Recently, when I was passing through Washington, DC, I had the opportunity to visit one of my favorite places in the world: the Library of Congress. I’ve actually been here several times before, and I always try to stop in for the public tour whenever I’m in town. But during this visit, my mission was slightly different. I’d set a personal goal to obtain the ultimate prize, the Holy Grail of book nerds everywhere: a researcher card from the Library of Congress.
This idea first got stuck in my head about ten years back, during one of a few visits to our nation’s capitol in 2008. I remember being absolutely blown away by the Jefferson Building’s architecture, although the public areas are basically limited to the lobby and a number of cool exhibits. For anyone who’s interested in seeing the awesome rotunda of the Main Reading Room, you’re pretty much limited to queueing up for a chance to crowd into an overlook space, along with all the other tourists in black knees socks. There, the lot of you can look down in envy at all the hardworking scholars below, all surrounded by endless stacks of important-looking leatherbound books set up on hardwood shelves. Just the sight of such an awesome reading space is enough to make even the most casual bookworm feel a twinge of jealousy.
I’d tried to pull this off a number of time before, but it seemed like my travel schedule always got in the way. If you’re a long-term DC resident, though, the process is actually fairly painless. All you have to do is visit the reader registration desk in person with a valid photo ID, and you can even pre-register online to save some time. Total time elapsed: fifteen minutes, maybe?
Of course, you can’t actually borrow books from the Library of Congress— who knows why, maybe the librarians figure that Senators and Congressmen can’t be trusted to pay their overdue fines? But once you get set up with a card, assuming you’re not just in this to obtain the ultimate Washington DC souvenir, the Library’s online catalog is easy enough to dive into. For serious researchers, you can request as many books as you’d like and have them delivered to the Main Reading Room, where they’ll be waiting and ready for your visit. It’s like some kind of magical Amazon service designed to facilitate your browsing needs… and oh yeah, it’s free!
Now that I’m finally in, it shouldn’t be long until I come across The Book of Secrets…