I periodically go to the Library of Congress to read things for various side projects. It's sad how few people actually use the Library of Congress as a library. There are a lot of tourists there. I usually go to the Science and Business Reading Room, which avoids most of the tourists as they check out the Main Reading Room. But attendance is usually sparse, perhaps 2 dozen per day.
The Library of Congress is an amazing free resource with a significant fraction of what's ever been published. They too seem to be pushing more and more off-site, but not to the extent that university libraries are. I can find a lot of rare books there that I would not have access to otherwise, and I've also used their technical reports collection extensively.
I'm not sure what I would do if the various research libraries I frequent were to reduce services or close. I've been saving a ton of PDF files over the years and I guess I could make do with what I have.
Seconding this. I haven't been there in forty years, but back in the day the place was a goldmine of hard-to-find books. And a housemate told me that it wasn't hard to get "stack privileges" (the right to actually physically browse the stacks) if you made a sufficiently favorable impression on the staff.
The Library of Congress is an amazing free resource with a significant fraction of what's ever been published. They too seem to be pushing more and more off-site, but not to the extent that university libraries are. I can find a lot of rare books there that I would not have access to otherwise, and I've also used their technical reports collection extensively.
I'm not sure what I would do if the various research libraries I frequent were to reduce services or close. I've been saving a ton of PDF files over the years and I guess I could make do with what I have.