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The Library of Congress is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress, but which is the de facto national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. John Cole argues that it is now the largest and most international library in the world. He attributes that to its highly influential leaders, especially Ainsworth Rand Spofford, Herbert Putnam, Luther H. Evans, and James H. Billington. Cole says they, "have affirmed and expanded Thomas Jefferson's concept that the Library of Congress is a national institution that should be universal in scope and widely and freely available to everyone."
Located in four buildings in Washington, D.C., as well as the Packard Campus in Virginia, it is the second largest library in the world by shelf space and number of books, after The British Library.
The Library of Congress moved to Washington in 1800, after sitting for eleven years in the temporary national capitals of New York and Philadelphia. The small Congressional Library was housed in the United States Capitol for most of the 19th century until the early 1890s. Most of the original collection had been destroyed by the British in 1814 during the War of 1812. To restore the collection in 1815, former president Thomas Jefferson sold 6,487 books, his entire personal collection, to pay his debts,
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