Libraries of the 21st Century

Today some libraries have grown to extraordinary size. Imagine standing next to a bookshelf that was 530 miles [850 km] long and that contained over 29 million books. That is the approximate size of the world’s largest library​—the Library of Congress, in the United States. In addition to books, the library holds some 2.7 million audio and video recordings, 12 million photographs, 4.8 million maps, and 57 million manuscripts. Each day, the library adds 7,000 items to its collection!

[Picture on page 20, 21]

U.S. Library of Congress, the world’s largest

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From the book Ridpath’s History of the World (Vol. IX)