The Library of Citizens
Locol.us combines Franklin’s idea of private individuals coming together to share knowledge with the LoC’s scale. Just for good measure we build the whole thing on distributed technologies with non-competitive media.
Like the LoC, our Library's mission is to make its resources available and useful to the American people and to sustain and preserve a universal collection of knowledge and creativity for future generations.
However, Locol.us allows access in complete privacy from anywhere and the doors never close. There is no storage limitation so no need to filter submisisons. Catalog policy as well as item maintainance are handled completely by the citizens themselves. The collection is not centralized, so there is no chance of accidental destruction.
Save the present for the future. Donate.
I Had. I Gave. We Have.
Library of Citizens On-Line
Lessons Learned
Accessibility
The Library of Congress is a research library, and books are used only on the premises by members of the public. Anyone over high school age may use the collections. All patrons using the Library's reading rooms and/or collections must have a user card with a photo on it. The library is open 8:30a-9:30p Monday through Saturday.
Limitations
The Library receives some 22,000 items each working day and adds approximately 10,000 items to the collections daily. The rest go unarchived.
Fragility
The Library of Congress was founded in 1800. On August 24, 1814, the Library's core collection of 3,000 volumes was destroyed when the British burned the Capitol, where the Library was housed.
On January 30, 1815, Congress approved the purchase of Thomas Jefferson's personal library of 6,487 books for $23,950. On Christmas Eve 1851, another fire destroyed two-thirds of the collection. Many of the volumes have since been replaced, but nearly 900 are missing. loc.gov
