First excursion today on the Library of Congress (LOC) website.  I started in the Researchers' section:  http://www.loc.gov/rr

From that anchor page, I selected the Local History & Genealogy Reading Room, specifically the "Before You Begin" section which is 13 tips for preparing to do research at the LOC.  A couple of the tips that stand out are that you must have a Reader's card to access the reading rooms.  I have one that probably needs to be renewed, but I recall that I had to get it in the Madison Building.  It was when I learned about the tunnels connecting the LOC's three main buildings.  There is a link to instructions for obtaining a Reader's card on the page. 

Another tip is that the staff does not do research, nor accept research requests, but (another tip) if you know the exact book and page numbers, you can request photocopies ($12 charge for setup, plus charge for the photocopies). 

Finally, there was a link to the "Search Tips for Locating Genealogical Resources in the LOC online catalog." Good information here that I would recommend printing, if you plan to do a lot of searching on the catalog, or at least keep open in a separate tab (I did) to which you can refer as you search. In the next post, I'll discuss the results of my search of the LOC catalog.