Uncover America's past at the Library of Congress, the world's largest library
A discussion of the world's largest library, from the documentary Volumes to Speak: The Library of Congress.
Great Museums Television (A Britannica Publishing Partner)
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Transcript
[Music in]
NARRATOR: The verses of a Korean poem printed 250 years before movable type was invented in the West. The spectacles in Abraham Lincoln's pocket the night he died. Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence. The typed script of Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech. The first photograph of Orville Wright taking flight. Alexander Graham Bell's first sketch of a telephone. These treasures and many more are housed in the Library of Congress, the largest repository of knowledge and creativity in the world and, in a sense, the ultimate museum.
HARRY KATZ: Many people think of the library as a—as a great repository of books, but it also has remarkable collections of prints and photographs.
SAMUEL BRYLAWSKI: The memory of America is on motion-picture film and videotape and disks and audiotape as well as in—in the printed text and photograph.
JAMES BILLINGTON: All our exhibits are online so that you can follow up and study them in more detail wherever you live, anywhere in the world that has access to the internet.
IRENE CHAMBERS: Really, here you can find all the answers to almost any question about the American past.
JAMES BILLINGTON: I think people who come and see our treasures of America and treasures of the world and see the beauty of the Jefferson Building in which they are contained and exhibited in permanence are most surprised by the richness and the variety, not just of our collections but of human creativity.
[Music out]
NARRATOR: The verses of a Korean poem printed 250 years before movable type was invented in the West. The spectacles in Abraham Lincoln's pocket the night he died. Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence. The typed script of Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech. The first photograph of Orville Wright taking flight. Alexander Graham Bell's first sketch of a telephone. These treasures and many more are housed in the Library of Congress, the largest repository of knowledge and creativity in the world and, in a sense, the ultimate museum.
HARRY KATZ: Many people think of the library as a—as a great repository of books, but it also has remarkable collections of prints and photographs.
SAMUEL BRYLAWSKI: The memory of America is on motion-picture film and videotape and disks and audiotape as well as in—in the printed text and photograph.
JAMES BILLINGTON: All our exhibits are online so that you can follow up and study them in more detail wherever you live, anywhere in the world that has access to the internet.
IRENE CHAMBERS: Really, here you can find all the answers to almost any question about the American past.
JAMES BILLINGTON: I think people who come and see our treasures of America and treasures of the world and see the beauty of the Jefferson Building in which they are contained and exhibited in permanence are most surprised by the richness and the variety, not just of our collections but of human creativity.
[Music out]