ABSTRACT
The Library's first home was in an upper room of the new Capitol Building, and it soon received its second legal underpinning. In January 1802, Congress passed a law that has been called the "charter of governance" for the new library. President Thomas Jefferson promptly appointed a close personal friend, one John James Beckley, as the first Librarian of Congress. The new Librarian and his committee began by querying bibliophiles throughout Washington for suggested purchases, and among those asked was Jefferson himself. An accumulation of any one of the three might well have become the national collection, if there was to be one, but the one that did was the copyright collection of the Library of Congress, and the reason was probably Ainsworth Rand Spofford. By 1865, Joseph Henry was becoming engulfed and repelled by the sheer bulk of the exchange publications—which Spofford saw and coveted, picturing them as filling the scientific gaps in his own collections.
