ists to develop these and other collections and per-
suaded Congress to appropriate substantial funds
to purchase research materials for all collections.
Copyright deposit remained one of the Library’s
major acquisitions sources throughout the twenti-
eth century, but between 1865 and 1897 it was fun-
damental in making the Library of Congress a
national institution.
Shared acquisitions and cataloging necessitated
international bibliographic standards, and the
Library met the challenge through the creation in
the mid-1960s of the MARC (Machine Readable
Cataloging) format for communicating biblio-
graphic data in machine-readable form. This new
capability for converting, maintaining, and distri-
buting bibliographic information soon became the
standard format for sharing data about books and
other research materials. The possibility of world-
wide application was immediately recognized, and
the MARC structure became an official national
standard in 1971 and an international standard in
- Although this format was clearly library-
oriented, it found favor with the archival commu-
nity, where it has been extensively used to catalog
photographic collections and individual photo-
graphs in a variety of institutional settings, includ-
ing libraries, archives, and historical societies (art
museums are notable exceptions to this trend).
The Library of Congress has greatly expanded
beyond its initial function as a library devoted to
books, so its collections span the traditions of
libraries, archives, and museums, including not
onlyconventionalprintedbooksbutrareandunique
books and incunabula, maps, printed ephemera,
photographs, motion pictures, and even musical
instruments. Although widely acknowledged as the
‘‘national’’ library, it still does not serve as an official
national library in the same sense that such institu-
tions exist in other countries.
Photographs in the Library of Congress in
Washington are held in the Library’s Prints and
Photographs Division, along with other works on
paper, from printed posters to fine-art prints. The
Adams Building of the Library, opened in 1939,
contained the Prints and Photographs Division
until the massive Madison Building was completed
in 1980. The Prints and Photographs Division in this
modern facility is easily accessible to researchers.
Although the aims of the Library in collecting
photographs have tended toward the documentary,
they also encompass fine-art photographs, espe-
cially since curator Jerald C. Maddox, who served
as curator of photography in the pivotal period
from 1966–1987, consciously began forming a col-
lection informally identified as ‘‘master’’ photo-
graphs in the 1970s. George J. Hobart became
curator of documentary photography in 1968.
Other noted photographic professionals who have
helped shape the collections and practices of the
Prints and Photographs Division throughout its
history include:
Hirst D. Milhollen (1906–1970), a specialist in
photography for over 40 years, helped obtain the
Brady collection, and was appointed curator of nega-
tives in 1950. Noted photographer and legendary
archivist Paul Vanderbilt was chief of the Prints and
Photographs Division from 1947–1950, and consul-
tant in iconography, 1950–1954. He developed the
basic scheme of picture retrieval. Alan Fern, on the
staffoftheLibraryfor21years,waschiefofthePrints
and Photographs Division, then director for special
collections since 1978, until serving as director of the
Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery,
1982–2000. Stephen E. Ostrow succeeded Fern as
chief of the Division. Recent photography staff
include Beverly Brannan, curator for large documen-
tary collections since 1974, and Verna Curtis, who
became Jerald Maddox’s successor.
When Merry Foresta began collecting art photo-
graphs for the Smithsonian Institution’s National
Museum of American Art (later called the Smithso-
nian American Art Museum) in the early 1980s, this
initiative represented competition, which led the
Library to return to its concentration on the docu-
mentary tradition and to de-emphasize its commit-
ment to new acquisitions of ‘‘fine-art’’ photography.
The functions of the Division are separated into
three areas: curatorial, cataloguing, and reference.
The specialized and skilled members of the catalo-
guing staff have been highly influential in their field
formanyyears.Typicallydevelopingdescriptiveand
technical standards that encompass photographs
and non-photographic prints alike, their publica-
tions and professional networking, both formal and
informal, have promoted professionalism and the
standardization of rules, procedures, and nomencla-
ture for prints and photographs throughout the
archival, library, and museum communities.Collections
An overview of some of the Library’s photographic
holdings providessomeimpressionoftheirdiversity,
size, scope, and significance. The more than 725
daguerreotypes in the Prints and Photographs Divi-
sion include primarily portraits, but fine architec-LIBRARY OF CONGRESS