This summer I have spent nearly every weekday in the Library of Congress' European Reading Room, and it is wonderful. First, I have had access to an immense array of books and articles for my academic writing and, more recently, for my syllabus creating. I have no idea how other academics get access to all these works, including both very obscure works from other countries, in foreign languages, and the newest mainstream books. For example, last week, within minutes, I received at my desk Denise M. Lynn's Claudia Jones: Visions of a Socialist America, which came out late last fall with Polity Press. My university doesn't have a copy of it. In the DMV, only Georgetown University has a copy, and it's a hard copy. This lack of access to books will only get worse as our universities are cutting library budgets. Also earlier this year I was reading copies of the Yugoslav journal Financije, which no university in the DMV has. I could wait for weeks to get my university to order volumes through Inter-Library Loan, but why? I can just sit down at my desk in the LoC reading room and have them brought to me, as many volumes as I like.
Yesterday, I said hi to a historian of Russia and said that I had been here nearly every day all summer, "Isn't this great?" He said, "I love it. What can I say?" Pure joy in the Library of Congress.
