LC21 A Digital Strategy for the Library of Congress (2000) / Chapter Skim
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2. The Library of Congress: From Jefferson to the Twenty-First Century
2. The Library of Congress: From Jefferson to the Twenty-First Century
Pages 50-81
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From page 50... ...
Library management tends to be conservative, so library leadership tends similarly to an accretive style. The present management structure of the Library of Congress cannot be understood without a sense of the history that has brought it about.)
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From page 51... ...
According to its mission, the Library is "to acquire, organize, preserve, secure, and sustain for the present and future of the Congress and the nation a comprehensive record of American history and creativity and a universal collection of human knowledge." More recently, the mission of LC has been articulated as follows: "To make its resources available and useful to the Congress and the American people and to sustain and preserve a universal collection of knowledge and creativity for future generations."2 The initial holdings of the Library were a reference tool rather than any attempt at a comprehensive collection or a collection of American publications. The Library was chiefly a library of legal information that might prove useful to legislators.
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From page 52... ...
For its first decade, the Legislative Reference Service focused on maintaining indexes relating to laws and legislative acts, a charge arising from work started by the Law Library.4 Other congressional creations during the twentieth century emphasized extending the forms of material that fall within the purview of the Library. In 1931, the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped was established to create materials for disabled audiences.
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From page 53... ...
In particular, Library Services condnues to be the oldest unit of the organization, responsible for Me collections and public services that most people Mink of as the Library of Congress. 6See Chapter 5 for an in-depth discussion of cataloging MARC, AACR, OCLC, and related topics.
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From page 54... ...
Its specific charge is to develop and manage "the Library's universal collections, which document the history and furler the creativity of the American people, and which record and contribute to the advancement of civilization and knowledge throughout the world." The audiences served are the following: "Congress, libraries and librarians, scholars, educators, the general public, the 8The source for the number of employees in Library Services and in the other units of LC is the Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress, 1999. 9ITS and some other units of the Office of the Librarian are discussed in greater detail in Chapters 7 and 8 The Office of the Librarian is mentioned here for purposes of comparison with the other major offices of the Library.
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From page 57... ...
1 I Office of Program Director I ILSlmplementation Teams I Bibliographic Control Steering Group I Acquisition Steering Group Inventory ControUCirculation Steering Group I I Serials Control Steering Group I Products Steering Group I Public Catalog Steering Group Host Environment Technical Group I Workstation Technical Group I User Support Technical Group I Policy Groups _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 FIGURE 2.3 Library Services and its directorates. 57 Public Service Collections American Folklife Center Children's Literature Center Collections Management Division Geography and Map Division Humanities and Social Sciences Division Loan Division Manuscript Division Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division Music Division Prints and Photographs Division Rare Book and Special Collections Division Science, Technology and Business Division Serial and Government Publications Division Area Studies Collections African and Middle Eastem Division Asian Division European Division Federal Research Division Hispanic Division Office of Scholarly Programs National Services Cataloging Distribution Service Centerfor the Book Federal Library and Information Center Committee Interpretive Programs Office National Digital Library National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped Publishing Office Retail Marketing Office Visitor Services Operations Administrative Teams Budget Human Resources Management Information Systems Automation, Planning and Liaison Office Network Development and MARC Standards Office Technical Processing and Automation Instnuction Office
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From page 58... ...
is a unit of Library Services, it receives a separate appropriation from Congress. bThe Library manages the Federal Library and Information Network (FEDL~K)
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From page 59... ...
As early as 1902, Library Services began serving its second audience— libraries and librarians—by distributing catalog materials to alleviate the burden of every library having to catalog the same item in more or less the same way. For nearly two-thirds of the twentieth century, this was done through a system of cards and printed volumes providing actual catalog records or references such as LC subject headings.
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From page 60... ...
CIP records form a part of the core catalog data distributed through CDS, and they accelerate the dissemination of cataloging data for new U.S. publications, offering a savings in the cost of cataloging and expediting the creation of catalog records.
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From page 61... ...
The division has not yet begun to collect significant numbers of geographical databases or mapping software, although it has been active in deploying tools and cataloging standards for maps. Currently, no robust structure for collecting such nontraditional formats exists in the Library, and this division is no exception.l5 The division has taken the lead in developing the standards to be used within the National Digital Library Program for delivering maps.
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From page 62... ...
Supreme Court justices, and prominent writers, inventors, and intellectuals, as well as the archives of nationally significant organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Me National Urban League.~9 The division has about 12,000 collections, which range in size from a few documents to thousands of boxes of documents. Finding aids (descriptions of collections with listings of the contents of boxes and folders)
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From page 63... ...
Even a mixed collection containing some traditional material and some electronic material cannot be easily accommodated with the existing tools.22 Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division The collections of the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division include roughly 1,000,000 audio recordings and 200,000 cans of film. The limited applicability of MARC for cataloging the materials of this division led to the development of specialized cataloging and collections management tools, so these collections as cataloged were not part of the initial ILS installation.
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From page 64... ...
may not mean that it is within the purview of the Prints and Photographs Division. We tend to classify digital materials by the analog forms they are realized in rather than by their native digital forms.
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From page 65... ...
