By BARBARA BRYANT
The music of Johannes Brahms and George and Ira Gershwin, Alexander Graham Bell's papers, Lessing Rosenwald's collection of rare books, and the writings of Nichiren, an influential 13th century Buddhist philosopher; these are just a few of the unique items the Library of Congress has acquired through its Exchange and Gift division (E&G), which was established on June 30, 1943.
Speaking at an anniversary luncheon held in the Mumford Room on Sept. 13, Donald Panzera, E&G division chief, recognized the accomplishments of the staff -- past and present -- who contributed substantially to the division's success in building the Library's rich collections.
Suzanne Thorin, the Library's chief of staff, hailed the ninth Librarian of Congress, Archibald MacLeish, for his "wisdom and foresight" in creating a valuable a unit within the Library whose mission and value have remained strong and virtually unchanged through the years. Ms. Thorin explained that MacLeish's General Order 1188 still accurately describes Exchange and Gift's responsibilities: to serve "as the Library's central clearinghouse for placing requests and receiving materials through exchange, gift, transfer and deposit."
These materials include government documents, books, serials, manuscripts, microforms, maps, posters prints, photographs, magnetic and videotapes and digitized information.
Later, Ms. Thorin quoted MacLeish again to explain the important role E&G plays in building the Library's collections. "The Library of Congress no longer waits for dealers to offer books, or for collectors to give them or for publishers to deposit them for copyright. The Library now takes active and affirmative steps of its own ... to find out what it lacks and to secure what it needs."
Winston Tabb, associate librarian for Collections Services, hailed the division for its "cultural diversity" a reference to the staff's ability to communicate with the Library's exchange partners in 27 different languages, including Portuguese, Chinese, Czech, Byelorussian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Tagalog, Finnish and Ukrainian.
He also cited the division for producing the Library's second oldest publication, the Monthly Checklist of Publications. Introduced in 1910, the Checklist is a unique bibliography of the publications of the states and U.S. territories. "Since the Checklist's inception, some 36 states have, by legislation, designated the Library of Congress their depository library," Mr. Tabb said. "It is one of the top 20 sales items in the inventory of the Government Printing Office."
The division also carries out a unique form of international humanitarian assistance to libraries worldwide. The division sent shipments of books and other materials to earthquake-devastated Mexico City in 1985, to Leningrad/St. Petersburg after its 1986 fire and to the Central University Library in Bucharest, Romania, after the Ceausescu dictatorship was overthrown in 1989. More recently, after Hurricane Andrew and the floods in the Midwest, Florida, Louisiana and other states also received shipments of books and other materials from E&G.
The division has also contributed to the Library's preservation programs, Mr. Tabb explained, by "parlaying surplus and duplicate transfer materials into funds to support photoreproduction of our many brittle collections."
Mary Price, who has served as the division's director of acquisitions for four years, praised the E&G staff for its increases in productivity through the decades. Although the personnel has grown 2 1/2 times its original size (from 28 in 1943 to 72 today), the division handles 11 times more material -- 13.4 million pieces per year.
Ms. Price briefly described E&G's use of emerging technology to communicate with other libraries. The division is experimenting with Internet, the huge international computer communications network, to distribute exchange lists to the Library's exchange partners and will soon use OCLC as a source of cataloging copy.
"My appreciation for the importance of nonpurchase acquisitions to the Library has grown immensely," Ms. Price said. "Not only must you have the usual acquisition skills -- plus familiarity with the activities of other federal agencies and extensive knowledge about particular countries and cultures -- but you must be extraordinary diplomats as well. The Library's successful Exchange and Gift programs have depended upon the kind of tactful and diplomatic attention to the needs of our partners, agents and donors that have become one of the trademarks of E&G during the past 50 years."
Judy McDermott, chief of the Overseas Operations Division and former chief of E&G, delivered a hilarious parody of the Gettysburg Address: "Two score and 10 years ago, our managers brought forth in this Library a new division, conceived in the spirit of international cooperation and dedicated to the proposition that important research material can be acquired through nonpurchase means." "We here highly resolve," she concluded, "that these materials shall not have been acquired in vain, that this division, under Don, shall have a new birth of business process improvement and that research collections of the customers, by the customers and for the customers shall not perish from the Library."