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General Collections

The Library’s collections of books and pamphlets, organized according to the familiar Library of Congress Classification Scheme, are known as the classified or general collections.

Materials are discovered using the Library of Congress Online Catalog and are accessible to researchers in the following reading rooms of the Library:

• Main Reading Room
• Business Reference Services
• The Law Library of Congress
• Local History and Genealogy
• Newspaper and Current Periodical
• Science Reference Services
• Children's Literature Center

The Main Reading Room in the Thomas Jefferson Building is the principal reference and book service point for the Library's general collections.

The general collections include books, pamphlets, and bound (non-current) periodicals in all languages except some that use non-roman alphabets (e.g., Chinese, Arabic) and in all areas of the classification scheme except:

• Law (classes J1-J14, JX1-JX1304, JX2000-JX9999, K, and LAW, located in the Law Library)
• Music (classes M, ML, and MT, located in the Performing Arts Reading Room)
• Maps and atlases (G1000-G9980, located in the Geography and Map Reading Room).

Cyrillic materials, although in a non-roman alphabet, are housed in the general collections. In general, most of the classes shelved in the Adams Building (A, G, H, J, L, Q, R, S, T, U, V, Z) cover science and social science subject areas, and those shelved in the Jefferson Building (B, C, D, E, F, N, P) cover the humanities. To ensure that book delivery time is kept to a minimum, readers should use the reading room located in the building where the materials they are requesting are housed.

All researchers must have a Library-issued Reader Identification Card to use these collections. All collections are stored in areas that are off-limits to the public and to staff without authorization. This "closed stack policy," like the reader identification program, ensures the security of the Library's collections. Researchers new to the Library are encouraged to take the "Research Orientation to the Library of Congress" course offered by the Humanities and Social Sciences Division. This 90-minute class, offered throughout the year, is a basic introduction for researchers using any of the Library of Congress collections and resource