The Library of Congress is the nation's oldest federal cultural institution and is the largest library in the world, with millions of books, recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps, and manuscripts, in its collections. The Library is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office. The Library preserves and provides access to a rich, diverse, and enduring source of knowledge to inform, inspire, and engage, you in your intellectual and creative endeavors.
The Library Collection can be searched in four ways. In no particular order, they are:
Story Maps at the Library of Congress are immersive web applications that tell the incredible stories of the Library’s collections through narrative, multimedia, and interactive maps. There are over 80 Story Maps, and the preferred browsers are Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Safari.
The Library of Congress and WGBH in Boston are preserving the most significant public television and radio programs of the past 60 years: The American Archive of Public Broadcasting. The American people have made a huge investment in public radio and television over many decades, calculated at more than $10 billion. The American Archive will ensure that this rich source for American political, social, and cultural, history and creativity will be saved and made available once again for future generations.
Wander the pages of the site, or use the Advanced Search to find a program!
You can also browse the AAPB! Not sure where to begin your search? Dive in to the AAPB using one of these suggested topics:
The American Archive of Public Broadcasting contains more than 50,000 hours of digitized public broadcasting programs and original materials. Some particularly notable collections are featured in these Special Collections. Each Special Collection finding aid provides detailed information about the content, such as its creator, recommended search strategies, and related resources. Most of the materials described in the Special Collections are available online. There are over eighty collections in the Special Collections, many of which feature otherwise hard to find information. If you have seen or heard something excellent on Public Broadcasting there is a good chance that it is featured in a Special Collection or one of the other collections. Examples include "Eyes on the Prize", "To the Moon Interviews", "9/11 Special Coverage", "American Masters Interviews", "Stonewall Uprising Interviews", "Jubilee Singers Interviews", "ZOOM", "Sesame Street", "Le Show", "Bill Moyers Collection", and "Pacifica Radio Archives", among many others.
Washington State Public Broadcasting organizations participating in the AAPB include BirdNote, KCTS 9, KDNA, KEXP, Northwest Public Broadcasting, and Seattle Community Colleges' SCCtv.
Exhibits: American Archive of Public Broadcasting staff and guest curators create exhibits of selected recordings that focus on themes, topics, and events of cultural and historical significance. In the exhibits, curators contextualize digitized primary and secondary source public television and radio materials. Each curated set of selected recordings present a diversity of perspectives concerning the exhibit's focus. As a result, AAPB exhibits often illuminate how public broadcasting stations and producers have covered the exhibit's theme.
The Multimedia Primary Source Discussion Sets have been curated to support educators teaching a variety of topics in US History. They are intended for broad use in educational settings. By engaging with these digital resources, students will have the opportunity to observe connections between past and present-day events, grow in their understanding of multiple perspectives when considering present-day challenges, and exercise media literacy skills by examining sources for clues about the historical moment in which they were produced.
Help Preserve Public Media!
The AAPB Citizen Archivist Toolkit enables you to help make historic public radio and television programs from across America easier to search and access. Become a citizen archivist by using FIX IT+, the AAPB tool for correcting speech-to-text transcripts! Your contributions will be made available in the American Archive of Public Broadcasting.
The American Folklife Center (AFC) documents and shares the many expressions of human experience to inspire, revitalize, and perpetuate living cultural traditions. Designated by the U.S. Congress as the national center for folklife documentation and research, the Center meets its mission by stewarding archival collections, creating public programs, and exchanging knowledge and expertise. The Center’s vision is to encourage diversity of expression and foster community participation in the collective creation of cultural memory.
Since 1976—when Congress passed the American Folklife Preservation Act (Public Law 94-201) and President Ford signed it into law—the American Folklife Center has worked to “preserve and present” folklife in all its diversity. The Center's staff have coordinated and conducted large scale fieldwork projects, produced rich public programs onsite and online, supported training for researchers and fieldworkers, provided robust reference services, and, built a significant multiformat archive that holds cultural documentation of lived human experience and meaning-making from around the world.
