United States 

Library of Congress
National Library of Medicine
National Agricultural Library



 
Library of Congress

The United States sponsors many governmental libraries, but three qualify as national because of the constituencies they serve. The largest is the Library of Congress (88,300,000 items in 1988), created by law in 1800 to serve the information
needs of the Congress. The British destroyed the Library during the War of 1812, but Thomas Jefferson offered to revive it by selling his personal library to the federal  government  in  1816.  After some political haggling, Congress decided to accept Jefferson's offer, subsuming not only his collection but also his classification  scheme.  The Libraryof Congress  limped along for several decades on minimal budgets and in inadequate quarters, but space needs accelerated when the Smithsonian Institution gave its scientific periodicals collections to the Librany in 1866 and Congress authorized the purchase of Peter Force's collection of Americana in 1867. Then, when Congress passed the Copyright Law of 1870, mandating that two copies of any work copyrighted in the United States be deposited the Library, the collection really began to swell. Ainsworth Rand Spotford, Librarian of Congress from 1865 to 1897, argued that the Library needed a separate building and, after nearly two decades of constant pressure, finally persuaded Congress of the Library's critical situation. Workmen completed the new structure in 1897, and two major additions followed in the 20th century--the Thomas Jefferson
Building in 1939 and the James Madison Building in 1983.

Herbert Putnam became Librarian of Congress in 1899, and under his direction the Library began to flex its muscle as a national library by spearheading efforts to centralize cataloguing processes. What started in the first decade of the 20th century as a service to distribute catalogue cards grew to the printing of the National Union Catalog in the fourth decade and ultimately led to Machine Readable Cataloguing (MARC) tapes in the sixth (see MARC). The Library also plays a role in other national library activities; it is actively involved in investigating better methods  for preserving print materials, in sponsoring book exchanges, and in acting as a center for the National Library Services for the Blind and physically Handicapped. In addition, in 1977 Congress authorized the Library to establish a Center for the Book to focus attention on that medium's traditionally important role.

Medicine and Agriculture

The federal government also supports two other important national libraries.  The National Library of Medicine (NLM)
emerged in the 1950s directly from its predecessor, the Army Medical Library, and serves America's physicians  and  medical  scientists  through  MEDLARS (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System), an intricate and sophisticaed computerized storage and retrieval system that grew from Index Medicus, the Library's paper-copy index to current medical literature.  Holdings  of the  NLM  surpassed  4,750,000 catalogued items by 1990.

The National Agricultural Library grew out of the Department of Agricuiture Library. It, too, has led in  the  development  of computerized  storage  and retrieval of information in its field.


Sources:

World guide to libraries. New York: Saur, 1998.
World encyclopedia of library and information services. 3rd ed. Chicago: American Library Association,c1993.