The Library of Congress has over 20 centers that provide research space and guidance for users to interact with collection items based on subject or format. The Belgian collections contain material in varying formats such as books, maps, photographs, manuscripts, and digital objects. These materials are held in various Reading Rooms in the Library (e.g. American Folklife Center, Prints and Photographs Reading Room, Law Library). The staff in the European Reading Room provide access to materials from the General Collections and help point researchers to relevant items in other reading rooms. The sections below also contain highlights from the Belgian collections available in each Reading Room. Selected digitized primary source materials from the Library’s collections are highlighted along with links for further exploration. Because not all of the Library's collections are listed in the online catalog or digitized, it is helpful to use the Library of Congress Finding Aids that have been created to locate unique collections. Searching can be done by Subject, Collection, Date, Name or LC Location (Research Center).
The Library's website pages include a search box as part of the header on the page in the top right-hand corner—use this box to search our digital collections. It is also possible to browse a page showing all digital collections (by collection name): Browse ALL Library of Congress Digital Collections. From this page, you will be able to filter the results by subject, format, and curatorial division in the Library.
The American Folklife Center collections includes resources from American ethnic groups as well as from every region of the world. The finding aid listed below describes the Archive of Folk Culture's unpublished ethnographic collections that document the traditional music and other aspects of the folklife of Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and their diaspora. To locate Belgian material in the Folklife Center you can use a filter in an advanced search of the Library's catalog. For example, use the search terms, "Belgian" or "Belgium" and limit your location to the AFC.
The Library's Prints and Photographs Division is the repository for a rich collection of prints, photographs, and other visual materials on and about Belgium from significant artists and photographers. These visual materials are available to researchers in the Library's Prints and Photographs Reading Room. Major strengths of the Prints and Photographs collections include illustrated books and serials; fine prints from the seventeenth through the nineteenth century (search by name); and posters from the Belle Époque to World War I. There is a large collection of political cartoons and satires from the Revolutionary era in Europe through the nineteenth century as well as documentary photographs including views of European cities and towns. This collection has over one hundred breathtaking images of Belgian architecture, rural areas, and city scenes, including the one above, as part of the larger Photochrom Prints Collection. Many Library of Congress collections have been digitized and are available online. For photographs and other images, see the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog.
The Law Library of Congress includes a vast collection on foreign legal materials, such as Constitutions, Codes, Session laws, Commentaries and indexes to laws, rules and regulations, Judicial court decisions and reports, and Legal bibliographies. The Law Library Reading Room makes available more than 2,500 titles pertaining to law in Belgium. The reading room possesses substantial holdings of the Belgian official gazette, entitled Le Moniteur Belge = Belgisch Staatsblad (Sept 1832-June 1836; 1846-2002). Since January 1, 2003 this title has appeared only in an online version. Guides to legal materials related to Belgium include:
The responsibilities of the Law Library to provide analyses to Congress and government agencies require a comprehensive collection of current legal resources from all French-speaking countries. The historical collections reflect the importance of French sources for developments in American and international law. They also provide valuable resources for historical research on many subjects.
The Manuscript Division holds approximately sixty million items in eleven thousand separate collections, including some of the greatest manuscript treasures of European history and culture and support scholarly research in many aspects of political, cultural, and scientific history. The Library's Manuscript Reading Room provides access to archival materials on and about Belgium, including primary sources from cultural figures, authors, and politicians. Finding aids describe manuscript collections significant in researching manuscript collections. Finding aids can be particularly useful when assessing the full contents of a manuscript collection. Locate additional manuscript materials from or about Belgium by searching Library of Congress Finding Aids. Use keywords like "Belgium" or "Belgian".
