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Library of Congress Update for 2010 ALA Midwinter Meeting: June-December, 2009

Deanna Marcum, Associate Librarian for Library Services Library of Congress

Service units, divisions, and offices within the Library have submitted the information in this briefing document for the attention and use of Library of Congress staff who will attend the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting in Boston, Mass., Jan. 14-19, 2010. The document covers initiatives undertaken at the Library of Congress since the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago, Ill., in July 2009.

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Library of Congress Exhibit Booth

Visit the Library of Congress Exhibit Booth #2238 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center . The exhibit booth coordinator is Jane Gilchrist. Exhibit hours are:

Friday, January 15 - 5:15 pm (Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony)
Friday, January 15 - 5:30-7:30 pm (All-Conference Reception & Exhibitions open)
Saturday-Sunday, January 16-17, 9:00 am -5:00 pm
Monday, January 18, 9:00 am - 2:00 pm

Library of Congress staff making presentations in the Booth theater will include: Colleen Cahill, Reggie Downs, Rebecca Guenther, Patricia Hayward, Guy Lamolinara, Everette Larson, Barbara Morland, David Pachter, Amber Paranick, George Thuronyi, Peter Vankevich, and Janis Young.

Of special note are the Webcasts planned for the booth theater. We will be featuring selections from the 2009 National Book Festival last September, including Webcasts of Judy Blume, Paula Deen, Jane Goodall, Gwen Ifill, and Rep. Zach Wamp of Tennessee. Library of Congress staff will also give presentations on Cataloger’s Desktop 3.0, the Digitizing American Imprints project supported by the Sloan Foundation, FEDLINK services, and the Library’s rich collections. These Webcasts are available through the Library of Congress Web site at URL <www.loc.gov> and YouTube at URL <http://www.youtube.com/loc/ >.

Incentive give-away items at the booth include, from the Cataloging Distribution Service, Class Web keyboard brushes and copy holders; copies of What Is FRBR?, Understanding MARC Bibliographic, and Understanding MARC Authority Records; LC Classification Poster and Pocket Guide; the CDS Catalog of Bibliographic Products and Services; flyers about two recent CDS publications: Subject Headings Manual and Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Serials) and assorted brochures from other Library of Congress units.

Library of Congress staff will be available throughout the day to answer questions. Selected merchandise from the Library of Congress Sales Shop will be available for purchase and free 2009 National Book Festival posters will be distributed.

A complete schedule of booth theater presentations, including perennial favorites, is found on the Library of Congress at ALA Midwinter Meeting Web site at URL <http://www.loc.gov/ala/mw-2010-booth.html>.

U.S. COPYRIGHT OFFICE

Supreme Court Revisits Electronic Rights Case

As noted in our report six months ago, the Supreme Court agreed in March to review an appeals court ruling that invalidated a settlement reached between freelance writers and publishers in relation to the Court’s 2001 decision in Tasini v. New York Times.

In Tasini, the Court found in favor of freelance writers who claimed their copyrights had been infringed when publishers licensed inclusion of the writers’ articles in online databases without further compensating them or requesting permission. In its ruling, the Court noted that the parties could enter into agreements that would allow the writers’ works to continue to be included in online databases, such as the New York Times archives and Lexis-Nexis. In 2005, after lengthy negotiations, they did so, consenting to a class-action settlement involving $18 million that provided payment to writers depending on whether and when they had registered the copyrights to their works with the Copyright Office. As a class action, the settlement required approval by a federal court, which the Southern District Court of New York subsequently provided.
Afterward, however, a group of freelance writers appealed, claiming that the settlement allocated insufficient funds to authors of unregistered works. In November 2007, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals declined to approve the district court ruling, but not for the reason put forth by the appellants. The court stated that under section 411(a) of the Copyright Act, only writers who had registered their works with the Copyright Office were eligible to file claims for damages. Most of the freelance writers involved in the class action had not registered their works. The appeals court held that federal courts have no jurisdiction over unregistered works, and the district court erred in ruling in a case made up mostly of such works.

The Supreme Court agreed to review the case, Reed Elsevier v. Muchnick, to decide whether section 411(a) limits the jurisdiction of federal courts over copyright infringement actions. The Copyright Office worked with the Department of Justice on a brief submitted to the Court that took that position that although the registration requirement is not jurisdictional, it nevertheless serves important public interests beyond those of the parties to an infringement suit, and that those interests include the interest of the Library of Congress in receiving copyright registration deposits to add to its collection, as well as the public interest in maintaining the Copyright Office’s public record of copyright ownership and the interest in giving the courts the benefit of the Register’s expertise on issues of copyrightability of works that are the subject of copyright infringement suits. Therefore, the registration requirement ordinarily should be strictly enforced by the courts. However, in this particular case, the interest in enforcing the registration requirement must be balanced against the public interest in approving an industry-wide class action settlement that would recognize freelance authors’ copyrights while ensuring the public availability of their works. Therefore, the lower courts should be permitted to consider the merits of the settlement in this particular case.

The justices heard oral arguments in October in the case. A decision could be issued any time between now and June.

Google Book Search Litigation

Proceedings relating to the settlement of the Google Book Search litigation continued throughout 2009 and into 2010. The underlying lawsuit was based on Google’s systematic reproduction of millions of protected books in their entirety, without permission of the copyright owners, through scanning operations set up with large research libraries. Once scanned, the books are indexed electronically, allowing end-users to search by title and other bibliographic information. Google returns hits to searchers that include the option of browsing “snippets” (e.g. several lines of the book), except for public domain books, which can be viewed and downloaded in their entirety.

The settlement between Google and the plaintiffs, the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild, resulted in an agreement hundreds of pages long with numerous appendices. That agreement is subject to the approval of the United States District Court for the Southern District. As was reported 6 months ago, the court had postponed, to September 4, 2009, the deadline for authors and publishers to file objections to the settlement or to opt out of the settlement.

On September 10 2009, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on “Competition and Commerce in Digital Books: The Proposed Google Book Settlement.” The Committee invited the Register of Copyrights to testify and present her views on the settlement. In that testimony, the Register expressed three major concerns. First, allowing Google to continue to scan millions of books into the future, on a rolling schedule with no deadline, is tantamount to creating a private compulsory license through the judiciary. Second, certain provisions of the proposed settlement dramatically compromise the legal rights of rights holders in out-of-print books, by, among other things, allowing Google to sell such works without permission. The out-of-print settlement provisions would also inappropriately interfere with the ongoing efforts of Congress to enact orphan works legislation. Third, foreign rights holders and foreign governments have raised concerns about the potential impact of the proposed settlement on their exclusive rights and national digitization projects.

The Department of Justice (DOJ), with the assistance of the Copyright Office and other federal agencies, filed a Statement of Interest of the United States on the proposed settlement with the court on September 18, 2009. The Statement of Interest expressed concerns about the proposed settlement in the areas of copyright, Rule 23 class action procedures, and antitrust law.

In response to that Statement of Interest, the parties to the settlement asked the court to postpone its fairness hearing, which had been scheduled to take place October 7, 2009, in order to give the parties an opportunity to revise the settlement in order to take into account the concerns expressed by the Justice Department. The court agreed to this request, and on November 13, the parties submitted a revised settlement agreement. The revised settlement agreement included various changes, including a significant reduction in the number of works by foreign authors included within its scope, but did not alter the basic structure of the agreement among the parties. The new deadline to object or opt out of the settlement is January 28, 2010 and the fairness hearing shall take place on February 18, 2010. The Department of Justice may submit its views by February 4, 2010.

Golan v. Holder: Restoration of Foreign Copyrights

Plaintiffs (artists and purveyors of art material) brought an action against the Federal government challenging the legality of the Copyright Term Extension Act (“CTEA”) and the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (“URAA”). Specifically, Plaintiffs claimed that these Acts unconstitutionally removed from, or staunched the flow of, literary and artistic works into the public domain. The United States District Court for the District of Colorado decided, inter alia, that the CTEA provision extending the term of copyright to life of the author plus 70 years did not create a perpetual copyright in violation of the Copyright and Patent Clause of the U.S. Constitution and that the provision in the URAA that “restored” copyrights of foreign works that had fallen into the public domain due to failure to comply with U.S. copyright formalities or due to lack of copyright relations with the United States was constitutional.

Plaintiffs appealed this decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. The 10th Circuit held that Section 514 of the URAA altered the traditional contours of copyright by restoring copyright in a manner that implicates the Plaintiffs’ First Amendment right to free expression. The 10th Circuit, however, remanded the case to the District Court for further consideration of the First Amendment claims at issue.

In addition, the 10th Circuit instructed the district court to assess whether Section 512 of the URAA is content-based or content-neutral. If the provision is found to be content-based, the District Court needs to consider whether the Government’s interest in promulgating the legislation is compelling and if the Government could achieve the same goals through alternative means that have less of an effect on protected speech. If the provision is content-neutral, the test is whether the provision is narrowly tailored to serve a significant governmental interest.

The Copyright Office assisted the Department of Justice in defending the constitutionality of the restoration provision of the URAA in the district court. The district court ruled in favor of the Plaintiffs on a motion for summary judgment. The district found that the restoration provision was content-neutral and that compliance with international treaty obligations was a significant governmental interest. However, the district court held that the provision was broader than necessary in relation to reliance parties. The scope of the district court’s decision is unclear, but seems to hold that to the extent Congress restored copyright protection to foreign works that were in the public domain, this provision violated the First Amendment in relation to parties that had a “vested interest” in works while they were in the public domain. Parties that used public domain works are referred to by Congress as “reliance parties.” Even though Congress established accommodations in the statute for such reliance parties, the district court held that the restrictions imposed by Congress on reliance parties went beyond what accession to the Berne Convention required.

The U.S. Government filed a notice of appeal to the Court of Appeals of the Tenth Circuit, and briefing is underway. The briefs filed by the United States argue that the district court erred in concluding that the restoration provision violates the First Amendment.

Constitutionality of the Copyright Royalty Board

Six months ago we reported on an appeal pending in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in which one party--Royalty Logic--an independent royalty organization, made a belated challenge to a determination by the Copyright Royalty Judges on the ground that the Copyright Royalty Judges were not properly appointed under the Constitution. Royalty Logic questioned whether the Copyright Royalty Judges are so independent that they are Principal Officers and are therefore constitutionally required to be presidentially appointed. See Article II, §2, cl. 2 of the Constitution. Additionally, they questioned whether the Copyright Royalty Judges’ appointment by the Librarian of Congress is constitutional, challenging whether the Librarian is the “Head of an Executive Agency” as indicated in Article II, §2, cl.2. Royalty Logic’s challenge was raised in an appeal involving a number of parties and a number of issues in addition to the constitutional challenge. On July 10, 2009, the DC Circuit issued its opinion in the case, Intercollegiate Broadcast System, Inc. v. Copyright Royalty Board, Library of Congress. The court declined to address the constitutional challenge, ruling that Royalty Logic had forfeited its argument by failing to raise it in its opening brief.

However, the issue arose again in a lawsuit filed in September by Live365, Inc. which asked the United States District Court for the District of Columbia to enjoin the Copyright Royalty Judges from proceeding to determine rates and terms for a compulsory license for webcasting (Live365, Inc. v. Copyright Royalty Board). Live365’s lawsuit was based on the same constitutional arguments that had been raised by not resolved in the Intercollegiate Broadcast System case. Live365’s request to enjoin the proceeding was denied by the district court on September 28, which concluded that “the plaintiff has failed to demonstrate its entitlement to the extraordinary relief of a preliminary injunction.” The court indicated that it will issue a memorandum opinion explaining its reasoning at a later date.

Public Process About Access to Copyrighted Works for the Blind and Visually Impaired Continues

The Copyright Office continued its public process to gather information about access to copyrighted works by blind people and others with disabilities by holding an additional comment proceeding in November and December 2009. The proceeding was part of a fact-finding effort undertaken by the Copyright Office and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to prepare for a December 14-18, 2009, meeting of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Comments and reply comments were requested on a treaty proposal introduced at the previous SCCR meeting in May 2009 by the delegations of Brazil, Ecuador, and Paraguay that would mandate certain exceptions and other practices regarding the cross-border import, export and qualified distribution of copyrighted works for the blind, visually impaired, and other reading disabled persons, without permission of the rights holders. The treaty proposal is based on text that was prepared under the auspices of the World Blind Union.

Commenters were asked to address 1) how the treaty proposal would interact with existing U.S. law; 2) how the treaty proposal would interact with existing international obligations of the U.S.; 3) the possible benefits of or concerns about the treaty proposal, including with regard to the objectives of the treaty proposal, how those objectives could lead to improved access for the blind and visually impaired, and any concerns about the implementation of the proposed treaty provisions in the U.S. or abroad; and 4) other possible courses of action that would facilitate access by blind, visually impaired, and other reading disabled persons. The Office received 20 initial comments and 29 reply comments from a range of stakeholders including members of the blind and visually impaired communities and representatives of public interest organizations, publishers, libraries, and firms that develop adaptive technologies. For the full record in this public inquiry, including notices, comments, and transcripts, see URL: <http://www.copyright.gov/docs/sccr/>.

At the December SCCR meeting, member states of WIPO, including the United States, discussed possible solutions relating to access to copyrighted works, including the treaty proposal introduced by the delegations of Brazil, Ecuador, and Paraguay. The member states agreed to initiate consultations aimed at producing an international consensus regarding copyright limitations and exceptions for persons with print disabilities.

Revision of Mandatory Deposit Requirements for Online-Only Works

The Copyright Office will shortly issue an interim regulation regarding the mandatory deposit of online-only works. The regulation will do the following:

Exempt electronic works published in the United States and available only online (e.g., with no print version) from the mandatory deposit provision, subject to a demand for deposit of copies or phonorecords of such works issued by the Copyright Office. Demands will initially be limited to electronic serials; other categories of online-only works may be added by subsequent regulatory changes pursuant to the Library’s collection needs;
Define the term “electronic serials”;
Specify that a complete copy of an online-only work must include metadata and formatting codes; Set forth the process for issuing and responding to a demand for deposit;
Establish new best edition criteria for electronic serials available only online.

