The US Library of Congress is under attack

FT.com no paywall – An institution that survived British torching in 1814 is now facing a new onslaught – “The US Library of Congress is under attack An institution that survived British torching in 1814 is now facing a new onslaught Richard Ovenden Aerial view of the main reading room of the Library of Congress The Library of Congress is a reference-only research library, its collections being built through legal deposit legislation, passed by Congress © Will Newton/The Washington Post/Getty Images The US Library of Congress is under attack on x (opens in a new window) The US Library of Congress is under attack on facebook (opens in a new window) The US Library of Congress is under attack on linkedin (opens in a new window) current progress 89% Richard Ovenden PublishedMay 12 2025 102 Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free Your guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the world The writer is director of the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, and author of ‘Burning the Books: A History of Knowledge under Attack’ In the space of three short months, the Archivist of the United States, Colleen Shogan, and the Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, have both been fired by the Trump administration. Both of these institutions have suffered setbacks before, and have come back stronger. One of the most severe attacks came at the hands of the British. In 1814 a British expeditionary force besieged Washington and set fire to the Capitol building. Officials had already recognised the threat and commandeered every cart they could find to move the National Archives outside the city. The Capitol building also housed the Library of Congress, and its 3,000 volumes of highly combustible material could not be moved so quickly. The volumes were ignited by British troops. The whole building, and much of the city, was consumed by flames. News of the destruction of the library reached Thomas Jefferson, whose presidency had ended five years before. In a letter published in a Washington newspaper, he expressed his outrage at the “barbarism” of the British, and offered to make good the losses from his own private library. Congress purchased 7,000 volumes from the former president; with Jefferson’s books, the Library was reborn. The Library of Congress serves two functions simultaneously. It is both the national library and the library of the legislature. It is as if the British Library was the same organisation as the libraries of the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The irony of course is that unlike its predecessor in 1814, the 119th US Congress has done nothing to protect its own library. Carla Hayden, wearing a blue dress, stands in the Library of Congress Carla Hayden, the first woman Librarian of Congress, was dismissed for providing ‘inappropriate books for children’. However the library has no lending facility for individual. It was another senior Trump aide, Kellyanne Conway, who in 2017 introduced the world to the notion that there could be “alternative facts”. This reason for firing Hayden — who has, since 2016, greatly strengthened the institution she inherited — is another “alternative fact”. The Library of Congress is a reference-only research library and has no lending library for children or adults, its collections being built through legal deposit legislation, passed by Congress in 1909 and updated as recently as 2016. Shogan was dismissed as Archivist of the United States and replaced by Marco Rubio — who clearly has so much free time alongside his dual role as Secretary of State and national security adviser that he can also run the world’s largest National Archives. One role that archives play is to preserve documents for legal and evidential reasons. After his last presidency, Trump’s illegal removal of classified documents, stored in a guest bathroom at Mar-a-Lago, resulted in their eventual retrieval by the National Archives under the provisions of the Presidential Records Act. The removal of Hayden and Shogan demonstrates the exercise of arbitrary power, asserting control over knowledge. Both are the first women to lead their respective institutions, and both committed to reaching all parts of the nation they were appointed to serve. If the ideologically motivated censorship of collections and the recent mass deletion of government websites is anything to go by, the Trump administration is intent on removing swaths of knowledge from public circulation. In a famous letter of 1813, Thomas Jefferson compared the spread of ideas to the way one candle is lit from another: “He who receives an idea from me”, he wrote, “receives instruction without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me”. Instead of Trump lighting the candles of knowledge in the US today, they are being systematically snuffed out…”