specific modifiers will inevitably flood the results with completely unrelated items from the LOC collection. Still, it was nice to know that the LOC has these valuable resources for an industry seldom concerned with preserving much of anything.2
However, to access these books and other copyrighted items that aren't digitized, a person not only has to be on the LOC premises, they must register for a free reader identification card. With that, they can request items that can be delivered to their place in one of the LOC's Reading Rooms—but not to be checked out, or even browse the stacks themselves (Library of Congress, n.d.-d). Just about the only way the average person could access physical LOC materials outside of the Library’s premises is to receive one of their items through interlibrary loan, which seems to be a last resort when the requesting library can't find said item at other libraries (Library of Congress, 2023).
Who works at the Library of Congress?
In my few hours of searching the LOC's website, I found information for a grand total of three out of the 3,172 permanent staff working there (Library of Congress, n.d.-e), with one of them enjoying an incredibly wide spotlight compared to her colleagues. Of course, this is for none other than Carla Hayden, the 14th Librarian of Congress, who has the honor of being both the first woman and the first African American director of the LOC (Library of Congress, n.d.-a). In a country—and by extension a national institution—that generally denies leadership positions to Black women, I would imagine having one at the helm widens the door for other minority groups to follow at least a little; if preserving and providing authoritative information about knowledge sourced from the entire globe doesn't already necessitate a wildly diverse staff, anyway. Without a publicly-accessible staff directory anywhere on the website, which I imagine is omitted for security reasons; or even a sampling of interactions from a physical visit, the demographics of LOC workers will remain unknown.
1 ^One of these does exist, though not through an official LOC channel—instead a YouTube video from the U.S. Department of State's ShareAmerica.
2 ^The video game industry is notoriously bad at preserving institutional knowledge and even their own commercial catalog to a tragic degree. This is entirely intentional due to commercial forces embedded into the industry from the beginning, as only about 13% of all video games ever released commercially in the United States can still be legally obtained (Salvador, 2023).
References
Celebrate Halloween with Mystery Night featuring Louise Penny, a murder mystery party and more during Live at the Library in October. (2023). Library of Congress Newsroom. https://newsroom.loc.gov/news/celebrate-halloween-with-mystery-night-featuring-louise-penny--a-murder-mystery-party-and-more-durin/s/b677a46c-e971-4ec2-808e-c00c203d2354
Library of Congress. (n.d.-a) About the Librarian. https://www.loc.gov/about/about-the-librarian/
Library of Congress. (n.d.-b). About the Library. https://www.loc.gov/about/
Library of Congress. (n.d.-c) Fascinating Facts. https://www.loc.gov/about/fascinating-facts/
Library of Congress. (n.d.-d) Frequently Asked Questions. https://www.loc.gov/about/frequently-asked-questions/
Library of Congress. (2023, August 22). Frequently Asked Questions: General. Retrieved from Ask a Librarian: https://ask.loc.gov/faq/300375
Library of Congress. (n.d.-e). General Information. https://www.loc.gov/about/general-information/
Rubin, R. E., & Rubin, R. G. (2020). Foundations of library and information science (5th ed.). American Library Association.
Salvador, P. (2023). Survey of the video game reissue market in the United States. Video Game History Foundation. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8161056
ShareAmerica. (2017). Library of Congress tour in 360 [Video]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF4ORoXy_uU
Wilson, J. (2023). Library of Congress homepage. [Screenshot]. CC BY-NC-SA.
Wilson, J. (2023). Library of Congress Discover page. [Screenshot]. CC BY-NC-SA.
Wilson, J. (2023). Unspecified search results. [Screenshot]. CC BY-NC-SA.