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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.