Today, the Library of Congress celebrates its 218th birthday. On
April 24, 1800, President John Adams approved an appropriation of $5,000
for the purchase of “such books as may be necessary for the use of
[C]ongress.”
The first books purchased were ordered from London and arrived in
1801. The collection of 740 volumes and three maps was stored in the
U.S. Capitol, the Library’s first home. At the time, it was not yet much
of a building—only its north wing had been completed.
From 1802 to 1805, the small collection was located in a room
previously occupied by the House of Representatives. It was later moved
to various places in the Capitol until August 24, 1814, when the British
burned and destroyed the Capitol, including the Library.
To replace the loss, Thomas Jefferson in 1815 sold his personal
library of 6,487 volumes—which was then unrivaled in America—to
Congress. Sadly, a second fire on Christmas Eve of 1851 destroyed
two-thirds of those volumes. But the Jefferson books nonetheless remain
the core from which the Library’s present collections grew.
A little more than a decade later, Ainsworth Rand Spofford,
Librarian of Congress from 1864 to 1897, took on the mission of
transforming the fledgling Library into the nationally significant
institution we know today. ... [mehr] https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2018/04/this-day-in-history-happy-birthday-loc/
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