The Manuscript Division collects Americana, including materials pertaining to U.S. relations of any nature with other countries. Here may be found the papers of many American diplomats and others from the United States who worked in or had correspondence with individuals from Belgium. Some manuscripts pertain to U.S.-Belgian relations during the two world wars. One collection, "Belgian Children's Letters to President Woodrow Wilson, February-March, 1915," comprises 8,400 letters in Flemish or French (with a few English translations) expressing gratitude for American relief efforts during World War I. The Mary French Sheldon Papers, 1885-1938 contain 1,350 items by said author, lecturer, and explorer, including correspondence, writings, lectures, notes, clippings, address book, drawings, awards, menus, books, photographs, passports, scrapbooks, and miscellaneous material relating primarily to Belgium, the Belgian Congo, and Africa. The Joseph Edward Davies Papers, 1860-1958 contain 75,000 items belonging to said diplomat, lawyer, and author including correspondence, diaries, drafts of articles, books, and speeches, printed matter, and scrapbooks relating to Davies's career as an ambassador to Belgium and Russia, presidential advisor, and author.
The Library's Geography and Map Division has custody of the largest and most comprehensive cartographic collection in the world with collections numbering over 5 million maps, 100,000 atlases, 8,000 reference works, over 5000 globes and globe gores, 3,000 raised relief models, over 130,000 microfiche/film, and a large number of cartographic materials in other formats. Many of these materials have been digitized and are available online. Materials that have not been digitized are available from the Geography and Map Reading Room. Locate additional maps from or about Belgium by searching Library of Congress Finding Aids. Use keywords like "Belgium" or "Belgian".
The Geography and Map Reading Room holds thousands of maps pertaining to Belgium. These comprise general, specialized, city and other maps of the past six centuries. Several maps by the renowned Flemish cartographers of the sixteenth-century are represented here, such as the atlas prepared in 1595 by Gerardus Mercator, whose last name is synonymous with projection maps. In 1993/94, an exhibit of Dutch and Flemish maps at the Library of Congress was accompanied by a 19-page guide entitled Leo Belgicus: The Dutch & Flemish World, 1500-1800. To view maps that have been digitized by the Library of Congress, see Map Collections: 1500-2003. Often there are finding aids for such collections such as this one for Maps showing entrenchments in France during World War I. The collection consists of 477 maps from World War I created by American and French forces that show trenches and related military information in France and Belgium. Data taken from aerial photography ("tranchées d'après" or "trenches according to" photos) and observation ("Schématique d'apres renseignements").
The Library's Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division holds one of the largest collections of motion pictures in the world, spanning the entire history of cinema. Access to these collection items, if not digitized, and research assistance is available through the Moving Image Research Center. Because not all items in these collections are separately listed in the Library's online catalog, readers and researchers should contact the appropriate reading rooms for advice from specialists and to obtain access to additional finding aids.
The Library has hundreds Belgian films, many of which have been distributed in the United States. These range from the early silent films by Lumieres and Pathe freres to theatrical features of the sound era, including works by directors such as Renoir, Chabrol, Truffaut, and Alain Renais. One of the strengths of the French film collections is a group of silent shorts produced in 1903-04 by the innovative George Melies, included in the Paper Print Collection of films registered for U.S. copyright protection between 1894 and 1915. Documentary recordings feature French personalities such as Sarah Bernhardt and Charles de Gaulle.
In the footage above, Theodore Roosevelt entertains members of the Belgian Mission at Sagamore Hill, Aug. 22, 1917. The mission is headed by Baron Ludovic Moncheur, former Ambassador to the United States and includes General Mathieu Leclercq, Commander of the Belgian Cavalry, Major Leon Osterrieth, Hector Carlier, Count Louis d'Ursel, and Jean D. Mertens. Those accompanying the Belgian Mission include George T. Wilson, Major General Daniel Appleton, Lieutenant Harry Stratton, Captain Thomas C. Cook, T. P. O'Connor, Irish political leader and writer, and New York lawyer Frederic Coudert. Camera pans the group standing in front of the porch. Identified are: Count Louis d'Ursel, the Belgian officer standing at the end of the group; T. P. O'Connor, the large man with white hair; a man who is probably Jean D. Mertens; a man who is probably George T. Wilson; General Leclercq; TR; Baron Moncheur; Frederic Coudert, wearing the white vest; Major Osterrieth, the large Belgian officer; Hector Carlier, with a dark beard and wearing a light suit; the large man in an American uniform with a white mustache is possibly Major General Appleton; the smaller American officer standing with his side to the camera and his knee bent is Captain Thomas C. Cook.
