The Library of Congress receives some 22,000 items each working day and adds approximately 10,000 items to its collections daily. No wonder it's 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 majority of the collections are received through the Copyright registration process, as the Library is home to the U.S. Copyright Office (see the "Greatest Chaos in America" in this month's issue.) Items are also acquired through gift, purchase, other government agencies (state, local and federal), Cataloging in Publication (a pre-publication arrangement with publishers) and exchange with libraries in the United States and abroad. Material not selected for the collections or other internal purposes is used in the Library's national and international exchange programs. Through these exchanges, the Library acquires material that would not be available otherwise. The remaining items are made available to other federal agencies and are then available for donation to educational institutions, public bodies and nonprofit tax-exempt organizations in the United States.