The Library of Congress is an o shoot of the private collection of books by Thomas Jefferson. During the 1812 war when the US capitol was attacked, books on facts, statistics and laws of the United States were all burnt. Thomas Jefferson then offered to sell his books to Congress. Books were then bought from the library of Jefferson to start what has now become known as the Library of Congress.

Between 1851 and 1853, the library suffered many losses due to fire. Close to 55,000 volumes of materials were consumed by re. Ideas then dawn on law makers that the Library of Congress needed to have separate structure independent of the capitol building. That idea was put into effect by Jefferson in 1886. By 1897, the new building was ready for the general public. Today, the Library of Congress enjoys the privilege of being the most prestigious and the best equipped library in the world with over 90 million items.

The Library of Congress has about 84 million articles, 74 millions books. All these documents and articles are written in 365 languages. ere are several buildings adjacent and across the Library of Congress that constitute and extension of the library. These houses include the Madison Building and John Adams Building. In the Madison building a number of services are located within it: the copyright office, geography room, law library, presidential papers, prints and photographs. Also in the Adams building you have the African, Asian, Hebrew, Near East, Science and social science reading rooms. In one of these buildings, a short lm documentary is shown to visitors about the history of the Library of Congress. To gain access to the library and also to become a permanent member of library, you need to apply for a temporary library card or a permanent one. The services for membership cards are located on the first floor of the Jefferson building which is the main building of the library. It is the building that is located next to the Supreme Court.