Currently, Copyright Office regulations exempt “automated databases available only online in the United States” from mandatory deposit. The Copyright Office has interpreted this exception broadly to apply to all electronic works published only online, in part because the Library of Congress had previously neither the inclination nor the technological means to collect online-only works. However, because a significant amount of creative and scholarly work is now available only on the Internet, it has become imperative for the Library to acquire such works through mandatory deposit.

Under its statutory authority, the Copyright Office proposed a qualified, demand-based exemption for online-only works in a July, 2009 Federal Register notice <http://www.copyright.gov/fedreg/2009/74fr34286.pdf [PDF, 64KB]>. The proposal received seven comments and three reply comments from the public, which were reviewed and discussed by the Copyright Office in close consultation with other divisions of the Library <http://www.copyright.gov/docs/online-only/>. The resulting interim regulation has been finalized and will be presented to the Librarian of Congress by mid-January for approval.

This qualified exemption is a first step in the Library’s larger strategy of acquiring, preserving, and making accessible the wealth of material available on the Internet. Befitting its pioneering nature, the regulation is classified as “interim” so that it can be fine-tuned as its mandate is put into practice. Accordingly, the Library and the Copyright Office intend to seek further public comment on the operation of the demand-based deposit system later in 2010.

Anticircumvention Rulemaking

The Copyright Office is in the final stages of its triennial rulemaking proceeding under section 1201 of the Copyright Act. Section 1201 prohibits circumvention of technological measures that protect access to copyrighted works. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 requires the Register of Copyrights to conduct such a rulemaking every three years and to present her recommendations to the Librarian of Congress for a determinationwhether the prohibition on circumvention of technological measures that protect access to works has or is likely to adversely affect users in their ability to make noninfringing uses particular classes of copyrighted works. Persons who make noninfringing uses of a work in a class of works designated by the Librarian will not be subject to the prohibition against circumventing access controls during the three-year period during which such a designation is in effect.

The Office received 25 proposed exemptions for consideration, including, for example, exemptions to allow extraction of clips from DVDs for use in documentary films, for educational purposes, or for noncommercial, transformative purposes, such as remix parodies posted on YouTube. Other proposed exemptions relate to issues such as “jailbreaking” iPhones, circumvention for security testing, and circumvention of measures on eBooks in order to facilitate accessibility by the blind and visually impaired. The proceeding involved initial written proposals, written comments in response to those proposals four days of hearings in May, and post-hearing questions to the hearing participants. As required by law, the Register consulted with the Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information at the U.S. Department of Commerce.

In a notice published in the Federal Register on October 27, 2009, the Librarian of Congress announced that he was extending, on an interim basis, the existing classes of works with respect to which the prohibition against circumvention of technological measures that effectively control access to copyrighted works shall not apply to persons who engage in noninfringing uses, noting that the Register of Copyrights had not been able to present her recommendation to the Librarian by October 28, 2009, when the existing exemptions were due to expire. It is anticipated that the Register will deliver her recommendations to the Librarian within the next several weeks.
The entire record for this and past § 1201 Rulemaking proceedings are available on the Copyright Office’s Web site at URL: <http://www.copyright.gov/1201/>

Assistance with Copyright Processing Backlog

The Librarian of Congress has placed high priority on eliminating a significant copyright registration processing backlog. A special project will begin in late January 2010, utilizing 50 additional staff members from all branches of the Library with the goal of processing 130,000 items in the Copyright Office by mid-March.

OFFICE OF THE LIBRARIAN

Naomi C. Earp was appointed Director for Opportunity, Inclusiveness and Compliance, effective June 8, 2009.

CONGRESSIONAL RELATIONS OFFICE

Civil Rights Histories: P.L. 111-19
The Civil Rights History Project Act of 2009 requires the Librarian of Congress and the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution (acting through the Director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture) to establish a joint five-year oral history project to: (1) collect video and audio recordings of, and visual and written materials relevant to the personal histories of, participants in the Civil Rights movement; and (2) make the collection available for public use through the Library of Congress and the Museum. The bill was signed into law on May 12, 2009.

The Congressional Relations Office (CRO) and the American Folklife Center actively worked on this bill with the House sponsors and the Committee on House Administration for several years. The act authorizes $500,000 for the program for fiscal 2010, and Asuch sums as may be necessary for each of the next four years. The Library received $250,000 in the fiscal 2010 appropriation for the Legislative Branch; the Smithsonian received $250,000 in the fiscal year 2010 appropriation for the Department of Interior.

At the Library's request, the directive to carry out the program is subject to availability of funding. The bill also authorizes the Library and Smithsonian to solicit private funds for the program.

National Veterans History Week: H. Res 866 and S. Res. 340
Both resolutions commemorate National Veterans Awareness Week, and support the designation of a “National Veterans History Project Week,” calling on the public to interview at least one veteran in their families or communities according to guidelines provided by the Library’s Veterans History Project. H. Res. 866 was introduced by Rep. Ron Kind (D-WI) on October 23 and passed the House on November 3, 2009; and S. Res. 340 was introduced on November 5, 2009 by Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID) and agreed to in the Senate on November 10.

Law Library of Congress Private/Public Financing: H.R. 2728
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) introduced H.R. 2728, the William Orton Law Library Improvement and Modernization Act providing separate budget treatment for the Law Library of Congress. The bill also authorizes $3.5 million for Law Library operations, and creates a new private, nonprofit foundation (the "William Orton Program") to provide supplemental funding for the general operation of the Law Library. Rep. Lofgren's office worked directly with CRO on structuring the foundation to support the Law Library. The Library took no position on the bill as introduced, although the Librarian stated for the record in a letter to members of the Committee on House Administration his objection to a separate line item for the Law Library.

The bill was introduced by Rep. Lofgren on June 4, 2009; Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA) co-sponsored the bill. It was referred to the Committee on House Administration, which held a markup on June 10. Prior to the markup, the Library sent a letter to all Committee members expressing concerns about some of the bill’s provisions. At the markup, members mostly spoke about the untimely death and life service of former Rep. Bill Orton (D-UT). The Committee adopted an amendment offered by Rep. Lofgren to re-designate the Law Library as the “National Law Library.”

The House passed the bill, as amended, on July 30. The bill was sent to the Senate and referred to the Committee on Rules and Administration. Committee staff have not indicated whether there are plans to move the bill. Senate Rules ranking member Robert Bennett (R-UT) met with the Librarian and the Law Librarian to discuss the bill, and encouraged the Library to work with the American Bar Association on an alternative proposal. The Law Library and the ABA’s Standing Committee on the Law Library of Congress have been actively working on compromise language that includes a public-private partnership in support of the Law Library and an appropriate vehicle to honor the late Bill Orton. The fiscal 2010 House appropriations report includes a statement of Committee support for efforts of the Law Library to expand support from private sources, and directing the Librarian to work with the Law Library and potential benefactors to create “the most mutually beneficial system for generating funding from private sources to support this critical function.”

Public Access to CRS Reports: H.R. 3762 and S. Res. 118
S. Res. 118 directs the Senate Sergeant at Arms, in consultation with the Congressional Research Service Director, to make publicly available, through a centralized electronic system, specified CRS-produced information, along with an index of information that is available through the CRS Web site. The information to be made available is limited to Issue Briefs, CRS Reports that are available to Congress through the CRS Web site, and appropriations products. Information deemed to be confidential, or which was initiated by a congressional research request and not placed on the CRS Web site, is exempt. Public availability would be through Members' and Committee Web sites.

The resolution also requires access to the information through Senate committee and Member Web sites, and requires the Sergeant at Arms to establish the database and maintain and update the information. S. Res. 118 was introduced by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) on April 29, 2009. The Resolution was referred to the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration. In a letter dated March 4, 2009, to Senate Rules Committee Chairman Charles Schumer (D‑NY), Sen. Lieberman called for a sanctioned, automatically updated clearinghouse for CRS documents so "those with power and those without have equal access to this important resource." An article in Government Executive magazine online outlined the request and cited other Internet sources for some CRS publications.

H.R. 3762 imposes similar requirements and public access to CRS products, exclusively through Member and Committee Web sites. The House bill also includes a clause stating that it does not compel the CRS Director to respond to any public inquiries generated as a result of the electronic access. H.R. 3762 was introduced on October 8, 2009 and referred to the Committee on House Administration.

“Open Government” Directive and Plan: OMB Memorandum [PDF]
On December 8, 2009, Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag released a Memorandum directing executive agencies to take specific actions to implement the principles of transparency, public participation, and collaboration in government. The memorandum establishes a framework setting tasks and deadlines for: publishing government information online; improving the quality of government information, particularly relating to federal spending; creating and institutionalizing a culture of and enabling policies for Open Government; and publishing an agency Open Government Plan.

By the end of January, executive agencies must publish a number of “high value” data sets on Data.gov, a new site dedicated to providing public access to high-value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch. Among other things, Data.gov offers data through a "raw" data catalog, providing an instant download of machine-readable, platform-independent datasets. The site also provides hyperlinks which may lead to agency tools or agency Web pages that allow public users to mine federal datasets.

Appointment of Archivist of the United States
On May 21, 2009, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census, and National Archives held a hearingentitled “Stakeholders' Views on the National Archives and Records Administration.” The purpose of the hearing was to examine issues that the new administration should consider in selecting the next Archivist. On July 28, 2009, President Obama nominated David Ferriero to be Archivist of the United States. Dr. Ferriero was confirmed on November 6, and sworn as 10th as Archivist of the United States on November 13, 2009.

On December 16, the Subcommittee invited the Librarian of Congress to testify [PDF, 59KB] at a hearing entitled “History Museum or Records Access Agency? Defining and Fulfilling the Mission of the National Archives and Records Administration.” The primary focus of the hearing was to hear from Archivist Ferriero [PDF, 39KB] about his priorities for NARA. Subcommittee Chairman Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-MO) asked Dr. Ferriero to discuss what he sees as the primary mission of NARA and how best to define and fulfill this mission. NARA’s key constituencies and sister federal cultural institutions, including the Library of Congress and Smithsonian, provided additional perspective on how to respond to the explosive growth of federal information during a time of increased budgetary pressure.

One key focus of the hearing was agency compliance with federal records management and preservation requirements. Public access to these records in agency or NARA custody was also discussed extensively. The Library and Smithsonian brought their perspectives to the table regarding balancing public access and preservation, and all three agency heads assured the Subcommittee of their mutually collaborative working relationship.

Preserving the American Historical Record Act: H.R. 2256
H.R. 2256 was introduced on May 5, 2009, by Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) and referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The bill requires the Archivist of the U.S. to make grants to states to protect historical records, use records in new and creative ways, provide education and training to those who care for historical records, and create a wide variety of access tools, including finding aids, documentary editions, indexes, and images of key records maintained on state and local organization Web sites. The bill authorizes $50 million in each of 5 succeeding years for these purposes.

The Congressional findings in the bill note that much of the American historical record is held at the state and local level by organizations that preserve the records that protect the rights of the nation. While the U.S. has recognized the importance of history by its support of national institutions such as the National Archives, the Library of Congress, and the Smithsonian Institution, this support is not adequate to reach the rest of the nation's archives being held in state and local historical societies, archives, and library history collections.

The bill also states that history connects people to community, and connections to the past are essential to sustaining democracy, educating students, creating a sense of place in family and community, supporting information needs in business and legal affairs, and making reasoned decisions about the nation's future direction.

Library of Congress Caucus
Early in 2008, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and then-Rep. Ray LaHood (R-IL) formed the Congressional Library of Congress Caucus to "draw Members' attention to the nation's library and its unparalleled collections and knowledgeable curators and to encourage further use of these extraordinary resources." With Rep. LaHood's departure from Congress, Rep. Zach Wamp (R-TN) agreed to serve as co-chairman for the 111th Congress. CRO informed new House Members and their staff about the caucus, and has added many new Members, for a current total of 59.

The first two Caucus events for the 111th Congress were held on March 4 and May 6, 2009 and featured an evening of Lincolniana; Members enjoyed a tour of the exhibit "With Malice Toward None" and an opportunity to discuss the history of the Lincoln administration with LC Manuscript historian John Sellers and other noted Lincoln scholars.

Current members of the House of Representatives Library of Congress Caucus are:

Co-Chairs: Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and Zach Wamp (R-TN)
Neil Abercrombie (D-HI)
Robert Aderholt (R-AL)
Shelley Berkley (D-NV)
Bruce Braley (D-IA)
Michael Conaway (R-TX)
Kathy Dahlkemper (D-PA)
Geoff Davis (R-KY)
Lloyd Doggett (D-TX)
Vernon Ehlers (R-MI)
Keith Ellison (D-MN)
Mary Fallin (R-OK)
Bob Filner (D-CA)
Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE)
Virginia Foxx (R-NC)
Charles Gonzalez (D-TX)
Bob Goodlatte (R-VA)
Bart Gordon (D-TN)
Parker Griffith (R-AL)
Raul Grijalva (D-AZ)
Brett Guthrie (R-KY)
Gregg Harper (R-MS)
Martin Heinrich (D-NM)
Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-SD)
Maizie Hirono (D-HI)
Rush Holt (D-NJ)
Michael Honda (D-CA)
Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX)
Dale Kildee (D-MI)
Ron Kind (D-WI)
Leonard Lance (R-NJ)
John Larson (D-CT)
Tom Latham (R-IA)
Bob Latta (R-OH)
Barbara Lee (D-CA)
John Lewis (D-GA)
David Loebsack (D-IA)
Donald Manzullo (R-IL)
Betty McCollum (D-MN)
Jim McDermott (D-WA)
Jim McGovern (D-MA)
Mike McIntyre (D-NC)
Candace Miller (R-MI)
Jim Moran (D-VA)
Thomas Petri (R-WI)
Bill Posey (R-FL)
David Price (D-NC)
Lamar Smith (R-TX)
Vic Snyder (D-AR)
Mark Souder (R-IN)
Bart Stupak (D-MI)
Glenn Thompson (R-PA)
Todd Tiahrt (R-KS)
Edolphus Towns (D-NY)
Chris Van Hollen (D-MD)
Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL)
Henry Waxman (D-CA)
Lynn Woolsey (D-CA)

OFFICE OF SECURITY AND EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS (OSEP)

The Office of Security and Emergency Preparedness continued developing the Library’s security and emergency programs, with a focus on enhancing the emergency preparedness program, updating Continuity of Operations (COOP) plans, and converting from analog to digital surveillance video recording in several reading rooms and exhibition areas.