National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLSBPH NLS, for short) was established in 1931 by an act of Congress to serve the particular needs of blind and physically handicapped people who cannot use ordinary printed texts.
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From page 66... ...
The timetable, file specification, and interface characteristics of a playback device for compressed digital audio are still being developed.25 A Web-based delivery of audio files from a digital library supported by improved voice synthesizers capable of turning digital text into functional audio without the expense of recording and distributing a "performance" of a given book can be envisioned, although there are some obstacles to achieving such a visional · Publishers' reluctance to allow the uncontrolled dissemination of text in such forms, · Physical difficulties involved in the use of current and next-generation Web-based systems for the visually handicapped, and · Economic difficulties associated with ensuring access to suitable technology by a population whose members would tend to be on the disadvantaged side of the "digital divide." Other Divisions Library Services is a large and complex organization that the committee could not fully explore. For example, the committee was able to visit only briefly the African and Middle Eastern Division, Asian Division, European Division, Hispanic Division, and the Office of Scholarly Programs.
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From page 67... ...
The index of federal statutes, which started as a Law Library project but eventually became a responsibility of CRS, and comparable indexes of international collections (most notably the Latin American indexes Mat have been maintained since the 1950s) have served as the basis for the Law Library's current initiatives in technology, including development of Me Global Legal Information Network (GLIN)
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From page 68... ...
OLIN's dependence on external funding marginalizes its potential.29 In other areas, the Law Library has been an active partner in advancing technology. For example, the installation of the ILS by Library Services was received with enthusiasm by the Law Library staff, who expect it will make their collection easy to manage.
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From page 69... ...
Like the Law Library, it operates under mandates that were based on an earlier set of circumstances. While the letter of the law that moves the Copyright Office forward may be out of date, its spirit is not.
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From page 70... ...
Each submission must be examined in the Copyright Office to determine whether it is eligible for copyright protection. Selection officers from the Law Library and Library Services review published materials and select those that meet the criteria for inclusion in the Library's permanent collection.
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From page 71... ...
For example, the staff of CRS make much less use of LC collections than the committee had expected, and CRS employees have their own union, quite separate in identity and orgaruzation from the unions to which other Library staff belong.3i The Congressional Research Service is organized into six research areas: American law; domestic social policy; foreign affairs, defense, and trade; government and finance; information research; and resources, science, and industry. In addition, of the five staff offices in CRS, Information Resources Management handles legislative information, including the Legislative Information System (LIS)
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From page 72... ...
! S°m~ ~ ~ater1~1 Disputed broads Shutout He Congress, Clung Sue brief Hat re-he regular updates Ed report Bat were formerly Talc documents but ~creas~y are updated pedodic~y.
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From page 73... ...
Although members of Congress and congressional staff can and do ask about an amazing variety of subjects, the CRS staff know from whom the questions will come, and the protocol for providing answers is comparatively clear. In some ways, CRS resembles a remarkably large staff of reference librarians, answering sophisticated inquiries In immense detail and with great professionalism; in others, it resembles a university faculty, performing original research on issues of public policy.
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From page 74... ...
For some collecting areas, having digital surrogates available is a benefit in the Prints and Photographs or Geography and Map Divisions, for instance. In others, the capability would be apt to provide access to materials otherwise difficult to see on account of access restrictions or concerns for preservation—the materials from the Law Library, for instance.
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From page 75... ...
Because none of the collecting arms of the LC have much in the way of structures for gathering digital materials, the NDLP has set itself the daunting task of managing the 5 million items once they are digitized. This is being done in an open fashion so that the collecting arms can make use of links to that imagery.
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From page 76... ...
The point may seem to be a fine one, but in some respects the management and delivery of narrative content constitute the logical next step after the development of the MARC format for management and delivery of formatted content. The Library has an opportunity to play a leadership role in examining the complex relationship between narrative materials that are acceptable for public access and the formal content of the catalog.
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From page 77... ...
It is Library Services the unit of LC that most people think of as "the library" that faces the most pointed questions. If it seeks to continue to accumulate a "comprehensive record of American history and creativity and a universal collection of human knowledge"35 in other words, a comprehensive collection of the nation's creative output and at the same time a broadly inclusive collection of research materials brought from around the world it must manage to deal with the old and the new together.
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From page 78... ...
There are, as well, the further questions of copyright registration, deposit, and selection for a continuing collection. It is here that issues of ownership, access, and responsibility for preservation arise.
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From page 79... ...
Second, the Library of Congress has a special function that most national libraries elsewhere do not have: responsibility for managing copyright registration as well as deposit.38 At present, copyright registration is a function that overlaps the deposit of printed materials, but within LC the systems used to support the Copyright Office and Library Services are very different. The physical materials are registered for copyright in one department of the Library and then are moved to a room where selectors extract the volumes likely to be added to the Library's collections.
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From page 80... ...
Along with relevant congressional testimony and an accompanying Price Waterhouse financial statement, it is available online at |
From page 81... ...
LC: FROM JEFFERSON TO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY 81 vation and flexibility, government pay scales that restrict access to the best talent, and statutory requirements (particularly in the area of copyright) that may compel the Library to engage in activities that would be better off restructured.
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