It costs every U.S. citizen about 5¢ a year to maintain the Library of Congress. Last week, in its annual report, the library told what all the nickels had accomplished.
The library, said the report, is pretty sure that it is now the biggest in the world.* It owns 27,560,873 "pieces": books, records, prints and photographs, and 11 million manuscripts. Last year it answered more than 22,000 questions from Congressmen, opened its doors to a record 866,669 readers. Most popular subject with its readers: U.S. history.
*Other great collections: London's British Museum, Paris' Bibliotheque Nationale, Moscow's Lenin State Library.
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