Photo by voteprime

On the third floor of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library is a local historian’s dream: Washingtoniana.

Washingtoniana is the largest special collection at the D.C. Public Libriary, flush with old photographs, local maps, rare books, millions of newspaper clippings and the D.C. community archives. This weekend, the history collection is having its first book sale in the division’s 107 year history.

Head up to the library’s third floor and follow the smell of must to find hundreds of volumes of the Records of the Columbia Historical Society and Washington History that date back to 1899. Peruse carts full of out-of-print books on D.C. neighborhoods, biographies on influential Washingtonians, and bound snapshots of the District through the years. The sale is technically open only to those who are attending the 38th Annual D.C. Historical Studies Conference, but the conference is free, so if you’re interested in a plenary on the “Social History of Washington” and are in the market for some rare books, it’s a win win.

The sale kicked off Friday and is continuing today from 12:30 p.m.-1:30 p.m. You can register for the conference — which features programming all day long — at the library. There’s a suggested donation of $20 dollars.