The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, with millions of books, recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps and manuscripts in its collections. The Library is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office.
The Library's Asian Division collection holds more than 3 million items, the largest assemblage of Chinese, Japanese and Korean materials outside of Asia, and one of the largest Tibetan collections in the world.
pictures of the largest library in the world
The Law Library of Congress is the world's largest law library, with more than 2.9 million volumes, including one of the world's best rare law book collections and the most complete collection of foreign legal gazettes in the United States. The Law Library contains United States congressional publications dating back to the nation's founding.
The Library's Prints and Photographs Division contains more than 17.5 million visual images, including the most comprehensive international collection of posters in the world, the most comprehensive visual record of the Civil War, and pioneering documentation of America's historic architecture. More than 1.2 million images are accessible on the Prints and Photographs online catalog at www.loc.gov/pictures/.
The Library holds the most comprehensive collection of American music in the world: more than 22 million items, including 8.2 million pieces of sheet music. The collection includes an extensive assemblage of original manuscripts by composers of the American musical theater and the largest collection of any one kind of musical instrument (flute) in the world. The Library sponsors a long-running broadcast concert series of chamber music.
With more than 6 million items, the Archive of Folk Culture in the American Folklife Center is the largest repository of traditional cultural documentation in the United States and one of the largest in the world. It contains the largest collection of American Indian music and spoken word, including the earliest ethnographic field recordings made anywhere in the world.
The Library of Congress has one of the largest and most diverse collections of scientific and technical information in the world. Such material makes up roughly one-fourth of its total book and journal collection. The Library's Science, Technology and Business Division maintains this country's largest collections of technical reports and standards (some 5 million foreign and domestic items).
The Bibliothèque Nationale de France can claim a history dating all the way back to 1368, when Charles V founded a royal library at the Louvre Palace. That collection was ultimately lost, but Louis XI began another one in 1461. This grew and became open to the public in 1692. Thanks to a couple of librarians and scholars, the books suffered no losses during the French Revolution. In fact, the opposite happened; the libraries of executed aristocrats were added to its catalogues. In 1896, it was the biggest library in the world.
One of the first free public libraries in the world, the State Library of Victoria has remained dedicated to being a place for discovery and education since 1854. Inside the Neoclassical library a number of books and artifacts detailing the history of the Victoria region and its culture. The regal La Trobe Reading Room alone houses nearly 32,000 books across its octagonal walls.
Founded in 1909 by the government of the Qing dynasty, the National Library of China has amassed an astronomical collection of over 37 million items including the largest array of Chinese literature in the world. Students, researchers, and book lovers from across the country flood the three different structures of the library. The newest addition, the North Area, is divide into two levels: the lower holding the geometric reading room and reference library signifying the old, and the upper, housing the digital library representing the future and evolving technology.
The Admont Abbey in Austria is one of the oldest monasteries in the world, and inside is the largest monastic library in the world. The grand library hall was built back in 1776 and contains roughly 70,000 books. 48 windows fill the chamber with gorgeous natural lighting.
Carrying on the tradition of Law Library staff visiting, and taking photos of, beautiful and interesting libraries around the world, today I bring you pictures from my recent visit to the Library of Trinity College Dublin.
The Austrian National Library 6. The Austrian National Library, ViennaThe largest library in Austria, this enormous building is the epitome of grandeur. It houses some 7.4 million items within its extensive archives, collections and museums, including rare literary works, fine art and an impressive selection of historical globes.
Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library 8. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale Designed by prize winning architect Gordon Bunshaft, the Yale University Library celebrated its 50th anniversary last year. Holding over 500,000 volumes and millions of manuscripts, the library is the largest of its kind in the world.
Located in Washington, D.C., the Library of Congress is the national library of the United States and the largest library in the world. Established in 1800, it contains materials in over 450 languages. Some of those materials include one of the smallest books in the world (you have to turn the pages with a needle), Stradivarius violins, and digitally archived Tweets.
The national library of the United Kingdom, located in London, is the second largest library in the world. Their impressive collection includes handwritten Beatles lyrics and an original draft of Chapter 10 and 11 from Jane Austen's Persuasion.
The New York Public Library is in Manhattan and it's the fourth largest library in the world. It was also the place people used to go for inquiries pre-Google, such as, "why do 18th century English paintings have so many squirrels in them, and how did they tame them so they didn't bite the painter?"
Although there is one continuously existing library that is older, the al-Qarawiyyin Library is often believed to be the oldest library in the world. The library is apart of one of the oldest universities in the world and was first opened in 859 CE. It was founded by by Fatima al-Fihri, the daughter of a wealthy Tunisian merchant (she also founded the Qarawiyyin Mosque and Qarawiyyin University).
The ancient Greek city of Pergamum (also called Pergamon) was an important cultural center of the ancient world, only rivaled by Alexandria and Antioch. Like Alexandria, Pergamum was home to a large library, which was second best in ancient Greece after the Library of Alexandria.
The Library of Alexandria is the best-known and largest libraries of the ancient world. It was located in the city of Alexandria in ancient Egypt, which was the major economic, cultural, and intellectual center of the world at the time.
Before the discovery of older ancient libraries in the early 20th century, the Royal Library of Ashurbanipal was considered the first library or the oldest surviving royal library in the world. While we now know that older libraries exist, it was one of the first to implement a systematical organization of its material. The library was named for Ashurbanipal, the last great king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.
When the Ugarit archives were discovered in 1929, archaeologists found more than one library. The thousands of clay tablets they uncovered revealed a palace library, a temple library, and two private libraries, one belonging to a diplomat named Rapanu. The two private libraries were unique in the world at the time and may have been some of the first libraries made for private, personal use.
A 300-year-old library chamber in the educational epicenter of Dublin, Ireland, has become world-famous for its stunning interior and treasure trove of rare titles, some of them over a century old. For book lovers of all ages, both the collection and the setting are the stuff of fairy tales.
WorldCat is the manifestation of the creativity and innovation of the staff of OCLC and thousands of librarians. Unique in scale and unparalleled in data quality, WorldCat makes library collections findable and accessible around the world.
Data about library collections, which house some of the most authoritative and unique resources in the world, is difficult to share directly from independent library catalogs. The collaborative nature of WorldCat helps libraries take advantage of linked data opportunities to lessen their workloads and to increase their online presence and discoverability. OCLC continues to explore linked data benefits for discovery, authority control, disambiguation and more as part of our work on numerous standards committees and community projects. OCLC also provides data services and downloadable data sets that help programmers and linked data practitioners create and improve their own applications with WorldCat data.
WorldCat provides the high-quality data that power discovery of library resources and make library collections visible to the largest resource-sharing community in the world. Since WorldCat is the foundation of WorldShare Interlibrary Loan, libraries can easily see the resources available from other libraries, borrow directly from them and share their resources to meet users' needs. WorldCat also allows borrowing libraries to link users directly to articles provided by lending libraries, giving users the instant access they expect.
The Library of Congress has 450 languages from around the world on display. In Washington, D.C., the library opened its doors. The library, which opened in 1800 in Washington, D.C., has been damaged and destroyed multiple times, including by the British in 1814 during the War of 1812 and a roaring fire in 1851.
After the American Civil War, it flourished and expanded, and it began collecting books and major publications from all over the world. Even though the library is open to the public for tours, only high-ranking government officials have access to its volumes and materials nowadays. The library is involved in several projects aimed at promoting American literature and art. 2ff7e9595c
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