The Library of Congress, the largest library in the world and the national library of the United States, receives about 22,000 items every working day and adds about 10,000 of these items to its collections daily. These items, housed on more than 530 miles of shelves, are not only works in English but in 460 other languages as well.

Because the mission of the Library is to “sustain and preserve a universal collection of knowledge and creativity,” the institution’s 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 Audubon’s 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.”