The collections are loosely assigned to ten overlapping categories, with dozens to hundreds of entries in each category (and many of the entries themselves include dozens to hundreds of different documents, recordings, photographs, and so on):
The Library of Congress does its best to share its digital collections, but they can not digitize their staff, many of whom have spent decades exploring and thinking about the LoC collections. These 21 blogs allow Library experts to unlock and interpret the Library’s collections, services and programs; to express their thoughts and share their expertise; and to bring you compelling stories, fascinating facts, and opportunities to explore. They are written by individual Library staff members and occasional guest authors. The text of blogs by staff members is free to use or reuse; some images may be restricted. You may link or reprint any blog—please include a credit to the author and the Library of Congress.
Reference staff and subject-matter experts at the American Folklife Center have created over 120 research guides that enable discovery and access to collection materials and resources managed by the Center. These guides offer geographic orientation to materials—such as state, country, or region–or take on a topical approach that draws on genre, cultural activity, or identity group. The guides are updated as new collections become available, and new guides are created based on patron need and staff expertise. (The Guides cover a lot of different topics and are well worth you taking at least a brief look at them. Many of the Guides focus on a particular State or Country, and the others are focused on a specific topic.)
Staff at the American Folklife Center have been using the Story Map platform to introduce their online collections, collections rich in context and audio-visual content. Story Maps at the Library of Congress are immersive web applications that tell the incredible stories of the Library’s collections through narrative, multimedia, and interactive maps. Preferred browsers are Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Safari. At this time there are nine Story Maps.
The Library of Congress is also the home of the Copyright Office. The U.S. Copyright Office promotes creativity and free expression by administering the nation’s copyright laws and by providing impartial, expert advice on copyright law and policy for the benefit of all. For over 150 years, the Copyright Office has been at the forefront of U.S. copyright. As part of the Library of Congress since 1870, and recognized by Congress as a separate department of the Library since 1897, the Copyright Office registers copyright claims, records information about copyright ownership, provides information to the public, and assists Congress and other parts of the government on a wide range of copyright issues, both simple and complex. Through this work, the Copyright Office is committed to helping fulfill Copyright’s Constitutional purpose and to promote creativity and free expression for the benefit of all.
Copyright is a type of intellectual property that protects original works of authorship as soon as an author fixes the work in a tangible form of expression. In copyright law, there are a lot of different types of works, including paintings, photographs, illustrations, musical compositions, sound recordings, computer programs, books, poems, blog posts, movies, architectural works, plays, and so much more! When you write a paper for a class you own the copyright of that paper. When you write an email to a friend of yours you own the copyright for that email. If your employer asks you to write an article for the corporate newsletter your employer owns the copyright in that article ["work for hire"]. If you create an article or video that discusses and critiques another article or video you can relatively freely quote from the article or video you are discussing and critiquing (the less you use the more free you are to use it). Read more about 'Fair Use' here and here. More information about copyright is available at this link.
The U.S. Copyright Office issues announcements, rules, proposed rules, and other notices in the Federal Register, an official U.S. government publication published daily by the National Archives and Records Administration. Federal Register documents are also available online via the Government Printing Office.
The Law Library of Congress provides authoritative legal research, reference and instruction services, and access to an unrivaled collection of U.S., foreign, comparative, and international law (unfortunately assistance from a real person is only available in-person). Accessible online are some ever-growing collections of digitized legal and legislative materials, as well as many important historical documents. The selection includes:
The digital collections represent historical documents, official publications, legal gazettes, and research reports authored by Law Library foreign legal specialists; as well as a variety of Indigenous legal materials from the United States and jurisdictions from around the world, including historical constitutions and charters. In short, if it is historical and about laws the odds are good that it appears in the Digital Collections of the Law Library of Congress.
