The Library of Congress began collecting motion pictures at the end of the 19th century as part of the copyright registration process. (The U.S. Copyright Office is part of the Library of Congress.) The first copyrighted "movie" was a series of Edison Kinetoscopic Records registered on October 6, 1893 by a key assistant to Thomas Edison named W.K.L. Dickson. Dickson was the primary inventor of the first practical motion picture camera, the Edison Kinetograph, and the first peephole viewing machine, the Edison Kinetoscope. From that date to the present, the Library has collected descriptive documentation and other materials relating to virtually every movie copyrighted in the United States, including animated theatrical and independent short subjects, feature films and TV broadcasts. The earliest animated film in the Library of Congress is the stop-motion The Enchanted Drawing (Edison, 1900), featuring the work of movie pioneer J. Stuart Blackton, who later went on to co-found the Vitagraph Company of America.

The earliest animated film in the Library of Congress is the stop-motion The Enchanted Drawing (Edison, 1900), featuring the work of movie pioneer J. Stuart Blackton.

Audio-Visual Materials Come of Age
During the first half of the 20th century the Library of Congress was largely content with collecting documentation about motion pictures in place of the actual films. That changed, however, in May 1942, when Archibald MacLeish (Librarian of Congress from 1939 to 1942) founded a division to collect and preserve motion pictures, in addition to providing filmographic information for researchers. MacLeish saw that movies, radio broadcasts and recordings in all formats, constituted essential records of American history. He believed it was appropriate for audio-visual materials of all kinds to be accorded an equal place in the nation's Library--alongside books, newspapers, photographs, maps and other traditional forms of library materials--so they could be studied by future generations for information about contemporary history and culture.

Today, the Library of Congress is the nation's largest publicly funded motion picture research and preservation center. Through the activities of the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound division and its Motion Picture Conservation Center, the Library carries out its mandate to collect, preserve and make available for research the largest collection of American produced motion pictures in the world. Broadly described, the Library's motion picture collection has grown continuously since 1893 and now amounts to over 250,000 film prints (35mm and 16mm) and more than 300,000 television broadcasts in film and video formats. In scope, these materials encompass the entire history of American film production and a considerable selection of foreign films over the past one hundred years.