The Office of Emergency Preparedness (OEP) focused its efforts on closely monitoring the global Novel A H1N1 influenza pandemic and assisting Library service and support units to refine their Pandemic COOP plans. These plans are designed to ensure that the essential functions of the Library and the national essential functions of the U.S. Congress can be supported if Library staff absences reach critical levels. Another COOP planning milestone involved the successful testing of “remote access” connectivity as selected Library staff used home PCs to conduct Library desktop operations without compromising network security.

Over the past several months, the Protective Services Office, in close coordination with senior curators and members of the Collections Security Oversight Committee, made significant strides in converting more than 600 closed-circuit television cameras from analog to digital video recording. The office completed a critical upgrade of the network infrastructure in preparing for the increasing bandwidth requisite to successful completion of the initiative. The upgrade more than doubled the system’s digital recording capacity. With the foundation now in place, the office is actively engaged in completing the transition of the Library’s remaining reading rooms and exhibition areas onto the digital platform. In addition to conforming to industry standards, this initiative has enhanced the effectiveness of the Library’s collections security program. Enhanced alerting and monitoring of the components of the enterprise recording system enable innovative approaches to minimize any lapse in recording in the event of a system or component failure.

NATIONAL BOOK FESTIVAL

ALA President-elect Roberta Stevens

Roberta Stevens officially became the 2009-2010 ALA President-elect on July 14 in Chicago, Ill. She will be inaugurated as President in June 2010 at the ALA Annual Conference in Washington, DC.

At the ALA Midwinter Meeting, President-elect Roberta Stevens will be outlining her 2010-2011 Presidential initiatives, presenting the budget for those initiatives, presenting recommendations for ALA committee appointments to the Executive Board, and finalizing the Council committee appointments with the Committee on Committees. In the past five months, she has participated in panels for the opening of Goucher College's Athenaeum and the live-streamed launch of the Knight Commission's report “Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age.” She's been interviewed by Fox Television on the effects of the recession on libraries, presented the New York Times/Carnegie Corporation of New York “I Love My Librarian” awards of $5,000 each to 10 librarians from across the nation, and traveled to South Africa and to China as the keynote speaker at International Summit on Public Libraries in Shenzhen and as the keynote speaker and seminar presenter at the Chinese American Library Association's 21st Century Librarian Seminar Series Program. Among the Presidential initiatives she will be introducing at Midwinter are authors as advocates for libraries and frontline fundraising.

2010 National Book Festival

The 2010 National Book Festival will be held on September 25, 2010, on the National Mall between Third and Seventh Streets. Last September more than 130,000 people attended the 2009 National Book Festival, which had the President and First Lady as honorary chairs. See URL <http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/>

LAW LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Roberta Shaffer was appointed Law Librarian of Congress on August 30. Roberta was formerly head of FLICC/FEDLINK.

LIBRARY SERVICES

Personnel Changes
Michael Handy was appointed Deputy Associate Librarian for Library Services on October 25. Ann Della Porta was appointed chief of the Integrated Library Systems Office on November 2.

Additions to the Collections
The Library of Congress made special efforts in 2009 to acquire materials relating to Abraham Lincoln or to the U.S. Civil War, to mark the 2009 bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth and the 2010 sesquicentenary observance of the Civil War. The “Stanton daguerreotype” and his cartes de visite were acquired for the Prints and Photographs Division. This portrait of Edwin McMasters Stanton (1814-1869) with his young son, Edwin Lamson Stanton, was taken by an unidentified photographer in Pittsburgh about 1852-55. Lincoln asked Stanton to join his “team of rivals” cabinet as Secretary of War in 1862. The Plan of the battle-field at Bull Run, July 21st 1861, was acquired for the Geography and Map Division. The Richard Yates Correspondence Collection, purchased for the Manuscript Division, consists of eleven letters written from 1855 to 1862 to Illinois Governor Richard Yates by friends and associates of Lincoln, including William Herndon, John Henry, George Koerner, Joshua Giddings, and Schuyler Colfax.
The Library acquired several newspaper issues published in 1865: The Evening Bulletin, Providence, Rhode Island, April 15, 1865; The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 20, 1865 (containing front page image of Lincoln’s funeral car and coffin); and New York Times, April 15, 1865 (the “assassination issue”). McClees' Gallery of Photographic Portraits of Senators, Representatives & Delegates of the Thirty-Fifth Congress, 1859, is the first photographic album to document members of the House and Senate. It includes more than 300 portraits of prominent political figures during the years immediately preceding the Civil War.

Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control
The Library continues to pursue several projects in response to the recommendations of the LC Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control in its report On the Record. Library Services is working with the National Library of Medicine and National Agricultural Library to test the proposed cataloging standard, Resource Description and Access, for feasibility, compatibility with existing metadata, cost-effectiveness, and user satisfaction before decisions are made regarding implementation of the new standard. With the co-publishers’ recent announcement that RDA Online will be released in June 2010, the testing is expected to begin with a 3-month learning period over the summer, with actual creation of records in the test to run from September through November. The three national libraries will host a training session for selected test partners and two open meetings, for vendors and for the general community, in conjunction with the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Boston. The vendors’ meeting will be on Sunday, Jan. 17, 8:00-9:00 am, in the Renaissance Boston-Aegean Room. The general-interest meeting will also be on Jan. 17, 10:30 am-12:00 pm, Renaissance Boston-Pacific A/B. The U.S. National Libraries RDA Test Steering Committee is co-chaired by Christopher Cole (National Agricultural Library), Dianne McCutcheon (National Library of Medicine), and Beacher Wiggins (Library of Congress).

As the next phase of its investigation into the creation and distribution of bibliographic data in U.S. and Canadian libraries, Library Services contracted with R2 Consulting LLC of Contoocook, N.H. to research and describe the current marketplace for cataloging records in the MARC format, with primary focus on the economics of current practices, including existing incentives and barriers to both contribution and availability. The resulting Study of the North American MARC Records Marketplace was completed in October 2009 and is available at URL
<http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/news/MARC_Record_Marketplace_2009-10.pdf [PDF, 1.09MB]>.

At the same time, the Associate Librarian for Library Services charged an internal task force, the OTR Implementation Working Group, to identify Working Group recommendations that the Library of Congress should pursue over the next four years. The report of the implementation working group, chaired by Bruce Knarr and Regina Reynolds, is available at URL <http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/news/OTR_rep_response_final_091509.pdf [PDF, 102KB]>.

On the Record, Section 1.1, Eliminate Redundancies, made several recommendations for using externally available bibliographic data and for further automating the Cataloging in Publication (CIP) process. The Library has followed up by piloting a method to generate MARC 21 records from publishers’ ONIX data, as described under Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate in this document. The ABA Directorate will have a key role in implementing many other aspects of the Working Group’s vision and is currently assessing resource needs and timetables for accomplishing other projects related to the report.

Associate Librarian for Library Services Deanna Marcum convened the Working Group in November 2006 to address how the Library of Congress and the library community should address the popularity of the Internet, advances in search-engine technology, and the influx of electronic information resources. The Working Group's final report and recommendations, published in January 2008 as On the Record, are available at URL <http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/>. Also available on the Web site is Dr. Marcum’s response, dated June 1, 2008, to the Working Group.

ACQUISITIONS AND BIBLIOGRAPHIC ACCESS DIRECTORATE (ABA)

Karl Debus-López, chief of the U.S. General Division, has also served as Acting Chief of the U.S. and Publisher Liaison Division since May, when former chief Maureen Landry retired. As part of this assignment he was asked to charge a group to review the structure and workflows of both divisions to define their missions, streamline workflows, and address staffing imbalances between the USGEN and USPL sections. Over the course of three months, the USGEN/PL Review Task Force gathered an enormous amount of quantitative and qualitative data from existing reports, surveys, and interviews with key staff and all USPL and USGEN Section Heads. The Task Force report has been shared with ABA Director Beacher Wiggins and Associate Librarian for Library Services Deanna Marcum. Options for a possible realignment of the two divisions, based on the recommendation of the Task Force, are currently being reviewed.

Automated MARC 21 Records from ONIX
The two divisions within ABA that process electronic cataloging in publication data from publishers, USPL and USGEN, began testing an ONIX to MARC conversion program in June 2009. This project was a direct outgrowth of the Report of The Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control, On the Record, specifically “Section 1.1, Eliminate Redundancies” that has several recommendations for using externally available bibliographic data and for further automating the CIP process. With this in mind, staff within USPL and USGEN has been conducting a pilot project designed to make available ONIX data received from publishers to the Electronic CIP (E-CIP) program. ABA Cataloging Automation Specialist David Williamson, developed the ONIX-to-MARC application software used in the ONIX Pilot Project. Camilla Williams, CIP Program Specialist, completed all changes necessary in the ECIP Traffic Manager.

The initial test involved ONIX data from two publishers, Cambridge University Press and Wiley, but later included Harper Collins imprints. The test looked at the following:

The availability of ONIX data for items in the CIP stream
The usefulness of the data in cataloging
Any problems or unexpected results from converting the data from ONIX to MARC
Changes that would be needed to the CIP workflow
What additional information can be extracted from the ONIX data that would not normally be provided in MARC records

The program was tested over a nine week period. A virtual test section was established in the ECIP Traffic Manager and incoming CIP applications from the publishers were diverted to this virtual section for descriptive cataloging processing. If an ONIX record is found based on matching the ISBN of the forthcoming book with ISBNs in the ONIX data, the data is converted immediately and a MARC record is created. From here, the catalogers involved compare the resulting record to the publisher-supplied information from the electronic galley, so as to look for differences or any missing/incorrect elements. Should there not be an ONIX record for the forthcoming book, the CIP application is forwarded to its original destination for normal processing. Once the rest of the descriptive cataloging process is completed, the catalogers involved forward the ECIP to the original destination for completion of subject cataloging and end-stage processing.

The test results indicated that when the records received from the publishers were accurate, the new ONIX/MARC conversion process was twice as fast as the former TCEC process. In some cases, however, the publisher records were missing too many key data elements to be useful and actually took longer to process using the converter. In order to evaluate more data, the ONIX/MARC Conversion Committee added the imprints of Palgrave Macmillan and Oxford University Press to the pilot. If the results continue to prove successful, we hope to take the project out of pilot and implement it more broadly for ECIP processing.

Questions may be directed to David Williamson, Cataloging Automation Specialist, ABA (<dawi@loc.gov>).

Bibliographic Enrichment Activities Team (BEAT) – see Automated MARC 21 Records from ONIX

Cataloging Distribution Service – see under PARTNERSHIPS AND OUTREACH PROGRAMS DIRECTORATE

Cataloging in Publication (CIP) – see Automated MARC 21 Records from ONIX
Karl Debus-López, chief of the US General Division and acting chief of the US and Publisher Liaison Division, is currently responsible for the Cataloging in Publication program. Oxana Horodecka, Electronic Cataloging in Publication program coordinator, retired on Jan. 2, 2010, after 41 years of service at the Library.

On November 2, 2009, the CIP mail opening operations were moved from the ABA CIP Support Section to the Library Systems and Services Incorporated contractor. The LSSI contract now includes CIP mail opening, targeting and barcode labeling work. This will result in significant cost and time savings for ABA in that the work will be done by less costly staff in a specified time period. Moreover, by moving this work to LSSI, the technicians within the CIP Support Section will be able to work on more difficult, higher graded tasks that will enhance their set of job skills and will also ensure faster turnaround time for other materials processed in their area.

Cataloging Policy – see Policy and Standards

Cooperative Cataloging Programs
The Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) Policy Committee at its November 2009 meeting adopted the BIBCO Standard Record for printed books and announced a January 4, 2010 implementation date. Implementation details and a newly revised FAQ are available from: <http://www.loc.gov/catdir/pcc/bibco/BSRAnnouncement.pdf [PDF, 27KB]> (For LC’s implementation plans and date, please see under Policy and Standards below.) The new BSR for printed books is a floor record standard open to additional fields as desired by each BIBCO institution. A few partners have announced their local implementation plans since the adoption of the new standard. The PCC is developing BIBCO Standard Records for future use in rare book and non-book formats.

Also at this meeting, the PCC Policy Committee chose John Riemer (University of California at Los Angeles) as Chair-Elect, to share leadership with Chair Magda El-Sherbini (Ohio State University) and Chair-Emeritus David Banush (Brown University).
The Cooperative Programs Section, CJK NACO Project, and the Committee on Technical Processing (CTP) of Committee on East Asian Libraries (CEAL) are co-sponsoring a CJK NACO workshop on corporate name and geographic name authorities in March 2010 in Philadelphia.

First quarter fiscal 2010 statistics for records from PCC partners are about 25 percent of the production of fiscal 2009. Large maintenance projects in 2009 swelled the changed name and series authority categories, so the first quarter 2010 numbers are considerably less than 25 percent of 2009 statistics. PCC record contribution statistics in various combinations appear at <http://www.loc.gov/catdir/pcc/stats/stats.html>

The University of Minnesota Libraries joined the BIBCO program, and Brigham Young University joined CONSER. Additional libraries joined the NACO and SACO programs.
John N. Mitchell retired from LC’s Cooperative Programs Section at the end of 2009. He lent his enthusiasm and expertise for many years as PCC Webmaster and promoter of the SACO program.

