Library of Congress

In 1783 a committee chaired by James MadisonJames MadisonJames Madison (1751–1836) was the fourth president of the United States, serving from 1809 to 1817. He helped frame the Constitution, co-wrote The Federalist and guided the Bill of Rights through Congress, and earlier served as a U.S. representative and secretary of state.Open the full entry submitted a list of about 1,300 books, the first proposal for a congressional library.⁠[1]

On April 24, 1800, President John AdamsJohn AdamsJohn Adams (1735–1826) was the first vice president (1789–1797) and the second president (1797–1801) of the United States. Earlier he served in the Continental Congress, was a signer of the Treaty of Paris and became the first American minister to Great Britain.Open the full entry approved a $5,000 appropriation for books needed by Congress, the beginning of the Library of Congress.⁠[2][1]

The first books, ordered from London, arrived in 1801: 740 volumes and three maps, kept in the U.S. Capitol. From 1802 to 1805 the collection was housed in a room formerly used by the House of Representatives.⁠[2]

In 1802 President Thomas JeffersonThomas JeffersonThomas Jefferson (1743–1826) was the author of the Declaration of Independence and the third president of the United States, serving from 1801 to 1809. He had earlier been governor of Virginia, minister to France, secretary of state and vice president.Open the full entry approved making the Librarian of Congress a presidential appointment; the first two Librarians he named, John James Beckley and Patrick Magruder, each also served as clerk of the House.⁠[3][4]

On August 24, 1814, British forces burned the U.S. Capitol, destroying the Library’s collection of roughly 3,000 volumes.⁠[2][1]

Jefferson offered to sell his personal library to Congress to restart its collection. The Senate passed the purchase bill on December 3, 1814, and the House on January 26, 1815, and President James Madison approved the appropriation on January 30, 1815. The collection of 6,487 books was more than twice the size of the library that had been lost and covered a much wider range of subjects.⁠[1][3]

On December 24, 1851, a second fire destroyed two-thirds of the Jefferson books.⁠[2]

Ainsworth Rand Spofford, appointed by Abraham LincolnAbraham LincolnAbraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States (1861–1865). Born to a frontier farming family in Kentucky, he had less than a year of formal schooling, taught himself law, and served in the Illinois legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives before winning the presidency as the Republican candidate in 1860. During the Civil War he preserved the Union, issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and pushed the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery through Congress. He was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in Washington on April 14, 1865, and died the next day.Open the full entry, was Librarian from 1864 to 1897 and argued for a single comprehensive collection of American publications serving both Congress and the public. In 1865 he won approval for two new fireproof wings.⁠[2][3]

In 1870 U.S.United StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry copyright registration and deposit were centralized at the Library, with copyright owners required to submit copies of their works. An architectural competition for a separate Library building was held in 1873, and Spofford’s 1875 annual report declared the Library out of shelf space and pressed Congress for a separate building.⁠[3][2]

In 1897 the Library’s separate building opened; it was then the largest library in the world and was named for Thomas Jefferson in 1980 as the Thomas Jefferson Building.⁠[3]

Herbert Putnam, Librarian from 1899, pursued a national-library role for the institution. A 1903 executive order transferred the records of the Continental Congress and the papers of six founding fathers to the Library, and in 1914 Putnam established the Legislative Reference Service as a separate department.⁠[3]

The John Adams Building opened in 1938.⁠[2][5]

During Lawrence Quincy Mumford’s tenure as Librarian (1954–1975), the book collection grew from 10 million to 17 million volumes, the staff from 1,600 to 4,500 and the annual appropriation from $9.5 million to $116 million. In 1975 President Gerald FordGerald FordGerald Ford (1913–2006) was an American politician who represented Michigan in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1949 to 1973 and became House minority leader in 1965. In 1973 he became the first vice president appointed under the 25th Amendment, and after Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 he served as the 38th president of the United States until 1977.Open the full entry appointed Daniel J. Boorstin as Librarian.⁠[3]

The James Madison Memorial Building opened in 1981, completing the Library’s three buildings on Capitol Hill with the Thomas Jefferson and John Adams Buildings; the Library later opened the High Density Storage Facility at Fort Meade, MarylandMarylandMaryland is a Middle Atlantic state of the United States, deeply indented by Chesapeake Bay and bordered by Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, the District of Columbia and West Virginia; its capital is Annapolis and its largest city is Baltimore. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on April 28, 1788, as the seventh state to do so, and had a population of 6,177,224 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry (2002), and the Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation in Culpeper, VirginiaVirginiaVirginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state whose capital is Richmond. It entered the Union on June 25, 1788, as the 10th state, and had a population of 8,631,393 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry (2007).⁠[5][2]

Carla Hayden, nominated by President Barack Obama and approved by the full Senate on July 13, 2016, was sworn in as the 14th Librarian of Congress by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.John G. Roberts Jr.John G. Roberts Jr. (born 1955) is an American judge who has served since 2005 as the 17th Chief Justice of the United States, heading the Supreme Court of the United States.Open the full entry on September 14, 2016. She was the third professional librarian to hold the post and the first woman and first African American to do so; she had been chief executive officer of the Enoch Pratt Free Library system in Baltimore.⁠[6][3]

In May 2025 the Donald Trump administration dismissed Hayden, who was informed by email that her position was terminated effective immediately; the White House gave no specific reason. The Justice Department announced that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche had been named acting Librarian, and the White House also fired Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter. The Librarian is a legislative branch post filled by presidential nomination, and Congress and the White House disagreed over the President’s authority to appoint an acting Librarian.⁠[7]

As of November 2026, the Library’s About the Librarian page lists Principal Deputy Librarian Robert Randolph Newlen as Acting Librarian of Congress. Newlen became principal deputy effective March 29, 2025; he joined the Library in 1975 as a temporary clerk in the Inquiry Unit of the Congressional Research Service, and holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and French from Bridgewater College, a master’s degree from American University and a master’s degree in library science from The Catholic University of America.⁠[8][9]

In fiscal year 2023 (October 2022–September 2023), the Library’s collections comprised more than 178.2 million recorded items, including more than 25.77 million cataloged books in the Library of Congress classification system; it had 3,238 permanent employees and $875.4 million in total budget authority, answered more than 681,000 reference requests, and issued more than 441,500 copyright registrations. The Library describes its holdings as including the world’s largest collection of legal materials, films, maps, sheet music and sound recordings, and the largest rare book collection in North America.⁠[5]

The Librarians of Congress have been John James Beckley (from 1802), Patrick Magruder (from 1807), George Watterston (from 1815), John Silva Meehan (1829–1861), John G. Stephenson (from 1861), Ainsworth Rand Spofford, John Russell Young (from 1897), Herbert Putnam, Archibald MacLeish (from 1939), Luther Evans (from 1945), Lawrence Quincy Mumford, Daniel J. Boorstin, James H. Billington (from 1987) and Carla Hayden.⁠[4]

Library of Congress: Official website: https://www.loc.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[8]

X: Public account: https://x.com/librarycongress (opens in a new window).⁠[8]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/library-of-congress (opens in a new window).⁠[8]

YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/libraryofcongress/ (opens in a new window).⁠[8]