Library of Congress is crazy!

Library of Congress: Fascinating Facts

When you publish a book, it is recommended to register it with the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN) helps uniquely identify the book and is related to copyright. Part of the process is to send a copy of a physical book to them. This isn’t required, but many publishers send them in.

The LOC receives over 15,000 books PER DAY into their possession. This is a ridiculous number. Not everything is worthy of being added to the LOC permanent collection, but nothing is thrown away and some of the approaches are pretty clever.

The library started in 1800, which is also amazing.