Your Gift's Impact

Your gift matters!

Over the past two centuries, the Library of Congress, with the help of supporters like you, has built the single most comprehensive collection of human knowledge ever assembled. Today, the Library is home to more than 170 million books, recordings, photographs, periodicals, maps, and manuscripts that chronicle achievement and culture around the globe.

Your gift supports everything from acquiring and digitizing collections to powering events, programs, and exhibitions for the public, from helping to develop new preservation methods to supporting the next generation of leaders through internships and fellowships. We could not do it all without you. Your support allows the Library to innovate, adapt, and find new ways for all Americans to connect with the Library of Congress.

The Library of Congress is your Library! We appreciate your generous commitment to ensuring the Library remains an invaluable resource for teachers, students, parents, and people everywhere for generations to come.

The Library at a Glance

The Library recorded a total of 171,636,507 items in its collections, including:

• +25m cataloged books in the Library of Congress Classification system
• +15.5m items in the nonclassified print collections, including books in large type and raised characters, incunabula (books printed before 1501), monographs and serials, music, bound newspapers, pamphlets, technical reports and other print material
• +131.1m items in the nonclassified (special) collections, including:
  • 4.2m audio matierals
  • 74.5m manuscripts
  • 5.6m maps
  • 17.4m microforms
  • 1.9m moving images
  • 8.2m items of sheet music
  • 2m other (including machine-readable items)
  • 17.3m visual materials

* numbers represent the Library of Congress, fiscal year 2020