How Does the Library of Congress Acquire Manuscripts?
Manuscripts are normally acquired by the Library of Congress in one of three ways: purchase, gift, or copyright deposit. Many of the earliest acquisitions were purchased by the Library directly or transferred from other government agencies. The institution’s first manuscript acquisitions, the Records of the Virginia Company of London, were included with the books, maps, and other items that the federal government purchased from Thomas Jefferson in 1815 and 1829 to replace the earlier congressional library burned by British troops during the War of 1812. In 1867 Congress appropriated $100,000 to purchase the Peter Force Papers, one of the nation’s first great privately assembled manuscript collections. A year earlier, Dolley Madison’s papers had been transferred from the Smithsonian Institution, and in 1903 President Theodore Roosevelt signed an executive order directing the transfer to the Manuscript Division of the State Department’s historical archives. Roosevelt’s action, one of the
