 Good morning, congressional research. May I help you? Hello, my subcommittee on arms control is looking at the legislation on the deep-sea mineral rights. Could you give us a report? Can you tell me where I should go to research my family history? Sure, just take a right at that card catalog and continue down the aisle. My local library told me this was the only place I could find this book. Could you tell me where I should look? Checking the card catalog behind you. Good morning, copyright. Yeah, I'd like to ask a few questions about copyrighting music. Well, I'm with the Martha Washington Library in Alexandria and we need to order some catalog cards from you. Are they still the same price? Well, have you seen our new catalog? Every day, thousands of people call, write, or visit the Library of Congress. Senators and congressmen, authors and musicians, librarians, scholars, or just someone who wants a quiet place to read. All these people share a common need. A need for answers. A need for information. Good morning, Congressional Research Service. Good morning, Congressional Research Service may help you. As a part of the legislative branch of the United States government, the Library of Congress is asked for information nearly 2,000 times a day by members of Congress and their staff. Yes, Senator. One of our science divisions has prepared a report on ocean resources. The Library's Congressional Research Service may respond with a detailed study that might take months to prepare or just a quick answer over the phone. Over 800 people work in this part of the Library, one of the most important research arms of Congress. We provide Congress with information in many forms. They can get updates of current legislation on a computer, issue briefs, surveys, translation. Whatever a member of Congress needs to keep informed and abreast of the events of the day. Everyone from publishers and authors to mapmakers, designers, and composers turns to the Library's Copyright Office to register the works they create. This is the form you should use. Just fill it out and send it back to us. We'll need two copies of your music if it's been published already, only one if it hasn't. Not just books, but sculpture, games, toys, and designs for all kinds of things can be registered for copyright. Of course, only some of these items are added to the collections. Most are simply stored. If there's a legal dispute, these samples may be valuable in establishing who owns the copyright. Play this one. No, this one. Okay. Under the law, copyright protection even extends to the music played on a jukebox. A yearly licensing fee has been established to pay royalties to the copyright owners. All over the world, librarians are helped by cataloging information prepared by the Library of Congress. Hundreds of catalogers assign a unique series of numbers and letters to describe the contents of books and other materials. This information is made available to other libraries and the public in many forms. In book catalogs, on cards, computer tape, and often on the back of the title page of a new book. Anyone can use the Library of Congress. No special identification is required. Most of the reading rooms are open to everyone over high school age. If it's your first visit to the library, staff members are available to help you find your way around. Other specialists aid experienced researchers with their particular interests. There are numerous guides to the collection, and many research tools are available to assist you. Most readers first come to the main reading room. Here they can request books by submitting call slips, which are sent to staff members in the stacks. Excuse me, is this where I put my call slip? Yes, you drop it in the tray right there. The books are pulled from the shelves and placed on a conveyor system connected to the issue desk and are then delivered to the reader. Here's the book you requested. When you're through with it, please return it to the issue desk. Although anyone may use the library, only members of Congress and other special borrowers may take books out. The library does, however, lend books to other libraries all over the world if they cannot be located anywhere else. For hundreds of thousands of blind and physically handicapped readers, the Library of Congress is a valuable link to books, magazines, and music materials. A nationwide network of 160 cooperating regional and sub-regional libraries supplies materials produced by the Library of Congress in either braille, large print, or recorded formats. Side 1, Goodhouse keeping, October 1978. Staff and volunteers narrate books. Record players and tape decks are loaned free of charge. All these services had their beginnings in 1800 with a small collection of legal reference books purchased by Congress. The first library was housed in the U.S. Capitol, then only a small building on an empty hill. But during the War of 1812, an event took place that was a disaster, but in some ways a blessing to the library. The British burned the Capitol. The books Congress had purchased went up in flames. Thomas Jefferson, then retired at Monticello, offered to sell his personal library of over 6,000 volumes as a replacement. As Jefferson said, his library contained no subject to which a member of Congress may not have an occasion to refer. With the purchase of Jefferson's collection, the Library of Congress acquired the same scope and variety of interests as the mind of this great statesman, inventor, architect, and philosopher. Here were books on history, chemistry, music, and military science. The beginnings of a library for all Americans, and for all nations as well. From a small collection of reference books, the library has grown to nearly 80 million items in over 400 different languages. Two-thirds of the books are in languages other than English. The Japanese, Chinese, and Russian collections, for example, are the largest outside the Orient and the Soviet Union. Three buildings are required to house this great mass of material. The Library of Congress building was completed in 1897 after eight years of construction. 