Original Name
Library of Congress (LC)

Institution Type
Library

Country
United States

Address
101 Independence Ave, SE Washington, DC 20540

Telephone
+1 202 707 50 00

Website
http://www.loc.gov/index.html

Description
The Library of Congress is the oldest federal cultural institution in the US; it serves as the research arm of Congress. It is also the largest library in the world, with nearly 128 million items on approximately 530 miles of bookshelves. The collections include more than 29 million books and other printed materials, 2.7 million recordings, 12 million photographs, 4.8 million maps, and 57 million manuscripts.

The Library of Congress is the largest depositor of samizdat and Soviet independent press in the North America.

Its Soviet Independent Press Collection contains approximately 3,000 serial titles with ca. 15,000-20,000 issues, representing every political shade and faction from monarchists to the extreme left, published during the period of exuberance between the promulgation of more liberal press laws and the demise of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991.

Also of interest is the collection of Hungarian samizdat (underground/unofficial literature) on microfiche. Most of this material dates from the 1980s, the last decade of Communist rule in Hungary.

ISRA Affiliation Level
member