Political Convention Summaries

Read brief summaries of past Democratic and Republican National Conventions. Includes bibliography. Please note: To view documents in PDF format, you will need the freely available Adobe Acrobat Reader.

About the Main Reading Room

The Library's principal reference and book service point for the general collections.

Main Reading Room Reference Collection

About the 70,000-volume general reference collection on the Main Reading Room's open shelves.

Computer Catalog Center

The Library's principal service point for searching the online catalog, subscription databases, CD-ROMs, and the Internet.

Bibliographies and Guides

Full text published guides for the Library's general collections.

Alcove 9 -- Reference Web sites

A selective list of other Internet resources in the humanities and social sciences.

Ask a Librarian
Want to ask the reference staff a question about the general collections?

This historic room is, through its catalogs, the primary entrance into the Library's research collections, and the principal reading room for work in the humanities and social sciences. Every day, hundreds of books and bound periodical volumes are delivered from the stacks for use in the Main Reading Room. Even researchers who will go on to work in one of the specialized reading rooms often begin their work in the Main Reading Room in order to use the electronic resources in the Computer Catalog Center, to consult the Main Card Catalog, to obtain an orientation to the Library as a whole, or to use some of the approximately 70,000 volumes in the Main Reading Room reference collection.