General Collections
When your research takes you beyond the ordinary, and you need hard to locate materials, Washington's distinctive collections become your tools of choice. There are two vast and wide ranging collections.
- The Library of Congress, one of the world's greatest libraries, with substantial secondary and primary collections in almost every area of human knowledge and endeavor. Using the library requires patience -- it is closed stack so you have to wait for librarians to retrieve materials, and it usually seems that they only find about half of that which you request at any given time -- but it is, nonetheless, an awesome resource.
- The National Archives, with collections of original documents from America's history, including census records, Congressional Committee deliberations, and the papers of numerous prominent individuals and organizations from the American experience. While much of the material has been moved to the suburbs, it is still reachable by Metro.