As the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution, the Library maintains more than 171 million collection items, including more than 40 million cataloged books and other print materials in 470 languages, more than 71 million manuscripts, the largest rare book collection in North America, and the world’s largest collection of legal materials, films, maps, sheet music, and sound recordings.
Of particular interest to historians of science, technology and medicine are the holdings of the Manuscript Division, whose nearly 12,000 separate collections include some of the greatest manuscript treasures of American history and culture, and support scholarly research in many aspects of political, cultural, and scientific history. The division maintains more than 700 science and technology collections, which include the papers of individuals such as the Wright Brothers, Samuel Morse, Alexander Graham Bell, Sigmund Freud, Abraham Flexner, Margaret Sanger, Margaret Mead, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Vannevar Bush, Carl Sagan, Henry Aaron Hill, E. O. Wilson, Rita Colwell, Nina V. Federoff, Vera Rubin, and many more.
Also of interest is the Library’s Science, Technology & Business Division, which provides reference and bibliographic services and develops the Library’s general collections in all areas of science, technology, business, and economics with the exception of clinical medicine and technical agriculture.