The Law Library has created 285 Research Guides that range (alphabetically) from American Indian Law through Wills, Probate, and Advance Directives: A Beginner's Guide and Women’s History Month: A Commemorative Observances Legal Research Guide. This includes Guides to the laws of many Countries and every U.S. State. Research guides provide a starting point for researching legal topics and recommend relevant materials in the Law Library's collections and online.
Congress.gov is the official website for current U.S. federal legislative information. The site provides access to accurate, timely, and complete legislative information for Members of Congress, legislative agencies, and the public. The information includes U.S. Congress legislation, Congressional Record debates, Members of Congress, and legislative process educational resources presented by the Library of Congress.
The Law Library offers several Online Webinars on U.S. legal research, and a Congress.gov Overview (how to perform searches and use new features of the official legislative information system for Congress). The Orientation to Legal Research Series gives a basic introduction to legal sources and research techniques. These orientations, taught by legal reference librarians, are typically offered once a month on a rotating basis. Classes offered will rotate through topics like the following:
After you click one of the above links scroll down for dates and sign-up information
In Custodia Legis is the Law Library’s blog. The Law Library has a blog team that publishes new posts on weekdays (over 1,000 entries so far). Some of the topics discussed on the blog include international legal developments, current legal trends, legal history and arcana, and information about updates to Congress.gov.
The Law Library subscribes to a broad range of databases and eResources that provide legal and legislative information for the U.S. and around the world. Note: some commercial databases are available only to researchers while on-site in a Library of Congress Reading Room, but about half of the databases listed here are freely available online.
Web Archives are efforts to manage, preserve, and provide access to archived legal web content. The Law Library participates in web archiving to preserve at-risk born-digital content. Currently there are eight archives:
The Law Library of Congress also produces reports on foreign, comparative, and international law in response to requests from Members of Congress, Congressional staff and committees, the federal courts, executive branch agencies, and others. Selected reports are provided to the public for reference purposes only and do not constitute legal advice. The information provided reflects research undertaken as of the date of writing (which has not been updated unless specifically noted). There are currently over 4,000 legal reports available online. Current and historical reports are released periodically. Browse reports by topic, region, year of publication, or simply browse all the reports.
The Library of Congress Catalog - with its Browse (find titles, authors/creators, subjects, call numbers, or standard numbers in alphabetical or sequential lists, with cross-references), Advanced Search (Combine search words using guided menus), and Keyword Search (find search words anywhere in the catalog record) features is not the only Catalog that the LOC maintains:
The Library of Congress presents The National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center and other contributing libraries and archives. Recordings in the Jukebox were issued on record labels now owned by Sony Music Entertainment, which has granted the Library of Congress a gratis license to stream acoustical recordings (at this time recordings made after 1928 are not available for download).
The National Jukebox is a project of the Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center. The goal of the Jukebox is to present to the widest audience possible early commercial sound recordings, offering a broad range of historical and cultural documents as a contribution to education and lifelong learning. These selections are presented as part of the record of the past. They are historical documents which reflect the language, attitudes, perspectives, and beliefs of different times. The Library of Congress does not endorse the views expressed in these recordings, which may contain content offensive to users.
The Jukebox includes more than 10,000 recordings made by the Victor Talking Machine Company between 1901 and 1925. Jukebox content is increased regularly, with additional Victor recordings and acoustically recorded titles made by other Sony-owned U.S. labels, including Columbia, OKeh, and others.