The PCC Participants Discussion Group Meeting will be January 17, 2010, 4:00-5:30 p.m., in the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, Room 104A/B. The speaker will be Jennifer A. Younger, Edward H. Arnold Director of Hesburgh Libraries, University of Notre Dame, on “Cataloging in an Age of Abundance.”

Dewey Decimal Classification at LC
132nd Editorial Policy Committee meeting. On November 16-17, 2009, the 132nd meeting of the Dewey Decimal Classification Editorial Policy Committee (EPC) was held at the Library of Congress. The assistant editors prepared an array of exhibits and discussion papers for presentation for the editorial policy committee to act upon. Information on the proposals that were reviewed at the meeting can be found on the OCLC Dewey blog at <http://ddc.typepad.com/025431/2009/11/index.html >

Decimal Classification Translations. Dewey Section staff members assisted OCLC staff on the development of several translations of the Decimal Classification. They moved forward on the Arabic, Swedish, Norwegian, and Spanish translations. More information can be found on the OCLC Dewey blog at <http://ddc.typepad.com/025431/2009/12/translations-translations-translations.html >

New Editorial Support System. On August 12, 2009, the production of the fourth version of the Editorial Support System (ESS) was launched. The new ESS greatly streamlines the work previously done, removing much of the manual data input. The assistant editors, Julianne Beall and Rebecca Green, continue to work on the new ESS, especially issues of database conversion.

ISSN (International Standard Serial Number)
Automated ISSN Register. In August 2009, after more than a year of development, the first ISSN using Automated ISSN Register was assigned to the online version of Publishers Weekly, the magazine to which R.R. Bowker assigned the first ISSN in 1972. The Automated ISSN Register is a standalone database program, built using Apex. The program resides on a server that can be accessed both on-site and remotely, thus providing the opportunity for staff to telework and ensuring that staff can continue to assign ISSN from home in the event of an emergency. The Automated Register is supported by an Oracle database that stores ISSN allocated by the ISSN International Centre in Paris, together with identifying metadata that are input as the ISSN are assigned. Keying time is saved and more accurate entry of ISSN into records results as staff copy and paste the ISSN and key title into the record they create or update in OCLC WorldCat. Time-saving new functionality includes the system’s capability to generate pre-formatted reports, such as numbers of ISSN assigned by time period, staff member, requestor category, or publication status. These management reports provide supervisors the ability to assign staff based on the ebb and flow in the sources of requests. The system also provides a required report for the ISSN International Centre and a report of prepublication titles that have passed their expected date of publication so that reminder emails can be sent to publishers.

ISSN Mailer Program. In June 2009, implementation of the ISSN Mailer program allowed email to become the default method for notifying publishers of assigned ISSN, incorrect use of ISSN, and other communications, using a set of email form letters that are completed with ISSN data extracted from ILS records. Staff members can choose from six form letters and can edit the letters to add customized information. The numerous benefits of the ISSN Mailer were felt immediately: improved service with the capability of quickly notifying requestors of their ISSN; savings in postage, stationery, and envelopes; greater accountability for the service as there is now an electronic copy in the ISSN email account of all letters that are sent to requestors. If our service is questioned, documents exist to trace our responses.

Linking ISSN. An important step towards implementation and use of the Linking ISSN in the United States occurred in August 2009 when OCLC implemented the subfields needed to record the Linking ISSN (022 $ l and 022 $ m) in the WorldCat database. The Linking ISSN is a mechanism to enable collocation of the medium-specific ISSN assigned to different medium versions of a serial. Regina Romano Reynolds, ISSN Coordinator, discussed the Linking ISSN with OCLC staff in April 2009. OCLC and LC staff followed up with subsequent internal discussions and a joint conference call. Ms. Reynolds and John Levy are coordinating LC efforts to work with OCLC to populate WorldCat with Linking ISSN from the tables on the ISSN International Centre Web site in Paris. It is anticipated that U.S. policy regarding assignment and provision of Linking ISSN to U.S. publishers will be determined in fiscal 2010.

Law Library Support
The Law Section, USPL Division, has now reclassified all of the legal treatises sent to it by the Law Library of Congress from the following geographic areas: Africa (English speaking countries); China; Latin American and Caribbean countries; Indian states; Philippines; and Hungary. Treatises sent by the Law Library from the following countries are in the process of being reclassed: Australia, Germany, Israel, Japan, Russia, and Spain.

Policy and Standards
Outreach to Spanish-speaking Librarians. In August of 2009 at the request of the Biblioteca Nacional de Chile and working through the U.S. State Department in Santiago, Policy and Standards Division Chief Barbara Tillett presented a videoconference, in Spanish, on the antecedents of the current cataloging rules and a behind-the-scenes look at the development of the forthcoming cataloging guidelines, RDA: Resource Description and Access. Dr. Tillett highlighted the importance of the IFLA International Cataloguing Principles and IFLA's conceptual models: Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) and Functional Requirements for Authority Data (FRAD), which focus on user tasks, and how this influence has shaped RDA. The videoconference was viewed by librarians throughout Chile and was recorded and is made available for viewing on LC's Webcasts page at URL
<http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=4736>. A link is also available from the PSD RDA information page at URL: <http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/rdawebcasts.html>.

PSD has also made available Spanish language files for use in presentations about IFLA's conceptual models, FRBR and FRAD, at URL: <http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/frbryfrad/frbryfrad.html>. The content was translated from the IFLA reports and developed for use in workshops, etc., by Graciela Spedalieri, a librarian at the Information Center at the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires. The goal is to support the dissemination of information on these conceptual models to the Latin American library community. Development of a module based on Dr. Tillett's Webcast in Spanish entitled "RDA: Antecedentes y aspectos de su implementación" is also being planned for the near future.

In the area of subject cataloging, the Biblioteca Nacional de España collaborated with PSD to translate the FAQ on Genre/Form headings. Available at URL <http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/genre_form_faq_spanish.html>, “Preguntas frecuentes (FAQ) sobre los términos género/forma de la Library of Congress” does not signal that LC plans to issue genre/form headings in Spanish; however, it explains the background, policies, and procedures for assigning the headings.

LCRI Review. The Policy and Standards Division, after considering recommendations from the PCC LCRI/RDA Task Force on the disposition of the current Library of Congress Rule Interpretations (LCRIs), evaluated each of the 545 existing LCRIs in the context of the U.S. National Libraries RDA Test in 2010. PSD decided that approximately 125 be retained and revised as annotations for RDA instructions to be used during the RDA Test. Some have general application but most have a narrow scope and will need to be consulted by only some of the testers. Content with general application is being revised to remove unneeded information.
The main categories of LCRIs being retained and revised as annotations include general guidance on pre-cataloging decisions (e.g., monograph vs. serial), guidance on corporate body status for consistency (e.g., concentration camps, libraries, printers), instructions related to CIP practices to convey information to libraries using CIP records, instructions for names of places because RDA Chapter 16 for places is not yet complete, instructions for musical works and legal works because not all needed revisions have yet been incorporated in RDA, and instructions developed with other constituencies for consistency (e.g., named works of art, American Indian tribes, manuscript repositories).

The main categories of LCRIs being cancelled include historical information or explanation of past practice, directions for evaluating/updating headings for transition to AACR2, instructions that were incorporated into RDA, instructions contrary to RDA instructions, and instructions for situations where cataloger’s judgment should be applied.

Further revision will be considered after participants in the U.S. National Libraries RDA Test have given their feedback on the need for and usefulness of this documentation.
Authority Non-Latin Reference Pre-population Project. PSD hopes to announce soon a process by which catalogers that have been examining the non-Latin script references added to name authority records since 2008 can contribute to the development of policies and practices for the future, such as the issues raised in the white paper on non-Latin script references in name authority records (see URL <http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/nonlatin_whitepaper.html>).

Geographic Coordinate Data in Authority Records. Beginning in August of 2009, NACO participants have been able to supply geographic coordinates in the 034 field (Coded Cartographic Mathematical Data) of MARC 21 name authority records for geographic name headings (151). The Library of Congress is also collaborating with OCLC, Inc., to harvest geographic coordinate data collected by OCLC that may be used to pre-populate existing name authority records for jurisdictions. Specifications for the project are still being developed, and it is hoped that coordinates will be added early in 2010. LC is also evaluating projects to add coordinates to selected subject authority records that form part of the LCSH system.

VIAF and NACO. The Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) is available at <http://viaf.org/ > for all PCC catalogers to use as a reference source for identifying persons and for resolving conflicts and disambiguation of personal names, as needed. When new and useful information is found in VIAF, it may be used and should be justified in a 670 field citation. All information should be used in accordance with AACR2, the Library of Congress Rule Interpretations, and current NACO policies. Examples of VIAF citations will be added to the Descriptive Cataloging Manual (DCM) Z1, 670 section, in the next update.

Major Update to Cataloger’s Desktop. Cataloger’s Desktop 3.0 is now available. It is a major modernization of the popular Web-based subscription service. Desktop is the Library of Congress’s integrated, online documentation service with the most important cataloging and metadata resources. The re-systemization of the service features a significantly enhanced bibliographic Web-based toolbox. Desktop currently includes resources in ten languages from more than a dozen countries. The user interface is provided in English, French, German, and Spanish.

Desktop 3.0 incorporates the most up-to-date searching and navigation, including: fuzzy matching, finding/excluding similar resources, dynamic drill-downs, contextual analysis, search relevancy, remembering search histories, query federation, facetted search drill-downs, and a search engine that adapts to a user’s search behavior. Desktop 3.0 takes advantage of state-of-the-art search and navigation techniques that help users find what they need faster and easier than ever before.

To help users optimize their use of Cataloger’s Desktop 3.0, a battery of learning aids and practical tips is available. These include a series of webinars in both English and Spanish, free online training files, PowerPoint presentations, and “at-a-glance” how-to handouts. Additional information is available from the Cataloger’s Desktop Web site at URL <http://www.loc.gov/cds/desktop/>.

Law Materials Digitization. Jolande Goldberg, law classification specialist, is active in a project to increase online access to law materials. This year collaboration began between LC and the Law Library Microform/digital Consortium (LLMDC) on a cooperative scanning project. The parties agreed on the types of materials that would be included, and Dr. Goldberg selected approximately 3,000 titles from the LC collections (classing in the LC Classification span E51-E99), including laws, treaties, and other law-related works for all of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Another collaborative project, with a tie-in with LCCMDC for metadata, is the upcoming law digital project with the National Diet Library of Japan, with selected items scanned by Internet Archives.

LCSH/SKOS. The LCSH/SKOS terminology section of the Authorities & Vocabularies service <http://id.loc.gov> has achieved the following developments over the past year: 1) enhanced use statistics to evaluate the effectiveness of the service; 2) weekly updates; 3) access to deleted terminology; 4) a scope statement explicitly describing the contents of the product. For the immediate future, plans include: 1) enhanced human search functions, including the non-preferred term search; 2) experiments to discover feasibility of a "social tagging" function in which users could suggest alternate terminology; 3) experiments in developing a "subject suggester" function; 4) re-design of the search results screen to display the "visualization." Longer-term goals include adding more vocabularies, including: Thesaurus of Graphic Materials, MARC Geographic Area Codes, MARC Language Codes, MARC Relator Codes; and several additions in support of technical metadata standards, including Preservation Events, Preservation Roles, and Cryptographic Hash Functions.

LCSH Genre/form Projects. The Policy and Standards Division continues to develop LCSH genre/form headings and policies for their use. There are currently four active projects:

Moving images. In April 2009 PSD requested comments on a plan to cancel most of the existing subject headings denoting genres of video recordings. In November, the decision was made to follow through with most elements of that proposal. PSD is currently requesting comment on a proposal to modify the hierarchical structure of the moving image genre/form headings.
Music. PSD is collaborating closely with the Music Library Association to deconstruct existing topical headings into their constituent genres, forms, and mediums of performance, so that those elements can be separately coded and searched.
Cartography. In June 2009 comments were requested on a plan to simplify cartographic form subdivisions used in topical headings; most of the comments being positive, PSD decided in November to follow through on the plan. Because the simplification is dependent on the existence of cartographic genre/form headings, changes to the policy will not occur until genre/form authority records are in place. PSD is currently inputting proposals for cartographic genre/form headings and hopes to approve the first group in the late spring or early summer of 2010.
Law. In November 2009 the American Association of Law Libraries presented PSD with its report, “Genre/Form Terms for Law Materials.” Policy specialists and catalogers are currently reviewing it and will confer with AALL as necessary.

PSD will begin discussions of genre/form terms in religion at the June 2010 American Theological Library Association (ATLA) conference. For more information on the projects, including the full text of the discussion papers, decisions, and an FAQ, please see PSD’s genre/form Web page, http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/genreformgeneral.html.

Library of Congress Children’s Subject Headings. The Policy and Standards Division (PSD) worked with the Cataloging Distribution Service (CDS) to create a sixth volume of the printed 31st edition of the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). One part of that Supplementary Vocabularies volume contains children’s subject headings from the Library. PSD is currently investigating the feasibility of enhancing this section by creating validation headings from bibliographic records containing children’s subject headings. These records can be identified by a second indicator of “1” in the subject heading fields (6XX) in bibliographic records. A draft listing has been generated and is out for review to specified LC staff. As with other subject validation headings from the Library, every effort will be made to assure the list of headings will be those of most value in assigning subjects to or in researching library materials. If the project is approved, topical headings would be added first. Categories of headings that would not be included are those developed from name authority headings, headings created according to obsolete practices, headings that duplicate headings from the main LCSH volumes, and headings that appear in a limited number of bibliographic records. Discussions are being held within the Library as to specific methods of enhancing the children’s subject headings section of the printed LCSH. Input from interested parties outside the Library is welcome; please email comments to the PSD email account <policy@loc.gov>.

