Wait..what? The Smithsonian has a library? And it's not the Library of Congress? Yes, grasshopper. It's true. 

With 20 locations, the Smithsonian Libraries support the research of Smithsonian staff at the museums, research stations and institutes wherever those researchers are working: from Panama to Washington DC,  and from Africa to Australia to the Arctic.   

Research at the Smithsonian covers the whole universe of knowledge:  art, history and culture, as well as the natural and physical sciences. Through interlibrary loan services, our researchers, fellows, staff and interns are supported by the generous international community of library collections, just as we support researchers and scholars in universities, public libraries, federal and state libraries through Smithsonian interlibrary loan services.

This presentation will highlight the resources and policies of the Smithsonian Libraries as well as the Smithsonian iteration of ILLiad, which connects the borrowing and lending functions among our 20 museum and research station libraries, nationally and internationally, keeps track of our resource sharing and documents our borrowing and lending reach.

• An overview of the collections of the Smithsonian Libraries
• The policies which allow borrowing access to these collections for borrowers outside the Smithsonian. 
• How important the network of interlibrary loan libraries are to the Smithsonian Libraries and Smithsonian research.