| Browse All Recordings | Author, Category, Composer, Date, Genre, Label, Language, Lyricist, Musical Group, Original Format, Performer, Subject, Target Audience, Vocalist, and more. |
| Browse All Artists | Find recordings by music greats! |
| Genres | Blues, Classical music, Ethnic music, Humorous songs, Jazz, Monologues, dialogues, and recitations, Musical theater, Opera, Ragtime, Religious music, Speeches, Traditional/Country, Whistling, Yodeling and more. |
| Jukebox Day by Day | See what was recorded on any given day of the year (prior to 1928). Check your birthday, an anniversary, or any other month and day of interest. |
| Collection Items | Over 16,000 music recordings, from 1900 to 1925. |
| Playlist of Recordings | The National Jukebox features playlists compiled by Library of Congress curators, project partners, and guest experts. Some of the playlists are below and consist of audio selections available on the website. |
Related Resources - Links to more historical digital recordings and information
The sound recordings in the National Jukebox are originally available by permission from the rightsholders. Many of these recordings began entering the public domain on January 1, 2022, when all recordings published prior to 1923 became free to use and reuse. Recordings published between 1923 and 1946 are protected for 100 years, and recordings published between 1947 and 1956 are protected for 110 years. Some of the items in the Jukebox are currently in the public domain and free to use and reuse. You are responsible for determining whether your re-use of the items in this collection is legal. You will need written permission from the rightsholders to copy, distribute, or otherwise use copyrighted materials (i.e. music published less than 100 years ago) except as allowed by fair use or other statutory exemptions. Some materials may be protected under international law. You may also need permission from holders of other rights, such as publicity and/or privacy rights, if you wish to reuse any music less than 100 years old.
The National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled (NLS), Library of Congress, administers a free national library program that provides braille and recorded materials to people who cannot see regular print or handle print materials. Established by an Act of Congress in 1931 to serve blind adults, the program was expanded in 1952 to include children, in 1962 to provide music materials, in 1966 to include individuals with other physical disabilities that prevent reading regular print, and in 2016 to permit NLS to provide refreshable braille displays. The NLS program is funded annually by Congress, and books and materials are mailed as “Free Matter for the Blind or Handicapped” through a separate appropriation to the United States Postal Service. NLS service is provided directly by a network of cooperating libraries funded through a combination of state, local, and/or federal sources.
Beginning with 19 libraries in 1931, the network has expanded to 55 regional libraries, 26 subregional libraries, and 13 advisory and outreach centers serving all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and Guam. A list of cooperating libraries is available at this link, and Washington's cooperating library is the Washington Talking Book & Braille Library, located at 2021 Ninth Avenue in Seattle (98121-2783). They can be reached at (206) 615-0400 and wtbbl@sos.wa.gov. Their website is http://www.wtbbl.org
Under a special provision of the United States Copyright Law, and with the permission of authors and publishers of works not covered by that provision, NLS selects books and magazines for full-length publication in braille, ebraille, and digital audio format. Reading materials are circulated through a network of libraries across the United States and its territories and to American citizens living abroad. Digital audio and ebraille materials are available through the NLS BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) service and the BARD Mobile app for iOS and Android devices. Libraries also circulate physical materials and free playback equipment needed to read magazines and audiobooks on digital cartridges (called talking books) through postage-free mail. In early 2019, the United States joined the Marrakesh Treaty as its 50th member, allowing NLS to assist patrons in requesting accessible materials in a wide range of languages from the other libraries around the world that are also Marrakesh Treaty members.
Their Frequently Asked Questions page is linked to here, this link is to more information about Services and Resources, and information about enrolling is available on their How to Enroll page.
The Library of Congress promotes poetry and literature through their online and in-person programs. The Poetry & Literature Center has been recording (usually video, sometimes audio) nearly every guest speaker or special event, and the National Book Festival in particular. Their recordings are available no matter where you live, enabling you to discover writers and performances featured at the Library of Congress. The collection also includes a number of related videos about many different 'literature adjacent' topics. There are over 5,000 videos available, covering the last dozen years or so. (The list of video and audio can be sorted by title and date added, but if you know the name of the person whose recording you would like to view the best approach is to use the search box in the upper right of the page.)
The Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature at the Library of Congress dates back to 1943, and contains nearly 2,000 audio recordings of poets and writers participating in literary events at the Library’s Capitol Hill campus as well as sessions at the Library’s Recording Laboratory. Explore the full collection.