The Performing Arts Reading Room (part of the Library's Music Division) provides access to classified music and book collections, music and literary manuscripts, iconography, microforms, periodicals, musical instruments, published and unpublished copyright deposits, and close to 500 special collections in music, theater, and dance. To hear recordings or interact with audio materials in the Library's collections visit the Recorded Sound Research Center which is part of the Library's Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. The Recorded Sound Research Center is also home to non-audio archival materials, including the personal papers, photographs, and records of various recording artists, radio personalities and writers, collectors, and networks.
The collections hold typographic manuals, published music and books as well as manuscript letters and scores. Examples of this range include Belgique ballades, danses et chansons de Flandre et Wallonie, audio recordings containing traditional songs and ballads from the Dutch and Walloon folk traditions of Belgium, and popular American musical scores and sheet music connected to Europe during WWI such as Salut! Les Belges et la Belgique!, and Belgium Belle. There are also modern recordings and symphonies such as Musique belge d'hier et d'aujourd'hui.
The Library of Congress holds thousands of rare books related to Belgium, dating from the fifteenth through the twentieth century. Researchers should visit the Rare Book and Special Collections Reading Room to learn more about rare materials available online as well as special collections that contain significant resources on Belgium. The majority of these were published before 1800, including more than fifty incunabula. When Thomas Jefferson sold his personal book collection to the Library of Congress in 1814, it included eighteen titles published in Belgium. Although only six of those titles survived a fire in 1851, replacement copies have been acquired for many of the lost volumes.
The Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, with its focus on illuminated books, includes among its many treasures more than one hundred volumes prepared by Flemish printers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Also of note from the Rosenwald Collection is the second book ever to be printed in the English language, a volume prepared in Belgium by the English printer William Caxton, entitled The Game and Playe of the Chesse [Bruges: after 31 March 1474/75]. The following two bibliographic guides focus on the Belgian-related portion of the Rosenwald Collection:
Early Printed Books of the Low Countries: An Exhibition in the Library of Congress, April 2, 1958, to August 31, 1958. Washington, 1958. 37 pages. LC call number: Z881. U5 1958.
Goff, Frederick Richmond. Early Belgian Books in the Rosenwald Collection of the Library of Congress. [1947] 11 pages. LC call number: Z733. U63 R63.
Students of the history of the book will find of interest a unique collection of some 1,300 broadsides and pamphlets from the years 1811-1909, announcing forthcoming or just-published books, newspapers and journals, grouped under the heading "Publishing Prospectuses from France and Belgium." Although primarily from Belgium and secondarily from France, prospectuses from ten other countries are included here. Some prospectuses are for intended publications that never materialized. There are also more modern collections such as the Serials and miscellaneous publications of the underground movements in Europe during World War II, 1936-1945. This work is divided into 28 series of serials and miscellaneous publications for the following countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, France, French Territories, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Netherland Territories, Norway, Poland and Yugoslavia. The serials are periodicals with dates, and sometimes issue numbering, while the miscellaneous publications embraces a wide field of political tracts, single handout sheets, private letters, newspaper clippings, posters, etc. Fourteen countries are represented with each having a section and an additional section for French Territories.
In addition to Belgian collections, the Library holds a significant collection of French-language incunabula and rare editions dating from the fifteenth through the twentieth century. The subject range of rare French material fully reflects that of the general collections, from the arts to the sciences and technology. Special Collections focus on subjects as varied as cooking (Bitting), law (Law Library), aeronautics (Tissandier), Jules Verne (Verne), the French Revolution (Thacher), anarchism (Avrich), and bibles (Bible). The tradition of illustrated books is well represented, from medieval and sixteenth- century livres d'heures to nineteenth- and twentieth-century livres d'artiste. The gift of the Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection gave the Library many fine examples and exceptional copies of books in which the high quality of French printing, illustration, papermaking, and book binding are evident. Many of the volumes include various states of the plates, added drawings, and special bindings.
