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32–720 2007

OVERSIGHT HEARING ON THE 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON 

HOUSE ADMINISTRATION 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, JULY 27, 2006 

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on House Administration 

( 


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COMMITTEE ON HOUSE ADMINISTRATION 

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan, Chairman 

BOB NEY, Ohio 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

JOHN T. DOOLITTLE, California 

THOMAS M. REYNOLDS, New York 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan 

JUANITA MILLENDER-MCDONALD, 

California 

Ranking Minority Member 

ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

PROFESSIONAL STAFF

WILL PLASTER, Staff Director 

GEORGE F. SHEVLIN, Minority Staff Director 


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OVERSIGHT HEARING ON THE LIBRARY OF 

CONGRESS 

THURSDAY, JULY 27, 2006 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON HOUSE ADMINISTRATION, 

Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:15 a.m., in room 

1310, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Vernon J. Ehlers 

(chairman of the committee) presiding. 

Present: Representatives Ehlers, Ney, Doolittle, MillenderMcDonald, and Lofgren. 

Staff Present: Fred Hay, General Counsel; Bryan T. Dorsey, Professional Staff Member; Peter Sloan, Clerk; Craley Funfgeld, Staff 

Assistant; George F. Shevlin, Minority Staff Director; Michael Harrison, Minority Professional Staff Member; Matt Pinkus, Minority 

Professional Staff Member; and Kristin McCowan, Minority Staff 

Assistant. 

The CHAIRMAN. The purpose of today’s oversight hearing is to get 

an update on the operations of the Library of Congress and the 

ways in which the Library is preparing for its future through its 

ongoing strategic planning, technology, design and preservation initiatives. 

One of the greatest challenges for America’s librarians and archivists is responding to the changing ways in which information is 

being created, shared, stored and maintained in the digital age. In 

order for our Nation’s libraries to maintain their relevancy to the 

public, they must look for opportunities to not only adapt to the 

digital revolution, but to embrace it. Dr. James H. Billington, the 

Librarian of Congress, and one of our witnesses today, is committed to leveraging the advances in technology to enhance the Library’s operations and to meet the evolving needs of the Congress 

and the public. 

Today, he will lay out his vision for how the Library of Congress 

will continue to transform itself in order to continue their goal of 

being America’s premier library into the 21st century. 

One of the largest and most exciting additions to the Library is 

the creation of the National Audiovisual Conservation Center, the 

NAVCC, located in Culpeper, Virginia. This facility, which was 

made possible through a partnership between the Library and the 

Packard Humanities Institute, with the aid of the Architect of the 

Capitol, will eventually house the entirety of the Library’s audiovisual collection and will feature specialized preservation laboratories used to minimize the degradation of these items over time. 


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I look forward to receiving an update from our witnesses on the 

construction of the NAVCC facilities so that we may better understand how the opening of this facility next year will impact current 

library operations. 

An exciting initiative that embraces emerging technologies is the 

National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program, or NDIIPP. I think you need better acronyms; this has all 

kinds of connotations. Its goal is to develop ways to preserve information through the use of technology. 

Now halfway through its congressional authorization, NDIIPP is 

committed to increasing access to a rich body of digital content 

through the establishment of a national network of committed partners who have a common goal of preserving our digital heritage. 

The network now has over 67 partners and plans to expand the 

program to assist state governments. NDIIPP is focused on the retention of digital media which is so often lost due to its evolving 

and dynamic nature, and I can vouch from experience, having dealt 

with this at the state level with county and city clerks who wanted 

to preserve all the records digitally, and few of them understood 

the complications of maintenance. And I was fortunate to be in a 

position there to write the legislation to help guide them in that, 

but they will certainly need your guidance. 

To help guide the NDIIPP, a National Digital Strategy Advisory 

Board has been created. It is comprised of Federal agencies such 

as the National Archives and Records Administration, NARA; the 

Government Printing Office, GPO; and the National Science Foundation, NSF; in addition to business leaders and technical experts. 

We would like to learn from our witnesses today what progress 

has been made since the establishment of the program, which upcoming projects are included in the program and the overall strategic direction. I believe that the work of this program will be instrumental in the establishment of government-wide standards for 

the preservation, authentication and access to digital information. 

I encourage the Library to assist GPO and NARA as they work on 

standards that not only will digitize Federal Government information but will also preserve it and make it available to the public. 

Another technology initiative that is of interest to the committee 

is the World Digital Library, which will create a repository of rare 

and historic materials for public use. This program is being supported through both private and public funding. Recently, Google 

Incorporated expressed their support for the project through a $3 

million donation. 

While I am pleased with the progress that has been made in preserving our history through the use of technology, there are many 

questions raised by the formation of the World Digital Library. 

With the explosive growth of the Internet and the never-ending 

amount of material available that could potentially be archived, the 

Library must ensure that the proper controls are in place so that 

the proper information is being stored with the appropriate operations in place to maintain the integrity of the collection. 

I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today concerning 

the management and governance of this important project. 

Another issue of importance before this committee is the progress 

being made on the Jefferson Building redesign. With the construcVerDate Aug 31 2005 13:12 May 29, 2007 Jkt 032720 PO 00000 Frm 00004 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 E:\HR\OC\A720.XXX A720

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tion of the Capitol Visitor’s Center growing closer to completion, 

there will soon be an opportunity to give visitors to the CVC an additional rich multimedia experience as they enter the Jefferson 

Building. I am eager to get a sense of our plans and schedule for 

the Jefferson Building space. 

Before I conclude my remarks, I should note another issue that 

has come to my attention. Over the past year, the committee has 

received several letters from Members expressing deep concern 

with CRS experts’ ability to meet the standards of the agency’s 

mission by providing the Congress with, quote, nonpartisan objective analysis and research on all legislative issues, end quote. 

When comments and criticisms are being made in the media, it 

should be the objective of CRS to always present to the Congress 

confidential analyses that fairly represents all sides of an issue. 

This committee would like CRS employees to keep that in mind 

when speaking about their work for the Congress outside of the office. 

Finally, all of the changes that have taken place within the Library over the past several years and the increasing focus on digital and technological enhancements to the Library’s operations, I 

would like to get a sense from Dr. Billington as to what is being 

done to ensure that the workforce in place at the Library of Congress is equipped and prepared for this change. As we prepare our 

physical and technical infrastructure with the equipment required 

to keep up with the latest technology, it is equally important to ensure that our workforce is prepared for this transition. 

At this time, I would like to recognize Ms. Millender-McDonald, 

who is not yet here, and I would like to ask if some other member 

of the minority would like—Ms. Lofgren. 

Ms. LOFGREN. I will just say, I think this is an important hearing. The Intellectual Properties Subcommittee, on which I also 

serve, is in the middle of a markup, so I may have to leave before 

we are concluded. It is not for lack of interest in this subject. 

I am particularly interested in the digital efforts of the Library, 

and one of the things I hope that can be addressed in the testimony 

is the issue of accessibility of the digital effort. As I am sure the 

librarian is aware, there is an effort underway in the private sector 

now to develop open-source standards so that no proprietary standard would prevent access to the information. And I am very interested in pursuing that because, to the extent that this is America, 

really the world’s library, the world needs to have access to it, and 

there shouldn’t be any barrier that is proprietary to that goal. 

Secondarily, I am interested—I didn’t see any reference to it in 

the written testimony, but I assume that it has been thought of— 

which is cyber security, which needs to be built in at the very beginning to the digital effort of the Library. And I am interested in 

what process we are using to make sure that the cyber security element has been addressed from the get-go on this. 

I commend—I understand that copyrights do provide some barriers to access, but I also know that it is possible to overcome those 

barriers with the permission of copyright holders. And in fact, we 

are well underway in adopting an orphan works bill that I think 

will assist this greatly because most of the protected materials are 

no longer being commercially exploited, and we are going to come 


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up with a way to make sure that that material is made available 

to the culture and not simply lost because of copyright rules. 

I just think this is a very exciting project. Google is not actually 

in my congressional district; it is about 8 miles outside, but I certainly have many, many constituents who work for Google, and I 

am glad they have been generous in contributing, and I am hoping 

that that will be matched by other companies in the digital space 

who understand the implications for not only the United States but 

the world in making this information so freely available. 

So thank you, Mr. Chairman, and also to the Library for this important work, and I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. And if you do have to leave for a different hearing, you will be gone for a long discussion on intellectual 

properties. 

Mr. Doolittle, do you have any—— 

Mr. DOOLITTLE. I have no comments. 

