Aging Beauty

You can get anything you want from the Library of Congress, the nation’s oldest cultural institution.

“Knowledge comes
but wisdom lingers.”
—Alfred Lord Tennyson

That bit up there under the headline isn’t entirely true: you can’t check out anything... but it is true that there are a helluva lotta things (three-dimensional and interactive as well as printed) available to any old schmuck among us philistines in what is perhaps this country’s most shining institution, the mother of all libraries and so much more: The Library of Congress.

The LOC’s been around since 1800, created by the same bill that moved the U.S. capital from Philadelphia to D.C. It’s the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States.

c. 1902

Thomas Jefferson played key roles in the institution. He created its librarian position. Later, after the Brits burned the Capitol building holding it and destroyed its core collection in that pointless, awful War of 1812, Congress approved the purchase of Jefferson’s personal library of nearly 6,500 books—doubling the amount of what had been lost. Given his literary proclivities, I’m guessing that the quality of the holdings doubled, too.

Its collections are massive. Often, large numbers can’t paint a truly vivid picture of something. (My eyes glaze over when reading cites of the astonishing amounts of money this country wastes on stupid things and the even larger amounts we don’t spend where they’re most needed. What does $1­–2 trillion—the amount the 2017 tax cuts added to the U.S. deficit—even mean without context?)

But numbers should do the job in this particular case—especially when paired with all the “mosts” and “largests” that define it.

It’s the largest library in the world, with an inventory pushing 180 million items. As of 2023, there were nearly 15 million in nonclassified print collections alone, including things you’ve heard of like pamphlets and monographs, but also more unusual things like books with raised characters and incunabula—books printed before 1501.

That’s just one corner—it’s almost easier to imagine what is not in the LOC as what is. About half of the book and serial collections are in non-English languages—more than 470 represented. There are more than 2 million films in its collections (more than 900 of them designated as landmarks, a number that grows by 25 annually). It employs more than 3,000 permanent staff. More than a third of a million people visit it annually (as of 2022). Trip Advisor notes that its shelves laid out would cover 532 miles—a road trip from my home in Wichita to my adopted home in Minneapolis.

Like American folk history? It’s got the largest repository of traditional cultural documentation in the country. That includes the earliest ethnographic field recordings made anywhere in the world and the largest collection of American Indian spoken word and music.

How about stuff outside of the U.S.? The LOC’s Iberian, Latin American, and Caribbean collections—millions of books, journals, newspapers, maps, manuscripts, photographs, posters, recordings, sheet music, and more—are the largest and most complete in the world. It’s got the largest collection of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean materials outside of Asia, the largest of Russian-language items outside of Russia, and one of the largest Tibetan collections in the world.

Maps? Whew, don’t get me started. The world’s largest collection, including the 1507 world map that comprises the first document with the word “America” on it.

Check out the newspaper collection, which soon might need to be re-categorized under “history,” although it’s already historical; its oldest dates from 1659.

The LOC acquires materials mostly through copyright deposit but also via gifts, purchases, and other means, including through its national and international exchange programs, which allows it access to items that would not otherwise be available. It has offices in India, Egypt, Brazil, Indonesia, Kenya, and Pakistan participating in a cooperative program making stuff available from more than 60 countries.

I was only vaguely aware of this institution until I got a job at the National Flute Association, where I edited publications for 16 years and worked with perhaps the LOC’s most avid fan on the planet, who introduced me to this infinitely rich source of materials. With a long editing career at Oxford University Press (culminating in “VP and Executive Editor”), Nancy Toff’s interest was understandable.

But it was even more so because the LOC holds the most comprehensive collection of American music in the world, and—more to the point—the largest collection of any one kind of musical instrument in the world: the flute. That’s thanks to the Dayton C. Miller Flute Collection, which contains nearly 1,700 flutes and other wind instruments, statuary, iconography, books, music, trade catalogs, tutors, patents, and other materials mostly related to the flute—Western and nonwestern examples with representations of at least 460 European and American instrument makers dating from the 16th to the 20th century.

As to the collection’s namesake, you can sink into a rabbit hole so twisty you’ll never emerge. (There’s a weird Wichita connection to him, too, via a late flutist and Unitarian Universalist friend of mine, so there you are: Kevin Bacon’s degrees of separation, alive and well.)

As probably the preeminent flute historian in the world, Toff leans heavily on the LOC to garner whimsical tidbits (which guarantee SRO attendance at her delightful presentations) and major scholarly innovations, such as her definitive biography Monarch of the Flute: The Life of Georges Barrère and her extensive research on flutist and Stanford professor Frances Blaisdell, a pioneer who in 1962 became the first woman wind player to perform with the New York Philharmonic. (Yes, you read that right; 1962, not 1862.)

In her literary and musical circles, Toff is known as the Nancy Drew of flutes, and her investigative drive has helped her uncover the kind of previously unknown, precise, and specific information that makes for the best historical writing.

“One of the gems of the music division is the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge collection,” she tells me. A distant cousin of our 30th president, Coolidge was a pianist and music patron, favoring chamber music in particular.

“Her papers are a gold mine of behind-the-scenes information about the music she commissioned and the concerts and musicians she sponsored to perform them. One of the most important pieces I found, early in my research on Georges Barrère, was a brochure for the Barrère Little Symphony, listing the reviews for the 1930­–31 season and the itinerary for 1931–32. That got me started in documenting his concert career—dozens of events on just one piece of paper—and suggested other research strategies that served me well.”

From Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge to the first biography of Georges Barrére, who holds a preeminent place in the American flute playing history. You never know where a book is going to come from, but the Library of Congress isn’t a bad place to start.

Perhaps of special importance in these times is another “largest-most-oldest-most comprehensive” category in our nation’s Library of Congress, one that points us directly back to its name: the Law Library of Congress.

This is the world’s largest law library, 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.

Here’s an amusing example, the most recent bill listed under the “legislation” tab:

Legislation

H.R.7853 - 118th Congress (2023-2024): To require executive branch employees to report certain royalties, and for other purposes.

Royalties? How quaint. But hey, it’s a start.

Bookmark the Law Library. Make it your friend for the foreseeable future. And do not be intimidated by the officious language. Look: right there to the left on its opening page. “Ask a librarian.”

The human side of our most precious institution is even more precious, here in the LOC and in your neighborhood branch.

Ask a librarian.

Lagniappe: It took the Oxford English Dictionary editors five years just to reach the word “ant.” But give them a break: It took them 20-plus years just to get the funding to publish the thing. And their goal? To document the English language going back to the Anglo-Saxon era, which ended around 1000 CE. What’s on your to-do list?