If the collection is subdivided, the law library with 2.4 million books is the largest in the world. In addition to the world's most precious legal books and the most abundant foreign legal materials, it also contains the publications of all legislative bodies since the founding of the United States. Africa and Middle East Group has 600,000 books in local non-Latin alphabet; The Asian Group has the largest collection of * * * 2 million pieces outside China, Japan, South Korea and Asia; 750,000 Russian documents, the largest collector outside Russia; Iberia, Latin America and the Caribbean have100000 kinds of materials (including books, magazines, newspapers, maps, manuscripts, posters, recordings, music scores, etc. The collection of rare books is second to none in North America, reaching more than 700,000 volumes, including the first batch of books printed in the Western Hemisphere; There are also the earliest children's books and bibles (published in1763); The smallest book can only be opened with the tip of a needle, while the largest book, Birds of America, is 1 m high. The oldest cuneiform tablet was made in 2040 BC, and the earliest printed fragments were Buddhist scriptures in 770 AD. Gutenberg Bible, purchased at 1930, is one of the three existing calfskin bibles in the world and a treasure of the Library of Congress. The print and photo group has13.6 million visual documents, including posters around the world, civil war records and pioneer documents in American historical buildings; Film, radio and record group, collecting movies from 1890, including Edison's first short film about sneezing registered in 1893; 2.5 million records, showing the development history of 100 years; 6.5438+0.5 million pieces of folk archives, including Indian music and dialects. Others include a large number of maps, urban traffic maps, telephone books and even telephone books and urban traffic maps of other countries; 654.38+0000 doctoral dissertations in the form of books, microfilms and microfiches. There are 5000 comic periodicals in the continuous publications and government publications group; The earliest newspaper was published on1659 65438+February 29th. 1/4 of the total collection of books and periodicals in the Library of Congress belongs to science and technology, with 4.4 million books and periodicals and technical reports and standards. There are 265.438 billion books in the House of Representatives of the United States Congress: among them, there are more than 654.38 billion printed works in 470 languages, including more than 654.38 million books; More than 9.8 million special books, versions of ancient books, monographs, serial publications, music scores, bound volumes, pamphlets, technical reports and other printed materials, including 75,000 periodicals in permanent collection and 0.2 million newspapers/kloc-; There are 88.5 million special collections, including 2.5 million audio recordings, 4.9 million maps, 55 million pages of manuscripts, 0.3 million microforms and 0.3 million visual materials, including 800,000 movies, 0.2 million photos and 85,000 posters. 400,000 prints and oil paintings; And documents of 23 presidents from Washington to Coolidge.
The library has a collection of 65.438+0.28 billion volumes, making it a giant in the history of libraries, with the total length of library shelves exceeding 800 kilometers. According to the latest introduction of the website of the Library of Congress, the total collection is 65.438+300 million volumes, including 29 million books, 65.438+02 million photos and 58 million manuscripts. Readers can borrow books in the reading room only by using a library card. The library provides readers with important materials such as historical materials, meeting minutes, and the Constitution of the United States Congress for reference.