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was established by an act of congress on April 24, 1800. It was originally housed in the United States capitol. The collection, which stared out small at 740 volumes, slowly increased to over 3,000 volumes by 1814. That year, though, the British along with the ca ....

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.... in order to receive protection. The flood of material that resulted forced the construction of a new building that opened in 1897. A new age for the library was guided by the opening of the Jefferson building and The Main Reading room. Special format collections were separated from the book collections and the readers could access them in different locations of the library. Some of these format collections were maps, prints, music, and manuscripts. The continued growth of the library’s collection required two new buildings at the location of the library, Capitol Hill. These two new buildings were the Adams building, built in 1939, and the Madison ....