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, any members wishing to submit an opening statement for the record may do so, and it will be 

entered into the record. 

STATEMENTS OF JAMES H. BILLINGTON, LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS; DEANNA MARCUM, ASSOCIATE LIBRARIAN FOR LIBRARY SERVICES; LAURA CAMPBELL, ASSOCIATE LIBRARIAN FOR STRATEGIC INITIATIVES; AND JO ANN JENKINS, 

CHIEF OF STAFF, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

The CHAIRMAN. I would like to welcome our first panel of the day 

and ask you to take your places at the table. We are pleased to 

welcome you. 

We have with us Dr. Billington, the Librarian of Congress, who 

is undoubtedly somewhat jetlagged from a recent trip to Russia. 

We also have Deanna Marcum, Associate Librarian for Library 

Services; Laura Campbell, Associate Librarian for Strategic Initiatives—almost sounds like a Pentagon job; and Jo Ann Jenkins, 

Chief of Staff to the Library of Congress. 

Welcome all, and please address the committee in any way you 

see fit at any time. 

I would first like to turn to Dr. Billington for his testimony. 

STATEMENT OF JAMES H. BILLINGTON 

Dr. BILLINGTON. Thank you, Chairman Ehlers, and members of 

the committee. 

It is a real pleasure and honor to appear before this committee 

and to thank you for the strong support and wise counsel that the 

committee has given to the Library of Congress over so many 

years. 

I appreciate the opportunity to highlight for you some of the developments and initiatives that are already transforming the Library of Congress and have already begun to shape Congress’s Library in the 21st century, as you have already enumerated. 

The Congress of the United States, Mr. Chairman, has been the 

greatest single patron of a library in the history of the world. 

Building on its purchase of Thomas Jefferson’s large, wide-ranging, 

almost unique personal library, the Congress has created and sustained what has now become the largest and most widely inclusive 


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repository both of the world’s knowledge in almost all languages 

and of America’s creativity in almost every kind of format. 

The overwhelming challenge now facing the Library in its third 

century—the oldest Federal cultural institution—is how to sort and 

preserve the exploding world of digital knowledge and information, 

and then how to integrate it into the still-expanding world of books 

and other traditional analog materials so that we can continue to 

provide Congress and the American people with the objective 

knowledge and the dependable information that is needed more 

than ever in this information age. Everything from our security to 

our economic competitiveness increasingly depends on the information and knowledge base of our country. 

There is no change in the Library’s basic, historic mission of acquiring, preserving and making accessible the world’s knowledge 

and the Nation’s creativity. But the way in which we do our work 

is changing radically in the face of the greatest revolution in the 

generation and communication of knowledge since the advent of 

the printing press—the digital age. The Library began the necessary process of transformation more than a decade ago with our 

American Memory Web site, which provides free access on the 

Internet to the Library’s primary documents of American history 

for use by the Nation’s schools and everyone else in their own locality who has access to our Web sites. At the same time, this committee asked the Library to create THOMAS, giving the public a 

new, simple way to access legislative information online. 

Since then, more than a decade ago, each area of the Library has 

pushed forward with utilizing technology to increase both its internal efficiency and its external outreach. 

In my longer statement that is in the record, I touch upon how 

electronic technology is transforming the work of CRS, the Copyright Office, the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, the Global Legal Information Network and the 

Library’s digital resources for K-through-12 teachers and local 

users across the Nation. 

By now, the Library is doing far more work with far fewer people, 1,091 fewer FTEs than in 1992. Last year, we acquired more 

than 2 million new analog items, gave special conservation treatment to 1.4 million of the 132 million analog items in our collections, and received nearly 3.7 billion electronic transactions on our 

Web site. We expect a 21 percent increase this year, to nearly 4.7 

billion hits. 

Without our worldwide comprehensive acquisitions policy, America might never have possessed the previously little known autobiography of Osama bin Laden or the materials needed to reconstruct the traditional laws of Afghanistan that were almost entirely 

destroyed by the Taliban, just to site two examples. 

Today, we want to report to you on the three major new library 

undertakings which you have already itemized for us, Mr. Chairman, and each of these was launched in response to congressional 

initiatives. 

First is the Library’s emerging new Audiovisual Conservation 

Center in Culpeper, Virginia; our National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program, terrible acronym though it 

may be; and finally, the new enhancements we are adding to the 


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Jefferson Building for the greatly increased number of visitors expected in 2007. 

The Culpeper facility was authorized by PL 105–44 and has been supported by $53 million in Federal appropriations over the last 4 

years. We are deeply grateful to the Congress for this funding. 

The facility has been built and funded by the Packard Human- ities Institute at a projected of cost of more than $150 million, 

which will be the largest private gift in the history of the Library 

and one of the largest such capital gifts ever conveyed to the Federal Government. 

Dr. Deanna Marcum, our Associate Librarian for Library Services, will discuss this unprecedented project for preserving our massive but often deteriorating audiovisual heritage, which contains so 

much of 20th century America, its history and creativity. 

Dr. Marcum will be followed by Laura Campbell, our Associate 

Librarian for Strategic Initiatives, who will report at midpoint on 

the National Digital Information Infrastructure Preservation Program, which she has directed since its establishment in December 

of 2000 by a special Congressional appropriation supporting PL 

106–554. 

Finally, our Chief of Staff, Jo Ann Jenkins, will describe the 

project she is directing to enhance the experience that the greatly 

increased number of visitors will have at the new Capitol Visitor 

Center and connecting passageway to the Thomas Jefferson Building opening next year. 

We are grateful to members of this committee for their longstanding support, both for restoring so magnificently the Jefferson 

Building and for now reconnecting it physically and intellectually 

with the Capitol, where the Library was originally housed for most 

of the 19th century. 

The new program in the Jefferson Building will focus on bringing 

knowledge into life for an altogether new audience of visitors. It 

will complement the exhibits in the Capitol Visitors Center by celebrating something that is not as well known as it should be, namely, the Congress’s unique historic role in preserving the creativity 

of the American people within the legislative branch of government—largely by locating the Copyright Office within the Library 

and making it possible for its deposits to be systematically housed 

there, as well as the growing number of deposits from American 

creative figures over the years. 

These three outstanding leaders to my left who will now continue 

the testimony exemplify, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, the quality of our remarkable and dedicated library staff. 

Like our unique collections, this staff is a national treasure. 

We will begin with Dr. Marcum, who will discuss our mission for 

transforming Library Sciences with examples of work already underway, and especially the National Audiovisual Conservation Center. 

[The statement of Dr. Billington follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. I was delinquent in not mentioning the 5-minute 

limit, so I encourage each of you to stay under 5 minutes. 

Dr. Marcum. 

STATEMENT OF DEANNA MARCUM 

Dr. MARCUM. Chairman Ehlers, members of the committee, good 

morning. 

Our primary challenge in these early years of the 21st century 

is to enhance and adapt digital technology, ensuring that the Library of Congress continues to be the world’s leading repository of 

recorded knowledge in all formats. 

As you well know, the Library of Congress has amassed an unparalleled richness of resources in all formats that creators have 

used, with print on paper being the most commonly used format. 

We have in place a superb preservation program for print on 

paper and all other formats, but our immediate imperative is to understand the many new materials that are being created in digital 

form and find appropriate ways to add digital materials to our collections and to preserve them for future generations. Our motivation for creating a new kind of library, the 21st century library, is 

that information-seekers in Congress, as elsewhere, have discovered the ease and convenience of Web and search engines for finding information. 

Publishers have responded by making more of their recent products available on the Web, and so have we. We have been at the 

forefront of making information available electronically. But the Library has not been replaced by Google. The Library continues to 

be essential because it brings together information in all formats 

and organizes and authenticates this information. 

Equally important, the Library provides expert curators who 

make connections between and among information resources to 

connect people with the content in a way that is unmatched by any 

search engine. The 21st century of the Library of Congress will enhance, not replace, the Library by collecting the growing amount 

of information in electronic form that will never be in print, and 

the Library will continue to digitize parts of the print collections, 

as copyrights permit, to allow broader access to Congress, researchers, students and the general public. 

Incorporating digital collections into the largest most comprehensive print repository will require changes in organizational structure, processes and staff skills. Through a program called Knowledge Navigators, we will bring the expertise of our highly skilled 

curators to the Web, making our validated, authenticated resources 

more accessible and more useful than ever before. 

There is already evidence of the 21st century library throughout 

the institution. One good example of progress is the geographic information systems technology and our Geography and Map Division. Congressional needs for nuanced policy data overlaid on maps 

are already being met by the new technology. Since launching the 

Congressional Cartography Program, we have provided more than 

230 custom maps to Members for their use in legislative deliberations. 

