[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 17 (Monday, May 1, 2000)]
[Pages 889-890]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Proclamation 7296--Bicentennial of the Library of Congress

April 21, 2000

By the President of the United States

of America

A Proclamation

    The Library of Congress is truly America's library. Established on 
April 24, 1800, as the Congress prepared to transfer the Federal 
Government from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., it is our country's 
oldest Federal cultural institution. With Thomas Jefferson's private 
library--acquired in 1815--as its core, the Library of Congress has 
reflected from its earliest days the breadth and variety of Jefferson's 
interests and his love of democracy, expanding the store of human 
knowledge, and helping ensure the free flow of ideas.
    Two centuries later, the Library's collections remain diverse and 
expansive, containing materials on virtually every subject, in virtually 
every medium. The Library houses approximately 120 million items, 
including more than 18 million books and some of the world's largest 
collections of maps, manuscripts, photographs, prints, newspapers, sound 
recordings, motion pictures, and other research materials. The Library 
also offers wide-ranging services to the Government and the public, 
serving simultaneously as a legislative library and the major research 
arm of the United States Congress; the copyright agency of the United 
States; the world's largest law library; and a major center for 
preserving research materials and for digitizing documents, manuscripts, 
maps, motion pictures, and other specialized materials for use on the 
Internet.
    Today, America's library is also the world's library. An 
international resource of unparalleled reach, the Library of Congress 
provides services through its 21 reading rooms in 3 buildings on Capitol 
Hill as well as electronically through its web site, which registers 
more than 4 million transactions each workday from people around the 
globe. With its remarkable collections and resources, the Library has 
truly fulfilled its stated mission to make ``available and useful . . . 
and to sustain and preserve a universal collection of knowledge and 
creativity for future generations.''
    Libraries have always enabled people, in the words of James Madison, 
to ``arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.'' These words, 
inscribed at the entrance of the James Madison Memorial Building of the 
Library of Congress, are a tribute to the Library's past and a 
sustaining goal as it embarks on its third century.
    Now, Therefore, I, William J. Clinton,  President of the United 
States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the 
Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim April 24, 
2000, as a time to commemorate the Bicentennial of the Library of 
Congress. I call upon the people of the United States to observe this 
occasion with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities that 
celebrate the many contributions the Library of Congress has made to 
strengthening our democracy and our national culture.
    In Witness Whereof,  I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-first 
day of April, in the year of our Lord two thousand, and of the 
Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twenty-
fourth.
                                            William J. Clinton

[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 8:45 a.m., April 24, 
2000]

 Note:  This proclamation was published in the  Federal Register  on 
April 25. This item was not received in time for publication in the 
appropriate issue.

[[Page 890]]