We’re the de facto National Library and it’s time we acted like one.

The Library of Congress preserves and shares the cultural content of this complex and diverse nation as much as possible and as often as possible. The LoC is moving on from being just a federal library supporting Congress, the Copyright office and our treasured historical artifacts, and leading the national conversation on preservation and access to cultural heritage in general.

Share all the things

We’re going to digitize the heck out of everything and get it online as soon as possible. We’re plowing through our backlog and giving you progress reports. CRS reports? Already happening. Need our metadata? We’ve got it for you, easily accessible. Open Access? We support it in word and deed. Planning a field trip? We’ve got the conference room warmed up and free bookmarks for everyone. What is ours is yours.

Love all the haters

Copyright is a mess and we’re going to be the ones to make it beautiful. Working with rights holders, copyright institutions and content consumers we’re going to fight for fair use and find ways to make enthusiastic content sharing a win-win for everyone. People should be able to understand their rights well enough to explain them to a five-year-old. No one should be afraid to share.

The Library is a growing organism

We’re going to expand our outreach mission to work closely and visibly with all the state libraries to help everyone in the country feel that the Library of Congress is their library. We’re going to make our content available in more languages and ensure that people with physical or intellectual disabilities can access all of our digital content. Our UX technique will be unstoppable. We will highlight the diversity of our collections to promote inclusion and be forthcoming when problematic aspects of history make that more complicated than it should be. Everyone is welcome. Join us.