An outstanding example of the transformation that will occur 

throughout the Library of Congress is the National Audiovisual 


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Conservation Center that is nearing completion in Culpeper, Virginia. 

The collections of our Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division consist of over 1 million moving image collection items, nearly 3 million audio collection items, and over 1.7 

million supporting paper documents and photographs. The new facility in Culpeper will bring together all of these collections now 

scattered in five storage locations, as you see on this map, in a facility designed for their care and preservation. Thanks to the support of the Congress and the unprecedented generosity of David 

Woodley Packard and the Packard Humanities Institute, the stateof-the-art conservation center will preserve our collections and provide space for 25 years of collections growth. 

The facility and its new technology will allow us to preserve the 

Library’s collections four to five times faster than we can today and 

preserve our films three times faster. 

Great care has gone into the design and construction of this 

building. The two charts you see, one an aerial photograph, and 

over here architectural renderings, show you the scale of the facility and illustrate the attention that has gone into caring for the 

surrounding environment. Construction began in August 2003. The 

collection storage building was turned over to the Architect of the 

Capitol in December 2005, and the Library began moving collections in February 2006. To date, we have moved 2 million items to 

Culpeper. 

The conservation building will be turned over to the Architect of 

the Capitol in February 2007; staff will move immediately thereafter. 

It is a privilege for me to work on these important initiatives at 

the Library of Congress, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak 

to you today. 

Now I turn to Laura Campbell, the Associate Librarian for Strategic Initiatives. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Ms. Campbell, you are recognized. 

STATEMENT OF LAURA CAMPBELL 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Chairman Ehlers and committee members, it is 

an honor for me to be here today. 

The transformation to a society in which near instant access to 

information is as common as electricity, water and highways is underway. We began our online National Digital Library with American Memory in 1995, now offering 10.5 million items online in one 

of the largest archives of commercial-free high-quality content on 

the Web. 

In 1999, we extended that offering to include important materials from seven other countries. In 2000, we realized, and Congress agreed, that we needed a program to preserve important atrisk digital content that exists in no other form, born-digital material. The average Web site exists for only 44 days. 

Bringing the rare and unique treasures of history from the Library of Congress’s collections to schools and the general public 

was a bold departure from our traditional audience of scholars. 

Last year, Congress authorized the Library to roll out a national 

program for teachers and students in all 50 States, our ‘‘Teaching 


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with Primary Sources’’ program. In little more than a decade, we 

have built a rich information resource for the Nation. 

Congress charged the Library, through our National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program, to build a national network of diverse partners in order to save and provide access to a body of high quality content in digital form. We have 

worked closely with content creators and distributors, research libraries, technology companies, museums and nine Federal agencies, including the National Archives and the Government Printing 

Office. We now have 67 partners under 28 agreements representing 

private and public organizations as shown on this map marking existing network partners in red. They are collecting and preserving 

digital content, developing the technical architecture that supports 

that network, and conducting cutting-edge research into tools and 

technologies to make the job easier. 

Our next investments will double the existing network, as shown 

on the map to your left. The Digital Preservation Program has become a community of practitioners sharing a complex challenge and 

leveraging what any one institution could do alone. By the year 

2010, we will produce a national collection of millions of digital 

works through partnerships with more than 150 organizations 

sharing responsibility and costs for what was once the responsibility of only a few large research libraries. 

In 2008, we will make recommendations to Congress about the 

future of the network. We will expand the network by the end of 

this year in three new ways: first, multi-state demonstration 

projects will encourage States to work cooperatively to collect and 

preserve at-risk State and local government information. We have 

proposals involving more than 30 States now. 

Second, a new Preserving Creative America initiative will target 

creative works from commercial companies, including movies, digital photographs and music. 

Third, we will strengthen the existing preservation network 

through shared storage, tools and services from nonprofit and technology companies. 

We are also teaming with the National Science Foundation’s 

Cyberinfrastructure Program to make the national digital collection 

as comprehensive as possible. 

Finally, in developing the World Digital Library, we are building 

on our record of successful bilateral projects with partners in Russia, Brazil, France, Spain and the Netherlands as well as enlisting 

new partners in the non-Western world beginning with Egypt and 

Mali, as indicated on the world map. 

We hope to create, alongside American Memory, digital presentations on the memory of these Nations in a way that will bring 

people together from diverse cultures in a shared learning experience. We are working with UNESCO and our existing partners to 

develop the guidelines, standards and approaches for including 

countries around the world. 

Thank you for your generous support for our digital programs. I 

am happy to answer your specific questions. 

I now introduce Jo Ann Jenkins, our Chief of Staff. 

The CHAIRMAN. Ms. Jenkins, you are recognized. 


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STATEMENT OF JO ANN JENKINS 

Ms. JENKINS. Chairman Ehlers, members of the committee, you 

have heard Dr. Billington and my colleagues describe the challenges before us as we position the Library of Congress for the 21st 

century. The use of technology in the digital environment brings 

tremendous opportunities for the Library to attract audiences that 

we have not been able to reach before. 

With the support of the Congress, the Thomas Jefferson Building 

was reopened in 1997 after being closed for 10 years for renovation. 

Today, we receive approximately 1.4 million visitors a year 

throughout three buildings. Our expectation, with the Capitol Visitor Center opening, is that the number of visitors will greatly increase to somewhere between 3 and 4 million visitors in a year. 

The opening of the nearly completed passageway from the Capitol Visitors Center to the Jefferson Building provides a once-in-alifetime opportunity to showcase Congress’s library and to draw 

into the Library many potential lifelong patrons and learners. 

We are designing new exhibitions and experiences that will engage and intrigue visitors of all ages and will showcase the breadth 

and depth of the Library’s collections. 

Visitors will learn from our dedicated staff who will acquire, organize and preserve and provide access to our vast materials in 

every language and format. We have prepared a DVD that describes our plans, and with the Chairman’s permission, we would 

like to show just a short segment to give the committee an idea of 

our plans. 

The CHAIRMAN. You may proceed. 

[Video played.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Ms. JENKINS. Mr. Chairman, our plans do not involve any major 

construction in the Jefferson Building; they are in fact designed to 

complement the Capitol Visitor Center and to highlight one of the 

least known and unique accomplishments of the Congress, which is 

the preservation of the record of creativity of the American people. 

As we increase access for a broader audience, our traditional 

scholars and researchers will continue to receive the high level of 

resources and research support they have always received. We are 

raising the funds from the private sector to bring the new visitors 

experience to the Library of Congress. On behalf of my colleagues, 

we appreciate the opportunity to speak before you today and would 

be happy to answer any questions. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you all for your testimony. 

I will recognize myself for 5 minutes for various questions. 

The first one I have to dispose of, just because it affects the 

many libraries throughout the country who are worried about this, 

and that is, providing control—the Library’s decision to discontinue 

providing controlled series access in the bibliographic records that 

library catalogers produce. 

As you know, you provide so much service to so many libraries, 

and they are so dependent on you. I just wanted to convey to you 

that some local libraries are worried about losing that since they 

regard the Library of Congress as the authority on cataloging information. I would appreciate if you would describe this function and 


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the justification for its proposed elimination. And I will refer to— 

Dr. Marcum, is that your territory? I will let you answer that one. 

Dr. MARCUM. Thank you. Yes, we are keenly aware of the concern in the broader library community about a recent policy decision to stop managing the series authority records in the catalog. 

I would like to put this issue in a larger context, if I may. As 

we move into the digital environment, we recognize that our biggest challenge is to connect the user with the content. It is not that 

cataloging will go away; more than ever we need to describe all elements of these digital files so that people will know what is available online. But it means, with a workforce in the same numbers, 

we have to set priorities. We decided that we needed to streamline 

our cataloging function following the rules that are meant for the 

print environment and focus more on the cataloging that will be 

necessary for all of these electronic materials. So we looked at the 

series authority records that are used by very, very few people. The 

series authorities let people know how a series title has changed 

over time. All of the use information we could gather indicated that 

about one-half of 1 percent of the use of online catalogs is for that 

part of the record. So we decided that we could stop managing that 

part and focus on some of these new digital requirements. 