LCSH Validation Records. As of December 2009, there are more than 34,000 subject validation records. These records are being created at the rate of 500 a week. It is anticipated that the automatic generation of a total of 70,000 to 80,000 the validation records will be completed this year. Special projects will then be initiated to create validation records in subject areas that have been reviewed prior to creation of validation records.

International Cataloguing Principles (IFLA – International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions). The Policy and Standards Division (and its predecessor, Cataloging Policy and Support Office) has been engaged for eight years in the work towards a new “Statement of International Cataloguing Principles” to replace IFLA’s Paris Principles of 1961. After worldwide review, the Statement was approved by all the worldwide participants and by IFLA in January 2009 and was posted (freely available) in February 2009 at URL <http://www.ifla.org/en/publications/statement-of-international-cataloguing-principles>. Work on the print publication of the text was completed in June, with the help of colleagues worldwide to provide the Statement, Glossary, and Resolution in 20 languages. The final volume was available in print in time for the IFLA conference in Milan, Italy, in August 2009. At that conference Barbara Tillett, chief of the Policy and Standards Division, received the IFLA scroll of recognition to celebrate her work on the Statement.

Program for Cooperative Cataloging – see Cooperative Cataloging Programs

ABA Production

Bibliographic Records Completed	FY09	FY08	FY07
Full/Core original	171,124	208,321	211,805
Collection-level cataloging	3,618	3,895	3,434
Copy cataloging	56,308	71,790	71,532
Minimal level cataloging	12,834	29,307	44,447
Total records completed	243,884	313,313	331,218
Total volumes cataloged	313,182	350,631	363,064
Authority Work	FY09	FY08	FY07
New name authority records	111,727	91,016	98,35
New Library of Congress Subject Headings	22,344	35,748*	9,206
New LC Classification Numbers	2,800	1,818	2,127
Total authority records created	109,686	136,871	128,582
Acquisitions for the LC Collections	FY09	FY08	FY07
Items acquired by gift**, exchange, or from GPO	248,725	248,133	258,585
Items purchased	1,263,411	1,200,174	814,726
Items transferred from U.S. Copyright Office	267,101	526,508	1,077,152
Items acquired via the CIP and EPCN programs	83,551	87,479	80,373
Total collection items acquired by ABA	1,862,788	2,062,294	2,230,836

*Includes subject-subdivision strings to support automated validation.

**Does not include gift items sent directly to the special format divisions.

American Folklife Center/Veterans History Project (AFC/VHP)

The Archie Green Fellowship Program was created in 2009 to honor the memory of Archie Green (1917-2009), the pioneering folklorist who championed the establishment of the American Folklife Center (AFC) at the Library. Green was a scholar and advocate for the documentation and analysis of the culture and traditions of American workers. The fellowships are intended to support new, original, independent field research into the culture and traditions of American workers and/or occupational groups. Successful projects must also create significant digital archival materials (such as audio recordings, photographs, motion pictures and field notes) that will be preserved in the center's archive and made available to researchers and the public. The 2010-2011 Archie Green Fellows, announced Dec. 22, are Robert McCarl (Boise State University), Steve Zeitlin (founder and director of City Lore, The New York Center for Urban Folk Culture). Nick Spitzer (University of New Orleans and Tulane University), and ethnomusicologist Maureen Loughran (Ph. D., Brown University), who collaborates with Spitzer on the radio series American Routes.

A new American Memory Web site presentation, "American English-Dialect Recordings: The Center for Applied Linguistics Collection," launched in September at URL: <http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/linguistics/>.

The Center for Applied Linguistics Collection comprises 59 audio recordings (118 hours) documenting North American English dialects. Made from 1941 to 1984, with the bulk being recorded between 1968 and 1982, the collection includes recordings from 43 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and parts of Canada.
AFC director Peggy Bulger serves on the U.S. delegation to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) subcommittee on "Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Traditional Cultural Expressions" and attended the June 2009 meeting. She also serves on the Authorities of the Inter-American Committee on Culture, convened by the Organization of American States (OAS).

Veterans History Project of the American Folklife Center (VHP)
This congressionally mandated public outreach/collection development project is now in its ninth year and continues to expand. In 2008, over 7,500 additional collections were donated. Organizations nationwide, including many libraries, have joined the effort to help gather and submit oral histories and supporting items for the VHP collection. Descriptions of the over 65,000 collections can be searched at the VHP’s Web site, URL <http://www.loc.gov/vets/>. Over 6,000 selected narratives are digitized, of which 20 percent offer transcripts on the project’s Web site, along with a series of themed presentations under the title “Experiencing War.” All collections can be served to researchers in LC’s American Folklife Center Reading Room.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed H. Res. 866 on November 3, 2009, to designate National Veterans History Project Week "to encourage public participation in a nationwide project that collects and preserves the stories of the men and women who served our Nation in times of war and conflict." Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wisc.) and Rep. Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.) submitted the resolution.

The Veterans History Project Web site now spotlights interviews of Native Americans in "Willing to Serve: American Indians," a Web site feature that comprises nine first-person accounts of those who volunteered to serve during conflicts from World War II to Iraq; and of members of the Coast Guard and Merchant Marine in "They Also Served." These one-of-a-kind stories can be found at http://www.loc.gov/vets/.

The Veterans History Project continues to rely on a nationwide network of volunteers and organizations to collect veterans’ interviews. Libraries are a valued resource in this effort, distributing information, coordinating VHP interviewing events, and making their facilities available to local VHP volunteers. A new video was released in November to help volunteer interviewers navigate the VHP Field Kit, the "how-to" guide on recording the first-person oral histories of American wartime veterans. Visit http://www.loc.gov/vets/ to download the video. RealPlayer is required. For additional information, see the project Web site, http://www.loc.gov/vets, or call 202-707-4916.

COLLECTIONS AND SERVICES DIRECTORATE

The OPAC component of the Library of Congress Electronic Resources Management System ("Beta") is currently available in beta version on Library of Congress reading room public computers. This is a full-fledged Integrated Interfaces Inc ("Triple I") public access catalog for electronic resources at the Library of Congress. When they select "Electronic Resources" from any public reading room workstation, users are given a choice of the standard or new electronic resources system to use. The beta version was tested in reading rooms from August 12 through October 2009. Preparations are underway for a full public launch of the system to both on-site and remote users. The beta version will be available to public on-site users until that time.

Collections Access, Loan, and Management Division (CALM)
In 2009, CALM successfully completed and implemented two major initiatives: Reader Registration System Upgrade and Automated Call Slip. These initiatives allow researchers in the general reading rooms, i.e. Main, Local History and Genealogy, and Science, Technology, and Business reading rooms, to request general collection titles online rather than by completing a paper call slip. Additionally the CALM reorganization, which focused on training staff to meet the current and future needs in the areas of collection retrieval, management, and integrity, is proceeding as anticipated.

Loan Reference and Collections Support Section. In the past six months the Loan Reference and Collections Support Section has expanded services to Congressional patrons by adding Playaway digital audio books to the selection of formats available for loan. This unit will soon begin a pilot project to lend E-readers to this same constituency. Requests for both Congressional loans and lending to other libraries grew in the past six months. Many local and academic libraries face financial challenges that induce them to rely more heavily on LC as a lender. Requests, both domestic and foreign, vary from 300 to 400 per day.

Digital Reference Section. In addition to answering more than 8,300 reference queries about the Library's digital collections, the Digital Reference Section continued to add guides to the two series of Web guides that provide topical access to the Library's millions of digitized items. Sixteen new guides were added to the series on the United States presidents that now includes the Civil War presidents--Lincoln, Johnson and Grant--and four 20th century presidents--Wilson, Coolidge, Hoover, and Roosevelt. These guides are accessible at URL <http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/bibguide.html>. Six guides were added to the State Web guide site, for Alabama, Georgia, New York, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, and Nebraska. Other new guides feature digital images and access to material about Paul Dunbar, Alexander Hamilton, Booker T. Washington, and Baseball resources in the collections of the Library. A greatly expanded portal for poetry resources and the poets laureate is accessible at URL <http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/lcpoetry/>.

To assist individuals without ready access to print resources and subscription databases in the field of library and information science, an enlarged Web guide compiled from free, full-text resources available on the Web was created at <http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/libsci/>.

Presentations, whether on-site or via the Web, continue to provide a venue for the digital reference specialists to reach an audience outside the Washington, DC, area. Web conferences via OPAL (Online Programming for All Libraries) continue to focus on special digital collections. The section offers "Introducing loc.gov” the second Wednesday of every month directly from the LC Web site at URL <http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/orientation.html>.

Registration for the latter Web conference is limited to 40 seats; thus, prior contract from participants is necessary. Additionally two new sessions were added to the Journeys and Crossings site that features Webcasts by Library curators and specialists: Amish Resources at the Library of Congress by Paul Conner (LH&G) and Journals of a Pioneer Argonaut, Daniel Jenks by Sara Duke (P&P) are available at <http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/journey/ >.

Off-Site Collections Storage at Ft. Meade. The Library continues to utilize an off-site storage facility at Ft. Meade, MD. The state-of-the-art collections storage modules feature a year round environment that is maintained at 50ºF, 30 percent rh. F, 30 percent rh. The first two modules house approximately 3.5 million books and bound periodicals, and are now full. Module 2 had room for about 500,000 books, and the General Collections stacks on Capitol Hill had an estimated 150,000 books that were on the floor with most stack shelves completely full. Congress and the Office of Compliance called upon the Library to remove all books from off the floor and to create empty space on each shelf for growth of several years. The transfers to Ft. Meade accomplished this.

The newest construction project included two additional modules with the same environmental controls as the first two. When full, these two modules will house approximately 32 million special format pieces, e.g., manuscripts, prints, photographs, maps, atlases and globes. In addition to the two additional storage modules, four cold storage rooms have been constructed as part of this program; three of these rooms will be maintained at 35ºF, 30 percent rh and will house primarily the Library’s collection of 400,000 microfilm masters; the fourth room will be maintained at 25ºF, 30 percent rh and will house color photographs and other items that are best preserved at a below-freezing temperature.

For both the two new modules and the four cold storage rooms, extensive work went into planning exactly where each container will be placed, and a detailed map of every shelf and its contents has been prepared. We anticipate that collections will begin moving to these newly constructed modules in March 2010, and will continue for a period of approximately three years.

Extensive coordination and cooperation between the custodial units and the Library’s Preservation Directorate have ensured that items will be properly housed and preserved at Ft. Meade.

The team that managed construction of Modules 3 and 4 and four cold storage rooms were honored with a Project Achievement Award from the Construction Management Association of America (CMAA) in October. The Ft. Meade team included representatives from the Library of Congress; Architect of the Capitol (AOC); the Baltimore District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; John C. Grimberg Co., the contractor; and Einhorn, Yaffee and Prescott, the design firm.

European Division
On the European Reading Room’s Web site we added the following new electronic offerings:

Address/Telephone Directories from Finland, Address/Telephone directories from Luxemburg, Masaryk & America: Testimonies of a Relationship, and
Revelations from the Russian Archives: Exhibit Publication.

These can be found at URL <http://loc.gov/rr/european/>

Taru Spiegel returned to the European Division in November 2009, where she is the recommending officer for the Scandinavian countries, Estonia, the Netherlands and Flemish language materials from Belgium.

Federal Research Division (FRD)
FRD Military Legal Resources Web site. Continued funding from the Army Judge Advocate General=s Legal Center and School has allowed FRD to significantly increased the size of the Military Legal Resources Web site <http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/military-legal-resources-home.html>. It now has 1,408 documents (247,277 full-text, searchable document pages) relevant to U.S. military law (including rare historical documents). Among the significant additions to the site since June 2009 are the first four of seven volumes of the Edmund M. Morgan Papers digitized from the Harvard University Law School Library Manuscript Collections. During 1948-49, Professor Morgan chaired the committee appointed by Secretary of Defense James V. Forrestal to draft the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Also posted were four new documents on Geneva Convention Materials, "The U.S. Fighting Man's Code” (1959), APOW: The Fight Continues After the Battle," and "The Rule of Law Handbook, 2009."

FRD Country Studies. Three books are underway (Colombia, Indonesia, and Sudan), in various stages of completion. We expect Colombia to be published in February. Funded by the Department of Defense, the new books are no longer Army publications but publications of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

FRD POW/MIA Database. This congressionally mandated effort, ongoing since 1993, is current with the most recently released documents on unaccounted-for Americans from the War in Southeast Asia. Previously microfilmed documents are almost all inked to image files for online retrieval. The linking to 129,427 of 153,467 documents was completed in November 2009.

Geography and Map Division
The Library of Congress has received a Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) to support a project that will catalog 125,000 sheet maps of Africa. The catalog records to be produced under the $240,240 grant will include geographic coordinates for each map that will permit geographic searching of the catalog records. The enhanced catalog data will make it possible to view the coverage area of individual sheet maps using geographical browsers such as Google Earth. The Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives grant program is made possible by funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The project began with the cataloging of 1,800 sets of maps from the 19th century to the present. An unexpected challenge arose from the discovery that about 22 percent of the maps lacked coordinate information; the cataloging team has to research or determine coordinates through indirect methods. Prior to the commencement of the project in May 2009, about 30 percent of the maps had no cataloging data. By December 2, 2009, 1,635 bibliographic records had been completed, providing catalog access to 36,326 map sheets.

Hispanic Division
The Hispanic Division is pleased to report that volume 65 (Humanities) of the Handbook of Latin American Studies was published in August 2009. The Handbook is prepared in the Hispanic Division and published by the University of Texas Press in Austin. The publication is also available online at http://lcweb2.loc.gov/hlas/
The Hispanic Division has added five Webcasts to its Web site including “Education in Jamaica” by Ambassador Anthony Johnson and a book talk by Catherine M. Mayo presenting The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire. These can be viewed on the Hispanic Reading Room site at http://www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/

Humanities and Social Sciences Division (HSS)
Only a Driver’s License (photo identification) is required to register to use Library’s Reading Rooms!