The PALABRA Archive at the Library of Congress dates back to 1943. Historically known as the Archive of Hispanic Literature on Tape (AHLOT), this collection contains nearly eight-hundred recordings of poets and prose writers participating in sessions at the Library’s Recording Laboratory and at other locations around Spain and Latin America. Recordings include sessions with Nobel Laureates Gabriel García Márquez, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda, and renowned writers, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar and Jorge Amado. To date, thirty-four countries are represented in the collection, and it includes readings in Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, French, Mayan, Náhuatl, Zapotec, Aymara, English and Dutch. Explore the full collection!
Poetry of America contains field recordings by a wide range of award-winning contemporary poets. Each poet reads a singular American poem of his or her choosing, and also speaks to how the poem connects to, deepens, or re-imagines our sense of American identity.
Since the Poet Laureateship was created by an act of Congress in 1985, nearly half of the laureates have taken on a signature project to raise the national appreciation of poetry.
Library of Congress Poetry Resources: This page is a comprehensive guide to locating poetry resources available on the Library of Congress's Web site. Major areas of the Library's Web site that include poetry resources are listed at the right. Select a link to view a description of and links to poetry resources available through each area.
The Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) contains catalog records and digital images representing a rich cross-section of still pictures held by the Prints & Photographs Division and, in some cases, other units of the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress offers broad public access to these materials as a contribution to education and scholarship. (There are currently seventy image collections, most with thousands of images. Additional ways to search include Browse by Name, Browse by Subject, and Browse by Format.)
The collections of the Prints & Photographs Division include photographs, fine and popular prints and drawings, posters, and architectural and engineering drawings. While international in scope, the collections are particularly rich in materials produced in, or documenting the history of, the United States and the lives, interests and achievements of the American people.
In some cases only "thumbnail" images ("gif" images) will display to those searching from outside the Library of Congress Buildings because of potential rights considerations (on-site searchers have access to larger "jpeg" and "tiff" images).
In some of the physical collections, only a portion of the images have so far been digitized (digitization is ongoing, but the physical collections are Large).
Rights Information:
As a publicly supported institution the Library generally does not own rights to material in its collections. Therefore, it does not charge permission fees for use of such material and cannot give or deny permission to publish or otherwise distribute material in its collections. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright or other use restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in the Library's collections.
The nature of historical archival collections means that copyright or other information about restrictions may be difficult or even impossible to determine. Whenever possible, the Library provides information about copyright owners and other restrictions in the catalog records or other texts that accompany collections. The Library provides such information as a service to aid patrons in determining the appropriate use of an item, but that determination ultimately rests with the patron. The Library of Congress is eager to hear from any copyright owners who are not properly identified so that appropriate information may be provided in the future.
For further information, see the Prints & Photographs Division "Rights and Restrictions Information" page.
Obtaining Copies of Images:
Digitized images appearing in the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog can be downloaded (see information above regarding image rights).
Copies of most images listed in the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog can be purchased from the Library of Congress Duplication Services. When viewing information about an item of interest in the catalog, select the "Obtaining Copies" tab for instructions for obtaining copies (the phrase you want to see in the "Obtaining Copies" tab is "No known restrictions on publication", if so a non-commercial and low-circulation use is probably fine).
But Wait! There's More!:
The Division has prepared picture lists and resource lists for popularly requested topics, as well as guides and finding aids for particular collections. There are numerous other picture catalogs available from other libraries, archives, museums, or picture agencies. Some significant ones are included in the list of "Picture Catalogs Online."
Downloading Image Files:
The Prints & Photographs Online Catalog includes images in the following formats:
Information on software for viewing tiffs can be found in a document on the American Memory web site: How to View Prints and Photographs.
In cases where the rights to an image have not been evaluated or are known to be restricted, .jpg and .tif images will not display to those searching outside of the Library of Congress.
