Renowned photographer Carol Highsmith donated her entire collection of photographs (approximately 150,000, and that number is still growing) to the Library of Congress. One subset of this collection are her extraordinary photographs of libraries across the US.

Ms. Highsmith has gifted these photos, copyright-free, to the American people. An index of these libraries is below the slideshow.

(Click on photo to slide to the next one—some computers might require a double-click to move to next photo)

Interior of the Wi...