In retrospect, I believe that our failure to communicate promptly 

with the library community led to this great concern that we were 

going to be phasing out some of our high quality cataloging; that 

certainly isn’t the case. In response to this issue, I have convened 

an external advisory committee. I have invited the American Library Association to name three representatives, the Association of 

Research Libraries to name three representatives, special libraries 

and law libraries, one each. I have also invited the search engine 

companies to name a representative to this external advisory committee, and there will be a few at-large members. We expect to convene this group to think about all of these cataloging issues in a 

cluster and try to think about cataloging in the new digital environment and develop some reports that will be helpful to librarians 

everywhere. It is a slightly long answer, but I think you need to 

get the full picture. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. I just want to emphasize this point on how dependent libraries are on you. I am sensitive to this, having grown 

up in a town with a magnificent population of 800 people—it still 

has 800 people—and libraries of this sort are not too concerned 

about the digital issues; they just are trying to keep their heads 

above water. They are totally dependent on you. So please keep all 

those libraries in mind as we go through this process. 

I have many more questions, but I am pleased now to note the 

attendance of our ranking member just released from the White 

House. The President apparently has decided he can run the country without the ranking member for the rest of the day. So we are 

pleased to welcome you. My time has expired, so I am pleased to 

recognize you for any questions. 

Mrs. MILLER of Michigan. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

And I thank you all so much for being here. I am sorry I was not 

here at the beginning, but nonetheless, I am interested in the subject area, and I thank my colleagues for pinch hitting for me during 

my absence. 


ycherry on PRODPC74 with HEARING
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Mr. Chairman, I am just looking over these. And I suppose the 

one thing that I would like to ask in terms of the library management is, how many staff members will be transferred from Capitol 

Hill to the new National Audiovisual Conservation Center in 

Culpeper? 

Dr. Billington, how many staff members will be transferred? 

Dr. BILLINGTON. I can’t give you the exact number, but many of 

them will be transferred, although not all, because the basic use of 

the collections for research and for the various purposes for which 

the materials being transferred—more than 5 million—will be used 

on Capitol Hill, so some will remain here. 

These collections have been housed in three States, including in 

Dayton, Ohio at the Wright-Patterson Air Force base. Nitrogenbased films are pyrophoric, even explosive, so they could never 

have been stored here on Capitol Hill. Our facility at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, which is being phased out, includes employees, who will have the option to retire, but most of them will be 

transferred to the Culpeper facility. 

The storage facilities, in Boyers, Pennsylvania, and in the warehouse just outside Washington, DC, in Landover, Maryland are not 

Library of Congress facilities. The employees at those facilities are 

not Library employees, and the ones working at Landover are not 

employees of the Motion Picture Film Broadcast and Recorded 

Sound Division, which is basically the division that is moving so 

many people to Culpeper. So I will get you the exact numbers for 

the record. 

Mrs. MILLER of Michigan. I would appreciate that. 

Dr. BILLINGTON. That is the general picture. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. I would appreciate that. 

Dr. BILLINGTON. That is the general picture. 

Dr. MARCUM. I can add a little bit. There are 11 staff whose jobs 

will remain here on Capitol Hill. They will provide reference and 

technical functions in the Performing Arts Reading Room, which 

will remain open and provide services. All of the other functions 

will be transferred to Culpepper. For individual staff who have decided they cannot go to Culpepper, we are making every effort to 

find equivalent jobs here and we will try to swap jobs within the 

Library so those who wish to go to Culpepper from another part of 

the institution will be able to do so. We need all of those skills at 

Culpepper, but we realize there are some individuals who will not 

be able to go. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. I appreciate your commenting on 

that because that would have been my next question: For those 

who did not wish to go to Culpepper, what would they do? So I am 

interested in that. The Chairman did speak to me on the floor last 

week to tell me that the majority of those employees were going to 

be transferred to jobs and that you did have the appropriate job 

swaps and other job transfers. And I was happy to hear that because we have worked very hard together to try to see how we 

could ensure that these employees did have safe landings. So we 

thank you so much. 

The last question I have is what is the Library doing that makes 

innovative use of technology in schools? I think we talked a little 

bit about that, but can you just quickly brief me on that? 


ycherry on PRODPC74 with HEARING
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Dr. BILLINGTON. The entire National Digital Library, the American Memory material, was basically designed for K through 12. 

Our creators, who have always served scholars very well, were 

asked ‘‘Suppose your 11- or 12-year-old niece or nephew came in; 

how would you get them interested in these primary documents of 

American history? How would you explain that in language that 

would be understandable to them?’’ This is being sustained to a 

large degree in our World Digital Library as we work in collaboration with the National Libraries of Egypt and Mali and France and 

the Netherlands, Spain and Brazil. But then in addition to that, we 

raised some private money from the Kellogg Foundation and from 

Walter Scott of Omaha, Lawrence and Ann Scott, who were interested in this. We have trained about 250 crack educators, competitively chosen from all over the country from a wide representation, 

teachers and librarians in the educational use. So all of their practical classroom teaching experience in using this material is also on 

line. 

In addition, there has been considerable congressional interest. 

We have in seven different States programs to train teachers in the 

educational use of the Internet, and we are developing a template 

so that any State can set this up. The crucial element is training 

teachers. Very often, even excellent teachers are not as advanced 

in the use of these materials and technology as their students are, 

because young people are growing up with this. The whole premise 

of this is to use the interactive potential of the Internet. It is not 

like television—even good television—which is essentially passive. 

You are a spectator witnessing somebody else’s train of thought. 

The idea is to engage them interactively—Give them primary 

documents of American history, all of its variety and richness. This 

way you get enormous diversity of material but within one unified 

American Memory Project. There are all kinds of interesting ways 

of using this that are being devised in the seven States whose various congressional delegations have collaborated to set up programs 

that we help work with them on, and to which some funds are devoted to helping seed this process of training teachers as well as 

providing the materials. 

I would say that one of the most important innovations that the 

Library has done has been to add an educational function, K 

through 12, to our already historic function of training higher 

scholars and the like and using the interactivity of the Internet to 

get people back into reading rather than pull them away with essentially passive spectatorism of television. 

New technologies tend to imitate the prior technology and the 

Internet has been excessively imitative, I think, of television in 

that it is a vehicle for commercial advertising and so forth, which 

is okay; but the market has not developed, so far, effective and 

widely used methods of training in the educational use of the Internet. 

We have provided the material which is either public domain or 

we have express permission of the copyright owner to use it for this 

educational purpose, and people are free to download it. Kids can 

use it in all kinds of inventive ways. Teachers have the lesson 

plans as well, so we are making I think a substantial contribution 

to what everyone will agree is important for almost every problem 


ycherry on PRODPC74 with HEARING
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we face in our country; namely, improvement of K through 12 education. It is a free service and we have been well supported, largely 

by Congress, but there are also important private contributions to 

this. It is ongoing and developing and we will have by the end of 

this year a template for every State that wants to set up a program 

for better training. This is training of the teachers who sometimes, 

as I say, think this is excessively difficult. It really isn’t difficult. 

It is not neurosurgery or rocket science, but it is an important addition to—not a replacement for—traditional education. 

Also it is extremely important for this fundamental problem: the 

fact that almost 1 out of 3 fourth graders is not able to read in 

America. That is really a national disgrace, if I can get a little bit 

on the soap box. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. I agree with you and my time is up. 

And I thank you so much, Dr. Billington. 

Dr. BILLINGTON. That is our educational effort and we hope that 

this can continue and develop. Of course, we are only a small element in a very large sea of problems, but I think we invented this 

use of technology. We should be using it for one of our most important national needs. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. Absolutely. 

The CHAIRMAN. The Chair recognizes Mr. Brady for 5 minutes. 

Mr. BRADY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. Billington, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that you 

grew up four blocks from my house, in the great city of Philadelphia, and I am going to continue our relationship. I have an affinity for people who come from the same place as I do, as we all do; 

and knowing that you have to be embedded with some union affinity, I am sure. There is some legislation pending about the police 

officers that are employed by the Library of Congress merging with 

the Capitol Hill Police, and hopefully none of them will be harmed 

in any type of way or lose their jobs. I understand they will be incorporated in, but as you know, sometimes people that are on the 

job 15, 20 years, and close to pension and close to pension age, the 

qualification reclassification—they have to requalify—may be a little too rigorous. And I note you have your own internal securities 

there. And I was hoping that I could talk to you further about their 

situation and hope that they will not be unemployed or hurt in any 

way. 

I understand also that you may or may not be able to comment 

on that, because hopefully there is an agreement that was made 

that may not need to be made public but; I would like you to know 

that I am going to continue that conversation and continue our relationship and hope that that can be taken care of and no men and 

women over there will be unemployed because of that merger. 