Outreach. HSS staff taught a total of 227 research orientation classes to 3,227 researchers in fiscal 2009: Special research and special orientations were provided for 165 groups with 2,460 patrons. Groups receiving special orientations included: the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; University of Monterey (Mexico) International Student Program; Harvard University’s Center for Hellenic Studies; the Institute of World Politics; Command and General Staff School-Ft. Belvoir; the Society for American Baseball Research; New England Historic Genealogical Society; Daughters of the American Revolution; and the National Defense Intelligence College, Defense Intelligence Agency. Other outreach included staff presentations offsite; approximately 1,000 individuals attended these events.

HSS continues its ongoing partnerships with the University of Maryland, George Mason University and with Semester in Washington programs; outreach to universities in a variety of subjects; individual faculty requests for class orientations; staff attendance at conferences and seminars; and HSS sponsored programs.

A successful "pilot" orientation for 51 students from a magnet high school in the Washington, DC metropolitan area was held in November. After extending the age requirement for reader registration to include those 16 and older, the Library was approached by two high school humanities teachers who explained that their students do an extensive research paper. They are free to choose a topic, but the genesis for the topics must come from images found through the Library of Congress Web site. The Main Reading Room librarians and the Office of Educational Outreach presented a full-day program for the students, whose teachers reported that the information provided and the research potential for their students exceeded all expectations.

Online guides to collections. Staff in HSS updated or compiled the following online guides to the collections: African American Family Histories and Related Works in the Library of Congress, updated by Ahmed Johnson, at URL <http://www.loc.gov/rr/genealogy/bib_guid/AfrAmerFamilyHistories.pdf [PDF, 309KB]>;
Dutch American Local History and Genealogy: Selected Titles at the Library of Congress, compiled by Lee Douglas, at URL <http://www.loc.gov/rr/genealogy/bib_guid/Dutch_Bibliography.pdf [PDF, 231 KB]>; George Washington’s Military Manuals, compiled by Virginia Wood, at URL <http://www.loc.gov/rr/genealogy/bib_guid/WashingtonMilitaryManuals.pdf [PDF, 43KB]>.

Collection Development and Acquisitions
Growth of the Microform Custodial Collections. After the receipt of 77,642 items in fiscal 2009, the Microform Reading Room custodial collection grew to 8,188,119 items.

Growth of the Machine Readable Custodial Collections. During fiscal 2009, the Machine-Readable custodial collections received 3,428 items, of which 2,285 were monographs and serials with disks and 1,143 were computer file CD-ROMs. The MRC collection at the end of FY2009 totaled 83,025 items: 40,580 Books and Serials with disks; 34,532 CD-ROMs; 7,690 Software packages, and 223 video disks. 3,697 books with disks were transferred to Fort Meade for offsite storage.

Key acquisitions. Social Sciences Citation Index (part of Web of Science) now covers the years 1898 to the present. The division acquired Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures, and the Environment from Alexander Street Press.

Music Division
On Nov. 16, 2009, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington named music legend Sir Paul McCartney as the recipient of the third Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. An all-star tribute concert is planned for spring 2010.

The Music Division in 2009 acquired the holograph score of Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No. 3 ("Kaddish Symphony"). Several holograph letters of Felix Mendelssohn, including one which discusses in detail the composer’s oratorio Elijah, were purchased. Other notable acquisitions for the Music Division included the archives of singer-songwriter and humanitarian Harry Chapin (1942-1981); the gift of an extensive collection documenting the influential New Dance Group, founded in 1932 in New York City by students of German expressionist dancer-choreographer Mary Wigman; and the purchase of the papers of Benjamin Franklin Garber, a student of Martha Graham and board member of her dance company. The Garber papers include materials from the late 1960s to early 1970s, a period of Graham's life for which there is very little primary source material.

National Audio-Visual Center/Packard Campus
The Library opened a 200-seat theater in the state-of-the-art Packard Campus of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center on Mount Pony, near Culpeper, Va., on Sept. 4, 2008. The theater is one of only five in the U.S. equipped to show original classic film prints on nitrate film stock as they would have been screened in theaters prior to 1950. The Mount Pony theater also features a custom-made organ that can rise from a pit in the stage. The theater is located on the ground floor of the Packard Campus of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, 19053 Mount Pony Rd., Culpeper, Va.

The 2010 film series begins on Jan. 7. All Packard Campus programs are free and open to the public. For reservation information, call (540) 827-1079 extension 79994 or (202) 707-9994 during business hours beginning one week before any given screening. For further information on the theater and film series, visit URL <http://www.loc.gov/avconservation/theater/>.

National Film Registry. On Dec. 30, 2009, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington selected 25 motion pictures for the National Film Registry. This year’s selections bring the number of films in the registry to 525. Under the terms of the National Film Preservation Act, each year the Librarian of Congress names 25 films to the registry that are "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant to be preserved for all time. These films are not selected as the "best" American films of all time, but rather as works of enduring importance to American culture. The selections for 2009 are: Dog Day Afternoon (1975); The Exiles (1961); Heroes All (1920); Hot Dogs for Gauguin (1972); The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957); Jezebel (1938); The Jungle (1967); The Lead Shoes (1949); Little Nemo (1911); Mabel’s Blunder (1914); The Mark of Zorro (1940); Mrs. Miniver (1942); The Muppet Movie (1979); Once Upon a Time in the West (1968); Pillow Talk (1959); Precious Images (1986); Quasi at the Quackadero (1975); The Red Book (1994); The Revenge of Pancho Villa (1930-36); Scratch and Crow (1995); Stark Love (1927); The Story of G.I. Joe (1945); A Study in Reds (1932); Thriller (1983); and Under Western Stars (1938).

Prints and Photographs Division (P&P)
The Prints and Photographs Division offers a Web home page at <http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/>. For ongoing information about newly available collections and recent and upcoming activities, see the "What's New" page at <http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/whatsnew.html>.

Flickr Commons Pilot Project. New sets of images feature Baseball and Mystery Pictures at <http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/sets/> The Flickr project page has background information is at <http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/flickr_pilot_faq.html>.

Graphic Materials 2nd Edition with RBMS sponsorship. The editorial team for the "Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Graphics)," or DCRM(G), will meet for 2 days, January 18-19, at ALA Midwinter Meeting in Boston. The work-in-progress can be seen at <http://dcrmg.pbwiki.com >.

Collections Recently Processed and Made Available Online: Herblock Collection. A growing proportion of the more than 14,000 cartoon drawings are represented by online descriptions and, in some cases, digital images. View online at <http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/hlbhtml/hlbabt.html>.

Online Reference Aids
Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building Art and Architecture. An overview of resources and search strategies for research on the art and architecture of this historic building. View online at <http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/npcohtml/npcosamp.html>.

Middle East Images in the Prints and Photographs Division: Subject Overview. An overview and set of search tips for finding images of the Middle East at <http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/coll/609_intro.html>. An in-depth look at Turkish holdings indicates the kinds of materials that can be found for many countries in the Middle East.

About the World War I Posters. "About the Collection" information discusses the background and scope of the World War I posters with links to related resources at URL <http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/wwiposhtml/wwiposabt.html>.

Historic American Buildings Survey 75th Anniversary – Webcast. A symposium held on November 14, 2008, marked the 75th anniversary of the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), America's first federal historic preservation program. The symposium is now available as a Webcast. A morning session, "Celebrating the Past and Present," featured four speakers who highlighted the origins and development of HABS at <http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=4606>. Two speakers in the afternoon session, "HABS: Planning for the Future," discussed opportunities and challenges, particularly in light of new technologies at <http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=4605>.

Serial and Government Publications Division (SER)
In fiscal year 2009 the division began a concerted effort to create publicly available holdings statements in the LC integrated library system (ILS) for all United States newspaper microfilm held in the division, converting a manual card file dating back to the division’s first newspaper filming efforts of the mid-twentieth century. We expect to complete this effort in late 2010.

The division completed an item-level inventory of its deacidified comic book collection (approximately 83,000 issues). Summary holding statements for all comic book titles are now available via the Library’s integrated library system (ILS).

Inventory control of the Library’s Federal Advisory Commission (FAC) collection was redesigned in fiscal 2009. SER staff consulted with another federal agency to bring the collection under better bibliographic control. There were 5,558 pieces, comprising annual reports, charters, and meeting minutes accessioned in an database specially developed for this collection.

The division also moved forward in exploring new ways to acquire and preserve online digital news resources, as newspaper publishers struggled to stay afloat in the current economy. Early in fiscal 2009, SER proposed two pilot projects for the archiving of online news Web sites, working with the LC Office of Strategic Information Web Capture initiative and exploring LC’s capabilities for Web capture of rich, daily news sites and publisher attitudes toward granting permission for such capture.

National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP – Chronicling America). The National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress (LC), is a long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of all U.S. newspapers with descriptive information and select digitization of historic pages through the Web site Chronicling America (URL <http://www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica/>). This resource is hosted by the Library of Congress and made freely available to the general public. Supported by NEH, this rich digital resource will be developed and permanently maintained at the Library of Congress. It will eventually include content contributed by all U.S. states and territories.

Chronicling America currently provides access to 1.72 million newspaper pages, digitized by 15 states and the Library of Congress. These historic newspapers include more than 212 titles published between 1880 and 1922 in Arizona, California, the District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Washington (State). The site also includes an extensive Newspaper Directory of U.S. newspaper titles published between 1690 and the present (approximately 140,000 bibliographic records) as well as associated library holdings information, and links to digitized pages when available. Features of the site include full-text search across all historic newspaper pages, the ability to view, magnify and manipulate newspaper pages with highlighted keyword search results, navigation between pages and issues, a quick calendar view of all digitized issues for a particular title, links to descriptive records for each digitized titles, a downloadable "See All" list of available digitized page content, and more than 70 contextual essays regarding the historical significance of each digitized newspaper.
Additional information about the program is available from the NDNP Web site at URL <http://www.loc.gov/ndnp/> which describes the scope of the program, current awardees, selection guidelines, technical conversion specifications for historic newspapers, and sustainable development plans. In addition, the site provides access to the program and technical guidelines for the annual NEH program competition currently underway. In June, NEH announced new 2009 awardees in Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, Oklahoma, Oregon, and South Carolina, converting content published between 1860 and 1922.

To encourage a wide range of potential uses, Chronicling America now employs an API (application programming interface) that enables several different views of the available data, all of which are publicly visible and use common Web protocols, making the data accessible external to the Library of Congress Chronicling America interface. Chronicling America also provides a weekly notification service, via RSS or Email subscription, that highlights interesting content in the site, when new newspapers are added and program updates. Users can use the icons at the lower-left side of the Chronicling America Web page to subscribe to the RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feed or sign up to receive the same information directly to their email in-box.

Veterans History Project see American Folklife Center/Veterans History Project

PARTNERSHIPS AND OUTREACH PROGRAMS DIRECTORATE

Cataloging Distribution Service
Cataloger’s Desktop. “Desktop 3.0” ( see also under ACQUISITIONS AND BIBLIOGRAPHIC ACCESS DIRECTORATE, Policy and Standards in this document). This major modernization of the Web-based subscription service to enhance searching and navigation was launched Oct. 31, 2009). Visit URL <www.loc.gov/cds/desktop/> for the latest news or for a free 30-day trial. During Midwinter Meeting, product demonstrations can be seen throughout the day at the LC exhibit booth and at scheduled LC booth theater presentations.

Classification Web. CDS’s best selling Web-based subscription service features LC classification schedules and tables that are updated daily. Records display non-Roman captions where applicable. For a free 30-day trial subscription visit URL <www.loc.gov/cds/classweb/application.html>. During Midwinter Meeting, product demonstrations can be seen throughout the day at the booth and at scheduled LC booth theater presentations.

Library of Congress Classification Schedules. A new schedule is now available: PB-PH: Modern European Languages (2009). Visit URL <www.loc.gov/cds/classif.html> for the latest information on LC Classification.

FREE PDF Versions of Selected Publications. All back issues of Cataloging Service Bulletin (Nos. 1-123) are available at URL <http://www.loc.gov/cds/freepdf.html>. Also available at the same site, the latest issues of the following publications as they are published: updates to Library of Congress Rule Interpretations, updates to Subject Headings Manual, updates to CONSER Cataloging Manual, updates to CONSER Cataloging Manual, updates to Descriptive Cataloging Manual, and updates to MARC 21 format documentation.

Library of Congress Subject Headings, 31st edition (2009). The 31st edition features a sixth volume at no extra cost: Supplementary Vocabularies, which includes free-floating subdivisions, genre/form headings, and children’s subject headings. Supplementary Vocabularies is also sold as a stand-alone item, which may interest school and special librarians. (Ssee also under ACQUISITIONS AND BIBLIOGRAPHIC ACCESS DIRECTORATE, Policy and Standards in this document).

MARC 21 Format for Bibliographic Data. This 2009 cumulation is a reprint of the base text with Updates Nos. 1-9 interfiled.

Center for the Book
Young Readers Center. Katherine Paterson, two-time winner of the National Book Award and the Newbery Medal, was inaugurated as National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature on Jan. 5, 2010. Paterson has chosen "Read for Your Life" as the theme for her platform. She will serve in the position during 2010 and 2011; she succeeds Jon Scieszka, appointed in 2008, who was the first person to hold the title.
The National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature is named by the Librarian of Congress for a two-year term, based on recommendations from a selection committee representing many segments of the book community. The selection criteria include the candidate’s contribution to young people’s literature and ability to relate to children. The position was created to raise national awareness of the importance of young people’s literature as it relates to lifelong literacy, education, and the development and betterment of the lives of young people. The Center for the Book in the Library of Congress, the Children’s Book Council (CBC), and the CBC foundation Every Child a Reader are the sponsors of the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature initiative (http://www.read.gov/cfb/ambassador/). Financial support for the National Ambassador program is provided by Penguin Young Readers Group, Scholastic Inc., HarperCollins Children’s Books, Random House Children’s Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Macmillan Publishers, Holiday House, Charlesbridge, National Geographic Children’s Books, Candlewick Press and Marshall Cavendish Publishers.

