ABSTRACT
The Library of Congress preserves culture in ink, wax, and silver salts. It has music, etchings, poetry, lithographs, motion pictures, photographs, and phonograph records. In 1980, the music collection reached 6 million items. In that year, the Library's five Stradivari instruments and its one Guarnerius were played in fifty free concerts, which were rebroadcast over dozens of "good music" stations in North America and Europe. The Library offers some eighty-odd long-playing records of this music, much of which has become the primary source material for basic research in the field. The great strength of the Library of Congress is the breadth and depth of its collections—and in no area is this more true than in performing arts. The Library's wealth of materials in music, film, sound recordings, posters, photographs, correspondence—as well as books and magazines—make it a kind of "one-stop shopping place" for serious researchers in this field.
