Chinese collectionsc at DC

I lived one hour away from DC (not on a traffic day). Last semester I visited both places and ordered my cards there.

What can a Chinese historian get from the museums and libraries there? Here is the list.

Painting: The Freer Museum is the home to 1200 Chinese paintings (compared with 500 owned by the Metropolitan Museum at New York)

Local Histories and Gazetteers: The Library of Congress is the home of 4000 titles, the largest collection in the US. It is also the home to many Chinese rare books in the US. Unfortunately the catelogue is not available online. One has to flip through the card catelogue to know about collections.

Last semester I spent several days in the Library of Congress, browsing the card catalogues in the back of the reading room of oriental collections. I ordered Zixia wenxian lu, a manuscript has mentioned many times in Xiachuan xu zhi. Fortunately it is already digitalized and can be browsed on the computer. But download is not allowed. One has to be in the reading room to browse the digital version. This reminds me of the Shanghai Library.