It is also the largest library in the world, with more than 162 million items. The collections include books, sound recordings, motion pictures, photographs, maps, and manuscripts.

The Collection Development Overviews in this section are brief descriptions of various segments of the Library of Congress’ collections. Originally written in the summer of 1993, the overviews …

The Library of Congress has custody of the largest and most comprehensive cartographic collection in the world with collections numbering over 5.5 million maps, 80,000 atlases, 6,000 …

The catalog is the main access point for the Library's collections. The new, user-centered interface is powered by modernized infrastructure that will support a new era of services.

Pictorial materials are found in many units of the Library of Congress. The Prints & Photographs Division, alone, holds more than 15 million items, including photographs, prints, drawings and …

Explore our subject and collections guides prepared by Library of Congress staff. These guides cover Library of Congress materials and databases available on-site, as well as select free …

At the Library of Congress, we loan our materials out to other libraries/institutions so you can use our collections when you can't travel to visit us in person.

Search Library of Congress finding aids by keyword. Browse finding by collection, date, LC location, name, name/title, and subject. Finding aids are XML documents created using the …

The Library of Congress holds approximately sixty million manuscript items in eleven thousand separate collections, including some of the greatest manuscript treasures of American history …

Research guides to the Library's collections, as well as subject guides prepared by Library of Congress staff, are listed below. More online guides covering other Library of Congress …