Library of Congress
On this date in 1800 in the United States, the Library of Congress was established when President John Adams signed legislation to appropriate $5,000 to purchase "such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress". The library has been destroyed, or severely damaged more than once, but today it is considered the greatest (largest inventory) library in the world.
Currently, its collection boasts more than 38 million books and other printed materials, 3.6 million recordings, 14 million photographs, 5.5 million maps, 8.1 million pieces of sheet music and 70 million manuscripts, 5,711 incunabula, and 122,810,430 items in the nonclassified (special) collections: more than 167,000,000 total items.
I'm a great fan of print books. They are authentic and more durable than any digital medium, and they invite readers and other admirers into a unique and indefinable relationship with text and with the physical object of the book that is different from whatever relationship one might have with a computer or other digital device. A print book is a work of art, a nearly perfect, enduring engineering design, and also a kind of container of knowledge. Used books are the most dangerous books of all, because they have no permanent owner and they have a tendency to wander unrestrained and uncontrolled. Books are supposed to be threatening, not reassuring (or, the former more than the latter) because their words represent an assault upon the unthinking.
Although it's true that a library is not, and never has been simply a warehouse for dead trees, I believe a library's primary task is to archive print material. I revere large, central libraries, and I even advocate a Universal Library - a library of about 1 billion items that can boast a copy of everything that has every been written, published, printed by humankind. But the truth is that large central libraries are targets for destruction, and throughout history culture, civilization and knowledge have been preserved and propagated in small provincial libraries, not the prized central ones.
The policy decision to fund the library as a legal deposit library and begin its rapid expansion into the role of global library leader did not start until around the turn of the twentieth century. Over time it evolved into that position through the leadership of inspired librarians, pressure on politicians for funds, and an enlightened political class that saw a function for it. It is not safe just on the laurels of its reputation because it remains at the mercy of fickle government policy and funding decisions.