A REAL Presidential Library

For the last ten years, a small group of rare book experts has sought to re-create Thomas Jefferson's library... which was the foundation for the Library of Congress, although two-thirds of the volumes were lost in a fire in 1851.

Tomorrow the recollected library, over 6,000 volumes of originals and replacements, will go on display at the LOC looking much as it would have 200 years ago.

"The leather-bound tomes on topics as varied as whist, beekeeping and philosophy were... brought to Monticello to help fulfill Jefferson's vow to amass the whole of human knowledge."

This accumulated knowledge attest to Jefferson's thirst for knowledge, and support the toast President John Kennedy made at a dinner he hosted for Nobel Prize winners in 1962 where he observed, "Never has there been so much collective intelligence in this room, since Jefferson dined here alone."