22 million bricks and almost half a million cubic feet of granite were set in place before its completion. Above the first story windows, a series of heads of 33 different races was carved, symbolizing the world unity of knowledge. The likenesses were based upon scientific measurements and represent an ideal type rather than any one individual. Some 50 American artists worked to adorn the interior of this magnificent structure. Murals, mosaics, and carvings decorate almost every square inch of the Great Hall, the showpiece of the Library of Congress. Here the highest achievements of civilization and mankind's noblest values are commemorated in the lavish style of the Italian Renaissance. The library outgrew this space by 1939, so an annex was constructed, now called the Thomas Jefferson Building. This building, designed in a modern style, is essentially a solid mass of 12 levels of book stacks encircled by workspace. A large reading room is on the top floor. The latest addition to the library is the James Madison Memorial Building. The Madison Building is located immediately south of the main building and doubles the amount of space available to the crowded library. The library's vast holdings are obtained through many sources. Despite popular rumor, not everything published in the United States is in the Library of Congress, but about half of everything copyrighted is. In addition, generous donors frequently contribute their entire personal collections or other items to the library. These priceless collections are among the most complete and respected anywhere. The library also buys books and materials from all over the world to ensure its international scope. From these many sources, the collections of the Library of Congress are brought together for use in its many reading rooms. Some rooms' collections are determined by culture, such as the Hispanic, European, Asian, African and the Middle East. Other collections are devoted to special topics, such as law. Or science. Newspapers have a room of their own. Because of the volume received daily, they are stored on microfilm. Prints and photographs. Over 9 million of them. The largest collection of cartography in the world. And new scripts. Like a dollar bill that flew the Atlantic. The papers of Freud. Poems of Whitman. The sketches of Alexander Graham Bell. And the telegram that gave flight to man. More than 1500 flutes came as a gift to the music division. Here are famous violins and musical scores. And special collection division contains medieval manuscripts. A life mask of Lincoln. And the contents of his pockets the night he died. Here too is the biggest book. And the smallest. The walking cane of Charles Dickens. The magic books of Harry Houdini. And over 19,000 dime novels. Everything in the Library of Congress must be protected and preserved. In the library's preservation office, researchers and staff are working on many different methods of preservation. Old, disintegrating books are rebound individually by hand. Covers hundreds of years old are renewed with special chemicals. Brittle books are encased in polyester film. Holes and tears in old documents are filled with new paper pulp by a leaf casting machine. Frequently microfilming is the only alternative if a deteriorating book has no intrinsic value. But the preservation office is racing against time. It is estimated that about one-third of the volumes in the Library of Congress are in need of some form of preservation. The chemicals that have been used in paper production since the mid-1800s are causing books to turn to dust on the shelves. One research lab has estimated the useful life of most books printed from 1900 to 1937 at only 50 years. By 1987, an entire generation of books could be lost forever. But research at the Library of Congress could change all this. Preliminary experiments using a special vapor to neutralize the acid in paper appear promising. Hopefully, this technique will save millions of books from destruction. The library is growing at the rate of about 1.6 million items a year. That's about 10 items a working minute. Keeping track of all this material is a job that demands the latest technology. Readers can now use computer terminals to identify some books by subject, author, or title. Other computer systems keep track of information resources, current legislation, recent periodical articles, and cataloging information. It used to take days to compile a list of books on a certain subject. This can be printed in seconds. But the Library of Congress is much more than the world's largest collection of books. It is also a place where you can attend a concert. You can listen to a folk tale. Go to a poetry reading. Oh, the stones came riding here like hunters on their ice barges. And where they debarked. Or by a poster. You can hear an old radio show. Order a reproduction. Take a tour. Or explore exhibits on your own. Because the Library of Congress is the national library of the United States, it is your library. These marbled halls, stately reading rooms, and priceless treasures are here for you. This is the Library of Congress. The Library of America.