–Washington, DC
Britannica –
“The de facto national library of the United States and the largest library in the world…
The library was founded in 1800 with $5,000 appropriated by the Congress when the U.S. capital moved from Philadelphia, PA, to Washington, DC. It was housed within the new Capitol building, where it remained for nearly a century. However, on Aug. 24, 1814, during the War of 1812, the library’s original collection of 3,000 volumes was destroyed when the British burned the Capitol as well as the White House. To rebuild the library’s collection, Congress, on January 30, 1815, approved the purchase of former president Thomas Jefferson’s personal library of 6,487 books for $23,950. On Christmas Eve 1851, another fire destroyed two–thirds of the collection. Many of the volumes have since been replaced.
The Library of Congress provides direct research assistance to the U.S. Congress through the Congressional Research Service (originally the Legislative Reference Service), which was founded in 1914. Established in 1832, the Law Library provides Congress with comprehensive research on foreign, comparative, international, and U.S. law, drawing upon its collection of some 2.6 million volumes.
In 1994 the Library of Congress launched the National Digital Library Program (NDLP), making freely available on the Internet high–quality electronic versions of American historical material from the library’s special collections.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/132563/Library–of–Congress (accessed July 1, 2009)