During 2002, the size of the Library's collections grew to more than 126 million items, an increase of nearly 2 million over the previous year. This figure includes nearly 29 million cataloged books and other print materials, 56 million manuscripts, 13.5 million microforms, nearly 4.9 million maps, more than 5 million items in the music collection, and 13.7 million visual materials.
Integrated Library System. The year 2002 was one of transition for the new integrated library system as it evolved from a project to a permanent operational part of the Library. The system performs routine library functions such as circulation, acquisitions and serials check-in; it also provides access to the Library's online public catalog. A number of major system upgrades brought stability to the system and reduced down-time. During the year, records pertaining to monograph and serials holdings were converted from card format into the ILS.
Arrearage Reduction/Cataloging. The Cataloging Directorate and Serial Record Division achieved record-high production in 2002. Staff cataloged 310,235 bibliographic volumes on 291,749 bibliographic records, at an average cost of $94.58 per record (as compared with $122.60 the previous year). Cataloging staff also created 41,776 inventory records for arrearage items. With the Library serving as the secretariat for the international Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC), approximately 350 PCC member institutions created 162,363 new name authorities (a 13 percent increase over 2001 production); 10,044 new series authorities (6.7 percent increase); 3,165 subject authorities (20 percent increase); 2,551 LC Classification proposals (25 percent increase); 30,160 bibliographic records for serials (50 percent increase); and 82,014 bibliographic records for monographs (12 percent increase).
Preservation Improvements
In 2002, the Preservation Directorate provided a comprehensive range of services to preserve, protect and make available the Library's extensive collections. Through the directorate's four divisions and two special programs, 1,126,598 items were preserved at a total cost of $11,205,276. The average per-item cost was $9.95. Notable accomplishments included: (1) deacidifying 150,000 books, thereby achieving the second year goal of a five-year contract that would enable the Library to deacidify 1 million books; (2) installing a flat sheet mass deacidification treater in the Library that will rescue 1 million books and 5 million manuscripts over a five-year period; (3) providing 30,000 hours of conservation for custodial division collections, including 220 items selected for inclusion on the American Memory Web site; (4) completing the first year of a five-year preventive preservation initiative; (5) completing the first year of a multi-year project to determine the life expectancy of compact discs; (6) preservation microfilming of 2,334,737 exposures (4.7 million pages); (7) hosting national and international digital preservation experts who visited the Library; and (8) contributing to the efforts of the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program.
Secondary Storage. Linked to the Library's arrearage reduction effort is the development of secondary storage sites to house processed materials and to provide for growth of the collections through the first part of the 21st century. With support from Congress, the Library opened the first module of a climate-controlled, high density book storage facility at Fort Meade, Md., on Nov. 18. The facility is projected to extend the life of the collections by several centuries. The first module has a capacity of 1.2 million volumes, leaving room on the 100-acre building site for 13 more storage modules.
The Library continued to plan for the construction of a National Audio-Visual Conservation Center (NAVCC) in Culpeper, Va., to house and preserve its extensive multimedia collections. During the summer, the Library developed an investment and program cost model and drafted a cost requirements plan for the entire facility over a five-year period. A 36,000 square foot temporary storage site in Elkwood, Va., was acquired by the Packard Humanities Institute for the temporary storage of the Library's film and video materials previously stored in the Culpeper facility, pending the completion of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center.
Important New Acquisitions. The Library receives millions of items each year from copyright deposits, federal agencies, and purchases, exchanges and gifts. Notable acquisitions during the year included additions by the Jefferson Library Project to reconstruct the collection in the original catalog of Thomas Jefferson's library, made possible through generous funding from the Madison Council, the Library's private-sector advisory body. Other major acquisitions made possible by the Madison Council included additional funding toward the purchase of the only extant copy of the 1507 map of the world by Martin WaldseemŸller (which first gave "America" its name); 69 autograph letters of 15th President James Buchanan; and more than 100 digital photographic prints documenting the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
National Film Registry 2002 Additions
- "Alien" (1979)
- "All My Babies" (1953)
- "The Bad and the Beautiful" (1952)
- "Beauty and the Beast" (1991)
- "The Black Stallion" (1979)
- "Boyz N the Hood" (1991)
- "Theodore Case Sound Tests: Gus Visser and His Singing Duck" (1925)
- "The Endless Summer" (1966)
- "From Here to Eternity" (1953)
- "From Stump to Ship" (1930)
- "Fuji" (1974)
- "In the Heat of the Night" (1967)
- "Lady Windermere's Fan" (1925)
- "Melody Ranch" (1940)
- "The Pearl" (1948)
- "Punch Drunks" (1934)
- "Sabrina" (1954)
- "Star Theatre" (1901)
- "Stranger Than Paradise" (1984)
- "This Is Cinerama" (1952)
- "This Is Spinal Tap" (1984)
- "Through Navajo Eyes" (series) (1966)
- "Why Man Creates" (1968)
- "Wild and Woolly" (1917)
- "Wild River" (1960)
The Library also acquired the following significant items and collections in 2002: a manuscript from the 1720s containing selections from three operas by George Frideric Handel; the papers of former Secretary of Defense (and Energy) James Schlesinger; 58 documentary photographs of the 9/11 destruction at the Pentagon and the Shanksville, Pa., crash site taken by news agency photographers; the Thomas Kane library of materials about Ethiopia, including 200 Ethiopian manuscripts and 12 Ethiopian magic scrolls, some 2,500 works in Amharic, Tigrinya, Ge'ez and other Ethiopian languages, and more than 3,500 titles in English and other European languages; "Takvim-ut-Tevarih" by Katip Chelebi (1733), one of the first books printed by Muslims (Turks) using movable type; and Sisitan, a run of newspapers issued in Afghanistan, beginning in 1902. In addition, approximately 30,000 Web sites were acquired through the MINERVA Web preservation project, a collaboration between the Library of Congress, the Internet Archive and WebArchivist.org. As part of the project, event-based Web site collections were developed, including those related to September 11, 2001, the 2002 Olympics, and the 2002 midterm election.
