3 Reading Room at the British Museum, London, England





The Reading Room at the British Museum is found in the center of the Great Court of the British Museum. It features a domed roof, with the ceiling made of a variety of papier-mâché. For much of the Room’s history, access was only granted to registered researches, and during this period many notable figures studied at the Library, including Karl Marx, Oscar Wilde, Mahatma Gandhi, Rudyard Kipling, George Orwell, Mark Twain, Lenin, and H.G. Wells. The Library’s collection was moved to the new British Library in 2000 and the Reading Room now houses an information center and a curated collection of books relating to history, art, travel and other subjects relevant to the collection’s of the British Museum.

1 Library of Congress, Washington D.C.





The Library of Congress is effectively the national library of the United States and the oldest federal cultural institution in the US. The library consists of three different buildings and is the largest library in the world. The library is open to the public, but only members of congress and other important government officials may check out books. The library also serves an important function as the “library of last resort” in the US, ensuring the availability of certain items to various libraries around the United States. The holdings of the library are extremely impressive, they include - over 32 million books, more than 61 million manuscripts, a rough draft of the Declaration of Independence, a perfect vellum copy of the Gutenberg Bible (one of only four in the world), over 1 million newspapers from the last three centuries, over 5 million maps, 6 million pieces of sheet music, and more than 14 millions photos and prints.