As its concluding event during its Bicentennial year, the Library of Congress has announced a gift to the nation of 5 million American historical items on its Web site. The National Digital Library Program's award-winning project, American Memory (www.loc.gov), has reached its goal of making these materials from the collections of the Library and other institutions freely available. American Memory is one of the leading providers of high-quality, noncommercial content on the Internet. The site now receives more than 18 million "hits" per month and is one of the federal government's most popular Web sites. Since its inception in October 1994, it has received more than 700 million hits.
The more than 90 American Memory collections offered cover the breadth of U.S. history, from the nation's founding, the wars it has fought, the Great Depression and the great inventors to baseball, the civil rights movement, modern music and theater, the conservation movement and photography. The papers of Presidents Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln bring to life these men and their times. A century later, film brought a new dimension to the public's perception of the careers of presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt, the first U.S. president to have his life chronicled on a large scale by film (even though his predecessors Grover Cleveland and William McKinley were the first to be filmed).
American Memory represents one of the major goals and achievements of the Librarian of Congress, James H. Billington, who came to the Library in 1987 with the idea of sharing as widely as possible the incomparable resources of the institution.
"The U.S. Congress and the American people are the greatest supporters of libraries in history," said Dr. Billington. "Our American Memory project enables us to share with all Americans the riches of their nation's library, the largest repository of knowledge in the world."
The Librarian also acknowledged the significant contributions to American Memory of more than 30 institutions nationwide, whose collections are also available on the site. The digitization and inclusion of these materials were made possible by a $2 million gift to the Library from Ameritech.
The National Digital Library Program of the Library of Congress began in 1994 with major contributions from Metromedia President John W. Kluge and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation ($5 million each) and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation ($3 million). This public-private partnership effort has received $15 million in appropriations from the U.S. Congress and more than $45 million in donations from the private sector.
The James Madison Council, a private sector advisory group to the Library, has been the program's chief source of support. The council is chaired by Mr. Kluge, who has recently donated $60 million to establish the John W. Kluge Center in the Library of Congress and the John W. Kluge Prize in the Human Sciences. The gift is the largest private monetary donation ever given to the Library.
Among the honors American Memory has received are the prestigious Government Information Infrastructure award for the Best Site in Education; a Five-Star Site award from Surfing the Net with Kids; a Pick of the Ages citation from Yahoo!; Time magazine's Best Web Sites for 1996; PC Magazine's Top 100 Sites every year since 1996; Lycos Top 5% of the Internet Award; CNN and PC Magazine's "Best 100" award; Best of the Web by eBlast, Encyclopaedia Britannica's internet guide; History Channel Hotlist; and Best of the Web by the Netscape Net Guide.
Congress OKs Library Budget
The Library's final fiscal year 2001 budget, approved by Congress on Dec. 15 and signed into law by President Clinton on Dec. 21, totals $547.2 million, including a special appropriation of $99.8 million to begin a major undertaking to develop standards and a nationwide collecting strategy to build a national repository of digital materials.
The Library's basic budget for 2001 remained largely unchanged from the version that emerged from a congressional conference committee on July 27, when $448.5 million was authorized for salaries, expenses, furniture and furnishings, representing a $21 million increase (4.9 percent) from the fiscal 2000 budget.
Before approving the final budget in December, Congress gave the Library an extra $100 million for national digital collection and preservation, but then cut the Library's and other agencies' budgets across the board by .22 percent to reduce overall spending. The effect of the rescission was to eliminate $1.2 million from the Library's 2001 budget and reduce the special appropriation to $99.8 million.
Until the Library's final budget was signed into law as part of the Legislative Branch Act of 2001 (P.L. 106-554), the Library operated at last year's spending level under 21 continuing resolutions passed by Congress between Sept. 30, the end of the last fiscal year, and Dec. 21, when the new spending authorization took effect.
Complete details of the Library's fiscal 2001 budget will be published in the February issue.