Dr. BILLINGTON. I know what you are talking about and I want 

to express our continuing concern. We have had a lot of dialogue 

about this with our Congressional oversight committees, and I will 

defer to our chief of staff, on your question and has been working 

in this area. 

The CHAIRMAN. Doctor, with our newfound relationship, I just 

wanted you to know I know, and I want to continue my relationship with you, but I will be more than happy to hear from Ms. Jenkins. 


ycherry on PRODPC74 with HEARING
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Ms. JENKINS. I just wanted to say that we are not prepared to 

comment on that. We are working with the House and Senate 

Committees to bring this to a positive resolution. 

Mr. BRADY. If we in any way, shape, or form can be helpful with 

that dialogue, please feel free to let us know. 

Ms. JENKINS. Thank you, sir. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman yields back the balance of his 

time. The gentlewoman from California, Ms. Lofgren. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you. I was notified that we lacked a 

quorum in the IP Subcommittee, but by the time I had gotten to 

the elevator they had given up and adjourned; so here I am, back. 

I think what is going on at the Library is very exciting. I am interested in a couple of issues in the testimony, written and also 

here, there has been a discussion about the need to access an open 

source and the committees you are putting together. I do not have 

all the people involved today, but I will send to you later the people 

who have been in touch with me in the private sector that are putting together an effort that may or may not mesh. You are the ones 

to decide that, not me. 

On that issue, I was interested in the World Digital Library and 

our partners in that, and I notice that we did not have a Spanishspeaking partner nor did we have a partner in Asia. What is the 

plan for that, and is that something to be concerned about? I do 

not know whether Dr. Marcum or Ms. Campbell would be the one 

to handle that. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. We do have a partner in Spain. 

Ms. LOFGREN. That is correct. I was thinking Latin America. It 

is fine for Brazil to be our partner, but as the largest Portugesespeaking nation in the world, I am wondering is there an effort to 

broaden that in Latin America? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Absolutely. We have seven existing partners and 

we have recently signed agreements with Egypt and the national 

library in Alexandria and the National Library in Cairo—to extend 

that group of countries to Egypt. We are going to take the experience of our initial seven partners and import that to a broader audience, working with UNESCO and other communities, to make 

certain that we include as many countries as we possibly can with 

multilingual presentations. 

This is a very big issue for us. And the underpinnings, which I 

think from your earlier comments you can appreciate in terms of 

how we build the architecture that supports this body of content, 

is very, very important; so we will be able to provide the security 

for it and we will be able to maintain it in several places around 

the world. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Now, pursuing that, I am not suggesting who 

should be our next partner, I am sure that is a complicated multinational decision, but certainly there are some countries that are 

tiny and some that are huge and have more content to bring to the 

table. And certainly if some of those larger actors were not on 

board with us, if this is truly to be a worldwide effort, that would 

be a problem. 

Are we reaching out to some of those sections of the globe to 

make sure that we are—we may be at odds politically, but we 

should not be at odds in preserving the culture of the world. 


ycherry on PRODPC74 with HEARING
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Ms. CAMPBELL. Well, for example, Mali is a recent partner of 

ours. We have preserved, working with them, digitized Islamic 

manuscripts that deal with a number of subjects, including law and 

poetry and the history of West Africa. We recognize in certain parts 

of the world there will be some stronger libraries and we will help 

them identify really interesting, fabulous and unique material from 

their region, and so we are including the small countries as well. 

It is very important. 

Ms. LOFGREN. If I can ask—and I do not know whether Dr. 

Marcum or Ms. Campbell would be the most appropriate person to 

direct this question to—but we have got a couple of issues. One, 

converting our analog collection to digital; and the other is just 

simply collecting the digital world as it evolves. 

Going to the second point, there was a discussion about Web 

pages that disappear and the need to collect them. There have been 

actually some private sector efforts to do that. And I am wondering 

to what extent our effort duplicates that and whether it is necessary to duplicate that—I do not suggest that that may be necessary—but also the reach of the Webs. I mean, are we going into 

MySpace and FaceBook, or are we just doing what is available to 

anyone? What are we looking at? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. We are working with the Internet Archive, which 

takes periodic snapshots of the Web and has done so since the 

early days of the World Wide Web. They are one of our partners 

in collecting at-risk digital material in the National Digital Preservation program. 

We also helped co-found an international organization called the 

International Internet Preservation Consortium where we are 

among 11 national libraries and the Internet Archive who are 

working together to develop common tools so we will be able to 

share material with other countries that are collecting their own 

domain materials. And yes, that is true, the figure that we rely on 

is that the average Web site disappears in 44 days. And it isn’t just 

the Web site, it is all kinds of content, photographs and music and 

independent films and things that certain communities cannot afford to keep, such as local and State data, maps that are created 

on the fly. 

Ms. LOFGREN. If I may, with unanimous consent, another 30 seconds. I serve on the Homeland Security Committee and one of the 

issues that we have at least touched on but not addressed very well 

is information that was generally available, and even published before 9/11, that now poses security—at least concerns relative to the 

critical infrastructure of the United States. Have you come up with 

a strategy for dealing with that? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Under the National Digital Preservation program, that long acronym, NDIIP we call it, we have a subgroup of 

the nine Federal agencies that are involved on our advisory board, 

and one of the things that we are addressing is preservation policies. Many of those organizations have come up against this issue 

where they had to take down material that was already out there 

in the public’s hands, and so we are looking at those policy issues. 

We are looking at preservation standards: Can we agree on what 

the preservation standard is across the federal government, because it would make it easier for many of us. And we meet on a 


ycherry on PRODPC74 with HEARING
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regular basis. There are nine of us and I expect there will be a few 

other agencies that will join us. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Is the Department of Homeland Security one of 

the agencies? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. No. DOD has just joined us but we would be 

happy to have the Department of Homeland Security join us. 

Ms. LOFGREN. You may not be happy. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. This is actually a fairly desperate group. We need 

one another. There are not a lot of people who want to delve into 

the nitty-gritty of digital preservation. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentlewoman’s time has expired. We will 

start a second round of questions. I have a fairly lengthy question 

for Dr. Billington, and I ask that you bear with me through the 

length of this but it is a very important question. 

Obviously, we will not finish all the questions we have today and 

so we will have to submit written questions on some issues. But 

the first major question, businesses around the world are well 

aware that in order to remain competitive in their industries it is 

no longer sufficient to possess a workforce comprised only of competent and loyal employees. Successful companies know it is imperative to build and sustain a highly skilled and nimble workforce 

that is able to not only survive but thrive in an environment where 

the pace of change accelerates every year. 

In other words, it is not your grandmother’s Library anymore. 

Obviously the Library is not in a competitive marketplace, but it 

plays a critical supporting role to the Congress, which needs to set 

public policy in a very dynamic world. Old models of human capital 

management that developed in the latter half of the last century 

cannot possibly fulfill the needs of the Congress and the country 

in the 21st century. 

Dr. Billington, on this I have three related questions. Is the Library’s human capital sufficiently skilled and appropriately deployed to support the changing requirements of the Congress? 

Second, is the Library’s human capital structured correctly to be 

highly responsive to the rapidly evolving environment in which it 

functions? 

And third, does your long-term human capital strategy align 

properly with the long-term needs of the Congress in the next 10 

to 20 years? I would appreciate your answer to this comprehensive 

question. 

Dr. BILLINGTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That is a very good 

and central question. The Library’s staff, through its different discrete areas, is at different stages in addressing this need for a kind 

of transformed workforce. The Library is not merely the National 

Library; it is also a kind of knowledge conglomerate. So if you 

begin with the institutions that most directly serve the Congress, 

the Congressional Research Service and the Law Library, you will 

find that they have almost completely transformed how knowledge 

is analyzed, gathered, and transmitted to Members of Congress. 

The Law Library with its global legal information network, 43 participating countries, increased usage last year. For instance, in 

2002 they were getting 405,000 hits on their Web site; through 

June of this year they have got 6,751,000. So there is an enormous 

increase in the utilization of the institutions that most directly 


ycherry on PRODPC74 with HEARING
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serve the Congress in the transformation and integration of the 

new digital universe. 

The Copyright Office is in the final stages of a reengineering to 

adapt copyright deposit and registration to the digital world. The 

technology staff serving the Library as a whole, was out in front 

of really much of the world and much of the private sector with the 

launch of the Library’s Web in 1994, with its ability to begin simultaneously both the American Memory Web site with 10,500,000 

items now on line and an enormous number of hits in educational 

usage, and, at the same time, the Thomas system. So the leadership in the digital field is fairly distinct now in the information program that we have talked about. 