As part of the Library’s increased interest in sharing its resources with young people, the Center for the Book oversees and operates the new Young Readers Center (YRC) in the Thomas Jefferson Building. The YRC will play a leading role in the Library’s promotion of books, reading, literacy and learning to a K-12 audience. Young people, as well as their parents, care-givers, teachers and librarians will participate in the YRC’s programs and activities. Jane Gilchrist is the YRC’s acting director.

Other Activities. In conjunction with the National Book Festival, on Sept. 26 the Center for the Book launched a new Web site at URL <www.read.gov>. It will be the Library’s reading promotion and literacy site. Audience pages are designed especially for children, young adults, adults, and teachers and librarians.

A highlight of the site is a 26-installment serialized story, The Exquisite Corpse, with new installments appearing every two weeks. The first chapter of the story will be written by Jon Scieszka, the Library’s first National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, and the last chapter will be written by the new Ambassador, Katherine Paterson. Well-known children’s book authors have written the intervening chapters and top artists have illustrated the story. The serialized story is being developed with the National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance (see URL: <http://www.thencbla.org/ >), a Center for the Book partner.

Federal Library and Information Center Commttee (FLICC)/FEDLINK
Charles Stanhope, senior advisor to the Associate Librarian for Library Services, has been acting director of FLICC/FEDLINK since August. On October 22, 2009, the Library honored the recipients of the 2008 FLICC awards winners at the 26th Annual FLICC Forum on Federal Information. The 2008 Federal Library/Information Center of the Year (Large Library) was the Information Services Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Research Library, Gaithersburg, Md. In the Small Library (with a staff of 10 or fewer federal and/or contract employees) category, the Hurlburt Field Library, U.S. Air Force, Hurlburt Field, Fla., was recognized. The 2008 Federal Librarian of the Year was Dr. Verlene Herrington, Chief, U.S. Army Military Intelligence Library, Fort Huachuca, Ariz. The 2008 Federal Library Technician of the Year was Lawana Gladney, Library Technician, Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.

Kluge Center/Office of Scholarly Programs
The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress invites qualified scholars to apply for a post-doctoral fellowship for advanced research based on the Alan Lomax Collection in the Library’s American Folklife Center. The Lomax Fellow is expected to develop research of publishable quality. The application deadline is Feb. 28, with the fellowship commencing anytime after Sept. 1. For an application and information on the Lomax fellowships, visit http://www.loc.gov/loc/kluge/fellowships/lomax.html or contact the Kluge Center at (202) 707-3302 or scholarly@loc.gov. For more information about the Lomax Collection, visit http://www.loc.gov/folklife/lomax/.

Luisa Elena Alcala and Jennifer Loughmiller-Newman were named as Short-Term Kislak Fellows, researching cultures and history of the Americas. The four-month fellowships begain in September for Loughmiller-Newman, an anthropologist at the New York State Museum in Albany, and in February, 2010, for Alcala, an associate professor of art history at New York University in Madrid, Spain. Loughmiller-Newman will study Mayan ceramics and the chemical and physical analysis of residues and decomposition. Alcala will research a project titled "Art Taming the Landscape: Creating a Sense of Place in Colonial Spanish-American Images." The Short-Term Kislak Fellowship in American Studies is part of an endowment of the Jay I. Kislak Collection, an important repository of books, manuscripts, historic documents, maps and art of the Americas that was donated to the Library of Congress in 2004 by the Jay I. Kislak Foundation of Miami Lakes, Fla. The collection contains some of the earliest records of indigenous peoples in North America.

National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS)

Digital Transition. In 2009, the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS) issued digital talking-book players and audiobooks on flash-memory cartridges in newly designed mailing containers to libraries around the country for distribution to patrons. This launch of the new digital talking-book program was a historic milestone for blind and physically handicapped individuals in the United States. Not only does this digital technology offer new spoken-word accessibility opportunities, but it represents a state-of-the-art technological achievement and innovation for the Library of Congress.

NLS patrons, including many of the more than 50,000 members of the National Federation of the Blind and members of the American Council of the Blind and the Blinded Veterans Association—who number in the hundreds of thousands—have responded enthusiastically to the digital talking-book player’s compactness, control of variable speed at constant pitch, and indexing and bookmarking capabilities. They are enjoying the high-quality digital sound and have expressed appreciation for the user-friendliness of the digital player which, unlike the analog cassette machine, provides up to 30 hours of uninterrupted reading time.

In addition, the Braille and Audio Reading Download (BARD) service continues to provide patrons the ability to download via the Internet more than 17,000 digital talking books and more than 1,400 issues of 46 audio magazines. Approximately 7,700 readers are registered with BARD, and they have downloaded more than 500,000 copies of audio materials. Many have expressed appreciation for this new service, its search functionality, and its ease of use.

In September NLS distributed 150 duplication fixtures to network libraries to support local duplication of digital talking books. This equipment serves as an interface between duplication equipment and the uniquely shaped NLS digital cartridges purchased by libraries. The fixture may be connected directly to a computer that provides sufficient USB sockets, or to an intermediate external USB hub. Duplication equipment may use several fixtures, each of which holds five cartridges. Further distribution will be made upon request as network libraries transition their programs to the digital talking-book system.

NLS holds a biweekly Open Forum Telephone Conference with staff from the network of 140-plus cooperating libraries. The sessions allow network librarians to gather information about program matters, clarify issues related to the digital transition, and receive updates on changes occurring in the service. In addition NLS managers meet on alternate weeks with the regional chairs of the network via teleconference to discuss program planning, network goals, and other issues regarding service to blind and physically handicapped individuals. These chairs represent four regions of the network and work with NLS to address the concerns and interests of the libraries they represent.

Other News. In recognition of the bicentenary of Louis Braille’s birth, the Library of Congress is presenting an exhibition entitled “Louis Braille: His Legacy and Influence”on the James Madison Building sixth floor, Washington, D.C., through January 30, 2010. The exhibition’s online component may be viewed at URL <http://myloc.gov/Exhibitions/braille/Pages/default.aspx>.

The 2009 Network Library of the Year Awards ceremony will be held on Wednesday, June 18, 2010. Last year the Perkins Braille and Talking Book Library, Boston, Mass., was named the 2008 Network Library of the Year and the Miami-Dade Public Library System Talking Books Library Service, Miami, Fla., was named the Network Subregional Library of the Year. Nominations for this year’s awards may be submitted between February 1 and March 12, 2010. For more information, contact Carolyn Hoover Sung at <csun@loc.gov>.

The 2010 National Conference of Librarians Serving Blind and Physically Handicapped Readers will be held in Des Moines, Iowa, May 16-20.

PRESERVATION DIRECTORATE

The Preservation Directorate is responsible for ensuring long-term access to collections in original or reformatted forms, through its divisions for Binding and Collections Care (BCCD), Conservation (CD), Preservation Reformatting (PRD) and Preservation Research and Testing (PRTD), and its program for Mass Deacidification. These core programs mitigate risks inherent to collections or from surrounding environments, through assessments, monitoring and remediation. The Library is vigilant in safeguarding its collections - its premier assets - from loss due to the inherently unstable nature of collection materials and to harmful, external environmental factors, such as inappropriate handling or display. In FY2009, over 6,763,960 books, serials, prints, photographs and other items were treated by binding, conservation, mass deacidification, and reformatting. Over 374,330 manuscripts, maps, globes and other items were housed in protective enclosures, folders or boxes. Over 65,400 items were labeled, and over 807,850 were surveyed.

Holly Robertson is the new Section Head for Collections Care within BCCD and Emma Lincoln is the Preservation Education Specialist for the Directorate.

Highlights of 2009 included the treatment of two extraordinary primary source collections of African Americana: the Gladstone Collection of 19th century photos of notable African-Americans, and Color Town, a one-of-a kind 52-page album produced by Max Waldman around 1947 that dramaticallyillustrates daily life in a primarily African American community in Florida, later altered by urban renewal in the 1960’s. A notable innovation occurred in response to President-elect Obama’s use of the Lincoln Bible at his inauguration: an innovative box was developed incorporating invisible waterproof shielding to protect the Bible against wet weather.

The Treasures Documentation Project, a multi-divisional project to safeguard the Library’s top treasures, made great progress in compiling past documentation of the treasures, digital conversion of associated Prservation Directorate documentation, hyperspectral imaging of general and unique identifying features, and anoxic case upgrades. An outstanding innovation is the development of a scripto-spatial, GIS (geospatial information system)-like approach to documenting the treasures. Using various wavelengths of light, imaging of the L’Enfant Plan (1791) revealed new details of streets, place names and color schemes, and tracked prior treatments on the map surface; imaging of the first and second drafts of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address revealed new details such as fingerprints and hidden pencil marks; and imaging of Madison’s Virginia Declaration of Rights revealed word changes and watermarks. Five treasure cases (L’Enfant plan, two Gettysburg drafts and Virginia Bill of Rights) were evaluated to determine the condition of their anoxic seals; the cases needed retro-fitting with new valves, gaskets and Plexiglas. The two Gettysburg drafts’ cases were retro-fitted prior to the Lincoln Bicentennial exhibition, and retro-fitting continues on the Draft Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Bill of Rights’ cases. Year-long monitoring of the Waldseemüller 1507 World Map encasement indicated that the anoxic seal could last 150 years, far exceeding design requirements of 25-30 years.

To educate and collaborate with library and information professionals, Preservation staff developed, with ALA/ALCTS, a new annual initiative, “Preservation Week.” The first Preservation Week will be held May 9-15, 2010. Preservation, with ALA and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, hosted planning meetings at LC for stakeholders representing 12 national professional and service organizations for libraries, museums, and archives; 3 federal funding agencies; and Washington area libraries and archives such as the National Library of Medicine and the Washington, DC, Historical Society. Preservation Week will increase public knowledge of libraries’ roles in connecting people to preservation information and expertise, through events created by individual libraries to emphasize the close relationships among personal, family, community, and public collections and their preservation. LC’s Preservation Directorate, NDIIPP, and Young Readers Center plan Preservation Week activities including exhibits and demonstrations on care of collections such as children’s books.
To train federal and other librarians, staff designed the first Preservation Summer Institute for FLICC, a cooperative 3-part program introducing participants to the theory of preservation through online classes developed by the Northeast Document Conservation Center, reinforced by weeklong direct observation of theory put into practice by the Library’s preservation staff, and followed by tailored online courses produced by Lyrasis (for more information, see URL <http://www.loc.gov/flicc/meeting_announcements/2009/ma0914.pdf [PDF, 823KB]>). Staff also planned the fourth “Safety Net” disaster preparedness workshop for FLICC, to be held in February 2010.

To advance preservation science, staff developed and hosted the Summit on Research Technology Transfer(SORTT) for Cultural Heritage, Sept. 29-30, 2009 (see URL <http://www.loc.gov/preserv/symposia/schedule.html>). The SORTT meeting brought together scientists from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Secret Service, Homeland Security, Central Intelligence Agency, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Nassau County (N.Y.) Police Department, U.S. Army Criminal Investigations Laboratory, and Naval Surface Warfare Center to discuss new technology that could be transferred to LC for preservation research. Discussions focused on non-destructive analyses (mainly imaging techniques including hyperspectral and thermal imaging), micro-analytical and forensic techniques for document, media and colorant analysis techniques, standardized protocols and procedures, lifetime predictive testing and scientific reference sample collections. Meeting participants sought partnerships with the Library on science projects, offering their own personnel and laboratories as potential collaborators in exchange, for the Library’s expertise in spectral imaging, for example.

Additional highlights and innovations occurred in the various Preservation Directorate divisions. In the Conservation Division, a new light bleaching station and extraction hood were installed in the wet treatment area to provide a safe method for lightening stains on collections items, as well as greater flexibility for solvent treatments. New tables were installed to speed the safe treatment and storage of oversized collections.

A Conservation Annex was developed to improve workflow, efficiency and safety, comprising housing workstations for stabilizing collections moving to off-site storage, a comprehensive conservation supply depot, an automated mat cutter, and a collections’ recovery room designed to improve drying of wet items and mold removal from at-risk items, in a innovative ductless biological safety enclosure. A second CD highlight was a pilot project on “Digital Preservation”: CD conducted a digital preservation readiness assessment survey of the digital programs (for both born-digital and digitized items) of the Library’s American Folklife Center (AFC) to determine current and missing policies and practices, documentation systems, and administrative and technological infrastructure and resources needed in support of ongoing management and accessibility of AFC’s digital materials. The resulting report examines and analyzes AFC’s digital preservation readiness in terms of the full continuum of actions necessary to ensure the continued accessibility and usefulness of the AFC’s digital resources.

Binding and Collections Care Division
The Binding and Collections Care Division continued to provide general preservation assistance to the public through the Question Point process, coordinating answers to 450 questions (41 additional questions were handled outside of Question Point, by phone, fax, mail). BCCD also continued to fulfill requests for manuscript marking ink, with requests received from 25 outside institutions this year; new developments include the design and implementation of a user satisfaction survey to facilitate assessment of the quality of reference service provided by the Directorate. An innovative training program for identification of damaged irradiated collections material was developed for ABA, presented to 20 staff members in August, and is being converted to Web-based online training for delivery to the rest of ABA’s processing staff. New initiatives included the purchase of innovative equipment enhance the quality and efficiency of operations: an American manufactured Gerber M1200 Boxing System will increase the Collections Care Section’s capacity to create custom enclosures for fragile, brittle and special format books, and a Cubiscan 100L cubing device will use ultrasound to instantly (and digitally) measure three dimensional objects such as books. This device will not only speed measurements of books for custom boxes – it will also reduce the number of times fragile, brittle, and special format materials must be handled prior to housing in protective enclosures. Additional acquisitions include a job backer and book presses (and press stands) to assist in collections conservation treatment, and ergonomic task stools.

