Library of Congress

Why $94,000 is not the Library’s budget

The Library of Congress is a legislative-branch institution whose public identity is collections, copyright, and congressional research. USAspending awarding-agency totals for CGAC 003 in this extract are $94,000 across 68 awards. That figure is not the Library’s full appropriation. Legislative-branch spending often sits partly outside the executive-branch award warehouse that USAspending was built around. Treating 94000 dollars as “what the Library costs” would understate the institution by a wide margin.

Dividing $94,000 by 68 awards yields about $1,382 per award. That is a micro mean: many small instruments, each a rounding error relative to a cabinet department. The packet has no median and no explanation of why so many rows carry so few dollars. The honest statement is the ratio plus the caveat that this CGAC’s USAspending footprint looks incomplete as an operating picture.

Copyright and CRS are not these 68 rows

Copyright registrations, Congressional Research Service reports, and collection-item counts are Library statistics. They are not the 68 USAspending awards. A year with more copyright claims does not automatically change $94,000. A small purchase order can change it with no change in collections.

Staff salaries for librarians, CRS analysts, and copyright examiners generally never appear as USAspending awards. The $94,000 understates the Library’s full operating cost even more than is typical for agencies in this extract. It is complete only as this CGAC’s award ledger in the current warehouse slice.

Questions

How much has the Library of Congress obligated on USAspending?

USAspending.gov shows $94,000 in Library of Congress obligations through FY2026 across 68 awards. Awarding-agency CGAC 003 is the filter. That total is not the Library’s full appropriation and not a count of collections or copyright registrations. USAspending.gov records this as awarding-agency obligations through FY2026, not cash outlays. The live table for CGAC 003 is the source for the current 68-award book.

Why is the average Library award only about $1,400?

Dividing 94000 dollars by 68 awards yields about $1,382. High count and a tiny dollar total produce a micro mean. The packet has no median. Legislative-branch coverage in USAspending can be incomplete relative to the institution’s size. That figure uses only the packet totals. The extract has no median and no contract-versus-assistance split. FY2026 is the warehouse cutoff, not a single-year appropriation.

What is agency code 003?

003 is the USAspending awarding-agency CGAC identifier for the Library of Congress. SpendingVault uses it in /agencies/003/. Other legislative-branch entities use different codes. SpendingVault URLs under the agency path filter to that CGAC identifier. It is an accounting tag, not a quality score. Totals on this page are obligations through FY2026.

Is $94,000 the Library of Congress budget?

No. It is the USAspending awarding-agency obligation stock for CGAC 003 through FY2026. Staff pay and most operating costs generally never appear as these 68 awards. Outlays are unpublished in the packet. Use legislative-branch budget documents for enacted funding. Outlays are unpublished in this packet, so this page does not estimate cash already paid. Refresh the agency page after USAspending updates rather than treating the current stock as frozen.