6/1/2000
By Allison Stacy
Researchers and historians around the globe have a better reason to celebrate Y2K - it's the 200th birthday of the Library of Congress.
Forget partying like it's 1999. Researchers and historians around the globe have a better reason to celebrate Y2K — it's the 200th birthday of the Library of Congress.
The past two centuries have turned the library into a gold mine for people in search of practically anything. It began in 1800 as a modest medley of 740 books and three maps. It's ballooned to a colossal collection of 115 million books, recordings, maps, photographs and manuscripts.
Of course, the more stuff it accumulated, the more space the world's largest library needed. First housed in an office in the US Capitol, the LOC has sprawled into 530 miles of bookshelves and 22 reading rooms spanning three buildings.