What's up with the Library of Congress?

Ahhhh. One of the biggest benefits of being an academic librarian, or otherwise working at a school of some kind, is the long holiday break. I'm relaxed, revitalized, and ready to face the Spring semester.

As much as I can be, at least. This semester will be busier than most; I'm involved with the Academic Bowl, creating questions for competitions and working as a Gallaudet Officer, so a good part of the Spring will see me traveling all over the country to work on regional competitions. If you're working with the Academic Bowl in your region, there's a good chance you'll see me this Spring!

Aside from the extracurricular activities, though, we're all also busy putting things together for the Spring -- electronic reserves, LibGuides, presentations, workshops, classes, new books and movies ... well, the list goes on.

Part of that involves a couple of announcements. First, replacement costs for lost books have gone up all across the WRLC, so the fee we charge has increased from $57 to $67. Not thrilling, but necessary. Publishing costs have gone up, which jacks up a whole bunch of other prices in its wake. It happens.

Second, we've made a slight modification to our home page; you'll see a lovely new pair of boxes at the top of the middle and right-hand columns. The Database Spotlight box is our effort to bring some of our less well-known databases to greater awareness. You'll see a few lines, which will link to a longer summary and standard instructions on how to find the database so you can use it. The From the Blog box is pretty self-explanatory -- we've gotten a few comments from students and faculty that this blog should be featured on the home page more prominently, so we're trying this out. The box will contain the dates and headlines of the last three posts, updated at the same time as this blog.

That's just a couple of new things. There'll be a few more in the coming weeks as we figure out more of what'll be happening both in the Library and on campus over the next semester.

In the meantime, I thought I'd plug something terrifically useful: researcher orientations at the Library of Congress, commonly known in librarian circles as the LOC. They offer classes on how to research in the LOC for the public on some Mondays of almost every month out of the year. You'll learn some really neat facts about the LOC, as well as how their reading rooms are set up and the system they have going. The LOC isn't your ordinary public library, so they do things differently, which means that if you plan to use them for your research, it'd be a good idea to go to one of those orientations. Interpreters are provided upon request, although you will need to place the request at least five business days in advance.

You can register for an orientation and place a request for interpreters and other accommodations here.

The LOC is kind of a funny place; it almost has its own mythology. At least once a semester, I give a presentation to a class that has at least one student who asks me why they should bother using the Gallaudet University Library when the LOC is right up on Capitol Hill. It has every book in the world and is totally open to the public, right? Actually, it doesn't and -- sort of -- isn't.

While it's certainly true that the LOC's mission includes the collection and maintenance of a universal body of knowledge and making it accessible to the public and that it's one of the largest libraries of all time, it has a stronger focus on something else: Congress. It's right there in the name: Library of Congress. More specifically, it's where Congress does its research. The services that the LOC makes available to the public are important, but they come in second to Congress and the rest of the federal government; the stuff they collect is usually acquired with the possible needs of the average Congresscritter in mind, before considering any possible cultural and historical value.

Still, the Library is just so large that you probably won't ever notice this aspect of its operations -- it contains so much information that it's virtually impossible that it won't have what you need.

So: What does Gallaudet have that the Library of Congress doesn't? To simplify matters, personal attention and ease of access.

The LOC is set up in a way that accomplishes a single purpose: maintaining the security of the collection while still providing access. Basically, you have to register for, and get, a reader ID card to get into the reading rooms (some reading rooms may also have more requirements for access, which are all available on the LOC's Web site). Once you've got the card, you need to figure out exactly what it is you want to look at. Every book, every map, every manuscript, including title, author, and call number.

Nearly the entire LOC consists of "closed stacks," which works on a similar principle to the Deaf Copy 1 room here on campus -- members of the public aren't allowed in among the shelves. To look at something from those shelves, you have to go into the reading room, sit down at a desk or table, fill out call slips with the correct information about the books you need, give them to an attendant or librarian, and wait for them to bring those items to you. Many reading rooms also enforce restrictions on what you can bring into the room with you; sometimes those restrictions are so severe that you are essentially limited to a single pencil. And it'd better have an eraser on it.

Okay, so the physical materials aren't so easy to get to. But they have a lot of stuff available online, right?

Weeeelllllll ... yes. They have a lot of stuff related to American history available for free on their Web site, as well as some free databases. However, most of their publicly-accessible stuff is extremely specialized and suitable mostly for very advanced researchers working in very narrow disciplines; the inaccessible stuff can be accessed only by going to the Library of Congress itself in person and searching via one of their computers. Here's the kicker: a lot of what they have online that'll be useful to you is also available through a library much closer to home. Guess which library*. Yeah.

The same principle applies to most other materials -- while it is nice to have an actual Gutenberg Bible to look at, our copy of the Revised Standard Version works just as well, and it's much easier to get to. Anything else might qualify as overkill.

Size is also a consideration. Most of the people I've met who opt for the LOC over us tend to come back with red faces and admit to being overwhelmed by the sheer number of resources available -- it's difficult to sift through tens of thousands of similar books when you just need to find a few case studies to support your conclusion.

That's without discussing the sheer amount of one-on-one help and communication access we offer that the LOC doesn't. We really are a group of knowledgeable librarians who can coordinate with your instructor for the best help possible, any time you need us. Then there's the fact that we know how to sign -- which is something that's hard to find anywhere else. In general, we do offer valuable help that can't be quantified, most of which comes to be through just plain old interacting with you and being a part of the school you attend.

To sum up: The Library of Congress is an incredible resource, but restrictions on access, relatively limited personal help, and the fact that most of what you'll need is available here on campus (after a little expert digging) anyway all combine to make the LOC fairly impractical for most undergraduate and graduate research.

No Question of the Week this week -- with only five days open since the holidays, we haven't had many folks coming in and asking us stuff. Instead, here's a bunch of LOC trivia.

• The Library of Congress encompasses 650 miles of shelf space and contains over 140 million individual items.
• It is the oldest Federal cultural institution in the United States.
• Only half of the Library's collection is in English; the rest is in 470 different languages.
• The Library receives approximately 22,000 items every day.
• However, the number of items actually added to the collection every day is much smaller: 10,000.
• The Library holds the some of the largest collections of items related to certain countries in the world.
• For example, it holds one of the world's largest Tibetan collections.
• It also holds the largest Asian collection outside of Asia; the same is true for Russian materials.
• The largest book in the Library of Congress is 5 feet by 7 feet!
• The Library of Congress contains the world's largest collection of comic books (5,000 titles, 100,000 issues).

*The Gallaudet University Library. Just in case.