Regarding your question about the adequacy of our workforce in 

a competitive world, is it sufficiently skilled and appropriately deployed? 

We have a couple of really profound problems that have to be 

overcome. First of all is the high degree of technological competence that is involved in this transformation. I think it is not an 

inconsiderable accomplishment to have taken the leadership role 

that we have had, particularly in dealing with direct services to the 

Congress. We have also reached out to new constituencies in the 

country when our workforce is not sufficiently competitive in what 

we can pay skilled high-tech workers, although we need them very 

much. 

We also have the problem of an aging workforce. If you take the 

core of the Library—the Librarian category, some 850 people, 22 

percent of our workforce—only 10 percent of those are under 40 

years of age. More than half of them, 51 percent to be exact, are 

over 55. So we have a problem of how to replace skilled employees. 

We have a fundamental challenge that you have to have more and 

more people in the central library profession who have a variety of 

skills. The Library is full of people with one-of-a-kind skills developed over a great many years. The average length of service is 18 

years. Forty percent of our staff will be eligible to retire by the year 

2010. So we have a large problem of replacement and we have extraordinarily important needs to retrain current employees so that 

they can have a great need of flexibility. This is not always easy 

to attain. 

We have important need for retraining but we do not have a particularly high training budget. While it is too early to predict the 

final outcome of our current budget submissions, we had a substantial—not exorbitant, but an important request for training funds to 

analyze this and project future needs in connection with our strategic plan which we are developing now. This year we are developing a very integrated strategic plan, but we had hoped to be able 

to analyze this problem and define it in precisely the terms you 

have requested, but it does not look like we will get much of that 

request. We have a fairly low training budget for one of the most 

specialty-intense workforces in the Federal Government. We have 

a great many problems. But the great thing that we do have is a 

very dedicated workforce, a lot of experience. 

Another aspect of professionalizing the workforce is mentoring, 

succession planning, which has been fairly well advanced in CRS 

and some other parts of the Library. It requires the ability to have 


ycherry on PRODPC74 with HEARING
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people both exercising their job and training people who will succeed them in those intangible one-of-a-kind skills with which the 

Library is very rich. 

I am happy to answer more detailed questions, but I would say 

that in terms of human capital management, the human component is the key to our future, really. We simply need to have more 

flexibility, and we are preparing draft legislation for the 110th Congress that will address many of the needs and many of the questions that you have posed. 

I am glad you brought this issue up because it is the core need: 

the human capital and replacing the skills. And we need, as Dr. 

Marcum has mentioned, a new type of librarian, in a sense, that 

you can call ‘‘knowledge navigator’’ who is capable of both substantive knowledge, linguistic knowledge. We deal with 480 languages and new skills in the electronic world so that they are able 

to do for the Congress, and increasingly for the American people, 

one-stop shopping where you can get information that is dependable, you can sort through the unfiltered world of the Internet and 

integrate it into the world of traditional knowledge stored in books 

and other analog items. 

It is an enormous challenge. It is one we are working very hard 

on, and I think in our new strategic plan we will be able to present 

a full and integrated picture of how human capital development for 

the Library of the 21st century will be conducted. 

The CHAIRMAN. My time has expired, but I do want to say we 

will have to pursue this with you as a committee, both minority 

and majority. I think it is a very complex issue that we will be facing over the next few years, as you said, with all the replacements 

taking place. You have to recognize that the Library depends on 

two things: your storage media and your personnel. That is what 

makes the Library, and they are both equally important. So we are 

very concerned about the personnel issues and we will pursue that 

later. But my time has expired. 

Now I would like to mention that I thought we were having 

votes, but in fact the House has recessed until 12, so I hope we can 

finish this panel, hear the second panel, and deal with that before 

noon. 

At this time I recognize Ms. Millender-McDonald. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. Billington, as you create this digital repository representing 

cultures around the globe, I know Google is providing funding for 

the initial planning for this World Digital Library. Has Google expressed an interest in continuing to fund the program beyond the 

planning process? Have other organizations expressed interest in 

participating in the program in this way? 

Dr. BILLINGTON. We have no further absolute commitment, but 

we have expressed an interest in taking a look at what happens 

in this pilot phase that we are doing. I should say that this is totally nonexclusive—we hope to get other contributors, as well. 

Yes, they have expressed some interest and it is important to realize that this is a nonexclusive philanthropic arrangement. We are 

very pleased with their support. When Mr. Sergei Brin and I conducted a telephone press conference announcing this, someone 

asked why are you doing this? And Sergei Brin said, quite spontaVerDate Aug 31 2005 13:12 May 29, 2007 Jkt 032720 PO 00000 Frm 00032 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A720.XXX A720

ycherry on PRODPC74 with HEARING
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neously, I don’t think it was programmed, he said, When I went 

to the Library I was looking at old Chinese maps and I realized 

they were telling stories that were very different from how far 

Shanghai is from Beijing. They were telling part of the story of 

these people. He said, I didn’t know much about it, but I was kind 

of fascinated by it and I loved looking at this, and I thought other 

people ought to have the same opportunity. 

It seems to me that this is a feeling that everybody has when 

they look at the treasures. What we are doing here is also showing 

the world that America has not only preserved and stored much of 

the world’s treasures, but is giving it back free to those countries. 

These treasures are largely visual, a lot of maps, a lot of old prints, 

a lot of things of these kinds that will immediately attract an 

audio-visual generation and, at the same time, raise curiosity and 

interest and respect for the different cultures of the world. So we 

think that this is something that is going to attract other backing 

and we are very pleased. 

The world digital Library is an outgrowth of our meeting of the 

frontiers project demonstrating the historical connection between 

the U.S. and Russia. We now are approaching a million items from 

Russia, and we are getting terrific cooperation from them. It has 

bilingual commentary. It compares America’s movement west with 

Russia’s movement east. It has been very successful. We have 

something like 36 Russian institutions sharing material, and we 

are, from the Library’s collection, mixing them together in a virtual 

Library that unites and reaches across borders, which involves 

more than just the Library of Congress. Other American institutions are contributing to it. 

The two pilot projects that we are doing in this initial phase are 

with Brazil and Egypt. With Egypt, we are getting parallel ArabicEnglish commentary. We are doing the history of Islamic science, 

which from the 10th to 16th century was in many ways the best 

in the world. 

We are celebrating foreign cultures, not just cultivating foreign 

customers. That is the commercial world. Ours is very different. It 

also represents something about America, that America itself is 

composed of many different cultures. 

Take the material in Mali. The President of Mali was over here 

a couple of years ago. There is an enormous amount of Islamic 

medical history that continued in West Africa because it was beyond the reach of the Ottoman Empire, where for a long period 

that great tradition stagnated. We are expanding our own understanding of the world, because it is bilingual, the commentary is in 

whatever language the country is, as well as in English. It is enabling young Americans in our already established educational program to learn about the world’s memory as well as our own American memory in its various forms. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. That is really so great. Thank you 

very much, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. I have one final question and the 

rest we will submit to you in writing. But this one goes back a 

ways, under Chairman Thomas’ tenure, which is better than 6 

years ago. This committee spent a lot of time and effort working 

with the Library to develop standards and protocols establishing 


ycherry on PRODPC74 with HEARING
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comprehensive collections security. You may recall at that time we 

had some losses, some very serious losses. 

Could you please provide the committee with an update on your 

continuing efforts to ensure that the Library’s collections are being 

properly managed and protected? 

Dr. BILLINGTON. I would ask to be able to provide it for the 

record in detail. In general, I think that the security problems 

which occurred and attracted a fair amount attention about 13, 14 

years ago, have been successfully addressed. One of the first actions I took was to close the stacks to public access. Theoretically, 

it had always been closed, but there were so many exceptions. So 

that has all been secured. We have an integrated, well thought out 

collections security plan. Unlike most buildings, we have to have 

security not only in people coming in the buildings, but people leaving the buildings. 

The Capitol Visitor Center will help a great deal because it will 

centralize the security clearance for people, but we are working 

also on making sure that we adjust to that. 

General Scott, my deputy who really oversees the whole security 

side of things, is unfortunately not here this week. But I would invite anyone else of my colleagues to talk about it. Because the 

unique thing about the Library is that in addition to all the other 

concerns about security and national monuments and in addition 

to participating fully in an integrated way with the perimeter security problems of this Capitol Hill complex, there are the very special problems of collection security, because these are enormous 

treasures. And perhaps because it concerns the collections, Dr. 

Marcum might want to speak on it. 

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Marcum, you are recognized. 

