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Legendary French philosopher, novelist and screenwriter, Jean-Paul Sartre once said, “I had found my religion: nothing seemed more important to me than a book. I saw the library as a temple”. Libraries are considered as the main source of knowledge and wisdom and is getting better with each passing day. Digitizing the records, libraries are now preserving the rare collection of books, photographs, quotes from the last era and most of the libraries are now considered as a place where people find their inner peace with the knowledge.
Libraries connect communities, help improve the local economies, act as free educational resources to the people and also help them cement their command over various languages. Libraries as it expands, increases the values it has, i.e. more books, more knowledge. If you ever wanted to visit the world’s largest libraries, this article might help you as it speaks about five of them.[$$$$]
The Library of Congress (Washington D.C, U.S)
One of the oldest cultural institutions in the US, the Library of the Congress is the largest library in the world. It was founded in 1800 and has a collection of more than 150 million items and all in more than 450 languages. The Library of Congress has a collection of 32 million cataloged books and over 61 million manuscripts. Remarkably, the library receives 22,000 copies per day from the publication produced in the US and the library collection fills about 1,349 km of bookshelves. Today, the library is open to the public only for touring, but only high officials can access its books and things.
Trivia: The library preserves America’s most important films such as Ghostbusters (1984) and health class classics like The Story of Menstruation (1946). [$$$$]
The British Library (London, UK)
Holding over 150 million items from different countries, the British Library receives 8,000 copies per day from the publications across the UK and Ireland. It includes 14 million books and every year three million items are added to the library occupying 9.6 km of new shelf space.
The library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is situated between the Euston and St. Pacras railway stations in London. Established in 1973, some of the famous collections of this library include the Diamond Sutra, a notebook of Leonardo da Vinci, Codez Arundel, Gutenberg Bibles and Lewis Carroll’s famous manuscript of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground.
Trivia: If you looked at five items in the library every day, it would take you 80,000 years to see the entire collection.[$$$$]
Library and Archives Canada (Ottawa, Canada)
Founded in 2004, the library holds 20 million books, and 24 million photographs. This library is the third biggest library in the world. Located at Ottawa, the library boasts of a collection of over 20 million books, newspapers, microfilms, posters and many others.
The library is maintained by the federal government of the country and is assigned by the immense task of preserving the country’s heritage documentaries. As of now, its collection consists of the proclamation of the Canadian Constitution Act, a 1st Century book by historian Flavius Josephus, a chair belonging to Glenn Gould, and the British North American Act.
Trivia: The library now reports to Parliament through Pablo Rodriguez, the Minister of Canadian Heritage since August 28, 2018.[$$$$]
The New York Public Library (New York, US)
Founded in 1895, the public library of New York has a huge collection of 53.1 million items. The library also has four research libraries, which are open to the general public. The main branch of the library is located on Fifth Avenue in New York at the intersection with 42nd Street.
The collection includes books, periodicals, musical records and other publication and albums. This private, non-governmental, independently managed, nonprofit corporation operates with both private and public financing. In 1965, the branch was declared as a National Historic Landmark and listed on the National Register of Historic Places n 1966.
Trivia: NYPL’s historical collections hold such treasures as Columbus’s 1493 letter announcing his discovery of the New World.[$$$$]
Russian State Library (Moscow, Russia)
Founded in 1862, the library was named V.I. Lenin State Library of the USSR in 1925 and it was renamed in 1992 as the Russian State Library. The library has over 275 km of shelves with more than 43 million items, including over 17 million books and serial volumes, 13 million journals, 350 thousand music scores and sound records.
Interestingly, between 1922 and 1991, one copy of every book published in the USSR was deposited in the library. In front of the library, a huge statue of Dostoevsky can be seen. The items in the libraries are in 247 languages of the world, the foreign part representing about 29 percent of the entire collection.
Trivia: More than 90 percent of dissertation abstracts, early printed books, documents from the Cartographic collection and the Universal collection, and more than 80 percent of the music collection are in the public domain.
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