Preservation Research and Testing Division
In the Preservation Research and Testing Division, lab renovations and the ground-breaking Center for Library Analytical Scientific Samples (CLASS) advanced. PRTD opened its remodeled and expanded Optical Properties laboratory. This laboratory has approximately 3,740 square feet with state-of-the art optical, imaging and spectroscopic equipment. Remodeling of the 3,240 square foot Chemical and Physical Properties Laboratory advanced, with a larger bench top area, a new environmental “TAPPI” room, three new chemical fume hoods and a new chemical storage area. The new “TAPPI” room was designed to meet specifications for testing physical properties (strength and durability) as per the Technical Association of Pulp and Paper Industry (TAPPI), as well as have an additional 100 square feet chamber tailored to emulate storage conditions for Top Treasures. The new 1,000 square feet CLASS storage space will make accessible to scholars for the first time the Library’s world-renowned scientific study specimens, including the Forbes Pigment Collection, the TAPPI Fiber Collection and the Barrow Books (1,000 volumes). CLASS will have a resource description framework (RDF) software accommodating both physical and digital data and samples, including spectra, images, metadata, etc., so that such data can be exchanged with institutions nationally and internationally.

The goal of the Directorate’s 35-year (one-generation) initiative in mass deacidification is to extend the life and utility of at-risk paper-based materials in the Library of Congress—over 8.5 million general collection books and at least 35,000,000 pages of manuscripts. Mass deacidification is an economic approach to stabilizing books and manuscripts through large-scale treatments to help ensure their continued access. In FY2009, the Directorate mass deacidified 325,830 books through contracted commercial deacidification [at Preservation Technologies, L.P.’s ‘Bookkeeper’ facility in Pennsylvania] and 736,500 manuscript sheets with equipment installed in the Madison Building. This was 30 percent over the annual goal to treat a minimum of 250,000 books and 26 percent under the annual minimum requirement to deacidify at least 1,000,000 sheets of unbound materials. The single-sheet manuscript treatment system (a horizontal deacidification chamber and a spray booth) is housed within the Preservation Testing and Research Division’s chemical laboratory and was out of use for four months in 2009 while that space was remodeled.

TECHNOLOGY POLICY DIRECTORATE

The Technology Policy Directorate consists of the Automation Planning and Liaison Office (APLO), the Network Development and MARC Standards Office (NDMSO), and the Integrated Library System Program Office (ILSPO). The three offices work closely together and with the staff of the Information Technology Services Directorate in the Office of Strategic Initiatives.

Integrated Library System Program Office (ILSPO)
Expanding Access and Improving Performance of the ILS. The LC Online Catalog is the primary access point for users of the Library’s collections and it is one of the most popular sites on the LC Web site. As demand for access to the LC Online Catalog has continued to increase the ILS Program Office has continued towards its goal of unlimited access to the site. Over the course of fiscal 2009 the Library increased access to the LC Online Catalog (URL: <catalog.loc.gov>) by 40 percent and to LC Authorities (URL: authorities.loc.gov) by 57 percent. LC staff worked with the Library’s ILS vendor, Ex Libris, to continue to tune the system to accommodate the increased use. In 2009 there were 142,338,949 total OPAC searches, an increase of almost 10.8 percent over fiscal 2008. Access to the Copyright catalog (URL: <cocatalog.loc.gov>) also increased over this period.

LC EAD (Encoded Archival Description) Archival Finding Aids. In fiscal 2009, Library Services Collections and Services divisions created 214 new EAD archival finding aids, bringing the total number of LC EAD finding aids to 827. Users can now access 27.3 million items in LC’s collections through these documents. Each EAD is linked to a collection-level record in the LC Online Catalog, enabling MARCXML data to be extracted from the Catalog and incorporated into EAD collection summaries and controlled name and subject access terms. PDF versions of LC’s finding aids are prominently indexed by Google and Yahoo, providing increased visibility to the Library’s rich primary source materials. Working with Library Services Web support staff, the EAD technical team revised the Library’s EAD Web site (URL <http://www.loc.gov/rr/ead/>) and created a searchable Web version of EAD Best Practices at the Library of Congress.

LC Persistent Identifiers. To persistently identify LC-managed e-resources, Library staff registered more than 250,000 handles in 2009. As of January 1, 2010, the Library’s handle server contained 2,616,703 handles. Over the past year, LC handles were assigned, for example, to materials digitized in a number of LC cooperative projects, to World Digital Library items, to U.S. legislation searchable in the THOMAS legislative information database, and to digital books created by NLS.
LCCN Permalink (http://lccn.loc.gov/), a Web service that allows users to create permanent URL links to records in the Library's Online Catalog (URL <http://catalog.loc.gov/>), continues to be popular. Nearly 10,000 daily requests enable researchers to reference materials from the Library's collection in their blogs, reference guides, Web pages, emails, bibliographies, databases, and more. LCCN Permalink is completely standards-based, leveraging widely used XML technologies, Z39.50/SRU, and metadata schemas.

Network Development and MARC Standards Office (NDMSO)
Standards projects. NDMSO maintains international standards for search, Z39.50 and SRU; data formats such as MARC, MODS, and EAD; technical metadata standards such as METS, MIX, and textMD; and PREMIS, the data element set for preservation of digital library resources. A tutorial that introduces practitioners to PREMIS, Understanding PREMIS, and a guideline for using PREMIS with METS were Web published. These enable greater ability to exchange standard preservation metadata between repositories (see URL: <http://www.loc.gov/standards/premis/>).

NDMSO, with the MODS Editorial Committee, completed the MODS/MADS Design Principles and compiled a registry of MODS tools, both of which are hosted on the MODS Web site (URL: <http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/>) to assist the community in use of these heavily used XML schema for description of digital material. Also version 3.4 of MODS was completed and will be published shortly. Work progressed on a draft MADS data model based on the SKOS standard that is a step toward enabling exposure of several important LC standards to the semantic Web community. The Library became the official home for the ALTO standard, an XML schema standard that assists with the translation of scanned text into character text and has been used especially for many newspaper projects. An international Editorial Committee was established to assist in the maintenance of ALTO (see URL: http://www.loc.gov/standards/alto/>).

After establishing with the 2008 update to the MARC 21 formats that the online version of this documentation is the “format of record” for MARC 21, the update for 2009 was published in a timely manner in November 2009. This update was significant as it contains many of the changes needed to accommodate RDA in MARC 21. The Office also prepared, with community assistance, several proposals or discussion papers for the January 2010 MARBI meetings, including new RDA data elements for works and expressions, ISBD punctuation in the format, and the recording of URIs for controlled values (see URL: <http://www.loc.gov/marc/>).

NDMSO continued to work with more than 25 foreign resource supply agencies to obtain standard MARC 21 records for direct load to LC’s ILS database (Voyager), thus allowing acquisitions staff to process new receipts without costly keying of new records. Between October 2008 and October 2009 more than 54,000 records were obtained, processed and loaded from Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, Italy, Macedonia, Mexico, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Romania, Serbia, Spain, the United Kingdom, Uruguay, Venezuela and Russia and other former Soviet Socialist Republics.

Digital Portal Projects. The Performing Arts Encyclopedia (PAE), Veterans History, and other portal projects enable the investigation of new approaches to digital site creation and delivery to end users (see URLs <http://www.loc.gov/performingarts/> and <http://www.loc.gov/vets/>). Recent releases have included Coptic Chant and Hymnody ith music transcriptions, audio, video, photos, maps, books, & essays from the Ragheb Moftah Collection; Musical Instruments at the Library of Congress presenting recordings, articles, and photos of the Library's collection of string, wind and folk instruments; Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, objects highlighting one of the most influential dance companies of the twentieth century, primarily from the Library's Bronislava Nijinska collection; and selected music manuscripts from the Ernest Bloch Collection made available to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the composer's death. The Veteran’s History Project added new content on American Indians servicepeople, the Coast Guard and Merchant Marines, and the D-Day 65th anniversary.

NDMSO staff trained Music Division digital project team staff in the use of a processing tool developed by NDMSO that enables them to add material to the PAE sites independently and efficiently. After scanning of an item takes place, music staff can view the digital image online, make adjustments, call for generation of the MODS and METS records, and finally see the presentation in a test environment before going live. Part of this process is the machine harvesting of MARC 21 records from Voyager for the MODS records needed by the PAE site followed by ongoing synchronization of the MARC 21 master record and the MODS record.

NDMSO staff worked with MBRS staff to put over 10,000 audio recordings from classic 78s online. These recordings are from stock sets owned now by SONY. As part of the project, this content will go into the Performing Arts Encyclopedia (PAE) but will additionally be served through a dedicated “jukebox” interface with the ability to stream the audio content. NDSMO thus began working with OSI on a new player with added functionality.

ID.LOC.GOV <http://id.loc.gov/>. NDMSO staff implemented this Web service as a portal for developers– whether local or external to LC–to enable them to interact programmatically with vocabularies commonly found in standards promulgated by LC. The system stores the vocabularies as SKOS data to enable querying and accessibility for semantic Web projects that occur at the Library or in the community. After implementation in April, 2009 with LCSH, NDMSO heard from a number of users about things they liked and suggested improvements for the service. Interestingly, many of the users were accessing the file as a Web site, a byproduct of the service, rather than enabling machine access, which is the main target of the development. Improvements in updating were implemented and a list of other enhancements prepared. Focus turned to adding other vocabularies to the system with more significant improvements expected after the XML Data Store (see below) is implemented. (See also under ACQUISITIONS AND BIBLIOGRAPHIC ACCESS DIRECTORATE, Policy and Standards, LCSH/SKOS in this document).

Library of Congress Web Archive. This project is developing a system to make the Web archives being collected by curatorial staff accessible to the public. In a multi-unit collaboration, Collections and Services staff selects sites to be harvested, the Office of Strategic Initiatives and Information Technology Services supply the software to carry out the crawls, ABA creates descriptive MODS records for the sites largely with data derived from the sites by OSI or automatically supplied by NDMSO, and NDMSO provides coordination and an access system for end user search and view. Recently, NDMSO completed optimizing the browse capability of the access system and enabling popup expansions for searching. Several collections have recently been added to the site including Legal Blawgs, Winter Olympics 2002, and Elections 2004 and 2006. A new collection called “single sites” is a group of sites covering a diverse array of topics selected by recommending librarians at LC. It initially focuses on military history and African-American history and culture; other topics currently include numismatics, Hungary, immigration, charitable organizations, and nanotechnology.

Metadata for Digital Content. This project has the goal to recommend a common set of metadata elements that will support the use cases for digital media recently developed by the Library, as well as future requirements; analyze existing descriptive metadata and recommend how and where the metadata should be managed; and recommend how descriptive metadata might be created for future digital objects. The group developed a master metadata element list and then documented metadata in existing digital library initiatives by developing profiles based on the master list, posting the information on a Web site from the “Standards” page at URL <http://www.loc.gov/standards/mdc/>. The work will lead to better consistency for metadata usage throughout the institution and will point to areas where metadata remediation might be beneficial.

XML Data Store. The XML Data Store Project is aimed at providing “seamless access” across all of the types of metadata that describe LC collections. After testing with a pilot in early 2009, a MarkLogic Server, which is a native XML database that enables the building and deployment of next-generation applications, was purchased and installed. Analysis took place on the initial applications to be loaded: all of the ILS data, the Library's Encoded Archival Descriptions (EADs), and serial records from the ERMS (Electronic Resource Management System). (See also under TECHNOLOGY POLICY DIRECTORATE, Integrated Library System Program Office (ILSPO), LC EAD (Encoded Archival Description) Archival Finding Aids in this document.)

Z Gateway. The popular WWW/Z39.50 Gateway enables Z39.50 access to the LC catalog and approximately 570 catalogs in other libraries for anyone with a Web browser. More than 180 of these catalogs are in foreign countries, such as Australia, Bahamas, Belgium, Botswana, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lebanon, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.

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Deanna Marcum, Associate Librarian for Library Services Library of Congress

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Stay Connected with the Library All ways to connect »

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Related Resources

Library of Congress Update for 2010 ALA Midwinter Meeting: June-December, 2009

Deanna Marcum, Associate Librarian for Library Services Library of Congress

Library of Congress Exhibit Booth

U.S. COPYRIGHT OFFICE

Supreme Court Revisits Electronic Rights Case

Google Book Search Litigation

Golan v. Holder: Restoration of Foreign Copyrights

Constitutionality of the Copyright Royalty Board

Public Process About Access to Copyrighted Works for the Blind and Visually Impaired Continues

Revision of Mandatory Deposit Requirements for Online-Only Works

Anticircumvention Rulemaking

Assistance with Copyright Processing Backlog

OFFICE OF THE LIBRARIAN

CONGRESSIONAL RELATIONS OFFICE

OFFICE OF SECURITY AND EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS (OSEP)

NATIONAL BOOK FESTIVAL

ALA President-elect Roberta Stevens

2010 National Book Festival

LAW LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

LIBRARY SERVICES

ACQUISITIONS AND BIBLIOGRAPHIC ACCESS DIRECTORATE (ABA)

American Folklife Center/Veterans History Project (AFC/VHP)

COLLECTIONS AND SERVICES DIRECTORATE

PARTNERSHIPS AND OUTREACH PROGRAMS DIRECTORATE

TECHNOLOGY POLICY DIRECTORATE

Stay Connected with the Library All ways to connect »

Find us on

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