Dr. MARCUM. Thank you. We have a very active collection security committee that now consists of staff from the collections in the 

Library and our security staff. They have worked very effectively 

in identifying all the possible risks, looking at ways to diminish 

those risks; and consequently, because of their good work, I do not 

think we have lost a single, significant item since they have been 

in operation. 

You probably saw all of the publicity about a person who was visiting all of the major libraries stealing maps recently, and many of 

our sister institutions lost a lot of maps during that time. I am 

happy to report that the Library of Congress did not lose a single 

map in that instance, and we are quite familiar with the person 

who was doing it; but I believe that the combination of the collection staff working with the security staff, tightening up all of those 

procedures, has been enormously successful. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Does anyone else wish to offer a comment? If not, we will terminate this portion of the hearing and proceed to the second panel. But I would like to ask the first panel 

to remain here to hear the testimony in case there are further 

questions for you. So I thank all of our witnesses on this panel for 

their testimony. I now invite Mr. Dennis Roth, President of the 

Congressional Research Employees Association, for his testimony. 

Mr. Roth. 


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STATEMENT OF DENNIS M. ROTH, PRESIDENT, 

CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH EMPLOYEES ASSOCIATION 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Roth, welcome. We are pleased to recognize 

you for 5 minutes. 

Mr. ROTH. Mr. Chairman, ranking minority member, good morning. My name is Dennis Roth, President of the Congressional Research Employees Association, otherwise known as CREA, the 

union representing over 500 bargaining union employees in the 

Congressional research Service. I would like to say how pleased I 

am to hear both of you say this morning how important staff are 

to the Library of Congress, not just its physical resources but also 

its human resources. This morning I will focus on a small portion 

of those resources that exist in the Congressional Research Service. 

I would like to focus my specific testimony on the style of management being practiced under the leadership of CRS Director Daniel P. Mulhollan and its consequences on staff and on CRS. 

Leadership can be accomplished in many ways and we believe 

that the style currently practiced by CRS management is inappropriate, damaging, and destructive for a professional service organization. It is autocratic, centralized, and secretive. Staff who speak 

out and recommend changes to top-level management decisions are 

labeled disloyal and whiners, unwilling to accept change. This has 

led to an ever-widening gap in trust and respect between top-level 

CRS management and its staff. 

CRS is aware that this problem exists based on two communication surveys conducted in 2002 and 2004. On both surveys, staff expressed a strong desire to have a participatory form of management; that is, an opportunity to be heard. Yet CRS top-level management has chosen not to do so. 

We believe the event that triggered the decline in trust and respect was the major reorganization of CRS in 2000. Staff were 

never informed that a reorganization was being contemplated, and 

when it was announced, staff were told that management was not 

open to modify the major provisions of the reorganization. Because 

of this leadership style of ‘‘decide and announce,’’ staff and top-level 

management began a disengagement, whose effects still exist. CRS 

analysts and information specialists are deemed good enough to 

work and advise the Congress of the United States, but not good 

enough to work for the top-level management of CRS. 

Director Mulhollan’s decision in September of 2005 to eliminate 

the positions of 59 production support, technical support, and 

audio-visual support staff was conducted under the same shroud of 

secrecy and autocracy. Analytical and research staff who rely most 

heavily on these support staff were never consulted. Thus the announcement of management’s decision sent a shockwave throughout the service. The primary reason given for the RIF was that 

CRS had conducted ‘‘sound business practice’’ analyses, yet CRS 

has refused to let these studies see the light of day. The director 

has turned down requests from congressional committees, individual Representatives and Senators, and CREA. His unwillingness 

to give them to us has been found illegal by an arbitrator. 

Wouldn’t you think that any substantive studies supporting a 

business decision of this magnitude and with such dire consequences would have been released immediately? Like us, Many 


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members of the House were unable to comprehend the rationale for 

the director’s decision, and in February of this year expressed their 

displeasure in a letter to Librarian of Congress James Billington. 

Congresswomen Millender-McDonald and Norton and Congressmen Cummings, Gonzales, Honda and Wynn all stated unequivocally that the director’s process for reaching this decision was ‘‘fundamentally flawed’’ and raised the prospect of open hearings. The 

hearings are now, and CRS must be made to explain and defend 

its decision in the open. We believe that the alleged sound business 

practice studies will be found to be deficient in sound cost analyses 

and insufficient to reach a decision to eliminate the positions in 

question. 

Analyses conducted in analytical divisions in CRS a month after 

the announcement of the abolishment of the positions clearly demonstrated that the functions of the dismissed staff were necessary 

in performing our services to Congress. 

CREA also remains highly concerned over the effect the RIF will 

have on the diversity of CRS staff. The positions being eliminated 

are held predominantly by minorities and by women. Some staff 

achieve these positions by participating in affirmative action and 

upward mobility programs. Approximately 70 percent of those who 

were targeted to lose their positions were African American, Asian, 

or Hispanic. Hard hit were minorities in the middle grade levels in 

CRS; that is, at the GS–8 level and the GS–12 level. 

CREA, from the outset, pushed the concept of retrain and retain, 

but the position of CRS top-level management was to the contrary. 

They argue that RIF-affected staff could not be retrained for any 

positions that were to open up in the immediate future. 

When CREA requested that Director Mulhollan utilize the occupational development provisions of our collective bargaining agreement, he replied that the employees could not be retrained for the 

new CRS positions. In fact, he went so far as to accuse me of being 

disingenuous and raising false hopes and expectations for those 

staff. 

In January of this year, the Library opened up its On-Line 

Learning Center, or the OLC, as part of the Center For Learning 

and Development. The OLC provides access to about 600 on-line 

courses, including administration, finance and accounting, human 

resources, library science, and contracting officers technical representative training. 

I personally approached the director of the center to investigate 

if he had been contacted by CRS to assist in retraining, and was 

disappointed but not surprised to learn that he was not. Furthermore, CRS’s claim that they had more than adequately trained the 

RIF’d staff was found to be false by the arbitrator. 

It is not too late to require CRS and the Library to offer retraining to the affected staff for present and future positions in CRS and 

the Library. The infrastructure for accomplishing this is in place. 

The Center for Learning and Development is there. What is lacking 

is CRS and the Library’s willingness to do so. What a waste of resources, both the Library’s training capabilities and the people who 

are being dismissed. 

Unlike the leadership of our sister legislative agencies, the Government Accountability Office and the Government Printing Office, 


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our director has determined that our staff are disposable and their 

long years of service and commitment mean nothing. The director 

has also stated repeatedly that the 59 staff had to be released because funding was necessary to increase the analytical capacity of 

CRS. Of the 96 positions we have counted to date that have been 

filled since the announcement, only 34 percent, or about 1 in every 

3, has been for an analyst or a specialist. About 18 percent were 

for supervisors or managers. CRS top-level management is increasing CRS’s supervisor and manager capacity more than it is increasing its analytical capacity. 

Are the salaries saved by eliminating 59 staff really going to hire 

more analysts and specialists? We are not antichange. What we are 

against is effectuating change through secrecy and inflexibility. We 

are not seeking co-management. We are seeking opportunities to be 

consulted and to influence major changes that affect CRS’s service 

to the Congress. 

The reputation of CRS was achieved and is maintained through 

the action of our analysts, librarians, and those who support them. 

Yet from top-level CRS management, we cannot attain the respect 

and trust that you give us on a daily basis. We seek your assistance in correcting this. 

We wish to work with management to make CRS the best place 

to work on Capitol Hill, as it was when I first joined the organization 30 years ago. CREA also requests that you make every possible effort to pass H.R. 5328, the Library of Congress Employee 

Transition Act of 2006, introduced by Congresswoman MillenderMcDonald, as soon as possible. CREA deeply thanks the Congresswoman for her efforts, not only for introducing the legislation, but 

also for all the interest and assistance offered over the past 10 

months. She has been a source of hope and support for all of our 

affected staff. Now we need help from all of you to pass this legislation. 

I will now be happy to address any questions you may have. 

Thank you. 

[The statement of Mr. Roth follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you for your comments. I allowed some 

extra time for you to complete it because I did not want to interrupt that narrative. 

Just a few quick questions on my part. I am not totally familiar 

with the RIF process, but my understanding is that under the RIF 

process all the employees who are losing their positions are being 

offered other open positions in the Library of Congress. Is that taking place? 

Mr. ROTH. That would be true if there are other open positions. 

As of my discussions with the staff person that is conducting the 

RIF, they didn’t have at that time a list of any open position for 

them to be placed. It was unclear. They had talked to each of the 

service unit heads and had asked them to submit open positions, 

but at this point we do not know what was given back to him to 

say if there are any positions at all. 

