National Agricultural Library
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| Type | National library |
|---|---|
| Established | 1862 |
| Reference to legal mandate | Organic Act (May 15, 1862) |
| Location | Beltsville, Maryland |
| Coordinates | 39°1′23″N 76°55′17.5″W / 39.02306°N 76.921528°WCoordinates: 39°1′23″N 76°55′17.5″W / 39.02306°N 76.921528°W |
| Branches | 1 (Washington D.C.) |
| Collection | |
| Size | approx. 4,000,000 |
| Other information | |
| Budget | approx. $22,000,000 (FY 2007) |
| Director | Paul M. Wester Jr. |
| Staff | 215 |
| Website | www |
The United States National Agricultural Library (NAL) is one of the world's largest agricultural research libraries, and serves as a national library of the United States and as the library of the United States Department of Agriculture. Located in Beltsville, Maryland, it is one of five national libraries of the United States (along with the Library of Congress, the National Library of Medicine, the National Transportation Library, and the National Library of Education). It is also the coordinator for the Agriculture Network Information Center, a national network of state land-grant institutions and coordinator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) field libraries.
NAL was established on May 15, 1862, by the signing of the Organic Act by Abraham Lincoln. It served as a departmental library until 1962, when the Secretary of Agriculture officially designated it as the National Agricultural Library. The first librarian, appointed in 1867, was Aaron B. Grosh, one of the founders of the National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry.
NAL was established as the U.S. Department of Agriculture Library on May 15, 1862, by the signing of the Organic Act by Abraham Lincoln. In 1863, the library's collection comprised 1,000 volumes that had been transferred from the U.S. Patent Office's Agricultural Division. By 1889, the library's collection had increased to 20,000 volumes, and a librarian from Amherst College was hired to create a classification system for the library's collection. At this time, the library was located on the second floor of the Department of Agriculture's main building. In 1893, William Cutter was hired as Librarian of the Department, and he began a reorganization effort to modernize the library and improve its effectiveness. His primary achievement was consolidating the library's collection of 38,000 volumes into one central library; previously, more than half of the library's collection was held in divisional libraries across the United States. By 1900, the library's collection contained 68,000 volumes, and in 1915, the library was moved to a larger facility in the Bieber Office Building at 1358 B Street SW, Washington, DC. The library moved again in 1932 to facilities in the USDA's South Building on Independence Avenue.
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