Which is the largest library in the world?
The Library of Congress in Washington DC is essentially both the national library of the U.S. and the country's oldest federal cultural institution. Though it consists of only three buildings, it is the largest library in the world for shelf space and number of volumes.
Since 1962, the Library of Congress has maintained offices abroad to acquire, catalog and preserve library and research materials from countries where such materials are essentially unavailable through conventional acquisitions methods.
Approximately half of the Library’s book and serial collections are in languages other than English. The collections contain materials in some 470 languages.
More Info:
en.wikipedia.org
What are your thoughts on this subject?
8 Comments
Cheryl Love
As of June 2023, British Library is noted as largest in several sources.
Jas Newman
Keith Richard Mears, What is the literacy rate of the RSA?
Ben
A person would probably be lost in such huge library. Now a days nobody goes to a library because of the internet. Only researchers would go there.
John W Shreve
Keith Richard Mears, Unfortunately, there are houses that do not have a single book in them. We have one however.
Karen Riedel
Joris van Pelt, Thanks for filling in the information that was left out.
Deborah Gabriel
Very interesting place! I have been there twice.
Keith Richard Mears
In a country with one of the lowest literacy rates amongst developed countries, the irony.
Joris van Pelt
The Library of Congress holds more than 167 million items
with more than 39 million books and other print materials,
against approximately 150 million items with 25 million books for the British Library.