Because the mission of the Library is to sustain and preserve a universal collection of knowledge and creativity, the institutions holdings encompass virtually all the languages of the world, many of which are no longer living languages, such as Latin and Aramaic.
Want more information about your national library? Then visit the Fascinating
Facts page to learn, for example, that the largest book in the Library is
by John James Audubon, the famous illustrator of birds, who insisted that his Birds
of America be printed life size. That means this volume is 39.37 inches high.
And the smallest book in our collections, Old King Cole," is only 1/25 inch
by 1/25 inch -- or about the size of the period at the end of this sentence.
The pages can only be turned with the use of a needle!
You can view some of Audubons extraordinary illustrations in the American Treasures online exhibition. The images are in the Reason section. American Treasures is
a rotating exhibition at the Library of Congress that features the rarest and
most interesting items from the unparalleled collections of the Library. It is
organized according to the way Thomas Jefferson organized his personal library
into the categories Memory, Reason and Imagination.