“The collections housed in The Rare Book and Special Collections Division amount to nearly 800,000 books, encompassing nearly all eras and subjects maintained in well over 100 separate collections. All of these collections offer scholarly documentation about the western and American traditions of life and learning. The Division’s collection of nearly 5,700 incunabula (fifteenth-century imprints) is the largest such grouping in the Western Hemisphere. Our Americana collections include more than 16,000 imprints from 1640 to 1800, including the Columbus letter of 1493. The digitized selections offered here represent a few of the  most interesting and important items in the collection, including a copy of the Gutenberg Bible, Thomas Jefferson’s copy of The Federalist, medieval manuscripts, books relating to cookery, children’s literature, and many more. The Rare Book and Special Collections Division traces its beginnings to Thomas Jefferson’s wish to create a library for statesmen and for the people of the new nation. After the British burned the Capitol and its library in 1814, Jefferson offered to sell his book collection to Congress. Congress appropriated money for the purchase, and Jefferson’s collection served as the foundation for the new Library of Congress in 1815. Jefferson’s books–in several languages and covering a great variety of subjects–today form the nucleus of the division. (Also see: The First Booklist of the Library of Congress: A Facsimile, Washington, DC, 1981.)…”