We occasionally get reports that individuals have difficulty saving .tif files, even when the link is visible to them. One possible explanation for this is that the file is large (many .tif files exceed 10 megabytes, and some are as large as 200 megabytes or more). Particularly when using a slow connection, it can take considerable time to open or save such a file. It is best, in these instances, to try to save the file without first opening it. Browsers and helper applications vary in how they present downloading options and steps. The following are the general steps for saving files.
To save images:
Reference staff and subject-matter experts at the American Folklife Center have created over 120 research guides that enable discovery and access to collection materials and resources managed by the Center. These guides offer geographic orientation to materials—such as state, country, or region–or take on a topical approach that draws on genre, cultural activity, or identity group. The guides are updated as new collections become available, and new guides are created based on patron need and staff expertise. (The Guides cover a lot of different topics and are worth taking at least a brief look at. Many of the Guides focus on a particular State or Country, and the others are focused on a specific topic.)
Here is a collection of over 1,000 other research guides, many of which are focused on materials physically in the Library of Congress - usually with some potentially useful online information. Another information-rich collection is the Library of Congress Bibliographies, Research Guides, and Finding Aids page. Two research guides that have some online information are those for the Moving Image Collection and the Moving Image Recorded Sound Collections.
The LOC website is large, complex, and growing. If you discover some research guides that should also be included here please let us know.
The Veterans History Project (VHP) of the Library of Congress American Folklife Center collects, preserves and makes accessible the firsthand narratives of U.S. military veterans who served from World War I through more recent conflicts and peacekeeping missions, so that future generations may hear directly from veterans and better understand what they saw, did and felt during their service. Since 2000, VHP has preserved thousands of individual veterans’ collections, which offer users an unparalleled archive of primary source material.
In addition to unedited audio- and video-recorded oral history interviews, VHP accepts memoirs and collections of original photographs, letters, and diaries. You can find more detailed information about the basic requirements for a collection and the kinds of material that VHP accepts via the LOC website (see How to Participate).
Once you have clicked the Veterans History Project link use the left-side navigation menu to learn more about searching, accessing and using VHP collection materials. Select the “Collection Items” tab at the top to immediately view descriptive records for thousands of individual veterans’ collections. Please note that the only descriptive records are for veterans who donated a copy of their story to VHP.
Serving: Our Voices:
The Serving: Our Voices feature presents curated materials from the VHP collections grouped by a wide variety of topical themes. Select the “Serving: Our Voices” tab above to browse these diverse presentations, which introduce the endless research possibilities found in LOC-VHP collections.
The American Folklife Center curates the Web Cultures Web Archive, which includes sites documenting the creation and sharing of emergent cultural traditions on the web. The mission of the American Folklife Center is to document traditional cultural forms and practices, and the proliferation of smart phones, tablets, and wireless Internet connections has positioned networked communication as a space where people increasingly develop and share folklore.
This collection, co-curated with scholars who study digital culture, captures a set of websites that document elements of the various digital vernaculars enabled through networked and computer-mediated communication. These sites comprise a wide range of everyday communication enacted by communities to create a shared sense of the world: reaction GIFs, image macros and memes; online communities that have established, shaped and disseminated communication tropes and themes; sites that document, establish and/or define vernacular language and icon-based communications, such as emoji and memes through Know Your Meme and Giphy; sites connected to DIY (do it yourself) movements of crafting and making; sites focused on documentation, development, proliferation, distribution and discussion of digital “urban legends” and lore, such as Creepypasta; and sites that focus on the development and dissemination of vernacular creative forms, such as fan fiction.
The Web Cultures Web Archive offers a representative sampling of the collective cultural creation and self-documentation characterizing vernacular spaces on the World Wide Web, and, like many of those spaces, is in process. The American Folklife Center will continue to add to these collections, developing archival holdings that reflect the dynamic nature of the web itself.
The majority of sites in the collection are archived quarterly or monthly, with some sites archived on a weekly, yearly, twice-yearly, or (occasionally) once.