Year 2021 at a Glance

In fiscal year 2021 (October 2020 to September 2021), the Library of Congress …

Responded to more than 731,000 reference requests from Congress, the public and other federal agencies, including the direct use of Congressional Research Service reports;

Welcomed about 30,000 onsite visitors to its Capitol Hill campus and recorded more than 178.1 million visits and 617.7 million page views on the Library’s web properties;

Issued 403,593 copyright registrations and recorded 11,625 documents containing more than 961,291 titles;

Circulated more than 21.5 million copies of braille, audio and large-print items to blind and print disabled patrons;

Circulated 154,505 physical items for use inside and outside the Library;

Performed approximately 2.2 million preservation actions on items in the Library’s physical collections, with an additional 3.4 million pages of materials prepared and shipped to vendors for preservation reformatting services;

Placed more than 7.5 million items under inventory control in its preservation facility at Fort Meade;

• more than 25.2 million cataloged books in the Library of Congress classification system
• more than 15.7 million items in the nonclassified print collections, including books in large type and raised characters, incunabula (books printed before 1501), monographs and serials, music, bound newspapers, pamphlets, technical reports and other printed material
• more than 132.7 million items in the nonclassified (special) collections, including:
  • 4.2 million audio materials (discs, tapes, talking books and other recorded formats)
  • 7
  • 5
  • 1
  • 1
  • 8
  • 1
  • 2

Operated with a total budget authority of $802.1 million, including $757.3 million in appropriations and the additional authority to spend $44.8 million in offsetting receipts.