I spent the last four days in Washington DC. This was my 5th or 6th visit to DC, a city that I really enjoy visiting. You could spend months there and never see the same thing twice, and you would learn a ton.

On this visit I took in two sites I’d never been to before, the National Archives and the Library of Congress. Of course, seeing the declaration and constitution was great, but I was really impressed with the library of congress. The roman renaissance interior is pretty amazing.

Unfortunately, much of the library is not accessible to the general public, unless you go through the trouble to get a User card. We were going to go to the main reading room to work for a few hours, but when we got to the library it turned out that you had to go to the Madison building several blocks away to get the card. We ended up deciding not to do that on this trip, but maybe next time.

So if you want to visit the library of congress, including all of the stacks and the main reading room, consider stopping by the Madison building first and getting a Library of Congress User card.

–John Newhoff