The Library of Congress was established by the American national legislature in 1800. It had comprehensive collecting policies from the beginning, as Thomas Jefferson, its principal founder, believed that a democratic legislature needed information and ideas in all subjects and from all parts of the world in order to do its job. By the second half of the nineteenth century it had come to be regarded as the national library of the American people, and by the twentieth century had moved into a position of world leadership with such developments as the LC classification and the MARC format, so becoming a truly international library in scope and service.
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