The CHAIRMAN. All right. My understanding is that there are 

some, and every attempt to be made to accommodate all the RIF 

employees, but I have not tested that lately. I know that my Ranking Member, Ms. Millender-McDonald, has a keen interest in this; 

so in the interest of time, because we will be voting soon, I yield 

back the balance of my time and will recognize Ms. MillenderMcDonald. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Having served as a personnel director in both the public and the 

private sector years ago, I am concerned about a hostile environment that is not conducive to any type of positive working conditions. I keep hearing this coming up all the time, that the environment is very hostile. 

Employees have to have respect and trust at all times, no matter 

who they work for, either for Members of Congress, for the President of the United States, or for the Library of Congress and the 

CRS. So I am very concerned and became concerned when I heard 

about these displacements or the attempt to displace 59 employees. 

Right away I spoke with Dr. Billington as well as Mr. Mulhollan 

about this. 

Subsequent to that, I talked independently with these employees 

that were affected, without either the unions or the management 

present, because I wanted to speak directly with them. I think it 

is really very shortsighted, and, to some degree, rather telling, 

when management says that employees cannot be retrained, even 

though that management has never put funding in a program to 

retrain employees. 

Now, this is my understanding, Mr. Roth. Am I correct in that 

assessment of saying that money was never put in? In fact, I think 

an article was in the paper here just the other day, stating that 

money was not put into a retraining program for employees. 

Mr. ROTH. The director released a—I think it was a 5- or 6-year 

analysis of all the money put into training, and it was very heavily 

front loaded. In 1999 we had received a lot of training, and as we 

move to 2005, which was last year, almost no training was offered. 

The arbitrator in her ruling noted that only 12 out of 51 staff—because that is just limited to our bargaining unit—received training 

in 2004, and only 2 in 2005. This is training directly related because of technological changes that you needed to update your 


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skills, that was not forthcoming. As a result of that, she has ruled 

that staff who felt they needed to do it out of pocket to keep current, the Library should reimburse those people. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. I did read that article. Has the Library reimbursed those employees who did take money out-of-pocket for retraining to keep up to the present technological advancements? 

Mr. ROTH. Not yet. The process is that the Library has 30 days 

from receiving the decision to appeal any of the arbitrator’s findings, and that would be August 11 by the way I calculate it. So unless we hear something that they are not going to appeal it, we 

haven’t been told that they are going to fund it at any point in 

time. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. I will raise that question with Dr. 

Billington in just a short minute. But the Chairman has said that 

he heard from both, I guess, Dr. Billington and certainly from Mr. 

Mulhollan, that those 27 or 29 persons who are the ones that are 

left from this 59 that initially were going to be asked to buy out 

and leave their post, were going to be reassigned. Are you suggesting that that is not the case? 

Mr. ROTH. Well we haven’t heard that at all. I talk to those people affected on a daily basis. I met, as I said, last week with the 

human resources person who has been contacted to deal with the 

RIF, and when I contacted him he did not have the responses if 

there would be enough. He was not optimistic, but he said he has 

to wait and see what people respond to him. So as of, say, the end 

of last week, there was no commitment by the Library or CRS to 

retain these people. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. Dr. Billington, can you come forward, sir, and answer that question, given that the Chairman had 

spoken to me on the House floor that those 29 employees were in 

fact going to be reassigned to other positions? 

The CHAIRMAN. Let me just comment that we are approaching 

short time, so please keep the answers very brief, and we can certainly continue this discussion privately as well. 

Dr. BILLINGTON. I will be happy to answer this and any other 

question in more detail. But I think on this question, we should 

defer to our head of Human Resources Mr. Dennis Hanratty. Let 

me just say, in general, that the Library is doing everything possible to minimize the impact of the transformational processes, 

which I have explained in some detail, on the affected staff. We are 

very supportive of your initiative in trying to see that we get the 

same additional rights in the executive branch as we have in the 

legislative branch, and we will ensure that those employees’ rights 

are protected through strict adherence to both our regulations and 

collective bargaining agreements. Mr. Hanratty can speak to the 

specific question. 

The CHAIRMAN. Would you state your name and title? 

Mr. HANRATTY. Dennis Hanratty, Director for Human Resources. 

The CHAIRMAN. That is for the entire Library of Congress, including CRS? 

Mr. HANRATTY. That is correct. As Dr. Billington mentioned, we 

are protecting our employees’ rights. The reduction in force commenced on June 29, and on that day I provided official notice to 


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the impacted staff and met with them to explain the reduction in 

force process. Since then we have met with each of the employees 

individually. Each employee has given us a resume of his knowledge, skills, and experience which we have shared with each service unit in the Library. 

As part of the reduction in force process, we have frozen hiring 

actions in the impacted job series up to the highest grade impacted 

by the reduction in force, and we are attempting right now to place 

employees in vacant positions for which they qualify. 

The CHAIRMAN. And when do you expect that process to conclude? 

Mr. HANRATTY. The process, Mr. Chairman, covers a 90-day period. So the RIF commenced on June 29, we will continue our efforts through the months of August and September to attempt to 

identify positions for these employees. 

The CHAIRMAN. What happens to the salaries of these employees? 

Mr. HANRATTY. If an individual is transferred to a different position in the Library, then that position is absorbed, that salary is 

absorbed by the new service unit. Employees have significant protections in a reduction in force. For example, if the best we can do 

is to find an employee a position that is a lower-graded position, 

that employee has protections for his current salary for a 2-year period. And at the end of that 2-year period, we would move that individual up to the highest step within that grade and provide that 

employee up to 150 percent of the current step. So it is quite possible that even if the best we can do is identify a lower-graded position, an employee would be able to retain his salary. 

The CHAIRMAN. All right. I think it would be improper for us to 

get into too much detail in this hearing. I think the issue has been 

brought to our attention. 

I think it would be more appropriate that we thank Mr. Roth for 

his information. I learned some things that I was not aware of before, and I appreciate you coming here. I also appreciate the Library’s honest intent to place them properly. 

And I am always concerned about getting too heavily into any 

human relations issues in open session. So I would suggest, if the 

Ranking Member does not object, that we adjourn this meeting and 

that we continue this discussion and follow it through. I am certainly interested in making certain that we treat all employees of 

the Library fairly and we will certainly want to have further conversations with all of you to ensure that this is properly done. 

I turn to the Ranking Member and I recognize her. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. I just wanted to say that I do recognize personnel issues and the importance of them not being publicly exposed. But there are a lot of times when there is litigation 

going on that they cannot be done. On a general note, you can continue to raise questions. 

The only thing I wanted to raise was if you are doing the process, 

sir, Mr. Human Relations person, it is within the scope of collective 

bargaining that you have done with the union. And secondarily, 

every employee has bumping rights to bump into a comparable position with that same salary. And I would like to hope that this is 

what is going on in that process because that is where we bump 


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into problems when it comes to MOUs and that is what I wanted 

to express, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. I appreciate your expressing that and, again, we 

will pursue that. It looks as if we are about to have some votes. 

Is there anything further you would like to ask? 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. No. There are many questions. 

It seems like a vote is coming on. I do have an appointment back 

in my office that I have got to go to. I would like to ask, though, 

if the Human Relations gentleman—I am sorry, I did not get your 

name. 

Mr. HANRATTY. Mr. Hanratty. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. If Mr. Hanratty and Mr. Roth and 

Dr. Billington and Mr. Mulhollan can meet with me to discuss 

some of those issues that we perhaps have not been able to get to, 

with reference to those 29 employees that we are trying to get positions for within the Library. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank you for the suggestion and we will arrange for such a meeting. If you want to pursue it at any time, we 

will certainly continue working on this issue. 

We thank you, Mr. Roth, for your testimony. We thank you for 

the Library for the response. I think this is something that we 

should be able to work through without too much difficulty. 

With that, I want to thank all of our distinguished witnesses for 

their time, preparation, and thoughtful comments, as well as the 

members of this committee and their staff who participated in this 

hearing. 

I ask unanimous consent that members and witnesses have 7 

calendar days to submit material for the record, including additional questions of the witnesses and also for those statements and 

materials to be entered into the appropriate place in the record. 

Without objection, the material will be so entered. 

I ask unanimous consent that staff be authorized to make technical and conforming changes on all matters considered by the committee at today’s hearing. Without objection, so ordered. 

Having completed our business for today and for this hearing, 

the committee is hereby adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:04 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 


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