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The Library of Congress by the Numbers in 2015

The Library of Congress today released statistics for fiscal year 2015. Its collection now comprises more than 162 million physical items in a wide variety of formats. The daily business of being the world’s largest library, the home of the U.S. Copyright Office and a supportive agency to the U.S. Congress resulted in the Library adding 1.7 million physical items to its permanent collections, registering more than 443,000 copyright claims and responding to more than 1 million reference requests from Congress, the public and other federal agencies in fiscal year 2015. Some notable items newly cataloged into the Library’s collection include the papers of former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and composer Marvin Hamlisch; rare Civil War stereograph images; recordings from the pioneering folk music label Stinson Records, featuring Woody Guthrie, Peter Seeger and Lead Belly; the Archive of the Association of American Geographers; and the backfile of issues on microfilm of the French satirical magazine “Charlie Hebdo,” which began publishing in 1970. The U.S. Copyright Office registered works in fiscal year 2015 from authors in all 50 states. The Grammy Award-nominated songs “Uptown Funk” (Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson) and “Alright” (Kendrick Lamar and Pharell Williams) and such box-office toppers as “Inside Out,” “Furious 7” and “Jurassic World” were among the nearly half-million novels, poems, films, software, video games, music, photographs and other works submitted. Reference librarians and Congressional Research Service staff responded to more than 1 million reference requests from patrons both on-site and via phone and email—an average of 4,600 requests every business day. Students, authors and scholars sought information this year about Abraham Lincoln’s religious beliefs, Theodore Roosevelt’s role in reforming college football practices, whether the “Book of Secrets” discussed in the 2007 film “National Treasure” exists and the always popular topic of family genealogy…”

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